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  He didn’t. Fortunately, after what had to have been at least a dozen pages of Back-Seat Love the oral phase ended and the genital phase began.

  “ ‘David,’ ” Lady B recited, “ ‘reached under Judy’s skirt and maneuvered her panties down her thighs and removed her panties.“

  ‘Judy was reluctant to let him do so. She had gone this far with him only once before, and she had become so excited that it took all the will power she could summon to refrain from going all the way.“

  ‘However, she was too excited now to offer anything but token resistance. David quickly overcame this resistance, and her panties soon lay on the floor of the back seat of the car.

  “ ‘Stroking her thighs provocatively, David worked his way up to her vagina, which was damp with anticipation. He maneuvered his fingers between the twin folds of skin which lay at the organ’s opening, and after caressing her there for a while, he slowly eased his middle finger up inside her.

  “ ‘ “Oh, David,” Judy gasped.

  “ ‘ “What’s the matter, Judy?” he replied. “Don’t you like it?”

  “ ‘ “Oh yes, David,” said she, “I like it very much. It feels wonderful. But, David, I’m scared.”

  “ ‘“What are you scared of, Judy?” he asked.

  “ ‘She whispered the words fearfully: “I might get pregnant and have a baby.”

  “ ‘He smiled reassuringly, all the while continuing to massage her vagina excitingly with his middle finger. “Judy,” he said, “a girl doesn’t get pregnant just by having a boy touch her.”

  “ ‘ “I know, David,” she replied, “but I’m getting very excited by having you touch me”—as indeed she was—“and I’m afraid that if you don’t stop soon I won’t be able to resist when you want to go all the way.”

  “ ‘ “I won’t want to go all the way, Judy,” he promised her. “Just trust me.”

  “ ‘ “I trust you, David,” she answered. “It’s myself that I don’t trust.”

  “ ‘ “Don’t worry about trusting yourself, Judy,” said he, massaging her vagina even more vigorously.” I promise you that I won’t put you in the situation where you’ll have to trust yourself.”

  “ ‘She did not know whether to believe him, but by this time she was too excited to offer further resistance. “Okay, David,” she said naively, “you may continue to touch my vagina. But please, David, please, please, please don’t get me too excited.”

  “ ‘ “I won’t, Judy,” he grunted, knowing full well that this end was precisely what he had in mind. “I promise you I won’t.”

  “ ‘He then proceeded to insert a second finger inside her vagina, and to maneuver both fingers back and forth in semicircular motions. As might have been expected, these motions were sufficient to arouse her to a point where her resistance vanished completely, and there, on the back seat of his car, they had sexual intercourse.’”

  “What?” I gulped, brought up short by the abrupt ending. “The passage stops there?”

  “Yes,” replied Lady B. “That’s the end of the chapter. The next chapter begins with Judy in a sleazy abortionist’s office in Liverpool.”

  I had a sneaking suspicion that Lady B was lying to me. I suspected that she herself had become so aroused by this time that she didn’t want to delay the master stroke any longer, and that she consequently had done a very quick editing job on David’s genital foreplay.

  “Take a passage from another book,” I told her. “Make it one where a man and woman fondle each other genitally for quite a while.”

  “Really, Rod, that won’t be necessary,” she smiled, reaching, as if by instinct, for my manhood. “I’m quite ready for the climax of our experiment now.”

  Frankly, so was I. Progressing right along with David, and, in fact, going him one better, I had completely undressed both Lady B and myself. The presence of her succulently ripe, unbelievably neglected body next to mine, to say nothing of all that foreplay, had put me very much in the mood for the grand finale.

  But I wasn’t toing to take any chances at having the experiment end without her experiencing The Big Climax. “I’m conducting the experiment,” I said authoritatively. “We’ll do things my way, and my way means reading another passage.”

  Reluctantly she agreed to recite an excerpt from Lust Weekend, a novel about a Mersey housewife’s affair with a plumber from Nottingham. The plumber was an intravaginal genius par excellence who had an especially keen talent for clitoral massage.

