It's What Up Front That Counts Page 6

  I suddenly was aware of the sweet, subtle scent of her perfume. She excited me, not with the excitement of mere sex, but with the excitement of a much deeper emotional bond. “Robbi,” I said softly, “I love you.” And, incredible as it may seem, I sincerely felt at the moment that I did.

  She leaned closer toward me, and her lips touched my cheek. “I love you, Rod,” she purred. “And I want you. I want you desperately. I want to make love to you.”

  My fingers found one of the buttons on her tweed jacket. I deftly unbuttoned it, and my hand slipped inside, closing around the soft, firm flesh of her exquisite breast. The nipple tensed under my touch, and her face pressed more firmly against mine. “We will make love,” I said. “Just as soon as we get away from here. And we will get away, Robbi. I know we will.”

  “I know we will too, Rod. I know we will too.”

  For a moment we silently shared the delicious tenderness of our union. Then her lips neared mine, and she whispered, “Kiss me, Rod. Gently. Kiss me.”

  I kissed her. Her lips parted slightly, and my tongue slipped between them. I gripped her bare breast more firmly, and, astonishing though it was, I found myself thinking that I never in my life had loved a girl more.

  We held the kiss for maybe thirty seconds. Then she slowly backed away.

  “Robbi,” I murmured, “you’re beautiful.”

  She looked at me and smiled. The fear had gone from her eyes now. But, unexplainably, the affection and devotion that had been there suddenly seemed to be going also. Her smile, at first one of incredible warmth and tenderness, rapidly was becoming a grin of triumph. She gingerly extracted my hand from inside her blouse and pushed it toward me as though it were a bag of garbage.

  “Well, Damon,” she said, rebuttoning the jacket, “you got your demonstration. Now cool it, okay?”

  I was crushed—really crushed. Only my pride kept me from begging her to play the game a little longer.

  “Robbi,” I said softly, “you’ve proved beyond a doubt that you’re a great actress.” Forcing a self-confident expression of superiority, I added bitterly, “But you’ve also proved that you’re a bitch par excellence. For your sake, I hope there’s a real person somewhere beneath all that talent. For my own sake, I don’t think I’m ever going to take the trouble of trying to find out.”

  She took The Life of Saint Maria Goretti back out from under the seat. “Your loss, Damon,” she snapped. “Now flake off.”

  I did the only sensible thing under the circumstances. Trying hard not to show my real feelings, I flaked off.

  The prettiest of the plane’s six stewardesses was at the moment taking an illegal cigarette break back in the galley. I ambled over to her, turned on the old Damon charm, chatted about the sort of banal topics which stews the world over seem to find so fascinating—like how she enjoyed flying and which of the world’s cities she liked most—and entered her New York phone number in my little black book. Then, after polishing off a trio of double Johnnie Walker Blacks, I returned to my seat, ignored Robbi Randall completely, maneuvered my body into a semi-foetal ball and, thanks mainly to the Johnnie Walker Blacks, conked out like a light.

  I woke to find a not-too-gentle hand shaking my shoulder. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I discovered that the hand belonged to Robbi.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting a wet dream,” she said curtly, “but we happen to have landed in London.”

  I straightened my clothes, picked up my briefcase and followed her out of the plane. Waiting for us at the baggage rack were two women. One was a schoolmarmish type in her fifties. The other was a considerably younger woman whom I recognized immediately as none other than The Big Prig herself.

  I’d had so many surprises over the past twelve hours that I couldn’t really say that I was flabbergasted at Lady B-B’s appearance. But I was, to put it mildly, taken aback.

  There had been two snapshots of her in Walrus-moustache’s dossier. The first, taken during her playgirl days, was a head-and-shoulders shot of a pretty and sexy—though overly made-up—young swinger who certainly would be worth a roll in the hay but hardly would inspire more than passing interest. The second, taken much more recently, showed a frumpy-looking girl in her late twenties whose face, unimproved by make-up, was totally bland, and whose bodily assets, if indeed there were any, were concealed by a baggy black dress the hem of which fell just above her ankles.

