It's What Up Front That Counts

by Troy Conway

  That was the theory, and it touched all the bases. If it was correct, my mission would be a cinch. All I’d have to do was spirit Andi and Diane out of England and the ball game would be over.

  Unfortunately, I had a sneaking suspicion that my theory wasn’t correct. True, it answered all my questions. But it answered them too well.

  Spy mysteries aren’t supposed to be solved this easily. There’s always supposed to be a fly in the ointment, a missing link that makes it impossible to string a chain of apparent coincidences together and come up with a rational explanation for everything that’s been happening.

  My theory was too pat.

  It made no allowance for a missing link.

  And while, when I was a novice at the spy game, I might’ve been all set to close the case at this point and compliment myself on a job well done, I now was more skeptical than proud. I had a feeling—a feeling so strong that it almost gave me goosebumps—that something would happen any second now that would dash my theory to hell and leave me even more mystified about the Smythe-Whelan affair than I had been when I started in on the case.

  I mentally rehearsed every aspect of the case, but couldn’t come up with the missing link I was looking for. So I ran the whole works through my mind one more time. I still couldn’t come up with the missing link.

  I was about to do another replay when Lady Brice-Bennington showed up for our appointment. She was wearing a bright pink dress with a neckline that was—for her, anyway—extremely daring, and the look in her eyes said that she couldn’t wait for our planned sexual discussion to get underway. Next to Robbi Randall, perhaps, I would have found her downright unattractive. But Robbi Randall wasn’t around, and Lady B-B was. I didn’t have too many reasons to believe I’d score with her, and I had a lot of good reasons to believe that I wouldn’t. But it sure as hell would be fun to try—and I planned to.

  Damn the missing link, I told myself as I crossed the room to take her hand. Full speed ahead!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We had tea in the breakfast room at the Eros—but not before I had played another round of hide-and-seek with my tails. Note well: tails, plural.

  Rumpled Suit led the parade. He was posted across the street, pretending to read The Evening Standard, as Lady B-B and I pulled out of the mansion driveway in her sedan. Not giving any indication that he had seen us, he ducked into a phone booth and hurriedly dialed a number.

  Next came a slim, dapper dude in an Edwardian jacket and mod, bell-bottom slacks. He was posted on the same side of the street as the mansion, and like Rumpled Suit, he was pretending to read a newspaper.

  No sooner had he spotted us leaving the driveway than he made a beeline for a Volkswagen parked at the curb. As he got inside, I saw his face. I gulped. Tail number two was none other than Peter Blaine, the pimp.

  I maneuvered Lady B-B’s sedan around a corner and into the heavy traffic on Charing Cross Road. Blaine’s Volks stayed right with us. Then, a minute later, an Austin-Healy slipped into line a few cars behind him. I couldn’t be sure, but I was willing to bet that it was the same Austin-Healy that had followed Andi from my hotel that morning.

  Just for the sport of it, I decided to give my tails a run for their money. Pulling off Charing Cross, I raced through a maze of side streets. Lady B-B’s sedan was much too fast for the Volks. Peter Blaine dropped out of the running after I had turned the fourth intersection. I made a few more turns, then pulled to the curb and parked.

  “Doctor Damon,” said Lady B-B, bewildered, “what’s the meaning of all this?”

  “I suspect we’re being followed,” I said sinisterly.

  “My word!” she gasped. “But in heaven’s name, by whom?”

  “A former girlfriend of mine,” I ad-libbed. “She’s madly in love with me, and she must’ve learned I’m in London. She wants me to marry her.”

  “Really, Damon, I must protest. I want no part of matters like these.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Lady B. No one will ever know you’re involved.”

  “But I’m not involved.”

  “Precisely. So there’s nothing for anyone to know, is there?”

  My verbal footwork was dazzling enough to silence her. We sat there for a minute or two waiting for the Volks. It never showed up.