  Midway through the passage, Lady B went wild. She was involved in a description of the plumber vigorously but gently rubbing his finger back and forth across the housewife’s clit when suddenly she stopped reciting and cried, “Oh, Rod! Oh, my heavens! What’s happening to me?”

  I covered her mouth with mine and thrust my tongue deeply inside. At the same time, I began rubbing her clit even more rapidly and with my free hand I cupped one of her marvelous breasts and began kneading it vigorously.

  “Mmmmmglrubbbb!” she groaned, struggling against me. Her heels dug into the bed, and her hips arched high into the air. Her body was taut as a violin string.

  I rubbed her clit all the more rapidly. Her hips began pumping back and forth in a furious pantomime of coitus. She struggled even harder to free her mouth from mine. Finally she succeeded.

  “Rod!” she screamed. “Oh, Rod! Take me! Oh! Oh my God, I can’t believe it! It’s happening! Rod!”

  The tremors that shook her were like fierce waves in a frantic sea. Her body arched so high in response to them that only her heels and shoulders were touching the bed. Then the tension snapped and she back to the be only to arch up again as though she had landed on a trampoline. Her teeth bit hungrily at my lips, and the fingers of both her hands squeezed my staff as tightly as if it were The Staff of Life.

  “Ohhhhhhhhhh!!!” She wailed. “Oh God! Oh Rod! Oh, it’s still happening! It isn’t stopping! It—it—ohhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

  Working like a bastard, I stoked her to even higher peaks of passion. There were five years of dammed up sexual energy inside her, and the dam had now burst. I drew every last ounce of ecstasy out of her, and then, as her sensations ebbed and she coasted down gently from her pinnacle of passion, I held her to me and kissed her lovingly on the lips.

  “Ohhhhhh,” she moaned softly, her body fluttering like a leaf in my arms. “Rod, I can’t believe it. I never dreamed that there was a feeling like this. And I never thought it would happen to me. But it happened. It really happened.”

  I smiled as I eased open her thighs. “Penelope, dearest, it’s going to happen again.”

  It did—again and again and again.

  Having gotten her machinery into good working order, I proceeded to work it at full capacity.

  For openers—and for my own satisfaction as well as hers—I gave her a course in love-making doggie-style. This permitted me to massage her all-important clit at the same time that my manhood was rutting around inside her. Her vagina was, at first, as tight as a new pair of shoes. But the muscles loosened up as our act continued, and I was able to do all my tricks without hurting her.

  Meanwhile, I discovered that she had a few tricks of her own. As our bodies grew accustomed to each other, the techniques which she had employed in her mattress days as a playgirl all seemed to come back to her. She had a super-talented muscle that seemed to have a will of its own. It gripped me and released me, squeezed me and stroked me.

  And her hips were something else. They wriggled and writhed, bounced and jounced, dipped and dived, swung and swung some more. All sorts of crazy sensations came alive inside me, and I responded with a performance that far surpassed my usual superb level of excellence. My actions in turn prompted reactions, and her reactions prompted further actions on my part. Together we were one fantastic, superbly coordinated, incredibly efficient sex machine—a machine with billions of complex moving parts, all working harmoniously toward the same end: mutual satisfaction.

  And mutual satisfactio
n it was. I forced myself to hold back as long as possible so that she could get as good a ride as I could possibly give her, and she had a good half-dozen orgasms to my one. But my one was worth all the effort I had put into it, and then some. Like wow!

  When we finally severed the tie that binds, she was a devout and dedicated convert to sexuality’s cause. But I still wasn’t ready to rest on my laurels. Enticing her to recite another passage from the erotic books which she previously had claimed to despise, I set up little game of Sixty-Nine. Then we went at it again in what the Polynesians call “the missionary position,” meaning man-on-top, woman-on-bottom, an arrangement which Christian missionaries to the South Seas had endeavored—unsuccessfully, to be sure—to persuade the islanders was the only ethical permissible mode of coital congress. Next I gave her a shot of what Benvenuto Cellini once described as amore all’Italiana, or “love, Italian style”—translation, buggery. And, for a finale, we went a round standing up, her back to the wall so that my thrusts had an even more telling effect on her.

