It's What Up Front That Counts

by Troy Conway

  “Come on, Damon! Come on, boy!” my eager cheerleader was shouting. “Sock it to her! Sock it to her!”

  I socked it to her.

  And so did Walrus-moustache.

  A minute passed, then another. My back was beginning to ache, and my legs were getting very tired. But I held on. Painful though it was, I held on.

  And then I didn’t have to hold on any longer.

  “The winnah!” exulted Walrus-moustache, springing to his feet and clasping his hands over his head. His fallen soldier was proof of his triumph. “That’s two thousand pounds, Brice. Would you like to try for four?”

  Lord B-B was nonplussed. “Two thousand pounds,” he giggled. Then, taking a very deep drag on his cigarette, which had been smoked down to almost nothing, he smiled ecstatically and said: “What’s two thousand pounds?”

  I got up from the mattress. “Brice,” I said smiling, “I’m going to give you one more chance to get even. And I’m going to offer you odds you can’t resist. Your investment will be a single pound—just one pound, Brice. And mine will be the two thousand you lost so far. If you win, you get your two thousand back. If I win, you pay out two thousand and one.”

  He looked at me through glazed eyes. “What’s the contest?”

  “Have another cigarette,” I said, offering him my pouch. “Then I’ll tell you all about it.”

  He obediently rolled a new joint and lit it.

  “Brice,” I said, “there’s a rumor going around that you’ve got fantastic will power when it comes to sex. According to what I hear, there isn’t a woman alive that can get you excited. But I think I know a woman who can. Now here’s the bet: You’re going to spend an hour in bed with this woman. One hour. During that time, neither one of you can speak a word. But she’s going to use every nonverbal means at her command to arouse you. If she succeeds—if she gets you excited enough that you make love to her—I win the bet. If she fails, you win the bet. I’m confident enough in her abilities that I’m offering you odds of two thousand to one.”

  He looked thoughtfully at his freshly lit joint “Excellent tobacco here, Damon. Excellent. Moroccan, you say? I must get the name of your tobacconist. Delightful smoke. Harsh at first, but very mild now. Quite wonderful, really.”

  “The bet, Brice,” I reminded him. “What do you say?”

  He chuckled, as if I had to be a fool to ask. “At odds of two thousand to one? Of course I’ll take it, Damon. Bring on your wonder woman! I’ll show her what resistance really is!”

  I went to the adjacent room, returning a few seconds later with Robbi Randall, who had been standing by just waiting for the word to spring into action. She had abandoned the severe tweeds that were her usual costume around the Friends of Decency in favor of a see-through outfit very similar to the one she had worn the night she came calling at the laboratory of the League for Sexual Dynamics. What I saw through Rob-bi’s see-through was enough to set my pulse racing—even though I had just gone a very vigorous round with the raven-haired beauty.

  “Miss Randall!” exclaimed Lord B-B, taken aback. “My word! You’re practically naked!”

  “All the better to turn you on, milord,” she purred, playing the seductress role to the hilt. “Wouldn’t you like to go to bed with me?”

  “Gad, would I!” he gasped. Then, as an aside, he added, “But what would Lady Brice-Bennington say?”

  “She said,” I reminded him, “that you had her permission to attend the orgy. And, in any case, she’ll never find out. Robbi is leaving with me for the States in just a few hours.”

  A man in full possession of his faculties probably would have required a more detailed explanation. But Lord B-B, under control of Muse Mary Jane, seemed perfectly content.

  “Brice, baby,” cooed Robbi, throwing one arm around his shoulders and reaching with the other for his crotch, “what do you say we try making beautiful music together?”

  He reached hesitatingly for her breast, then, in a sudden burst of enthusiasm, clutched it vigorously through her see-through. “Ahhhhhhh!!!” he sighed. “Gad, that feels good!” Turning to me, he said: “Damon, I think I’m going to lose the bet.” Then, beaming happily, he added: “But what the hell’s one pound more or less?”

  “The lovers,” I told Walrus-moustache, “should be left alone. I’ve got a canopied bed set up in the next room and they can do their stuff in there whenever they’re ready. Meanwhile, let’s let them warm up to the occasion with a little foreplay out here.”

