"Traitor, can you hear me?"
Ramirez nodded. A muffled sound came from behind the gag.
"Then listen carefully," Dax continued. "We have come for the money. If we get it no harm will come to you or the woman. If not, you will spend a long time dying."
Another stifled sound came from behind the gag.
Dax raised the knife so that Ramirez could see it. "I'm going to loosen your gag. One move out of you and you will die with the blood pouring from the hole between your legs where your genitals used to be."
Marcel held his breath as Dax loosened the gag. Fortunately Ramirez was no hero.
"Now," Dax whispered, "the money?"
"It's gone!" Ramirez whispered back huskily. "The gaming tables got it all!"
Dax laughed silently. The knife moved swiftly and a thin line of blood traced a path down Ramirez' belly. There was a look of horror on the man's face at the sight of his own blood. His eyes rolled upward into his head and he slumped.
"The coward has fainted again." Fat Cat looked at Dax. "We could be at this all night."
Dax went over to the washstand and picked up the pitcher. He came back to Ramirez and emptied it. Ramirez came up sputtering.
At the same time the woman began to roll around, bumping the floor. "Hold her still!" Dax ordered. "She'll have the whole house down on us!"
Fat Cat leaned over the woman and slapped her face. Despite her trussing she tried to kick him. Fat Cat grinned. "At least she has the courage the traitor lacks." He sat down heavily, straddling her hips, and with one large hand spanned her throat, effectively pinning her to the floor.
"Where is the money?" Dax asked again.
Ramirez didn't answer. He was staring at Fat Cat and the woman. His head spun around as Dax swiped at him with the butt of the knife. "It's gone, I tell you!"
Fat Cat looked over at the traitor. "She seems like a nice little piece even though she's a bit small in the tetas."
Ramirez remained silent.
Fat Cat looked over at Dax. "It's been a long time. I'm a three-day virgin."
Dax didn't take his eyes from Ramirez' face. "Go ahead," he said quietly. "Fuck her. And when you're finished, let Marcel fuck her too."
The protest rising in Marcel's throat was never uttered. He saw the tawny jungle look in Dax's eyes. The woman began to struggle as Fat Cat forced her legs apart with one knee. He opened his fly. "Be happy, little one," he murmured. "Now you will see what a real man is like. Mine is not a miserable worm like that one's."
The words burst out of Ramirez' throat. "There! The safe in the wall behind the bed!"
'That's better." Dax laughed. "Now, how is it opened?"
"The key is in my pants pocket."
Dax already had the trousers off the chair over which they had been carelessly thrown. He held up a key ring. "Is this the one?"
Ramirez nodded. "Behind the picture on the wall."
Quickly Dax crossed the room. He moved the picture, and inserted the key in the black metal safe. "It does not work!" he said angrily, coming back to Ramirez.
Ramirez tore his eyes away from Fat Cat. "That is the car key. There is another."
Marcel couldn’t keep himself from staring. Until now rape had been only a word he had seen in the newspapers. He felt dizzy with a strange excitement. It was nothing like the fornication he had experienced. It was cold and savage and brutal. Fat Cat had already entered the woman. Marcel saw her entire body shuddering under the impact.
"Marcel!"
He tore his eyes away from the two of them and walked over to Dax. The safe was filled with stacks of neatly packaged banknotes. "My God!" he whispered.
"Don't stand there gawking! Get a pillowcase and help me pack this money."
Marcel couldn't keep from glancing back over his shoulder as he held the pillowcase for Dax. He looked at Ramirez. The traitor was staring at Fat Cat and the woman. It wasn't until he ran his tongue over his lips that Marcel realized what he was thinking. The money had been forgotten.
The whole world had gone mad. Nothing in it made sense any more. Dax, after one perfunctory glance at the writhing pair, paid them no further attention. It was as if what was happening was a perfectly ordinary occurrence. Marcel was in the throes of a private sexual excitement all his own; his legs felt weak and they trembled, as they hadn't since the first time he had been with a woman.
"Bueno!" Dax's voice was filled with satisfaction. The pillowcase was almost full. Quickly he secured the open end with a silk stocking. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at Fat Cat. "Don't take all night," he said casually. "We still have to get out of here."
He looked at the other key on the ring and was about to throw it away. "Do you drive?" he suddenly asked Marcel.
Silently Marcel nodded.
"Bueno. There's nothing like a pleasant drive in the cool of the night."
The baron leaned across his desk. "How much did they recover?"
"Almost four and a half million francs," Marcel replied, coming back to the present again.
"I'm glad," the baron said quietly. He stared down thoughtfully at his desk. "That's quite a lad. Has there been any discussion about which school he will attend?"
"I heard the consul mention the public schools. But that was before the money was recovered."
"Unfortunately it won't be of much help," the baron said. "It will hardly cover the personal loans the consul made in order to pay the bills." He tapped the pencil on his desk. "I want you to suggest that the boy attend De Roqueville."
"But that is the most expensive school in Paris!"
"It is also the best. My own son goes there. I will pay the tuition, make all the arrangements. The boy will be offered a scholarship."