  When we finally called it quits, the time was nine o’clock and Lady B-B was barely able to walk. “I say, Damon,” she grinned ecstatically, “you argue a good case. I came here believing I was incapable of orgasm, and I’m leaving having experienced all of twenty of them,”

  “Such, Penelope,” I replied suavely, “is the power of the scientific method. When in doubt, investigate. Empirical data are vastly superior to hastily formed prejudices. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

  Her eyes took on a dreamy look. “I can’s wait to share my date with Lord Brice-Bennington.” Then, her expression suddenly clouding, she said, “But how will I go about it? I can’t just waltz up to him and announce that you’ve taught me what sex was all about.”

  “For the time being,” I said, “don’t tell him anything. I’ve got an idea about how Lord B-B can be brought into the fold. It’ll take me a few days to set things up, but once I have, everything’ll work out just dandy. Meanwhile, act as if nothing had happened between us, and I’ll let you know when we’re ready to make our big move.”

  “Whatever you say, Rod,” she purred, buttoning her blouse. Then, kissing me resoundingly on the lips, she bade me goodbye.

  She hadn’t been gone for five minutes when my phone rang. The caller was the desk clerk, who informed me that a messenger was on the way with a package for me. The package proved to be the bundle of newsclips about Smythe and Whelan which I had asked Walrus-moustache to have The Coxe Foundation’s London crew assemble for me.

  I put it in the drawer of my bureau, then took a quick shower and dressed for dinner. Then, giving myself a once-over in the mirror before leaving for the restaurant, I flashed an ecstatic smile.

  “Damon, you old dog,” I said aloud, “you’ve done it again—and in record time.”

  I was really proud of myself. In a few hours, Andi Gleason was due to come calling. When she did, I was sure, I’d have no trouble persuading her to head for that little rose-covered cottage in San Francisco—and to take Diane Dionne along with her. Meanwhile, while I waited for her to arrive, I’d go through the newsclips I had just received and uncover a clue which would magically explain just why the guy who had put Andi and Diane up to extorting Smythe and Whelan believed that the two M.P.’s were such lucrative targets. When I had found the clue, I’d be able to prove to Walrus-moustache that the attempted shakedown of Smythe and Whelan hadn’t been a Communist plot at all, but merely the brainstorm of a smalltime pimp, Peter Blaine, whose plans far outdistanced his ability to execute them. I’d thus be able to prove that the Communists never knew that Smythe and Whelan were involved with the B-bomb—in fact, that the Communists never knew that the B-bomb existed—and that they had been tailing Andi and Diane only because they were trying to get some proof of the rumors about Smythe and Whelan, rumors which would die once Andi and Diane were safely spirited away to the States. I’d also be able to prove that the Friends of Decency had been fishing around with Andi and Diane for the same reason that the Communists had—to get proof of the scandalous rumors—and that the proof had not been forthcoming. And, as a bonus, once I’d done my little number on Lord B-B, the Friends of Decency would be dissolved, and The Big Prig, along with his Big Prigess, would be two of the most devout converts to la vita sessuale since David discovered Bathsheba.

  “Missing link!” I scoffed, looking lovingly at my image in the mirror. “What missing link!? Your theory was correct all along, Damon-you-old-dog. You were just being paranoid when you doubted yourself. This case has just been wrapped up and tied in a neat pink ribbon. It’s all over now but the shouting.”

  Adjusting my tie, I strode out of the room as proud as a Congressional Medal of Honor winner on Memorial Day. In the lobby, I tossed a contemptuous glance at Rumpled Suit, who was at his usual post, and paused long enough to buy an evening paper just to make sure he didn’t fail to notice me. Then, tucking the paper under my arm, I ambled across the street to a Greek restaurant, where I gorged myself on shish-kabob and ouzo until I thought it’d come out of my ears.

  “Damon, Damon, Damon,” I told myself as I floated back up to the room. “You’re a genius. An absolute genius. A man among men. A king among kings.”

  And boy did I regret saying it a few hours later!

  “Pride,” someone once observed, “goeth before the fall.”

  Well, I’d had my moment of pride—and I’d savored it.