  But the Austin-Healy did. The driver had turned the last corner too quickly to put on his brakes and stop casually somewhere behind me, so he just drove on by. I got a good look at him as the car passed. It was my monocled tablemate from the night before at The Safari Club.

  I waited until the Austin-Healy was out of sight. Then I U-turned and doubled back to Charing Cross. Trying to make sure the Austin-Healy couldn’t pick up on me again, I took the scenic route back to the Eros—via Buckingham Palace, then London Bridge, then Leicester Square—but he stayed with me until I had turned onto Shaftesbury Avenue, then, mysteriously, he lost interest and cut down Wimpy Mews.

  I soon discovered why he had lost interest: he knew I was going back to the Eros, and he had me covered there. His colleague, Rumpled Suit, was sitting in the lobby reading Punch when I ushered Laby B-B in. He never gave any indication that he noticed me, but I knew that he had.

  In the dining room, Lady B-B and I killed half an hour discussing my progress with the sex survey. Then I shifted the subject to her sexual philosophies and the experiences which had led to their development. We reworked most of the terrain we had covered the previous day, all without my discovering anything significant. Then our discussion became a debate; she presented the standard arguments against the free dissemination of erotic literature, and I presented the standard arguments for it.

  My rhetoric, of course, didn’t move her—not any more than her rhetoric moved me—but as we spoke I got the feeling that something else was moving her. In the course of arguing that the reading of erotic literature arouses people to perform sexual acts, she cited numerous passages from the erotic books she had read—in the course of her work, of course, and only, heh-heh, as a matter of duty. She described each of these passages in great detail, sometimes all but reciting them verbatim. And, with each passage she described, her manner grew more animated.

  No doubt about it, she was excited. And her excitement wasn’t the zeal of a missionary about to win a convert or a debater about to make a point. It was good, old-fashioned sexual excitement. She probably would be the last person in the world to admit it, but she was really getting turned on!

  I suggested that we adjourn to my room to continue the discussion. She seemed to weigh the idea for a moment. Then she demurred.

  “But why not?” I demanded. “Surely you don’t think I’ll attack you.”

  “Of course not,” she replied quickly. Then, smiling seductively in spite of herself, she added, “But you might make sexual advances.”

  I smiled back. “I certainly would be tempted to. But, of course, I respect your wishes too much to surrender to the temptation.”

  “Suppose you got carried away?”

  “I wouldn’t.” Leering, I added, “But, even if I did, you’d be able to resist them, wouldn’t you? What was it you told me yesterday? ‘The difference between humans and animals is that humans control their sexual impulses.’ Surely you don’t think you’d lose control.”

  Her pride in her control was her downfall. If she had admitted that she was afraid of getting carried away, I wouldn’t have had a rhetorical leg to stand on. But she wouldn’t admit it—probably not even to herself. And without admitting it, she couldn’t logically decline my invitation.

  Grinning like a bastard, I led the way to my room. She accepted my offer of a drink, and our debate resumed. Her argument this time was the old proposition that reading about sex gives people ideas that they wouldn’t get otherwise. To support her position she offered the hypothetical example of a high school student who might happen upon a book describing precoital stimulation.

  “Take a book,” she said, “like Sisters of Sin—one of the many pieces
of trash which presently circulate freely throughout England and which can be bought for a few shillings at newsstands near all our high schools. Have you read it?”

  “No,” I confessed, “I haven’t.”

  Her eyes glowed with a missionary fervor. “Well, I have and I can tell you that it’s absolutely disgusting. There’s one scene, for example, where a lascivious old rake seduces a young girl. The description of the seduction goes something like this:

  “ ‘Mister Dennison held Laurie to him, and his hand gently stroked the soft, firm mound of her breast through the fabric of her cashmere sweater. She wasn’t wearing a brassiere, and her nipple came alive as he touched it. A shiver of excitement coarsed through her body, and, as if by reflex, her legs parted.

