by Don Elliott
"We aren't married yet, Jim. I can't take the risk of throwing up my job until I've got that ring on my finger. It's a damned good job. The pay-"
"To hell with the pay," McHughes said. "What is it, a hundred fifty a week? T'd pay you a hundred fifty a week just to spit in Brubaker's fat face!"
"That would make me a kept woman, wouldn't it?"
"Is a wife a kept woman?"
"Sometimes she is." Ellen replied evenly. She shook her head. "No, Jim. I don't want any money from you. I just want you to bear with me. If you'll be patient-"
"I can't be patient any longer. This is tearing me in half, Ellen."
"Just a few months," she said.
"Not even a few hours. Here's what I want, Ellen. Stop sleeping around. No more spanking parties with Brubaker, no more giving in to your sniveling wreck of a husband, and no more fun with oddball guys on the side. Give up all sex, except with me. I'll do the same. We'll act as if we're man and wife, except that we won't be living together until your divorce decree comes through. And then-"
"No, Jim."
"No?"
"I've explained this half a billion times," Ellen said. "I need these few months of freedom between my marriages. T want to hell around. You don't know how it is. You've been free all your life, and if you want to boff two chicks a night, or three, or seven, you just go out and get them and do it. But I've had it differently. I've been a married woman, and now I want my fling."
A muscle flickered in his cheek. Tension roiled his guts. McHughes said, "You've been separated from Ray Dawson for more than a year, haven't you? That's a pretty good fling, I'd say. You've had lots of fun. How much more freedom do you want? A year? Two years?"
"Just the next few months, Jim." She smiled thinly at him. "Let me have my adventures a couple of nights a week. And you have your Cleos and your Peggies. And then-"
"I don't want that, Ellen."
"But I do."
"Then we'll have to take some drastic steps," McHughes said. "Such as?"
He took a deep breath. "I love you very much, Ellen; that should go without saying. But I'm not going to let you torture me this way any more. It's got to be one way or the other. Either you stop going to bed with the other men or you stop seeing me altogether."
It was a bluff. He didn't know how he could possibly get along without Ellen as a part of his life. But he had to do something to spare himself this torment.
He stared levelly at her.
Ellen said, "You're trying to blackmail your way into getting a monopoly over me."
"All I want is what any engaged man is entitled to have from his fiance." he replied. "Decency. Fidelity. Old-fashioned things like that."
"And if you don't get them?"
"Then I'll walk out. And I won't be coming back," McHughes said bluntly.
"In other words, I give in or we break up?"
"That's it."
"I guess it's good-bye, then, Jim. You aren't going to push me around like this. I love you and I want you, but I'm not prepared to let you dictate to me about my life until the proper time comes."
McHughes gaped at her in disbelief. Was she bluffing, too? Was this a test of strength?
There was a red haze of anguish before his eyes. He couldn't accept the idea that Ellen was so wedded to her life of promiscuity that she would risk their breakup rather than abandon her wildness.
And yet she seemed serious.
"Do you mean that, Ellen?"
"I mean that. Yes."
Something snapped in McHughes. He knew that from this moment on, his love for Ellen was dead and could never be brought back to life. She had defied him; she had virtually declared war on him. He could not love a woman who openly admitted giving herself to other men, to weaklings, to perverts, to strangers. There were depths of evil in her that he could not begin to understand. And he saw that he had no assurance that she would ever stop sleeping around, even after their marriage. If he married her, he was letting himself in for constant uncertainty, for a cuckold's horns, for shame and torment and bitterness. He would not marry her.
But neither, he thought in a wild surge of emotion, would anybody else.
"All right, Ellen," he said in a voice so thick with passion that he could scarcely recognize it in his own ears.
"If that's the way you want it to be."
"Jim-"
He stepped toward her. Her eyes widened, and she gasped in alarm and tried to back up, but McHughes moved faster than she did. His big, powerful hands rose and clasped themselves around Ellen's throat.
"No-" she choked.
His hands tightened.
He felt the softness of her skin as he gripped her. Like satin. Like fine silk. And the eyes, so blue. The hair, so golden.
Grasping her throat tightly, McHughes began to shake her, until her head rocked from side to side as if it would fly from her shoulders. Within the filmy negligee, the succulent, tantalizing white globes of her flawless breasts jiggled and quivered like mounds of jelly. McHughes stared fixedly at the globes of delight. But he did not let the provocative near-nudity of her distract him.
She fought-with ever lessening strength. She hammered at him and clawed him.
His hands tightened.
Her face was red and blotchy now. He felt a strange calmness. She would die, he thought, and then he would be free of his torment. He would no longer have to worry, each night that he spent away from her, that she was engineering some loathsomely perverse act of sensuality. He would be free at last! Tighter-Tighter.
She was sagging. Consciousness was leaving her now, McHughes realized Tighter.
The window! The window's open!
