She fumbled at the trunk’s catches, unsnapped them. But the trunk’s lock was turned. She could not open it.
She went to a battered table and opened a drawer. She withdrew a long knife. Fascinated, Terry Dixon watched her with bewildered eyes as she pried at the lock of the trunk. Abruptly the lock gave way. With a short, suppressed exclamation of triumph the girl lifted the lid and rummaged swiftly, efficiently within.
At last she seemed to have found what she wanted. She brought forth a long manila envelope, opened it. She withdrew a typewritten sheet of paper. Then she turned to Terry Dixon. “Do you know what this is?” she breathed unevenly, excitedly.
Terry stared at her. “No.”
“It’s the proof of Slavich’s real mission!” the girl cried. “It’s his instructions from the Acme Mills! He’s really an Acme man—and Acme sent him to your father’s plant to cause trouble. If the Dixon mill shuts down, Acme will get all the business. That’s what they’re after. That’s why Slavich has been agitating a strike!”
“But—but—why should you—” Terry gasped uncomprehendingly.
She smiled slowly at him. “I’m a Pinkerton operative. Your father engaged me to worm my way into Slavich’s confidence, try to get something on him. That’s why I pretended to be an agitator myself. That’s why I stood up before that mob tonight and pretended I’d been tattooed—exposed my…breasts…
“And you have the evidence there?” Terry whispered harshly.
“Yes! All we need to destroy all the work Slavich has done!” she answered.
“Then cut my ropes! Let’s get out of here!” Terry roared.
The girl picked up the knife with which she had pried open the trunk. She came toward Terry, started to saw at his bonds—
“Drop that, you dirty double-crossing tramp!” a voice snarled from the rear door of the cabin. The blonde girl went suddenly pale. Terry Dixon froze. He stared toward the back of the cabin. Slavich, hulking and beetle-browed and ominous, stood framed in the open portal—at the door the yellow-haired girl had forgotten to lock! And Slavich was covering them both with his automatic!
The agitator stepped forward with a sinister leer. “I figured you might be a double-crosser!” he barked venomously at the shrinking girl. “So I trapped you. I just drove about a mile; then I parked my car and sneaked back. I heard all you told this rat. And now—you’re going to pay up!”
He lunged at the girl. She screamed, beat at his face with ineffectual fists. He grabbed at her, ripped the tattered dress from her shoulders. Naked to the waist, she backed away from him, her bared breasts rising and falling swiftly, pantingly.
Slavich caught her once more. He picked her up.
His mouth clamped down over her lips, traveled downward over her rounded shoulders… His hands pawed at her body brutally. She cried out in pain and terror.
Slavich carried her toward a cot at the far end of the room…
With a desperate jerk, Terry Dixon slumped his trussed form off the chair, onto the floor.
He landed alongside the knife which the girl had dropped when Slavich had appeared at the back doorway. With his numbed hands that were tied behind him, he fumbled for the blade.
At the back of the cabin, Slavich was pressing the yellow-haired girl backward upon the cot. His back was toward Terry Dixon. The agitator’s thick fingers fumbled at the girl’s skirt, yanked it upward—
Terry Dixon clamped the blade of the knife between his knees. Then, savagely, swiftly, he began sawing at the ropes that gyved his numbed wrists. A single strand parted; then another—
Back on the cot, the yellow-haired girl’s hand clawed out. Her sharp fingernails raked down across Slavich’s leathery cheek. Blood flowed. The agitator cursed. “Damn you to hell!” he gritted. “Now I am going to hurt you—plenty!” He raised his hand and brought it down savagely across her face. His palm left a red weal on her cheek…
She gasped, cried out. And at that instant Terry Dixon sawed through the final strand of the rope about his wrists. His hands free, he clenched at the knife and desperately attacked the bonds that fettered his ankles. In four swift, sure strokes he severed the rope. Then he leaped to his feet. He gathered his muscles to spring.
The blonde girl looked toward him. “Terry—please—!” she sobbed frantically, terrified.
Terry Dixon lunged. Slavich, warned by the girl’s cry, whirled—saw him coming. The agitator’s hand flashed to his pocket. He fired through his coat.