  “ ‘Mister Dennison then brought his hand from her breasts to her thighs, which were bare, and he slowly worked his way up their smooth surface until his fingers had come to rest against her panties, which were damp in anticipation. She wanted him desperately, and he knew it.’ ”

  As had been the case in her previous recitations of erotic passages, Lady B-B seemed to grow more inflamed with each word she recited. Her eyes lost their missionary glow and took on a look that was pure hunger.

  She continued, “ ‘Laurie’s hips began moving slowly back and forth, as if in response to the prodding of a penis. Her thighs spread farther apart, and Mr. Dennison worked his fingers through the leg of her panties and began massaging her eagerly distended clitoris. She squirmed passionately in his lap. She knew that what she was doing was wrong, but she also knew that a lot of other girls did it, and she figured that it couldn’t be wrong if so many people liked it so much.’

  “ ‘ “Laurie,” Mr. Dennison said, “I would like to make love to you.”

  “ ‘ “Oh no, Mr. Dennison,” she replied, “we shouldn’t. It’s all wrong.”

  “ ‘ “But Laurie,” he argued persuasively, “a lot of other girls do it, and they like it very much. It can’t be wrong if so many people like it.”

  “ ‘Laurie wasn’t persuaded by his argument, but she now was too hungry for him to resist any longer. As his fingers left her clitoris and began to explore the moist warmth of her vagina, she said: “Okay, Mr. Denison, let’s do it.”

  “ ‘He then guided her panties over her hips, situated her on a couch and made love to her.’ “

  The Big Prig’s eyes took on a sad expression.

  “Continue,” I prodded. “It’s just getting good.”

  She frowned. “The passage ends there. The next passage takes up with Laurie in her eighth month of pregnancy at a home for unwed mothers.”

  “What a shame,” I sympathized.

  Her excitement now having ebbed, Lady B-B proceeded to point out the moral lesson which she believed the sexy passage proved. “Imagine, Doctor, a high school boy who has gotten his hands on this awful book. As he reads the passage, he first discovers that an effective way of getting a girl excited is to caress her breast. He then learns that one of the ways he can determine she is excited is by noting the tenseness of her nipple. He next learns that a further indication of excitement is the dampness of a girl’s panties. And he then learns that he can get her all the more excited by massaging her clitoris.”

  “Not all females,” I reminded her, “respond to the same modes of sexual foreplay, and not all have precisely the same bodily reactions to sexual arousal.”

  “That doesn’t matter. The point is that a boy can learn some modes and some bodily reactions from one book and other modes and other reactions from other books, then put the knowledge together and use it against innocent girls. What’s more, from these same books they can learn arguments by which to persuade girls to abandon their virtue. In Sisters of Sin, for example, Mr. Dennison tells Laurie that sex can’t be wrong if so many people like it. How many boys, do you suppose, will repeat this argument in their own attempts at sexual conquest?”

  “Frankly, Lady B, I don’t think too many boys need Mr. Dennison’s example. The thought that sex can’t be so bad if it’s really so good probably occurs to most people long before they’ve ever read an erotic book.”

  “Most, perhaps, but not all. And if even one person is prevented from learning the techniques of seduction, the Friends of Decency’s campaign against erotic literature will have been a worthwhile endeavor.”

  I had half a dozen rebuttals just ready to be used, but I didn’t use any of them. I was interested in turning The Big Prig on, not in playing Demosthenes, and my experiences thus far with her led me to believe that the best way to turn her on, and to keep her turned on, was to keep the conversation on a strictly sexual plane.

  “Let’s look at the matter from another angle,” I said. “Let’s forget about high school students for the moment and let’s talk about married couples. Let’s suppose that a husband who, thanks to your campaign to ban all erotic books, has never discovered that the clitoris is an erogenous zone. Let’s suppose that this husband doesn’t even know what a clitoris is, or that most women can’t achieve orgasm without clitoral stimulation. Because of his ignorance, his wife goes sexually unsatisfied. And because she is unsatisfied, she commits adultery with a man who does satisfy her. Eventually she decides to leave her husband and live with her lover. She abandons him—and their children—because she couldn’t find sexual satisfaction in their marriage.”

