The Best Laid Plans

by Troy Conway

  Claudette Marly did not know I was afflicted with that sex peculiarity which permits a man to maintain his rigidity endlessly during the sexual congress. It is an ailment—if so I can term it—which stands me in good stead as the founder and number one instructor for my League of Sexual Dynamics. It also helps more than somewhat when I am on a Coxe Foundation job.

  Like now, man. My pussycat partner was going off all over the place, bouncing and flopping, yelping her fleshly delight as I went right on staying with her. We were starting to attract attention, for one of the redheads was turning and staring at us, a friendly grin on her lips.

  I heard a woman pant, “Will you look at them? He’s been that way for ages. Sure I peeked. Hell, who wouldn’t, with his equipment?”

  And Claudette sobbed, “Cracher! Cracher! Mon Dieu—cracher!”

  “I can’t, honey,” I breathed. “It’s a kind of problem of mine. I stay like this indefinitely.”

  “You do?” Her surprise was laughable, except for the grotesque contortion of her lust-maddened face. “Honestly? You aren’t ki-kidding me?”

  “Try me,” I invited.

  She pulled free and slipped back into her chair. Her glance around the candlelit room was almost embarrassed. “Let’s get out of here. We can go to my room. But please—hurry.”

  I gathered that HECATE was almost ready to pounce, and that my little honey-pot wanted more of the goodies before the trap snapped shut. Well, this was fine with me. I can never get too much of a good thing.

  The price of two absinthes at Les Choses d’Amour is thirty thousand francs. Almost fifty bucks American. But hell, you got a floor show, and I was charging it up to the Coxe Foundation. As I made myself presentable, I figured I could do a paper on the act the two redheads put on, and file it under international relations in League headquarters.

  We emerged into the night air, Claudette clinging amorously to me, rubbing her mound against my thigh. She was as heated-up as a female mink in season, and I congratulated myself on my cleverness in choosing as a date an Air France stewardess who had such a roommate.

  In the taxi, she searched for my mouth blindly, eyes closed and lips open. She was all for mounting me, kneeling on the seat on either side of my thighs, but I tried to convey the idea I was too modest for that sort of thing. I mean, we were driving down the Boulevard Saint Germain, and even if it was the Latin Quarter, I had some shreds of decency left.

  So I treated her to the eplucher des lentilles, which is finger-play of the female body, for close to twenty minutes. She was actually crying real tears, so emotionally explosive had she become.

  I had to help her out of the taxi, and half support her with an arm about her middle as I led her into her apartment house. Her shapely gams were like rubber. In the tiny elevator, she clung to me as if afraid I would turn into mist.

  I put her key in the lock, turning the doorknob.

  Her hand flicked on the light switch. Two men were sitting there in easy chairs, hardbitten characters who stared at me with cold fish eyes. Claudette Marly gaped at them in dumb surprise.

  The anger flushed her red. “Stupid pigs!” she screeched. “You’re too early! Goddammit, you weren’t supposed to come here until dawn!”

  I guess she figured she had said enough to make me more than suspicious, because she turned her wide, tearful eyes in my direction and waved her hands in Gallic frustration.

  “I am sorry, Professor,” she cried. “I’d hoped to enjoy your ailment for another few hours—but these bougres care nothing for human relationships. They are too busy with their business.”

  “And what is their business?” I asked politely.

  Nobody said a word. The men got out of the easy chairs and each one hunched his shoulders and wriggled his fingers a little, as a man does when he is about to engage in a simple form of exercise. I gathered these pigs were about to take a spot of boxing exercise, with me as the punching bag. Oddly enough, I liked the idea.

  It is not a nice feeling to come home to her apartment with a chick like Claudette Marly and find a couple of strongmen there to prevent you from the bed-bouncing you had in mind. I was mad as hell, to be quite frank about it. Sure, before this was over I was going to be subdued and lugged off to that hospital in Dampierre, but there was nobody to say I shouldn’t have myself some satisfaction from them first.

  They came toward me, walking on their toes. I guess that was to impress me as to how catlike and agile they were. Well, I was one mouse who was going to fight back.