  Now, in person, The Big Prig stood as living proof that photographs can be deceiving. Her face, untouched by the cosmeticist’s hand, wasn’t exactly the sort that launches a thousand ships. But there was something very natural and attractive about it. The sexiness that had shown through in the first snapshot was still there, but in a much more subtle and exciting way. The prettiness, though camouflaged by a huge pair of round, rimless spectacles, was also apparent.

  She wore an ankle-length black dress very similar to the one she had worn in the second snapshot, and she was obviously heavily corseted beneath it. The fullness of the dress and the heaviness of the corseting made it impossible for me to appraise her body accurately. But her overall form was good, and my practiced eye perceived bulges here and crevasses which suggested that, while they might not be perfectly placed, the raw materials of a groovy bod were nonetheless very present.

  Robbi Randall performed the introductions. The fiftyish schoolmarm-type, whose name turned out to be Gretchen Stark, was presented as executive director of the Friends and secretary of the London Council of Religious Organizations Opposed to the Disemmination of Filth. She took my hand as though she were afraid it would contaminate her, gave it a perfunctory squeeze, then dropped it like a hot potato.

  The Big Prig was considerably more cordial. While she didn’t exactly fall panting into my arms, she did squeeze my hand firmly, and the look in her pretty blue eyes suggested that she was not unfriendly toward me and perhaps even a little fascinated by me. “Doctor Damon,” she smiled affably, “welcome to the enemy camp.”

  “Enemy, Lady Brice-Bennington?” I replied, letting my charm ooze through. “I think not. A beautiful woman like yourself can never be my enemy. She may accept my friendship or reject it, but, in either case, I shall always think of her as my friend.”

  Robbi Randall’s smirk let me know what she thought of my Captain Gallant approach. Frumpy Gretchen Stark was equally—and visibly—unimpressed. But I wasn’t pitching Robbi and Gretchcn at the moment; I was pitching The Big Prig—and, from what I could see, she liked my pitch.

  “You’re a very charming man, Doctor,” she said. “Small wonder you’ve managed to entice so many tender young innocents into your boudoir.”

  I smiled. “Many there have been, your ladyship, and most were tender, but few were young and fewer still innocent.”

  Robbi almost choked on that one. Gretchen Stark turned away as though she were going to vomit. But The Big Prig responded with a chuckle that told me I was really on her wave length.

  “Tell me, Doctor,” she said, “how do you feel about the work you’re going to do for us?”

  My eyebrows arched quizzically. “How do I feel, madame? I don’t quite understand the question. Work is work. One generally doesn’t have feelings about it one way or the other.”

  “I should think you would. After all, your studies in the past have been decidedly pro-sexual. Now you’ve been commissioned to conduct a study which will prove that the free dissemination of erotic literature is a principal cause of sexual permissiveness in contemporary London. This conclusion flies in the face of everything you’ve written so far.”

  “Not so fast, madame. As I understand the commission, I’m going to conduct a study which will attempt to determine if there actually is a connection between the free dissemination of erotic literature and sexual permissiveness. A scientist never concludes anything until all the evidence has been assembled.”

  “You’re being semantic, Damon.” Her tone grew a shade cooler. “We both know that there is a connection.”


  I smiled superiorly. “Science, madame, knows only what has been proven. So far nothing has been proven on this subject. That’s why I consented to conduct the study.”

  Gretchen Stark decided to put her two pence worth in. “I don’t know anything about science, Doctor, but I know what I see. In nineteen sixty-seven, more than sixty percent of the young people arrested in Great Britain for sex crimes were found to have erotic materials either on their person or in their domiciles. The statistics of your Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States are quite similar. How do you explain that?”

  “Miss Stark,” I replied evenly, “I would venture to say that nearly one hundred percent of all murderers arrested in the United States and Great Britain during nineteen sixty-seven were found to have toothbrushes either on their person or in their domiciles. Does this prove a connection between the free dissemination of dental hygiene devices and homicide?”