McHughes realized suddenly that in his single-minded determination to have it out with Ellen, he had forgotten all about the blinds. As usual, she had left the blinds undrawn, for in her shameless way she seemed to enjoy putting her nude body on display for any onlooker on the far side of the courtyard.
If Ellen wanted to show her naked flesh off, that was her business. But McHughes did not feel like having an audience while he committed murder. Perhaps he had been seen already In that case he was as good as in the electric chair. But maybe luck was riding with him, maybe there still was time to ring down the curtain.
He released his grip on Ellen's throat. She hung bonelessly from his hands. Not dead yet, he knew he could see the mounds of her breasts still rising and falling within her garment. Well, he could finish the job in a moment. He eased her to the floor.
Then he walked to the window.
He looked out. Was anyone watching? It seemed to him that he saw a figure sitting in a window across the way. McHughes bit his lower lip tensely. Had he seen? Or was he just an old dodderer, staring myopically into nowhere as he used up another night of a dull, useless life?
McHughes carefully pulled down the blind and made sure it was completely closed.
Now to take care of Ellen, he thought. To finish in cold blood what he had begun in murderous rage.
McHughes started to turn.
There came a sudden impact, unexpected and incredibly painful, and he went stumbling forward in surprise and shock his face twisting with agony.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A DAY HAD passed since the big crisis of Mr. Crispian's life, and he was just starting to think that things were going to get back to normal.
The girl, Kathryn, the one who had invaded the quiet of his apartment with her wanton naked body, had not caused any trouble for him-none that he knew of, anyhow. He assumed that if she had complained to the police about him, he would have heard from them by this time. Perhaps she had thought things over and decided that the safest thing from her point of view was to forget the whole business.
Of course, Mr. Crispian couldn't forget it. It was impossible to blank from his mind the fact that a stark naked sixteen-year-old girl had stood right over there, daring him to take her. Or that he had put his hands on her breas
ts and gripped those youthfully firm globes of seductive, hard-nippled flesh. Or that he had pushed her, and watched her land on her taut buttocks, with her legs flying apart.
All those things would remain burned into his memory forever. They would join such events in his life as his seduction by the plump woman, Jenny, so many decades ago, and the revolting things his feebleminded sister had forced him to do, and the episode of his love affair with Joanne. In a life that has had as few major events as Mr. Crispian's, nothing of such significance is readily forgotten.
But, he thought, he was going to have no other after-effects besides the memories. He would not have to move. He would not have to give up peeping, or expose his inner nature before the blunt, crude questions of coarse policemen. He would be able to go along as before, he hoped. He had his fingers crossed that no delayed-action booby traps would be waiting for him in the days ahead.
And so, when he got home from a troubled day of work and found that no policemen were lurking on his doorstep, Mr. Crispian allowed himself to slip back into the daily mold of his routine.
He settled down after dinner to scan the apartment windows on the other side of the building. Glancing first at the window of his most dependable victim, the busty blonde girl across the way, Mr. Crispian saw that her light was on. Good. Last night he had missed her, because of that telephone call. And then all his troubles had started.
He examined some of the other windows. Kathryn's was dark. She was probably out with some teen-ager, getting made in a parked car. Mr. Crispian hoped she had a successful outing and came back fully satisfied, all her lusts quenched for the time being. Heaven help him if she returned in another rage of desire. She might come across the courtyard and stir up more problems for him.
There was the blonde now, Mr. Crispian saw.
He watched her as she moved around in the apartment. It was a little too early for her nine o'clock bath, he told himself. Right now she was wearing a smartly tailored suit. He waited patiently, swinging into the mood of expectation that came over him each time he pursued his hobby.
And she was starting to get undressed.
Mr. Crispian frowned. This was one of those rare nights, evidently, when she didn't follow her usual timetable. It was only half past eight. Well, he didn't mind that. He'd get himself a good eyeful. And once he had watched her undress, do her exercises and get into her nightgown, he could safely turn his attention to the other windows without fear of missing anything.
The blonde girl went through her usual nighttime pattern while Mr. Crispian stared in eagerness. She took off garment after garment, carefully hanging each one in the closet. She seemed to be in a happy mood, moving in a gay, lilting rhythm as she stripped.
Now she was down to her slip and underthings. Mr. Crispian's heart raced. The slip came off. She walked to the closet with it. His eyes zeroed in on the cheeks of her buttocks, firm and plump within her white panties.
Now she was turning. Taking off her bra. Baring the mounds of her breasts, full and heavy, tipped with the little cherries of her nipples. Mr. Crispian's face grew flushed. The sight of those big. white breasts reminded him forcibly of another pair, just as beautiful. Kathryn's. The breasts that he had seen at close range last night. The breasts that he had held in his hands.