The feel of the ten-thousand-franc note in his pocket was very reassuring to Marcel as he left the baron's office. His finances were looking up. The grocer had not been the only one to make a deal with him for the collection of bills.
But there was still one unanswered question plaguing him. He still knew no more about why the Baron de Coyne was interested in the consul and his son than he had the morning of that first telephone call.
CHAPTER 4
The buzzer on his father's desk sounded harshly. Dax came back from the window and picked up the intercom. "Oui, Marcel?"
"Your friend Robert is here."
"Merci. Ask him to come in." Dax put down the receiver and turned toward the door.
Robert entered and crossed the room, his hand outstretched. "I came as soon as I heard the news."
They shook hands European fashion, just as they always did on meeting or parting, even if they had seen each other earlier that morning on the polo practice field. "Thank you. How did you find out?"
"The steward at the clubhouse," Robert said. "He told me about the phone call."
Dax's lips twisted wryly. Paris was no different from a small town at home. By now the news would be everywhere, and soon the newspapers would have their reporters at the door.
"Is there anything I can do?"
Dax shook his head. "There is nothing anyone can do. All we can do is wait."
"Was he ill this morning when you left the house?"
"No. Had he been, I would not have come to practice."
"Of course."
"Father was not very strong, as you know. Ever since we came to Europe he has been subject to very severe colds. It seemed that no sooner was he over one than he contracted another. It appeared that he had no resistance. Marcel found him slumped over the desk. He and Fat Cat carried him upstairs and called the doctor. The doctor said it was his heart, then they called me."
Robert shook his head. "This is no climate for your father. He should have lived on the Riviera."
"My father never should have come here at all. The strains and tensions were too much for him. He never really got his strength back after the loss of his arm."
"Why didn't he go back then?"
"He had a strong sense of duty. He rem
ained because he was needed. The first credits he worked out with your father's bank saved our country from bankruptcy."
"He could have gone home after that."
"You don't know my father." Dax grimaced. "That was only the beginning. He knocked at every door in Europe to get help for our country. The snubs and rebuffs turned him into an old man. But he kept on trying."
Dax took out a thin brown cigarette and lit it. "You know," he said somberly, "the early years here did him no good either. The previous consul had left a mess and my father cleaned it up. He paid all unpaid bills himself, even though it broke him. To this day he doesn't know that I know that everything went to pay those bills—our home in Curatu, his savings, everything he had. The only thing he did not touch was our hacienda in Bandaya, and that was because he wanted me one day to have it." He dragged deeply on the cigarette and let the smoke trickle slowly from his nostrils.
"I never knew that," Robert said.
Dax grinned wryly. "If that scholarship at De Roque had not turned up like a miracle, I'd have attended public schools. As It was, my father deprived himself of things he needed so I would be dressed properly and there would be gasoline enough in the car so Fat Cat could drive me home for the weekends."
Robert de Coyne looked at Dax. Strange that none of them at the school had ever guessed it. There were some poverty-stricken ex-royalty there but everyone knew who they were. They were there because they brought social standing to the school. But Dax was South American and everyone assumed that South Americans were rich. They owned tin mines and oil wells and cattle ranches. They were never poor.
Suddenly, many of the things that had happened during those early school years became clear to him. For example, the incident toward the end of that first week at school. Thursday afternoon, between the last class and dinner. Free time. In back of the gymnasium. They had stood in a small semicircle around one of the new boys.
His dark eyes had looked at them impassively. "Why do I have to fight one of you?"
Sergei Nikovitch looked around with an expression of disgust. "Because," he explained patiently, "next week we have to draw lots to see whose room you will share for the remainder of the school term. If you do not fight, how are we to know whether to accept you or reject you?"
"Do I also have the same right?"
"Only if you win. Then you can choose your roommate."
The new boy had thought for a moment, then nodded. "It seems stupid to me but I will fight."
"Good," Sergei said. "We shall be fair about it. You can decide which one of us to fight, that way you will not have to face someone bigger. But you are not allowed to choose anyone smaller."
"I choose you."
Sergei had a surprised look on his face. "But I am a head taller than you. It would not be fair."
'That is why I chose you."
Sergei shrugged hopelessly. He began to take off his jacket. He looked around at the others as Robert de Coyne had gone up to the new boy.
"Change your mind," he had said earnestly. "Fight me instead. I'm your size. Sergei is the biggest and best fighter in the class."
The new boy smiled at him. "Thank you. But I have already chosen. This business is stupid enough as it is. Why make it worse?"
Robert had looked at him in surprise. That was the way he had always felt, but this was the first time he had ever heard anyone dare to say it. Still, it was the custom. He felt an instinctive liking for the new boy. "Whether you win or lose I shall consider myself fortunate if I draw you for a roommate."
The new boy looked at him with sudden shyness. "Thank you."
"Are you ready?" Sergei called.
The boy slipped out of his jacket and nodded.
"You have your choice again," Sergei said. "La boxe, la savate, or free-for-all."
"Free-for-all," the other said, only because he wasn't quite sure what the other two meant.
