It's What Up Front That Counts Page 5

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite see what you’re driving at”

  “Just this: Robbi Randall, after she had gained full acceptance as a loyal Friend of Decency, sold Lady Brice-Bennington on the idea that what the Friends really needed was some scientific evidence that the free dissemination of erotic literature is a principal cause of sexual permissiveness in contemporary London. Robbi then volunteered to recruit you, the world’s foremost sexologist—and, of course, one of the world’s most outspoken sexual liberals—to supply that evidence.”

  “But,” I protested, “there is no proof that erotic literature is connected with sex crimes—and there’s a great deal of proof that it isn’t.”

  He smiled. “You know that, and I know that, but The Big Prig doesn’t know it Like all zealous missionaries, she’s completely convinced of the rightness of her cause. She sincerely believes that there is a connection, as she’s been preaching all these years, and she’s certain that any genuinely valid scientific study will prove it. Consequently, when Robbi suggested that the Friends of Decency hire you to conduct a study—under their auspices and under their supervision, of course —Lady Brice-Bennington thought the idea was simply ginger-peachy.”

  “And that’s why Robbi came back to America? To recruit me?”

  “Not quite. Although you were unaware of it, she recruited you by mail. Her letters addressed to you actually were sent to The Coxe Foundation, and she received replies bearing your signature—forged by experts, of course.”

  “That’s what I like about you guys. You’re so ethical.”

  He ignored the comment. “In your replies, you accepted the Friends’ invitation to study the relationship between erotic literature and sexual permissiveness in contemporary London. Once a fee had been agreed upon—a fee of a thousand dollars per month plus expenses, in case you’re interested—you said that you were all ready to go. Robbi then was dispatched by Lady Brice-Bennington to meet you here in the States and bring you to London, which she will do very soon.”

  Something about the way he said “very soon” struck me as curious. “How soon?” I asked.

  He glanced at his watch. “Well, you should arrive there by nine tomorrow morning. My mobile field office should deposit you at the airport within the hour, and your flight is scheduled to leave at ten p.m., our time.”

  I gulped. “But I’m expected back at the office party. And I haven’t got anything with me but the clothes I’m wearing.”

  “You can buy all the clothes you need in London. They’ve got excellent tailors there, and in case you forgot, you’re on an unlimited expense account. As for the office party, we’ve sent someone to replace you. Since everything there is being carried on in the dark, I don’t think anyone will miss you. And when it comes time for you to take your date home, our man will simply tell her that you didn’t feel well and asked him to pinch-hit for you.” He looked at me with a mischievous twinkling in his eyes. “I guess I’ve answered all your objections, haven’t I?”

  I didn’t answer.

  I couldn’t.

  What’s there to say when your captors have you by the proverbials and both of you know it?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Pan-Am’s big Boeing 707 lifted off right on schedule, and yours truly, Dr. Rod Damon, reluctant superspy for the United States of America, was on his way to Merrie Olde England.

  But Superspy Damon was in a mood anything but merrie.

  For one thing, I’ve never been particularly nuts about flying. I’d long before passed the stage where flying frightened me. But I’d never been able to develop a frame of mind whereunder I considered it fun—as all the airline ads said it was—to pass six hours sitting cramped-up in a too-narrow seat with too little legroom and nowhere to go for relaxation except the bathroom.

  For another, I was far from ecstatic about being tapped for another mission on behalf of The Coxe Foundation. Back at the laboratory of the League for Sexual Dynamics, my colleagues were putting into practice all the new twists and turns of sex which they had discovered during their previous three hundred and sixty-four days of dedicated research. And I, their leader, had walked out on them to play another round of spy games with The Big Prig and the Communists. Among the fates I would have accepted with only slightly more displeasure were leukemia, cirrhosis of the liver and cancer of the pancreas.

  My mood, of course, would have been brighter if my traveling companion had been a bit friendlier. But, despite her abundance of passion when she was playing Ellen to my Jean-Claude, Robbi Randall had gone ice-cold again once Walrus-moustache’s little scene had ended, and, try though I might, I had been unable to defrost her.