Which one had better breasts? Mr. Crispian wondered. Kathryn's were slightly smaller, he thought. Not much, though, since both girls had well-developed bosoms. The schoolgirl's breasts were perhaps a trifle higher, closer together. The blonde's breasts were bigger, but they were a bit more widely spaced. The effect of being ten years older than Kathryn, maybe. But in both cases, the bosoms were fabulous, and it was impossible to find fault with either one.
Now the blonde was rolling down her panties.
Though Mr. Crispian had seen this sight a hundred times, he never grew weary of it. The same thrill as always stole over him as he contemplated the smooth columns of the thighs, the flat drumhead of the stomach.
She turned, showing him the luscious mounds of her buttocks. Mr. Crispian waited for the exercises, now. Get down, he thought. Touch your toes, wiggle your hips, make your boobs jump around! But exercises didn't seem to be on the docket tonight. He was going to be denied that fifteen-minute session of twisting, curvaceous flesh.
She slipped into a pink, filmy negligee. Mr. Crispian let out a sigh of disappointment that the show was being concluded so soon. Not that it was entirely over, though. Even across the whole distance of the courtyard. Mr. Crispian was still able to see the white globes of her breasts jouncing inside the gauzy material of the negligee, and when she turned her back to the window he was able to make out the delineation of the cheeks of her delectable buttocks.
Then she vanished for a moment.
While she was gone from sight, Mr. Crispian scanned the other windows, looking for a new victim. Nothing doing. He would have to be patient and hope that the blonde gave him some additional thrills tonight.
He could see her again. She had returned to view, and now she had company. The burly black-haired man, her most frequent visitor, was with her.
They were kissing. It was the kind of kiss that could send sparks flying. Mr. Crispian was a little surprised that the window blinds remained open, because the black-haired man was always quite careful to close them. He had forgotten all about it, it seemed.
He had one hand on the blonde girl's breasts while he kissed her. The other hand was groping at the back of her negligee, pulling it up to get at the bare flesh underneath. Mr. Crispian watched the girl's thighs come into view, and then the lush mounds of her buttocks. The big man's hand clamped down over the white cheeks.
Maybe they'll make love where I can see it, Mr. Crispian thought. Maybe No. It didn't seem that way. The kiss ended, and the black-haired man released her. As he let go of her bunched-up negligee, it fell back into place, concealing the globes of her buttocks.
They were facing each other now, and talking. They seemed to be having an argument. When the blonde came toward him, holding out her hands in an obvious invitation to bed, her breasts heaving, the big man shook her off. The window was partly open, and Mr. Crispian thought he could hear the sounds of angry words passing between them, even though he could not make out the individual words. The man seemed to be doing most of the talking. It was obvious from the furious gestures he was making that they were having a very serious quarrel.
Mr. Crispian's ready imagination supplied a fantasy of what would take place next: Suppose, he thought, they have a fight and he strips her naked, right in front of the window. And then he rapes her. He throws her down into position and forces her while I watch. And then And then Mr. Crispian caught his breath sharply and snapped out of his fantasy as reality took over across the courtyard, the black-haired man put his hands around the blonde's throat and began to squeeze!
He's murdering her, Mr. Crispian thought in shock and disbelief.
Mr. Crispian saw the blonde girl's arms wave frantically, claw at the big man's shoulders, try desperately to push him away. Her big breasts were heav:? wildly. He was shaking her, violently throwing her around, and all the time his hands were locked at her throat. Mr. Crispian thought that he heard a thin, gargling sound that might have been her scream, or might simply have been a figment manufactured by his overheated imagination.
The blonde girl sagged limply in the big black-haired man's arms. They moved away from the window.
Mr. Crispian's eyes bugged. Hard as he peered, it was impossible to see them now. Obviously the black-haired man was finishing the job of killing her. Maybe she was dead already.
Mr. Crispian felt a great sense of sorrow sweep over him, an empty void spring into being within his heart. What if the blonde girl were dead? Whom would he watch undressing every night? She was part of his life, a big part, an essential part. It wasn't fair that some hulking brute should come along and subtract her from his existence so suddenly, so cruelly. I need her, Mr. Crispian thought! Sh
e-she belongs to me. She mustn't die!
A long moment passed. Nobody was visible at the girl's window.
Mr. Crispian felt beads of sweat running down his sallow cheeks. He wondered what he should do. He had built his whole life around the principle of minding his own business and keeping out of other people's troubles. Why should he butt in now? It might lead to all sorts of complications for him. On the other hand, the blonde girl's nightly shows of nudity were important to him, and if he sat by idly and let her get murdered, he'd have only himself to blame for the empty nights that followed.
Maybe I should call the police, he thought.
But what would he say to them? Something like, "I was watching a girl undress across the courtyard, and all of a sudden somebody entered her apartment and started to strangle her?" No, of course not. He shook his head. There was no need to tell them all that. He could simply say to the police, "I happened to glance out my window, and I saw this man strangling this girl in the apartment on the other side of the courtyard. You'd better come quickly. Maybe she's still alive, maybe you can catch the man-"
