‘The idea for my collection was born from that visit, although my own modest museum could never be called Black. In fact, I prefer to think of it as merely Blue. Yes, the Blue Museum. And now, gentlemen, I must take your leave. I have a late appointment with a certain young lady, and the manipulations of that machine have ensured that she would not want me to miss it.
The Strange Case of the Loquacious Prince
Even with her head bobbing up and down in his lap, she was a riveting conversationalist. ‘It really is too bad,’ she complained. ‘The man is a Prince, for goodness sake, privy to all manner of sensitive issues of state. Yet he cannot even keep from blabbering about a simple Gentleman’s Club.’
Ambrose Horne stroked her hair. ‘Hardly simple,’ he mused between tight, ecstatic breaths. ‘In fact, I don’t believe there’s another society such as this any place else in the world. And believe me, I would know.’
Indeed he would. For a decade now, since he attained what he considered his maturity, Ambrose Horne had thrown himself into exploring every avenue of human sexuality that he could uncover, whether they were the delightful short routes that ended in the so-called Missionary Position, or the more enticing, teasing, twisted journeys that led to who-knows-where.
His renown spread as his knowledge grew. Three years ago, he had set himself up as a one-man Private Detective agency, his avowed pledge to maintain the utmost discretion almost immediately leading him into situations for which his natural inclinations had already developed a taste. Although he was never one to camouflage his beacon beneath a bushel, even Horne himself was sometimes astonished to contemplate the dizzying universe of carnality into which he had plunged, and continued to be plunged whenever he was summonsed to a new investigation.
This latest commission, however, promised to be stickier than most – the pun was unintended; his orgasm was completely unexpected, and he broke his train of thought to apologise to the woman whose cheeks were now drenched in his spray. ‘Never mind,’ she smiled, rubbing it into her flesh with two fingertips. ‘Nature’s own face-pack.’ Then her pretty face turned serious. ‘I just wish other mistakes were so easily remedied.’
The woman – she styled herself Mother Cassandra, although Horne doubted whether her own religious calling would be recognised by any Church in the land – was matriarch of one of the most fascinating societies that Horne had ever encountered. Licentious clubs that catered to the more esoteric carnal voyager he had frequented by the dozen over the years. For there were, indeed, as many such clubs as there were predilections to be entertained therein.
But he had always left them with a bad taste in his mouth ... a taste, he hastened to add, that had nothing to do with the personal hygiene of the ladies therein. No matter how decorous, how class-conscious, how pretentious those establishments liked to appear, at the end of the day, they were nothing more than common knocking shops, bawdy brothels in which the rich and indolent spent their cash as readily as they spent their passion.
Mother Cassandra, however, accepted no money for the services that were enacted within her premises; nor were her doors opened to anyone who wished to see inside. Members were carefully vetted in every corner of their lives. They were followed, scrutinized, spied upon for months, even years, before they were invited to pay a first visit, and as much of their time in these halls was devoted to lectures, interviews and educational pursuits, as it was to the act of love itself.
Neither, like so many other clubs, was this some rude, ships-in-the-night style operation. The society’s written records extended back to the Dissolution, 300 years before; the traditions dated back even further. Yet now, one of Britain’s most honourable, historic societies was in danger of collapse ... worse than that, of exposure, scandal and possibly even legal censure ... because, for the first time in history, the governors had assumed that a would-be member’s rank excused him from the customary investigations and securities.
‘It’s not like we simply hoped for the best,’ Mother Cassandra sighed. ‘We have long since accustomed ourselves to expecting certain standards from certain ranks, and hitherto we had never been disappointed. As a young German princeling, his grandfather frequently availed himself of our services, evincing passions that I feel certain must still thrill the woman that he wed.’
Horne shuddered. The notion of Queen Victoria accepting any manner of passionate thrill was not one that came easily to the mind. ‘Two siblings, both parents, countless cousins. All have visited us, many have stayed. One even died here, and such a palaver that provoked. And not one of them ever so much as strained our confidence in his discretion. This Prince, however ...’