  Let the record note: I did try. For more than half an hour before takeoff and a good hour afterwards, I used all the rehetoric at my command to convince her that she would have plenty of time to get back into her role as a Damon-hating Friend of Decency once the plane began circling Heathrow Airport for its London landing. But I might as well have tried to sell her the Brooklyn Bridge. She did talk freely and in great detail about the comings and goings of Lady Brice-Bennington and the Friends. But her manner was strictly business, and the contempt-filled tone of her voice served as a constant reminder that she regarded me—at least while she was playing the Friend role—as a creature just slightly less loathsome than Hitler or Atilla the Hun.

  Finally, somewhere between Iceland and Newfoundland, I abandoned my attempts at getting through to her and buried myself in the dossiers which Walrus-moustache had given me to study before I began my actual work on the case. They covered essentially the same terrain he had covered in his briefing, but in considerably greater detail. I read them twice, start to finish, then reread several sections that struck me as sort of curious.

  Especially curious, I thought, was the history of The Big Prig herself. She had acquired a ladyship via marriage to Lord Brice-Bennington, but previously had been of working-class background. She had come to London from her native Dorchester ten years ago, at age eighteen, and had gone the secretary-receptionist-filing clerk route for a year or two before moving in with the so-called smart set. Then she had gone the playgirl route, presumably subsisting on gifts from her lovers, for another two or three years.

  Somewhere or other along the line, she evidently had decided that the sweet life wasn’t as sweet as it seemed. In any case, five years ago, she stopped being a playgirl and formed the Friends of Decency. She got her initial financing from religious organizations and other groups traditionally opposed to sexual permissiveness, then built the Friends into a financial powerhouse which, through private contributions, now enjoyed an income of better than a million dollars a year. She herself, along with other staff members, took only a modest salary; the rest of the money was channeled into the Friends’ lawsuits and propaganda activities.

  A year after forming the Friends, she married Lord Brice-Bennington, who, I guessed, had met her in the course of her work and had decided that she was that ultra-desirable sort of old-fashioned “nice” girl that seemed to be in ever-dwindling supply nowadays. Lord B-B at the time had been a thirty-five-year-old bachelor who kept pretty much out of the social mainstream, preferring to devote his time to fox hunting, card games at exlusive gentlemen’s clubs, and similar old-school aristocratic pursuits. He never took a visibly active part in any of the Friends’ activities; but he evidently was both pleased with and proud of his wife’s efforts to stamp out sex and sin in the British Empire.

  What struck me as particularly curious about all this was Lady B-B’s sudden—or, as may have been the case, gradual—conversion from the ways of sin to the ways of righteousness. I could understand that a playgirl might grow disenchanted with her life and decide to turn over a new leaf. But I couldn’t quite see how a playgirl like Lady B-B, who appeared to be a typical working-class girl, unencumbered by the moral strictures and social goals of the middle class, would be motivated to shift gears so dramatically in midstream. If she had been the daughter of a clergyman
, for example, or if she had been raised in an extremely puritannical atmosphere, her about-face might have made sense, But according to Walrus-moustache’s dossier, her parents were far from religious, and she herself had not been a regular churchgoer before forming the Friends.

  Also—and, of course, I am biased on this count—I couldn’t imagine how anyone who had really gotten into sex, anyone who had really gained an appreciation of what a wonderful thing it is, could ever go sour on it, no matter what her past influences. The examples of Mary Magdalen, St. Paul, Emperor Constantine, et. al., notwithstanding, I found it impossible to conceive of anyone who had really enjoyed sex ever becoming a bluenose.

  Another thing that struck me as curious was the tie-in between Lady B-B’s campaign against Smythe and Whelan and the Communists’ interest in getting Smythe and Whelan turned out of office. According to Walrus-moustache’s dossier, Lord B-B was a diehard conservative, a man whose view were so far to the right that he made America’s Goldwater look, in comparison, like a flaming liberal. Even if Lord B-B shared his wife’s opinions on the evils of sex and the alleged connection between free disemmination of erotic literature and sexual permissiveness, would he want her to fight so diligently against two staunch anti-Communists like Smythe and Whelan just because they were pro-sex? I didn’t think so.