  Now for the fall. I only hoped I would survive it.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In my room, I tossed my unread evening paper on the dresser and opened the package of newsclips which The Coxe Foundation had sent me. It took better than an hour to find the clips I was looking for, but when I found them, I was more convinced than ever that my theory about the Smythe-Whelan affair was one hundred percent foolproof.

  The first significant clip was a year old. It was from the financial section of The Times, and it stated that one Christopher Smythe of Kensington had inherited all the stock in a South African diamond mine. The value of the mine had been set at better than ten million pounds, or twenty-four million American dollars.

  The second significant clip was also from The Times, but this time from the news rather than the financial section. It was six months old, and it stated that M.P.’s Christopher Smythe and James Whelan had been requested by the Prime Minister to divest themselves of their holdings in a certain American publishing firm which specialized in erotic books. The American firm, it seemed, had worked out a deal with a British firm, which planned to issue English editions of all the American firm’s books. Since Smythe and Whelan were two of Parliament’s most outspoken proponents of a law which would abolish Her Majesty’s Censorship Office, the fact that they held stock in the American firm was deemed by the Prime Minister to be a conflict of interests.

  The third clip, this one from The Daily Telegram, was five months old and revealed that Smythe and Whelan had refused to sell their publishing stocks. The Prime Minister had then threatened to make an issue of the conflict of interests charge. But evidently he never carried out his threat, because there were no further clips which mentioned the matter.

  The fourth clip—this from The Sunday Mirror—was six years old. It consisted of a photograph and a caption. The photograph pictured a group of people at a theater opening. The people were identified in the caption as Christopher Smythe, his wife, James Whelan, his wife, Doctor Stephen Ward and an unidentified friend. Doctor Ward, of course, was the osteopath-socialite-playboy-pimp who had introduced Christine Keeler to John Profumo. His unidentified companion in the photo bore a striking resemblance to Christine’s bosom buddy, Mandy Rice-Davies.

  Having examined all four clips, along with the financial statements on Smythe and Whelan which The Coxe Foundation had sent me, I didn’t have much trouble deducing the modus operandi of Peter Blaine, the presumed mastermind of the Smythe-Whelan caper. I also was able to make a very plausible guess as to why the caper had gone wrong. />
  Blaine evidently had been on the scene in London at the time of the Profumo scandal. He, Andi Gleason and Diane Dionne had not been members of the social circle in which Stephen Ward and his girls had moved. But Blaine had, along with everyone else who read the newspapers, seen the Ward girls make a bundle of money on the scandal.

  Like most small-time pimps, Blaine had wished he had had a piece of the Ward girls’ action. But, unlike most small-time pimps, who just wished and never did anything to make their wishes come true, Blaine had gone to work immediately on a plan to set up his own Ward-style association with British VIPs who could be lured into a Profumo-like situation.

  In search of prospective suckers, he had checked out newspaper files for the names of VIPs who had been associated in some way or other with Ward in the days before the Profumo scandal broke. He had realized that few if any of these VIPs would get involved in a potentially scandalous liaison while the public’s memory of the Profumo scandal was fresh. But he also had realized that libertines, like leopards who don’t change their spots, don’t abandon their libertine ways, and he had guessed—quite rightly, as later developments would prove—that some VIP’s would be good targets a few years after the Profumo business had died down.

  When he came upon the photo of Smythe and Whelan and their wives with Ward and the girl who resembled Mandy Rice-Davies—a photo published in 1962, a year before the Profumo scandal had broken—he had added Smythe and Whelan to his list of prospective suckers. He probably had made some attempts to get to other VIPs and had failed. In any case, he eventually had gotten to Smythe and Whelan, most likely rather recently, perhaps not sooner than a year and a half ago.

  His initial plan of action, it would seem, had been to get just enough proof of scandalous doings that he could sell his girls’ stories about their affairs with Smythe and Whelan to the newspapers. But then he had come upon the item in The Times identifying one Christopher Smythe of Kensington as the inheritor of a diamond mine fortune. Now, instead of shooting at the half million dollars or so which he might expect to gain by peddling his girls’ stories to the newspapers, he had decided to shoot at a much more lucrative target—a piece of the twenty-four million.