  I let them get three feet away.

  Then I dropped flat and lashed out with a foot at the leg nearest me. My shoe landed with a solid thunk. From floor level I looked up grinning as the thug I’d just kicked opened his mouth, rolled his eyes and hopped up and down on one leg.

  I swiveled around on my knees and belted his good leg with my shoulder, sending him flying backward across a tea table. Wood splintered. The lamp on the table went hurtling through the air to land in a crescendo of shattered porcelain and broken lamp bulb. The big bruiser bounced around in the midst of all this, bellowing out his aches and pains.

  The other man dived at me.

  He left his feet, both hands outstretched to grab my neck and choke me into submission. His face was pockmarked, his eyes were narrow slits between puffy eyelids, his clothes were a shade above the average. The thought touched my mind as I scrambled out of his way, that he was the main man in this duo. He would be the boss, the giver of the orders.

  I did not scramble fast enough. His two hundred pounds and more came down across my thighs, damn near breaking them. A stab of pain shot along my nerve-ends just as he got a hand ready to slam me in an extremely delicate spot. There was a no-nonsense air about this boy, he was here to get a job done and he intended to get it over with as soon as possible.

  I twisted my hips, took his blow on my hip-bone.

  “Non, non! Merde! You will ruin him as a man!” Claudette screeched.

  A lot he cared, the big merde!

  Sitting there with him across my legs, I slammed the edge of a hand across his already-broken nose. He howled his anguish, getting to his knees and covering his nose with his big hands. I let my foot fall into his belly, with all my weight behind it.

  He oofed and doubled up, retching.

  I whirled, hunting the other bruiser but not seeing him in time as he shot forward across the broken table, the top of his head aimed at my face like he was a goat. His skull crunched into my cheek. I saw stars.

  I twisted sideways, commanding my brain to forget the pain. My brain disobeyed me, because I felt it for sure. It made me even madder.

  My fist let go with a wallop.

  My knuckles hit a jawbone. If I hadn’t been sitting on the floor when I let that blow go, so that it had little steam behind it, I would have knocked him out. As it was, he rolled aside, shouting curses.

  Hey, I told myself. Don’t win this fight!

  Old Walrus-moustache expected me to get taken into that hospital and have my head operated on, to have a radio-thought-control stimulator placed in the fleshy part of my skull. I wouldn’t be playing fair with the Thaddeus X. Coxe Foundation if I knocked these strongmen out.

  So I had to ease up on the rough stuff. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds. I had to make it look good, because Claudette Marly was there cheering me on, waving her pretty little fists around in the air, urging me to bop them some more.

  I thrrew a wild right at the guy with the splinters from the shattered tea table sticking into him. It was deliberately off target. I wanted him to think I was close to the end of my roughhouse rope.

  I guess I overacted. With a roar of happiness he ducked my fist and slammed me one in the ear. My head rang like it was a bell and it was Bastille Day in Paris.

  The guy with the pockmarked face was himself again and joined in the attack on me from the rear. His hand-edge hit my throat a glancing blow. I sagged, waiting.

  They took the bait. They leaped for me fr
om opposite directions. I reached out, grabbed a tie and a shirt-front and tried to bang their heads together. I was partially successful at that.

  Pockmark hit the splintery bruiser on his Adam’s apple. The man with the splinters gagged and choked. My hands caught the tie I held, tightened it with a somewhat vicious tug.

  The pockmarked face got purple.

  Claudette screeched, “Oooooh—what a man! He can fight and flon-flon like a Hercules!”

  Well, now. I might not go that far in praising myself, but I was more than holding my own. However, all my fighting had been done with my butt on the carpet. I decided to get up and throw a few punches on my feet. I mean, after all, my rear end was getting floor burns.

  I got up, so did the guy with the ugly face, clawing at his tie, getting it loose. I belted him in the belly. He staggered back. I didn’t want to knock him out, he had to take me to that hospital.