  Was Lady B-B’s campaign against Smythe and Whelan being undertaken contrary to her husband’s wishes? I couldn’t imagine that either. A fundamental rule—indeed, a standing operating procedure—in old-school marriages of the sort which Lord and Lady B-B seemed to have is that the husband calls all the shots. So where did Lady B-B, The Big Prig, come off playing right into the hands of the Commies—who, on the face of things, seemed to be her husband’s bêtes noirs.

  Finally among the things that struck me curious was the business of Andi Gleason and Diane Dionne being used to set Smythe and Whelan up for a scandal. I couldn’t really imagine the Friends, who presumably would adhere to the old Christian dictum that the end never justifies the means, arranging a sexual frame-up. And yet, long before the Coxe Foundation had reason to suspect Communist involvement, one highly placed member of the Friends had over the space of two weeks made three visits to the Soho strip-joint where Andi Gleason had worked before becoming a full-time prostitute, while another highly placed Friend had during the same period attended several pot parties at which Diane Dionne was present. If these Friends hadn’t been trying to arrange a frame-up, what were they doing on the scene? And if, contrary to my expectations, they had been trying to arrange a frame-up, where did the Communists fit into the picture?

  Walrus-moustache seemed to think that it was the Commies who arranged the frame-up. This theory, on the face of things, seemed more plausible. But, if the frame-up had been the Commies’ doing, where did the two highly placed Friends who were rubbing elbows with Andi and Diane fit in? If the Commies were framing Smythe and Whelan in the interest of getting information on the B-Bomb, they certainly wouldn’t want the Friends to be hip to the Smythe-Whelan-Andi-Diane liaison, because the Friends almost certainly would set off a scandal before the Commies could find out what they wanted to know.

  Had the Friends possibly learned of the liaison through their own sources, and had their two emissaries been frequenting the netherworld simply to gain more information? Quite possible. But, if they now had enough on Smythe and Whelan to set off scandal—and it was safe to assume that they did, since the Coxe Foundation had acquired its evidence of hanky–panky in a lot shorter time than the Friends had had to acquire their—why hadn’t they set off the scandal already? As Walrus–moustache had pointed out, the sooner a scandalmonger triggers a scandal like this, the better off he is.

  I checked this question out with Robbi Randall, who patronizingly granted me an audience of three minutes in which to answer it. Putting down the copy of The Life of Saint Maria Goretti in which she appeared to have been totally absorbed, she advised me that, active though she was in the Friends, she was not yet close enough to Lady B–B to have been apprised of any developments in the scandal department, if in fact there were such developments on the Friend’s side of the fence.

  This left me right back where I had started—nowhere. And since I obviously couldn’t get anywhere without doing some in–person fishing around, I decided to stop speculating for the time being. Tucking Walrus–moustache’s dossiers back into my briefcase, I put the briefcase under my seat, maneuvered myself into as comfortable a position as I could manage in my cramped quarters, closed my eyes, and tried to fall asleep.

  But sleep wouldn’t come. One reason why it wouldn’t was because the couple in the row of seats behind me had suddenly become involved in a very animated discussion about the alleged superiority of the London theater over the Broadway theater; I couldn’t have been less interested in their conversation, but they were talking so loud that, try though I might, I couldn’t shut their voices out of my consciousness. Another reason was that Robbi’s reading light was shining in my eyes. And a third reason was Robbi’s magnificent breasts. While she had abandoned the see–through she had been wearing earlier in favor of a conservative tweed jacket which concealed her charms much more effectively, the twin bulges in the jacket—which were right in my line of vision—served as a constant reminder of what I had viewed in full, unadorned splendor such a while before. By closing my eyes I could remove the immediate stimulus; but I couldn’t erase my memory of those marvelous thirty–eights—so, the absence of stimulus notwithstanding, the response was still there.