  “She doesn’t have to abandon him. People can have a happy marriage without sexual satisfaction.”

  “They can? I don’t think so.”

  “I do. And I’m in a better position to know than you are.”

  “How so?”

  “I—I—” she fumbled. Then, catching herself on the threshold of what would have been a damaging admission, she said, “I’ve investigated dozens of such cases in my work for the Friends of Decency.”

  “Well,” I replied, “I’ve investigated thousands of cases in my work for the League of Sexual Dynamics, and I’ve never found one couple that was perfectly happy without sexual satisfaction.”

  “You’ve evidently investigated the wrong cases, Doctor.”

  “I don’t think so, Lady B. I think that you’ve been too biased in your investigations to admit that these couples of yours really weren’t happy.” Seeing an irresistible opportunity to get things back on a personal plane, I added quickly, “Take yourself and Lord Brice-Bennington, for example. Do you suppose that your marriage would be as happy as it is if he didn’t satisfy you sexually?”

  She blushed.

  “Well,” I prodded, “would it?”

  Her blush deepened. “Doctor Damon,” she said after a moment, “Lord Brice-Bennington and I are perfectly happy without sex.”

  I’d more or less expected the answer I got, and I was ready with a follow-up. “You mean,” I asked, pretending incredulity, “that you don’t engage in sex?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Have you ever?”

  “Never.”

  “But for goodness’ sake, Lady B, why not? Surely you can’t think that sex is evil inside a marital relationship.”

  “Not evil, Doctor. Just unnecessary.”

  “Strictly speaking, nothing is necessary—not love, not affection, not compatibility, not even cohabitation. But while unnecessary, they’re all desirable—and so, I think, is sex.”

  “Not desirable for Lord Bennington and me, Doctor.”

  I scratched my head, thoroughly puzzled.

  “Perhaps,” she said after a moment, “I’d better explain.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed, “you’d better.”

  She took a small sip from the drink I had mixed her. It had gone untouched previously. “Doctor,” she began, “I told you earlier that I had lived something of a hectic life before I formed the Friends of Decency. I told you that I had been to bed with many men, and that I found all my affairs unsatisfying, and that I subsequently came to see the error of my ways—which was why I formed the Friends. But I didn’t tell you how I came to see the er
ror of my ways.”

  “True,” I observed, “you didn’t.”

  “During my years as a playgirl, I found that men were interested in me for only one thing: sex. I despised the feeling I got after they made love to me—the feeling that I had been exploited, used, taken advantage of. I hated the life I was leading, and I wanted desperately to extricate myself from it But I had grown too accustomed to soft living. I didn’t have the strength to make a clean break . . . until I met Lord Brice-Bennington.”

  “You met him while you still were a playgirl? I thought you hadn’t met until after you had formed the Friends of Decency.”

  “No. It was largely because of his influence that I formed the Friends.”

  I suddenly gave myself a very swift mental kick in the pants. One of the reasons I’d been unable thus far to understand Lady B-B’s warmth and friendliness to me was because I assumed she was flying the Friends’ flag under her own colors. Now I saw otherwise—and I should have seen it all before.

  When I had examined Walrus-moustache’s dossiers, I had noted that Lord and Lady B-B were married a year after she had formed the Friends. I had automatically assumed that she must have met him during the course of her work as a bluenose and that he had fallen for her because he thought her to be a kindred spirit. What I had overlooked was that some people wait awhile before they get married—especially if they think of marriage as a sacred and indissolvable bond.

  So Lord B-B met her while she was still a playgirl. And, judging from what she had said, he had sold her not only on abandoning the libertine life but also on organizing the anti-sex pressure group which she now headed.

  That explained the difference in her attitude when she was in his presence and when she was alone with me. Unless I missed my guess, Lady B-B was only the figurehead of the Friends of Decency; Lord B-B was its brains, the man who directed its actions from behind the scenes, the real Big Prig.