This Prince had not only strained that confidence, he had shattered it, so sorely abusing the bonds of secrecy that bound every member of the society that, just last week, Mother Cassandra even found herself facing the inquisition of a newspaperman, a crisis that was only averted when he let slip in his questioning that he possessed some unsatisfied curiosities of his own. ‘Which naturally caused difficulties of its own,’ sighed Mother Cassandra. ‘Do you have any idea how problematic it is to procure half a dozen lesbian lion-tamers at a moment’s notice? But we succeeded, because – until now – we have always succeeded.
‘And that is why we summoned you, Mr Horne. Now, are you certain there is nothing else that you require before I take my leave?’
Horne shook his head. ‘For all my renown,’ he confessed, ‘my own tastes are remarkably conservative.’
Mother Cassandra grinned slyly. ‘We will have to see if they remain so.’ She departed and Horne walked across to the writing desk, sat and started doodling on the pad of paper that lay there.
The essence of the problem was simple. How to shut up a Prince. The solution, however, was somewhat more elusive. For one was not dealing simply with a man. Behind him, no matter how disgraceful his behaviour, was arrayed all the apparatus of state – the police, the army, the secret service, and organisations so shadowy that even he, the Prince, was likely unaware of how they operated. All, however, had one over-riding goal. To preserve the dignity of the monarchy, no matter how undignified those monarchs might prove.
Blackmail was out of the question, of course. Even the foreign press would back away from any whiff of royal scandal, so tightly-knit were the crowned heads of Europe. Threats were pointless – Horne was reminded of those schoolyard scuffles, where boys battled one another with the threat of elder brothers and fathers. ‘My dad’s bigger than yours ...’ ‘Yes, but my army is bigger than him.’
It was pointless, too, to make an appeal to the Prince’s better nature. He had none; or, at least, none that could be discerned in the present situation. He was aware of the oaths he had taken the first time he visited the society, and had been reminded of them on several occasions since then. But each reminder, every entreaty, served only to loosen his tongue even further, until all of London society seemed aware that a few miles north of a certain milltown, if you followed the road that led to the coast, then turned down a lane that ran west from a windmill, there awaited a battalion of willing voluptuaries, each with his or her own special method of transporting a man – or woman – to paradise.
Mother Cassandra had already drawn up provisional plans to relocate; was in the process of canvassing the society’s other members, in the hope that they might donate sufficient funds to afford a seamless transition to a brand new locale. But that would only postpone the inevitable. It was not the society that needed to be closed. It was the Prince’s mouth.
Horne glanced down at his doodle-pad, the row upon row of fat breasts, spurting penises and shapely bottoms with which his subconscious habitually relaxed, but whose dimensions contracted to near-imperceptibility the longer he wrestled with a difficult question. For, no matter how he approached this matter, only one truly flawless solution appeared to present itself. He lay down his pencil and left the room.
Dinner was a muted affair. Though close to 70 people crowded into the great hall
, to drink and dine beneath the portraits of their most illustrious predecessors, barely one mind was not at least halfway occupied by the fear that this lifestyle was soon to come to an end.
Horne glanced around himself. It was not as though the men and women here were themselves utterly powerless. Effortlessly he recognised two newspaper editors, several military commanders, one minor Royal – a Princess for whom he had once performed a service or two; he even recognised a friend, Inspector Toynbee of Scotland Yard. Smiling, Horne raised his glass to the man; Toynbee returned the gesture, then tapped his wrist and held one finger up in the air. One hour. Horne nodded.
One hour later, Horne entered the smoking room, where Toynbee sat listlessly toying with the breasts of a lithe young brunette. ‘Confounded business this,’ the older man spat. ‘Present me with a pair of bubbies like that and normally I’m between them like a flash. But tonight, damn it, her nipples are harder than I am.’