  I finally gave up on my attempts to sleep and decided to make another stab at defrosting Robbi. “Uh, sweetheart,” I said fumblingly, “can I talk to sou about something?”

  Marking her place in The Life of Saint Maria Goretti with her finger, she gave me the sort of look mothers give little boys who have to go to the bathroom in public places where there don’t seem to be any bathrooms around. “To you, Damon, I am not ‘sweetheart,’ I am ‘Miss Randall,’ “ she replied tartly. “Now what’s bothering you this time?”

  “Well,” I stumbled, “I’ve, ah, been sort of thinking, ah, that the time is going to come on this mission, ah, when we’re going to have to work, ah, pretty closely together . . .”

  “Stop pronouncing the spaces between your words and get to the point.”

  “Well, ah—excuse me—when I do get to the bottom of this business about who put Andi Gleason and Diane Dionne up to framing Smythe and Whelan, you and I, ah—excuse me—may have to make a fast getaway, ah, together.”

  “So?”

  “Well, if that time comes and you’re still very deep in the down–with–Damon bag, will you be able to change character and become my ally on such short notice?”

  “Certainly.”

  “How will you be able to do it—without some practice?”

  “Let me worry about the now. Now flake off, will you? I’m reading.”

  I let a little of my anger and impatience show through. “No, I won’t flake off. If you’ve got to be a fourteen-karat bitch with me twenty-four hours a day just to stay in character for The Big Prig’s benefit, I don’t think you’ll be able to make the transition when the chips are down.”

  The corners of her mouth curved upward in a small, superior little smile. “You saw how fast I could make a transition back in the van, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but you had Walrus-moustache directing you then. You won’t have him in London when the you-know-what hits the fan.”

  “I’ll manage on my own.”

  “I can’t take your word for it. I want proof.”

  “What sort of proof?”

  “Make the transition now. Pretend that we’re together in London, and that we’ve got to escape together to a plane that’s waiting to take us back to the States. I’ve just confiscated the negatives that prove S,,.ythe and Whelan have been carrying on with Andi Gleason and Diane Dionne”— as I spoke my voice took on something of the directorial tone which Walrus-moustache had use
d earlier—”and the Communist plot has been foiled. But the Communists have learned that you and I are working for The Coxe Foundation. As we sit hunched together in a dark corner of Lady Brice-Bennington’s mansion, our enemies are stalking through the corridors, guns in hand, looking for us and—“

  She frowned. “Damon, if you aren’t a better lover than a film director, heaven help the League for Sexual Dynamics.”

  “I’m new at being a director. Give me a chance.”

  “Forget it. If you really have to have your stupid little demonstration, and if the only way I can get you to leave me alone is to give it to you, I will. But don’t make my job harder. I’ll direct myself. You just sit there and wait for the results.”

  Appropriately chastised, I sat and waited. Dog-earing her page in The Life of Saint Maria Goretti, Robbi slid the book under her seat. Then, covering her face with her hands, she leaned forward like a guru going into a trance.

  I watched, fascinated. Very slowly, but nonetheless very visibly, her body seemed to go through a series of changes. The stiffness with which she had been sitting while in her Friend-of-Decency role gradually gave way to a seemingly total relaxation. Then a nervous tension seemed to take possession of her, and she cowered in the seat, as if both of us actually were hunched together in that dark corner of Lady B-B’s mansion that I had been talking about, while gun-wielding Commies stalked the corridors outside.

  Her hands now came away from her face, and her eyes found mine. They looked at me with unnervingly genuine fear, and yet with what appeared to be complete trust. She brought one hand to my forearm.

  “Rod,” she whispered tensely, “do you think well really make it?”

  I found myself, to my astonishment, getting right into character with her. “We’ll make it, baby,” I Humphrey Bogart-ed. “Don’t worry.”

  She brought her face closer to mine. “I believe you. I don’t know why, but I believe you.”