  “Whatever you say, Damon,” he replied obligingly. “Actually, I was getting a little bored with all this anyway. We’ve got a few gentlemen down in the cellar that I’d like to talk to. And I’ve a few questions to ask you once we’re finished with them.”

  “Then let’s be off, shall we?” I gestured toward the door leading to the cellar stairs.

  Down in the cellar, a backer’s dozen of Communist agents were seated Indian-chief-style on the floor. Their wrists were bound behind their backs, and their faces wore expressions of acute displeasure. Guarding them were the seven of our Coxemen who hadn’t been pressed into service for the orgy.

  Rounding up the Commies had been a cinch. After taking them on a wild goose chase for twenty-four hours, the Coxemen had simply led them to the mansion. Then, while all the tails were waiting outside to see what would next the Coxeman had done a turnabout and, with guns, had taken the tails prisoner. Now they were wall here—Rumpled Suit, Mod Type, Crew Cut, an assortment of flunkies whom I’d yet to nickname, and, in the middle of the circle, the big man behind the operations, Michaelson, the gent with the monocle who had been my tablemate that first evening at The Safari Club.

  “Gentlemen,” I told them, as Walrus-moustache and I joined the group, “you’ve go two alternatives: either defect to the West and work for our side from now on, or take your changes with the boys home. You realize, of course, that if you select the latter alternative, it’s Siberia for all of you.”

  Michaelson scowled. “You’re bluffing, Damon. You don’t have anything on us, and you know it.”

  I grinned sarcastically. “Don’t I? Well, let’s see.”

  Walrus-moustache promptly disappeared into an adjacent room and reappeared moments later with Peter Blaine. The erstwhile pimp looked more relaxed than I had ever seen him.

  “Take a look at these pictures, Michaelson,” said Walrus-moustache, displaying the prints of the Commie agents and their girlfriends which I had taken from Blaine’s safe deposit box. “Here’s proof that you and you boys were lying down on the job—or should I say laying down on the job? While you should’ve been spying you were playing games. Blaine caught you in the act. He didn’t know how to get you in trouble with these pictures, because he doesn’t know who your boss is. But I do know who your boss is— and I know how he feels about agents who lose sight of their mission and get involved in extracurricular affairs. I also happen to know of a Russian spy in Rangoon who just hates Rangoon and who’d like nothing more than to move your job here in England. All I’ve got to do is see to it that this fellow gets these photographs. You’ll be on the next Aeroflot back to Moscow before you can say Tovarrich Robinson.

  “But,” protested Michaelson, “we made love to the girls only in the line of duty. We were working on a case.”

  “Try explaining that to your boss,” grinned Walrus-moustache. “He’ll want to know what case you were working on. And, when you tell him the Smythe-Whelan case, you’ll find that you don’t have a case at all.”

  “We do have a case,” said Michaelson. “We have photos of Smythe and Whelan with their girlfriends—in very compromising positions.”

  “The photos are meaningless,” I said. “If you used them when you first got them, you might’ve set off a scandal that could’ve toppled Prime Minister Wilson’s regime. But you didn’t. And now you can’t. It’s too late. The photos are useless without the girls who appear in them. One of the girls, Andi Gleason, is dead. The other girl, Diane Dionne, is in th
e United States. Without witnesses to back up the photos, you really don’t have a case. If you turned the photos over to the newspapers, they’d think you doctored them to help Smythe and Whelan’s opponents. If you turned them over to your bosses, they’d think you doctored them to save your own neck.”

  “You made your big mistake, Michaelson,” continued Walrus-moustache, “when you shot for the big prize. You thought there was one. But there wasn’t. That error of judgment proved to be your downfall.”

  “And it really was one hell of an error of judgment,” I put in. “This whole fiasco got started when Peter Blaine and his girlfriends decided to try shaking down Smythe and Whelan for cash. Blaine arranged to get Smythe and Whelan involved in affairs with his girls. He originally planned to get just enough evidence on Smythe and Whelan so that he could sell his girls’ stories to the newspapers. But, while he was getting his evidence, he learned that a certain guy named Christopher Smythe—the M.P.’s namesake, but definitely not the M.P.—had inherited a twenty-four-million-dollar fortune. Blaine didn’t realize that the guy was just a namesake; he thought that M.P. Christopher Blaine had inherited the money, and he tired to shake him down for it.”