"Bien. It is over when one of us gives up."
Actually it was over before that. It was also the finish of that custom at De Roqueville School. It all happened so quickly that it ended while the boys were still waiting for something to happen.
Sergei had reached out his arms in the conventional wrestler's position and begun to circle the new boy, who turned with him, his arms hanging loosely at his sides. Then Sergei grabbed for him, and the other's movements became a blur of speed. The flat of his hand struck aside Sergei's outstretched arm and as that arm fell limply to his side, the new boy struck again. He seemed to half-spin, which gave his flattened hand additional power as it lashed into Sergei's ribs. There was barely time to see the expression of surprise on Sergei's face as he doubled over, then the other circled behind him and hit him at the base of his skull with the knuckles of his closed fist. Sergei crumpled to the ground.
The new boy stood over him, then turned to them. They stared back unbelieving. This one wasn't even breathing heavily. They watched him go back and pick up his jacket from where he had folded it neatly on the ground. He started to walk away, then turned.
"I choose you for a roommate," he said to Robert. Then he glanced at Sergei, still lying silently on the ground. "You'd better get help for him. His arm is broken and so are two of his ribs. But he'll be all right. I didn't kill him."
The doorman at the Royale Palace was an imposing sight-A tall man, six foot seven in his boots, his high Cossack hat made him seem even taller, and the pink and blue uniform with the golden epaulets and braid across the chest gave him the appearance of a general out of a Franz Lehar operetta.
And he ran his post at the hotel entrance like a general. The luggage racks were neatly folded away in a hidden corner and woe betide any bellhop who neglected to replace them in that exact manner. His stentorian heavily accented voice had been known to summon a taxi from as far away as three blocks.
It was said about him that at one time he had actually been a colonel in the Cossacks, though this was never proved. All that was known was that he had been a count, a distant cousin of the Romanovs, and one wintry day in 1920 he had appeared full blown in the hotel doorway. He had been there ever since. Count Ivan Nikovitch was not a man to invite confidences or even discussions of a personal nature. The sight of the saber scar, half hidden in his cheek by the thick, carefully trimmed black beard, was quite enough to discourage that.
Just now he sat awkwardly in a chair much too small for him and studied his son, propped up in the bed. There was no anger in him, not even sympathy for his son, only annoyance. "You were stupid," he said flatly. "One never fights an opponent who does not know the rules. One can get killed that way. Rules are made for your own protection as well as the enemy's. That's why we lost to the Bolsheviki. They didn't know the rules either."
Sergei was embarrassed. That hurt even more than the pain. The ease and speed with which he had been beaten, and by a boy little more than half his size. "I didn't know that he didn't know the rules."
"All the more reason you should have explained them to him," his father replied. "That alone would have so confused him he would have been easy for you."
Sergei thought for a moment, then shook his head. "I don't think so. I think he would have ignored them."
A sound of voices came through the open window. The boys were coming out of the classrooms. Count Nikovitch rose from his chair and went over to look down at them.
"I would like to see this boy," he said curiously. "Might he be among them?"
Sergei turned his head so that he could see through the window. "There, the dark boy walking alone."
The count watched Dax cross the field to the next building without even a curious glance at the other boys. When he disappeared into the building Count Nikovitch turned back to his son.
He nodded his head. "I think you are right. That one will always make his own rules. He is not afraid to walk alone."
The next year Dax and Robert had moved to the main dormitory, where they would remain, moving only from the top floor down to the first, year by year,
until their time at De Roqueville would be over. Now they were "older" boys, as compared with the younger boys, who lived in another building. That was how they had been joined by Sergei. The older boys were lodged three in a room.
It was a policy of the school based on a belief that three was a more productive number than either two or four. Four in a room generally wound up two against two, and two in a room was not economical. Dax and Robert had barely begun to unpack their things when a knock had come at' the door. Robert went over and opened it. Sergei stood there, his valise in hand.
It was hard to tell which of them was more surprised. Sergei checked the room slip he still held in his free hand, then the number on the door. "This is the room, all right."
He put his valise down in the center of the room. They stood silently watching him. "I didn't ask for it, you know," he said. "My own roommate dropped out and le prefet assigned me here." They still didn't speak. Since the fight Sergei and Dax had always managed carefully to avoid one another.
Suddenly Sergei smiled. There was warm vitality in that grin. "I'm glad we don't have to fight for this one," he said in mock relief. "I don't know whether my bones could take it."
Robert and Dax glanced at each other; the beginnings of an answering smile came to their lips. "How are you in literature?" Robert asked. Sergei shook his head. "Not good at all."
"Math, physics, chemistry?" A woeful expression crossed Sergei's face as he shook his head to each in turn. "What are you good at then?" Robert asked. "Those are the subjects we need most help in." "I don't know," Sergei confessed. "They're my weak ones too."
"History, geography, government?" Dax asked. "I'm not very good at those either."
Dax glanced at Robert, a secret smile in his eyes. "We need a roommate who can teach us something. You don't seem to be of much use." "No, I'm not," Sergei answered sadly.
"Isn't there anything you can teach us?"
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