  Besides, if I should kayo him and his buddy, Claudette Marly would insist I drag them out into the corridor and lock the door behind them. Then I was to drag—drag, ha!—her into the bedroom for some of that flon-flon she was talking about.

  So I pulled my punches as I whaled out at him.

  I drove him back over a chair. Man and chair hit the floor together. The guy with the splinters was on his feet now and sending out a fist in my general direction.

  I blocked his blow.

  I rammed him in the middle an inch above his belt buckle. He made sobbing sounds as he tottered backwards. Claudette was urging me to go after him, to finish him off.

  I tried. I threw haymakers that would have rocked him sleepy-bye if they had landed. I made sure they did not. I followed him around the room, the wind of my near-misses blowing him ahead of me.

  Pockmarked-face was up and diving for me.

  His skull rammed into my hip, knocking me sideways. It was my turn to fall over a chair. We were making a shambles of the apartment all right. I caught him by his ears and twisted his head sideways so that it slammed into a wooden chest-leg. I rolled against him, sought for a wrestling hold.

  I got a half nelson on his neck and head, but his body was bouncing around so savagely he broke the grip. His knee slammed my thigh. He was panting and puffing by this time, his face was scarlet and wet with sweat. I was in a little better shape but not by much.

  Then something fell on my back, damn near breaking my spine.

  The other guy, getting into the melee.

  We bounced and bumped here and there. We upended an end table, we brought a standing lamp down over our threshing bodies, we even rammed into Claudette Marly and sent her flying.

  Fists thudded into my jaw and belly. I figured I’d put up enough of a fight to make the Coxe Foundation proud of me. I would let them overpower me.

  Hah! I had no say in the matter. Encouraged by their temporary success, the two bruisers went wild. They showered my face with knuckles. They turned my stomach-flesh black and blue.

  I tried to tell them I was surrendering. They wouldn’t have any part of that, they went on hammering away at the Damon features. Until they finally succeeded.

  They knocked me cold.

  CHAPTER THREE

  My head hurt with something worse than the Excedrin headache the television screens make much of. I was strapped down on a cot, and could move neither my arms nor legs.

  HECATE had me good.

  My eyes still worked, however, so I studied the room in which I lay. It had white walls decorated with a couple of Picasso prints. Beside the cot where I was strapped down there was a dresser and a night table, plus a rocking chair. Austere quarters, but they were mine, all mine.

  “Hoi!” I yelled.

  The door opened. A nurse poked her head in and flashed a grin. The white cap perched on her neat black hair bobbed as she said, “Bon jour, m’sieu. I see we are ready to take our place in the world.”

  She came into the room, walking with a strut that made her breasts bounce enticingly behind her starched white uniform. No brassiere, but the necessary breastworks to fill a pair of C cups. There was amusement in her eyes as she reached to take my wrist between her fingers.

  “I’ve heard you just about turned Claudette Marly inside out,” she announced as she took my pulse. “The poor girl was hysterical when they carried you off.”

  “I have my moments,” I grinned.

  Her stare challenged me. I moved my shoulders in a little shrug. “I can’t prove anything tied down like this,” I suggested.

  The nurse laughed, shaking her head. “Soon, maybe. Not right now. You’ve had an accident. A lamp fell on your head in Paris. You’re here in Dampierre at a private hospital, being treated for a mild concussion.”

  “How’m I doing, everything considered?”

  Her glance was enigmatic. “Everything considered, m’sieu, I’d say you were doing fine. Your pulse is normal. No more fever. Yes, you do very well, indeed.”

  “Then why don’t I get up?”

  “Plenty of time for that. A doctor must examine you first. So just lie back, rest, and be patient.”

  The doctor came in half an hour, a tall man, almost cadaverous in appearance, with a caved-in chest and a body as thin as a slat rail. His eyes were dark, ringed with purple flesh. His lips were thin, his Adam’s apple prominent, and his voice was quite deep.

  “Bon, bon,” he muttered, eyes glowing. “You are a very healthy specimen of manhood, m’sieu. You have thrown off the effects of the—of—ah—your blow, quite swiftly. I think you may be up and about, if you so wish.”