  “The M.P.,” Walrus-moustache went on, “didn’t have the money, so he couldn’t pay Blaine off. Meanwhile, a number of other people had gotten wind of the Smythe-Whelan affair.”

  “The Friends of Decency got wind of it,” I said, “and they made a feeble attempt at finding out what was what. But, of course, they weren’t really equipped to do the kind of work we spy people do, so, after fishing around for a while trying to get evidence, they backed off. It wasn’t that they disbelieved the rumors they had heard. It was just that they saw no point in rowing upstream when they didn’t have to. And they didn’t have to. I wasn’t aware of it until just recently, but the Friends had all the reason in the world to believe that Smythe and Whelan wouldn’t get back into office. The districts which Smythe and Whelan represented in Parliament are staunch religious districts. Smythe and Whelan had aroused the antagonism of the clergymen in these districts by taking a firm stand against censorship of erotic literature and films. When it later was revealed that both Smythe and Whelan held stock in an American publisher of erotic books, Smythe and Whelan were as good as out of office.” To Walrus-moustache, and almost as an aside, I added, “One of the things I hadn’t been able to figure out about this case was why Lord Brice-Bennington had been confident that Smythe and Whelan would lose—so confident that he was willing to bet me five hundred pounds that not just one but both of them would. The reason he was so confident was because he had been alert to the reaction of the constituents in these districts to the holding by Smythe and Whelan of the American publishing stocks.”

  “So,” said Walrus-moustache, “the Friends of Decency had investigated the possible connection between Smythe and Whelan and their girlfriends, but had lost interest in the matter after a very short while. Meanwhile, The Coxe Foundation had also investigated, and our agents had, on their own, gotten the same evidence that Peter Blaine had.”

  “But,” I added triumphantly, “your people, Michaelson, hadn’t gotten this same evidence. So you continued to tail Blaine and his girlfriends, hoping that you’d eventually come across what you wanted. All you wanted at the time was evidence that you could use to throw the election to Smythe and Whelan’s opponents. Then I showed up on the scene and you guessed that there might be something bigger, at stake.”

  “Yes,” said Walrus-moustache. “Damon’s arrival in London to conduct a sex study under the auspices of the Friends of Decency was publicized. Your bosses back in the Kremlin learned of it as a matter of course, and they became suspicious.”

  “They became suspicious,” I said, “because this wasn’t the first time one of my mighty publicized studies coincided with an affair you people were interested in. I’ve worked many times when your people worked with me hand-in-hand. By this time, I’d become a very familiar face to Russia’s international spy headquarters. My government had been using me too heavily on too many cases, and my undercover value had diminished considerably.”

  “But,” continued Walrus-moustache, “in this case your recognition of Damon worked to our advantage. This time, you see, he wasn’t working on a case for us. He had come to London to conduct a bona fide sex study. However, because you people knew about the Smythe-Whelan caper that Blaine was working on, you automatically assumed that we knew—and you assumed when Damon’s sex study was publicized that we were sending him here to work on the same case.”

  “Which really wasn’t true,” I lied. “But, of course, you didn’t know it wasn’t true. So you had me tailed from the moment I arrived in London. And when I showed up at The Safari Club, you were positive I had been sent here to work on the case. Actually I had gone to The Safari Club just by coincidence. I wanted a night on the town, and a little sex action. You personally picked up on me at The Safari Club, Michaelson, and, when you saw me move in on Andi Gleason, you were even more positive that you and I were both after the same thing—something to do with the Smythe-Whelan affair.”

  “That’s why,” said Walrus-moustache, “you really stepped up your program. Until Damon arrived, you were content to take your good-natured time trying to get evidence on Smythe and Whelan. But once you saw him on the scene—and making a play for Andi Gleason, yet—you assumed that there must be something more involved than just the threat of a scandal. You were wrong, of course, but you didn’t know you were wrong, so you pulled out all the stops. You approached Peter Blaine and tried to force him to play ball with you. And when that failed, you broke into his apartment, and, since he had been foolish enough to leave photos of Smythe and Whelan and the girls lying around, you got the evidence you wanted.”

  “But then,” I said, “you were afraid to use the evidence. You figured that I was after something more than you were, and you didn’t know what. So you made a bold move. Without even knowing what you were looking for, you approached Christopher Smythe and tried to get him to tell you what it was you thought he was trying to hide.”