The slug smashed against the knife in Terry Dixon’s hand, splintered the blade, sent it flying in fragments across the room. Terry’s hand was a stinging, raging inferno of sudden pain. Disarmed, he faced the smoking muzzle of Slavich’s automatic.
Slavich’s trigger-finger tightened venomously. As he fired, the blonde girl struck at his arm from behind. The bullet went wild. And then Terry Dixon leaped in.
He dived, head-first, in a desperate flying tackle. His arms went about Slavich’s knees. The agitator swayed and toppled backward. His hard fist balled and smashed up, full into Terry Dixon’s mouth.
Blood streamed from Terry’s puffed and battered lips in a sudden gush. For a single instant the room swayed and whirled before his eyes. And in that instant, Slavich had rolled over on him—was pinning him down, battering at his face with fists and elbows.
Terry Dixon’s knee came up, caught Slavich in the groin. The man grunted and doubled over. Terry slid free. The lust of combat leaped into his hate-raging eyes. He flung himself at Slavich in a superhuman burst of motion. Once—twice—three times his iron-hard fist smashed home against the agitator mouth. Slavich scrambled to his feet, backed away.
Terry was upon him, savagely, vengefully. Again his fists crunched home against his adversary’s jaw. Slavich staggered. His right hand slid into the pocket of his coat, emerged with the automatic. He raised it.
Terry Dixon caught at his wrist. He twisted. For a long instant the combatants stood toe to toe in a savage test of strength with death facing the loser. Then Terry Dixon wrenched down suddenly. The automatic exploded once—belched flame and a leaden slug into the floor. Terry Dixon grabbed at the hot muzzle, twisted—and the weapon came away in his hand. He raised it, brought the butt crushing down against Slavich’s unprotected skull…
The agitator slumped face-forward and lay still.
Terry turned to the girl on the cot. She rose, swayed toward him. “You—you’re hurt!”
He shook his head slowly, forced a grin to his bruised lips. “I’m all right,” he answered thickly.
She ran toward the wash-bowl at the other end of the room. She dipped a towel in water and came back toward Terry Dixon. Unmindful of her nakedness where her dress had been torn from her delicious body, she bathed his battered face, wiped away the blood from his mouth.
“You—you’ve saved everything!” she whispered. “With the evidence we have, Slavich’s work will be undone at your father’s mill. And—and you’ve saved something else, too—” she faltered.
“What’s that?”
“My—my job. Without your help, I’d have failed—and my agency would have fired me.” She looked toward the slumped form of Slavich on the floor, and shuddered. “That is, if—if I’d managed to get away…alive…
And then, abruptly, Terry Dixon grinned. “Are you so anxious about your job, my dear?”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“Would you consider a better one?”
She stared at him. “A better one? What kind?”
He caught her around the waist, drew her toward him. Gently his hand touched her bare breast. His bruised lips sought and found hers. “Guess!” he whispered.
“You—you mean—?”
“I mean the job of being Mrs. Terry Dixon!” he answered.
She didn’t respond in words. But her warm, rounded arms crept around his battere
d neck and he read his answer in her eyes.
WHITE MEAT, by Don King
Originally published in Spicy Adventures, April 1934.
Great purple and yellow plumes of fire licked upward greedily, lapping at the melting resin of the dry candlewood pyre as a hundred black Monbuttus, their ebony skins bright with the pungent oil of their pores, danced about the nude white man chained to a stake in the heart of the inferno of tongued flames.
Sweat poured from his face, his neck and his chest, steaming and hissing like a nest of snakes as it met the climbing feathers of flame and billowed upward in stinking vapor. He screamed in agony and his voice split the night. The cannibals bellowed with delight, their women hopping from one foot to the other and shaking their flaccid black breasts. Here and there a younger female, sleek of thigh and boasting breasts that were pear-shaped and shone like purple plums, crept closer to the pyre, the better to see the tortured twist of the white man’s face, the quivering of his loins as the white-hot flames seared the flesh of his legs and thighs.