Horne sympathized. ‘I fear a lot of people are discovering similar frailties this season,’ he mused, although he carefully avoided even the mildest suggestion that he numbered himself among them. Indeed, a passing encounter in the hallway on his way here had encumbered him with an erection that he believed would allow him no rest this evening – and now he was anxious to put that conviction to the test. ‘You asked to speak with me?’
‘What do you make of this situation, Horne?’
‘I believe we are in a very pretty pickle.’ He outlined the solutions that he had already discarded. ‘I was wondering whether the Yard has, shall we say, any hidden information that we might be able to employ?’ He knew as well as Toynbee that there could be not even the slightest suggestion of police involvement in the events he had in mind. But he also knew that Scotland Yard possessed the largest database of facts, rumours and innuendos in the land. If the Prince had any weakness, chances were that the Yard was aware of them. And that someone had meticulously detailed them on an index card.
‘There are a couple of things. Remember that grisly business in Whitechapel a few years ago?’
Horne nodded. The so-called Ripper killings. ‘I thought they had been cleared up?’
‘So they have – although the press refuse to accept that. Every so often another flurry of rumours go around; the Ripper’s in New York, the Ripper has confessed, the Ripper has struck again. Well, a ripe little story that did the rounds a while back claimed that the Ripper was ...’
‘The Prince? I heard that. But I thought he had alibis for every single killing?’
‘So he does, so he does. But what is an alibi if not somebody vouchsafing one story, to contradict another? We are satisfied that the Prince was every place he claimed to be at the times in question. But you cannot halt the tattle of the streets, can you?’
‘What are you suggesting?’ Horne asked slowly. ‘I thought we agreed that blackmail was an impossibility. His people would only strike it down.’
‘I’m not suggesting anything. Merely observing. If people choose to disbelieve the Prince when he says that he was in one place then, why should they believe him when he says he was in another place now? We – that is, the Yard – issues a statement claiming we have investigated the rumours of a well-organised house of ill repute in the north of England, and have discovered them to be baseless, at the same time as one of our journalistic friends reignites the questions over the Prince’s whereabouts in September 1888.’
Horne shook his head. ‘It won’t work. Too many proofs have already seen the light of day. That reporter chap for example. No, Mother Cassandra is on the right track with her plans of removing from these premises. But that solves only half the problem. We also need to silence the Prince.’
Toynbee turned to stare at Horne. ‘Silence him. You’re not suggesting ...’ – but Horne raised his hand. ‘As you yourself just remarked, Inspector, I’m not suggesting anything. Merely observing.’ He took his leave.
Miranda was that most precious of treasures, a redhead whose ardour was as fiery as her colouring, with a taste for cunnilingus that would have tested any man’s powers of endurance. Horne lost count of the times, as her hips bucked beneath his tongue, that he attempted to shift his body sufficiently that he might pique her curiosity with his own enflamed organ.
But, every time her hands clamped down, holding his head in a particular position, while she gently crooned, ‘Oh, don’t stop ... not yet ... not now, just keep doing that ... yes ... yes ... mmmmmmmmm.’ And, every time, her entreaties engulfed him with such passionate enthusiasm that he was powerless to resist her demands, though he was conscious that, with every passing second, his own urge for orgasm was growing more and more powerful. By the time she was finally satisfied, and turned her attentions to his own requirements, the slightest touch would be sufficient to send his spend cascading across her.
And so it proved. As he was finally permitted to raise his head, and her questing hands grasped him to pull him inside her body, so he felt his entire being contract in one monstrous shiver of delight, and his seed splashed hard across the girl’s thighs.
She eyed him reproachfully. ‘Oh, and I so wanted to feel you inside me.’ Then her face brightened again. ‘But maybe you could do something else for me.’ And she pushed his face back down to her crotch. ‘Lick me. Please, lick me.’
Horne licked her. What a joy it was to meet a girl who not only knew what she wanted, she was eager to ask for it, too.