  I so wished, so in another half hour I was dressed in sports shirt and slacks—the hospital orderlies had secured a change of my clothes from the hotel—and was strolling down a hospital corridor. There were several nurses at a desk, eyeing me up and down. I gathered from their wide eyes and quick whispered confidences that Claudette Marly hadn’t done my reputation any harm. I smiled at them, winked and passed on to the big French doors that opened onto a brick patio.

  The air was brisk, fragrant with honeysuckle. I was a little puzzled at my apparent freedom, until I remembered that if the Coxe Foundation and old Walrus-moustache were right, I had a miniature bugging device in my skull that would theoretically, prevent any attempt to run away.

  I played it cosy. I strolled about, drew deep lungfuls of perfumed air into my lungs, then went back into the hospital building like any good patient. I walked up to the nurse at the hall desk.

  “How’s chances of getting something to eat, honey?” I asked. “I’m starved.”

  Her smile was a yard wide. “Certainment, m’sieu! Your need for food is most understandable.” The way she said it, it sounded like a dirty dig. I guess she was remembering Claudette Marly.

  They served me ham and eggs, toast and coffee in my room. I was no sooner finished with my second cup than two men entered and stood staring at me. I pushed back the card table that held my dishes and cups, and stared back.

  The men were above middle height, muscuar and lithe; they looked like athletes. Their skin was heavily tanned and they had a hard, ruthless look to their eyes. At first glance, I had thought them to be musclemen. Now J revised my estimate.

  “Ah, the brains of the outfit,” I murmured, and one of the men—slightly balding and with intense black eyes that seemed to crackle as he blinked—visibly started, turning to stare at his companion.

  The second man merely smiled. He was suave, dressed with impeccable taste in a Pierre Cardin suit with all the elegant accessories. His hair was a reddish-blonde, worn rather long, and his eyes were a washed-out blue.

  “Brains, Professor Damon?”

  “Of this hospital, of course,” I murmured, waving a hand about casually, The balding man quieted, seeming more at ease. “I assume you run it. I want to thank you for everything you’ve done. I just hope I can afford the bill.”

  “You can afford it, Professor—believe me,” said Pierre-Cardin-suit. His smile was not nice as he added, “We’ve made sure of that. Yo
u see, Professor, you interest us very much.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, indeed. As a matter of fact, many men and women all over the world interest us, here at HECATE.” He chuckled at my expression. “Don’t bother to put on an act, Professor. We know all about you and Rhea Carson, how you saved her life. And what you and your chief learned later at the Caldwell Neurosurgical Clinic.”

  I blinked at that all right, until I realized he was guessing. The fact that the man who had saved Rhea Carson’s life had come so soon to France might be a building block on which to construct a whole set of theories.

  His smile was very friendly. “That is usually how we select a great number of our operatives, from their past history, or because of their successful interference with our plans. Most organizations would kill their best opponents. Not HECATE.”

  Balding-man said softly, “We turn them to our advantage, we use them. It’s an advantage we have over other organizations who utilize secret agents such as yourself. We are always sure of your obedience, always positive you will remain loyal to us.”

  Pierre-Cardin-suit nodded affably. “Permit me. This man with me is Doctor Cyrano Matelot, one of the world’s foremost experts in the field of interacerebral electric stimulation. I am Doctor Yves Roger-Viollet.” He was very modest about it. Yves Roger-Viollet was a name to rank with that of Clinton Thayer in the field of neurosurgery.

  I rose and bowed. “It is my privilege, gentlemen,” I told them, and meant it. I always admire brains and ability in a man, even in an enemy.

  Roger-Viollet was very pleased. He rose and bowed also, as did Matelot. Apparently I was not being controlled by the buttons in my head at the moment, so what I had done was quite voluntary and they accepted it as a compliment.

  “We shall get along, Professor,” murmured Roger-Viollet.

  Doctor Matelot muttered supiciously, “I don’t think you understand the meaning of what you’ve just heard, Damon. Ours is an organization called HECATE. We have selected you to act as one of our secret agents.”