  “Smythe,” Walrus-moustache went on, “was a weakling in many ways. In addition to serving as his lover, Andi Gleason had been his supplier of drugs, to which she had introduced him during the course of their affair. He was then dependent on drugs, and he was dependent on Andi to supply them. James Whelan was equally dependent on Diane Dionne. That’s why when the American spy network approached them through diplomatic channels and asked them to kiss their girlfriends goodbye, they refused. They needed their drugs, and the girls were the only people whom they knew they could count on to supply them.”

  “But,” I said pointedly, “while Smythe and Whelan were weak when it came to drugs, they were strong when it came to national loyalty. They wouldn’t sell out to you people, Michaelson, if their lives depended on it. And when you, panicked by my appearance on the scene, put pressure on Smydie, he made sure that you couldn’t possibly put his loyalty to a test. He made sure by killing himself.”

  “Your strong-arm tactics,” said Walrus-moustache, “really blew that attempt for you, Michaelson. That’s one thing you Commies can’t understand—national loyalty. Your government keeps you loyal by putting a gun in your back. Democratic governments inspire loyalty rather than threaten it. Smythe was loyal, and he killed himself rather than let you high-pressure him into doing your bidding once he got back into office.”

  “After Smythe was killed,” I continued, “you backed off on Whelan. You didn’t want to risk losing the only other prospective turncoat you had. And, because I was on the scene, you were sure Whelan was another turncoat. You were, of course, wrong.”

  “Meanwhile,” said Walrus-moustache, “Damon couldn’t help noticing how your people had been tailing him all over the city. He wondered why you were tailing him and he connected it with his rendezvous with Andi Gleason.”

  “I followed up on Andi,” I went on, “and she led me to Blaine, who told me about
how you were trying to muscle in on his caper. That’s when I contacted my boss and let him know that I’d accidentally happened on a spy caper that he’d be interested in.”

  “The rest,” said Walrus-moustache, “is ancient history. We sent a group of men to Damon’s room and your people tailed them. Then we did a turnaround on your tails, and here you sit. Now, what will it be? Do you defect to the West, or do we see to it that all of you get shipped off to Siberia?”

  Michaelson shook his head sadly. “I should’ve been an accountant,” he murmured. “When I was a boy, I used to love mathematics and everything that had to do with figures. I could’ve been very happy in Kiev, tending to the books of our communal stores. But no, I had to look for adventure and excitement as a spy! How stupid!”

  Walrus-moustache smiled. “Win some, lose some. And you just lost the big one.” He turned to one of his Coxemen. “Give these gentlemen another fifteen minutes to weigh their decision. Then I’ll be back to talk business with them. Meanwhile, Damon and I have to check up on the progress of a wager that’s being decided upstairs.”

  We headed toward the room where the orgy had been staged. Peter Blaine accompanied us.

  “Boy,” he said on the way up the cellar stairs, “you guys really know your business.”

  “That’s part of being a pro,” smiled Walrus-moustache. “The pros know their business. The amateurs don’t.”

  “What I can’t understand, though,” said Blaine, “is why the Communists killed Andi. I mean, you guys said that the photos of Smythe and Whelan with the girls would be useless without the girls’ testimony. If the Commies needed the girls’ testimony, whey did they kill one of the girls?”

  “They didn’t,” I said.

  “Then who lulled Andi?”

  “She died accidentally just like it said in the police report. I couldn’t understand it myself when it happened. I couldn’t believe that a girl who was in full possession of her faculties would simply walk out into traffic and get run down—especially when she was involved in a case like this one. It seemed like too much to ask of coincidence. But then I saw Diane walk into a doorframe at the apartment where you and I met yesterday, and everything became clear to me. What I had forgotten when I discounted coincidence was that Andi wasn’t a girl in full possession of her faculties. Like Diane, she was a dyed-in-the-wood pothead. She was zonked out of her mind the night I made love to her. And I’d bet my bottom dollar that she stayed zonked, because she was scared stiff of the Communists and of everything else that was happening. The more scared she got, the more zonked she got. And finally she was so zonked that she just stepped out in front of a car. The driver who killed her probably didn’t stop because he was afraid of criminal charges. Hit-and-run accidents happen all the time.”