  “That’s not a valid comparison, Damon, and you know it,” said Robbi Randall.

  “It is a valid comparison,” I replied. “Correlation does not prove causation. The causatory relationship of one variable to another must be established independently of the mere harmonious existence of both variables.” I closed the sentence with a smile that said: How do you like them apples?

  My little excursion into jargonese accomplished the desired effect. Since neither Lady B-B, Gretchen Stark nor Robbi Randall knew what the hell I was talking about, they couldn’t pursue their arguments any further.

  To Lady B-B I said, “Under the terms of our agreement, madame, I am going to assemble data which may or may not prove that there is a relationship between erotica and sexual permissiveness. My data will be scientifically valid, and you’ll have the right to turn them over to other scientists of your own choosing to corroborate or deny their validity. The conclusions I draw will be equally valid, whatever they may be, and you’ll also have the opportunity of having independent scientists evaluate them. Once I’ve given them to you, you can use them as you wish. If they support your cause, you can publicize them. If they don’t, you can shove them”—I curbed the impulse to finish the sentence with the phrase that really was on my mind—”into a filing cabinet somewhere.”

  The Big Prig smiled, “That’s fair enough, Damon. But let me remind you that we’ll be supervising you very closely. Your sexual views are well known to us, and we’re not unaware that you might be tempted to twist the statistics to favor your own point of view,”

  “Supervise me as closely as you like, madame,” I purred. My eyes fixing to hers meaningfully, I added, “I’d like nothing more than to be supervised very closely by you.”

  At this point, as if on cue, Robbi Randall’s luggage arrived on the baggage rack. A redcap took it in tow, and our party adjourned to Lady Brice-Bennington’s sedan in the airport parking lot. Robbi Randall drove, and Gretchen Stark shared the front seat with her. I shared the back set with The Big Prig.

  Helping her through the door, I gripped her at the bicep, carefully letting the back of my hand brush against her breast. She jerked away from my touch, but not before there had been a good five or six seconds of uninterrupted contact. I couldn’t be sure whether she liked being touched by mc or whether she just had slow reflexes, but judging from everything I had seen so far, I was betting on the former. One thing was certain: unless I had completely lost my ability to judge a woman’s sexual response, Lady Brice-Bennington was anything but The Big Prig she was made out to be.

  Once inside the car, I sat square against her. My briefcase gave me the excuse to do so. It took up the space between me and the edge of the seat. As had been the case when I touched her breast, she lingered for a few seconds before moving away from me. I resolved that I’d make it a point to get off somewhere with her alone—where Gretchen Stark and Robbi Randall wouldn’t be witnesses to what happened between us—at the earliest possible moment. I suspected that when I did I’d learn a lot more about The Big Prig than her Friends of Decency had ever dreamed there was to learn.

  The trip from the airport to the mansion which served as both Lady B-B’s home and the headquarters for her Friends took an hour and a half. We passed the time discussing administrative details about my proposed study. I hadn’t had time to work out a detailed prospectus, but I was an old enough hand at the sex survey game that I was able to ad-lib convincingly.

  I said that I wanted to conduct in-depth interviews with three random samples of contemporary London young men and women. One sample would be made up of persons who, in response to a mail survey, reported that they had not engaged in sexual intercourse before marriage. Another sample would be made up of persons who reported that they had engaged in sexual intercourse before marriage. The third sample would be drawn from London’s demimonde of prostitutes, pimps, strippers and others of professed libertine proclivities. All respondents would be questioned about the nature and extent of their erotic reading. Then, when the statistics had been assembled, an attempt would be made to establish parallels between reading habits and sexual behavior.

  Lady B-B accepted the plan with one qualification: she wanted me to balance the demimonde sample with a sample of students at church-operated schools. From a scientific point of view, her request was unreasonable because the ages and domicile status of the school sample wouldn’t be parallel to the ages and domicile status of the other samples. But in the interest of harmony I accepted the qualification.