Now he was choking and gasping. The smoke stung his eyes closed, parched his lips. He could no longer screech out the anguish of his tortured body. A tongue of flame, like a thing alive, shot up the green wood stake and set his hair afire. In a moment it was like a great red coal, a flaming ball of cotton stuck to his skull. His head snapped back and his chest swelled like a round barrel, hollowing his scorched belly. Reached by the flame, his bonds of coiled vines snapped. He was free, but too late. Life no longer pulsated through his swollen, gas-filled body, but the heat within his lungs and stomach held him erect.
The smell of roasted flesh drove the cannibals into a frenzy of mad delight. A curtain of fire enveloped the white man but above its roar could be heard the hollow bursting of his belly. At the sound, a massive black stepped to the pyre and pulled its victim from its clutches with a hooked stick.
They fell on it, male and female, tearing the hot, steaming flesh apart, shoving it into their mouths in great gulps until the fatty juices formed rings around their thick lips. Soon there was nothing left but the skeleton and scraps of burnt flesh. The men broke the bones over their knees and sucked greedily on the hot marrow.
The pyre leaped high in the air and a huge umbrella of light hung over the human feast.
* * * *
Major Cyril Whittey, commander of the Central African outpost of the British Foreign Service, nodded dolefully as the wail of savage voices rode on wings of night from the matted thickness of the jungle. “That makes four,” he muttered. A pale blue network of veins bulged on the back of his clenched hand. “If I could wipe them out I’d feed each of their filthy black carcasses to the buzzards! Blood-sucking beasts!”
He turned away from the limestone parapet, but the young, broad-shouldered American at his side still gazed out into the darkness. A phosphorescent glow seemed to hang over the inky valley, moving like clouds from place to place. Kane Bedford, attaché to the American Consul at Zanzibar, knew they were massed swarms of giant fireflies. One of the post Tommies had told him.
He lingered a moment, then followed the old British army officer across the roof of the fortress. It was a new and vivid experience to Kane Bedford. Zanzibar, to a great extent, had taken on the habiliments of civilization, but this…this was wilderness, this was primeval.
“What the American Consul expected to accomplish by sending you down to this hell-hole, I don’t know,” Major Whittey was saying as they descended the spiral staircase leading to the interior of the square building, “You’ve been here three weeks and the net results have been nil! The Monbuttus are tricky and strong as oxen. My men say rifle bullets bounce off their chests like rice grains. You saw them snatch that poor boy tonight. He’s gone now. As much as I warn the men never to venture outside the fort alone, some blighter always makes the mistake!”
They were in the court, glowing with dozen swinging oil lamps. Kane breathed deeply of the warm, hibiscus-scented air.
“As I told you, Major, if American girls are being sold up from Cape Town to the Berber tribes and then in turn to these cannibals, we must stop the traffic in flesh.”
The Britisher boomed. “By the Gods of war, young man, it’s suicide! Rank, beastly suicide!”
“What’s suicide, father?” A bell-like, feminine voice came out of the shadows. It was followed by a slim, blonde girl in white—the post commander’s daughter, Margot.
She smiled prettily at Kane, mimicked the Major’s harsh frown. “Don’t let this old buck frighten you, Kane,” she said, her blue eyes flashing. “He’s all bark and no bite.”
Major Whittey spluttered, but retired quickly, pleading the preparation of a report.
Arm in arm, Margot and Kane walked across the court, through an arched doorway and into a miniature garden. It was a paradise of scent; a quadrangle of exotic blooms, criss-crossed with brick walks. In her year at the isolated post, Margot had experimented with native plants and flowers. It had been something to do to keep her mind and fingers occupied.
A rustic, candlewood bench beckoned. When hey were seated, Margot turned to him. A quarter-moon, wrapped in its own iridescent halo, sent silver beams down to wed the highlights of her golden hair. She was beautiful, Kane decided at that moment. He wanted nothing more to hold her in his arms and press the hard-breasted loveliness of her body to him. Her lips parted slightly and the tip of her tongue gave them damp sparkle.