Alone in the darkness later that night, Horne ran once again through the possibilities that lay before him. Still he could find only one that was foolproof. The question was, how it could be enacted. He resolved to broach Cassandra on that subject in the morning. Assuming morning ever arrived – sleeplessness rendered the night-time unending.
Switching on the bedside lamp, he climbed out of bed and positioned himself before the great standing mirror, and began gently to massage his thickening penis. His explosive climax earlier in the evening had been fabulous, but it satisfied only his body’s immediate need for relief. Its deeper need for caresses and coddling, on the other hand, remained unfulfilled and, in the absence of anybody else to oblige, he’d have to do it himself. The mirror simply added a fresh visual dimension to the proceedings.
‘The Prince’s requirements tend to be fairly conventional,’ Mother Cassandra reported the following morning. ‘A little light whipping – he enjoys feet,’ she mused. ‘His own and other people’s. He has partaken in the occasional bout of sodomy, again from both perspectives, but I think ... were he, shall we say, one of our regular guests, one whose free time might allow him to visit here for an extended period of time, I do believe we could winkle out certain other interests, involving that same region of the body, that he himself might only be aware of in his dreams.’
‘Such as?’ Horne was fairly certain that he had caught the woman’s meaning, but he was always happier to have such things spelled out for him. One can go so astray if one’s opinions are formed from conjecture alone.
‘I believe he is fascinated by faeces. Perhaps he played with them as a child – many do; perhaps he was punished for doing so and, through some mental association, now considers them a conduit to a form of pleasure that he has not experienced since childhood. I don’t know and, frankly, he has never done more than hint around the subject. As I said, under normal circumstances, we would have taken those hints as the basis for some form of experimentation – we have several guests, after all, for whom the delivery of a particularly splendid turd is as satisfying as you might find the discharge of any other bodily secretion.’
‘And how would the delivery be received?’ I asked.
Mother Cassandra frowned. ‘That depends on the recipient. Some merely collect it in their hands as it is excreted. Others will not touch it at all. And some even demand that ...’
‘I understand.’ Horne was not squeamish in the slightest, and he knew that Mother Cassandra was so accustomed to such peculiarities that she could as easily have been discussing th
e best time to prune the wisteria. But still he did not need to hear the intimate details of this particular fetish. He did not even particularly care to watch.
‘Maybe it is time that you began the Prince’s education,’ I suggested. ‘Perhaps an invitation is in order?’
Cassandra nodded. ‘I’ll see to it immediately.’
His conscience and concern utterly sublimated by the arrogance of rank (and, possibility, the stupidity inherent in such blue-blooded inbreeding as was the Royals’ want), the Prince had no notion of the troubles he had inflicted upon Mother Cassandra and her colleagues; simply could not comprehend that his loud-mouthed descriptions of his personal pleasure palace conferred anything less than dignity and favour upon the establishment – a Royal Seal of Approval, in fact.
The invitation to spend a long weekend in the arms of his favourite temptresses, then, came as no surprise. He had, in fact, been considering availing himself once again of their pleasures for a few days. The invitation simply meant that a transport would be arranged for him, as opposed to him having to arrange it for himself. He arrived on the Thursday; he would linger until Tuesday, and Mother Cassandra’s hand-written pledge that all of his deepest desires would be fulfilled possessed him with such impatience that even a slight cold, a minor sniffle, could not prevent him from setting out.
His doctor shrugged. At 27 years of age, the Prince was a strong man, and a strong-willed one as well. Anybody else, and the medic would have enlisted a handful of colleagues to recommend that His Highness remain in London. But there was no arguing with this one, and so the Prince left, by coach to St Pancras station, and then north aboard the luxuriously appointed locomotive that was reserved for the Royals alone.
He arrived in late evening; Horne was, in turn, astonished and disgusted by the obsequious show that his very presence demanded; even Mother Cassandra, whose loathing of the Prince was no secret within these walls, bowed and scraped before him; and, when the Prince retired to bed, it was in the company of no less than four of the loveliest women in the place.
The Erotic Adventures of Ambrose Horne Page 6