  We then worked out such details as how the random samples would be drawn, who would do the actual selecting of respondents, who would perform the clerical work, et cetera. By this time, we were at the mansion, and, over lunch, we concluded our administrative arrangements. Lady B-B then gave me a guided tour of the mansion and the Friends’ headquarters after which she volunteered to escort me to my hotel. Out of a sense of mischief, I selected the Hotel Eros on Shaftesbury Avenue, a piquant touch which seemed to amuse rather than annoy her.

  It was now four p.m. and I was dog-tired, but I didn’t want to say goodbye to The Big Prig before I had had a chance to ask a few important questions. She accepted my invitation for tea, and as we sat across from each other at a small table in the hotel breakfast room, I went to work.

  “Have you always believed,” I asked, “that sex is such a horrible thing?”

  Her eyes took on a wistful look. “Once, Damon, when I was much younger, I expected it to be supremely beautiful. But, of course, I had been misled by the propaganda of eroticists such as yourself. I since have come to realize that it is vastly overrated.”

  “Did you give it a fair try?”

  Her smile was that of one who has gone the full route and now speaks with unimpeachable authority. “Yes, sad to say, I did. For several years I lent myself shamelessly to every debauchery. It was only after wallowing in the very depths of filth and depravity that I saw the light, and it perhaps is because I sunk as low as I did that I now am as devoted as I am to the cause of purity and decency.”

  “Tell me something about your experiences and about how you came to hold your present views.”

  Without embarrassment—in fact, almost with pride—she described her peccadilloes as a playgirl. Her tone was that of a penitent who while condemning his sins also rejoices in them because their magnitude makes repentence and atonement all the more meaningful. I listened carefully to the recitation, and prodded her as she went along with questions designed to illuminate other areas of her life. After an hour of tactful questioning, I had elicited an autobiography which paralleled very closely the background information in Walrus-moustache’s dossier.

  I was strongly tempted to ask if during her many sexual meanderings she had ever experienced orgasm. I rather suspected that she hadn’t. But I was afraid that I’d lose rapport with her if I questioned her that intimately at this early stage of the game, so I held back.

  I also wanted to ask about her interest in getting Smythe and Whelan turned out of office, and whether her husband opposed her support of the pr
o-Communist candidates. But I didn’t want to tip my hand on this count just yet, so I let the question remain unasked.

  I did permit myself one little shot in the dark. “Lady Brice-Bennington,” I said, “this morning when I first saw you at the airport, I experienced a feeling of warmth toward you, a very tender feeling, one not entirely sexual but at least partly sexual. With all due respect, I must say that I also got the impression that you responded to this feeling, and that you felt a certain warmth toward me. Am I wrong?”

  She blushed a deep crimson.

  I smiled. “I’m not wrong, am I?”

  It took her a long moment to answer. “Doctor Damon,” she said finally, “I won’t deny that I’m somewhat attracted to you. But, of course, the sexual impulse is strong even in those of us who realize what a dangerous thing sex really is. The difference between humans and animals is that humans control their sexual impulses.”

  I decided to quit while I was ahead. Shifting the conversation to less intimate areas, I chatted with her for another fifteen minutes. Then, promising to see her at the mansion the following day to begin my study, I bade her goodbye.

  The time was now five fifteen. I was tired enough that I could have slept right through until the next the next afternoon. But I knew that I had work to do and that it had to be done fast if the Commies were to be prevented from getting their hands on the B-bomb. I permitted myself a six-hour nap. Then, after wolfing down a plate of cold roast beef in a pun off Piccadilly Circus, I hightailed it to the Soho strip-joint where Andi Gleason had done her thing before she went the full-time prostie route. The odds against finding here, I knew, were far from good. But, good odds or not, I had to start somewhere. There was no better place than The Safari Club, and no better time than the present.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When you’re in the spy business, your worst enemy is the Law of Averages. Your main activity is tracking down leads —looking for people, for scraps of information, or occasionally for theories that will help you get to the bottom of the mystery you’re trying to solve. But you can only be in one place at one time, and the Law of Averages says that more often than not you’re going to be in the wrong place.