“You’re going to give up your mission, Kane, aren’t you?” she whispered. “It’s certain death…and a horrible one.” Her voice trembled like a muted violin. “You heard the weird cries tonight. That’s how they are when they get human flesh, mad, insane, delirious!”
Kane found one of her white hands, cradled it between his. “Does it really matter that much to you, Margot?” She flushed and lowered her eyes. Her breasts rose and fell gently with the quick rhythm of her breathing.
“Yes, Kane, it does. Your coming has been like—like—” Her eyes came up to meet his and there was more eloquence in them than words could express. The unseen hand that draws youth to youth brought them together. In the moon-brilliant darkness, their lips met, clung, and their bodies melted one against the other. He lifted her to her feet, the better to feel the warm, firm pressure of her thighs and the boring tautness of her breasts. One of his hands dropped to her hip, moved across its smooth slope. She trembled ecstatically, giving him her darting tongue in a frenzied gasp of passion.
* * * *
“I have decided,” Kane said, as he faced Major Whittey in the latter’s office, “to make the Cape Town trip before really attempting anything with the Monbuttu. If our information is correct, and the girls are being shipped North through the Cape, we may be able to choke it right there.”
The post commander stroked his iron-gray moustache approvingly. “Now you’re talking jolly good sense, young man. There’s a caravan coming through tomorrow at daybreak. They’ll make the Cape in seven days.”
The door opened and Margot came into the room. “I just heard the tail end of what you said, Father, but there’s a condition to Kane’s leaving for the Cape. I’m to go with him for the trip!”
Major Whittey fumed and fussed, but he was putty in Margot’s hands. At dawn, the camel caravan drew away from the limestone fort. A squadron of Tommies fired a rifle volley into the air from the parapet. Major Whittey, stern-faced and soldierly, saluted in response to Kane’s and Margot’s waving hands.
“It’s wonderful,” Margot whispered, once they were out of sight of the fort. “Wonderful just to get away from that drab, ugly place.” She leaned back against the silk cushions astride the camel’s back. It was a large beast and the caravan leader had said it would carry two with ease. “And more wonderful to be alone with you,” she added softly.
Kane’s hand moved up over her hips and across her flat stomach to touch the rigidity of an extended breast. He could
feel the frantic beat of her heart beneath the coned mound. He leaned over and joined his mouth to hers while his searching fingers found the loose opening of her brown cotton waist.
* * * *
They were two days from the post, in the heart of the desolate wilderness of British South Africa, when the rider who had gone ahead to select a site for the night’s encampment, sped back across the Kalahari Desert, bringing news that three miles to the South was a caravan of blacks and whites. Kane questioned the frightened Nubian at length, finally eliciting the information that he had seen—at a distance—women whose flesh was pale as the desert sands. How many he did not know.
Kane, above Margot’s protests, went into action. He selected five of the strongest drivers, all of whom were equipped with high-powered rifles, mounted them on the fleetest of the camels, and led them across the hot sands in the direction of the mysterious mixed-color caravan. In his own mind, he was certain they had inadvertently stumbled on the white slave traffic from the Cape. A mile from the oasis, the side walls of white tents were visible. Kane drew up and issued careful instructions to his men. There was to be no shooting until his revolver spoke first. He patted the black butt of his Mauser by way of illustration. The Nubians understood.
Two white men, heavily bearded, stepped out of a tent as Kane’s little band rode into the encampment. They were dressed shabbily in dirty breeches and suede shirts. Kane brought his camel to his knees and dismounted. Both men approached, their right hands resting easily on gun butts protruding from hip holsters. Kane’s eyes shot around the clearing, noted two white girls staggering into a tent, came back to rest on the bearded faces of the men approaching him.
“Hawkins is the name,” one of them greeted. “Anythin’ we kin do fer you?” His tone was far from pleasant.
Kane extended his hand, felt it gripped in a gnarled, calloused palm. “I’m Kane Wilbur of the American Consul’s office in Zanzibar.” He watched their eyes grow steel-hard. “One of our drivers spotted your caravan so I thought I’d drop in and say hello to a white man. Are you Americans?”
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