His coolly-humorous grey eyes took in every smooth movement of the girl as she closed the bulging drawer of the file and turned toward him. Nice little piece, he thought. The kind of secretary who made you glad the last one had finally got herself married. She had the small, tight build he admired in a woman. Breasts high, and swung in a little arch. Belly flat under the knitted wool dress. Ankles slim and-
"It's nine o'clock, you know."
He always surprised himself when he did that- when the words tumbled out undisciplined while his mind went wool-gathering.
"I've been trying to put this office back together. I just can't work any longer with this system-if it is a system."
"Old pickle-puss had her own way of doing things," he grinned. "But she was a damn good secretary. And she left at five o'clock."
Her hair, when she stood at that angle, fell back like a rich golden mane. Just the sweep of her brow made him catch his breath sharply. Damn women!
"Perhaps Miss Pickle-Puss would have known why you work so late every evening. It isn't good for your health...especially all that gin you drink."
"Miss Blair!" There was horror in his voice, and the girl jumped at its suddeness. "That 'gin' happens to be the very best Scotch!"
The girl looked relieved to learn that her only error had been that of inexactitude. She leaned back against the filing cabinet and surveyed her employer quizzically, her forehead wrinkled in a frown.
"Well, whatever it is, I'm sure so much of it isn't good for you. And night before last you slept in the office!" she accused.
"The couch is really very comfortable..." No use telling her that he'd slept there because he hadn't had the dime for carfare. He began to wish to hell he had kept his mouth shut.
"If you were working on a big case or something, I could understand it. But all you've given me to do so far has been letters to your creditors. Except for this work I make up, I haven't anything to do!"
"You haven't drawn any salary, have you?" he shot back. "What could be fairer? You don't have any work to do, and I don't pay you."
He was glad when she smiled like that. She was even lovelier when she smiled. Come to think of it, she was pretty swell all around. There weren't many girls who could see the humor in a crack like that.
"But I am working on a case," he hastened to add. "Or perhaps I should say about a case and a quarter, because the Scotch is running low. Til show you."
He pulled open a bottom drawer of his desk and tapped the necks of the three bottles with the heavy Chinese saddle ring he wore.
"Haig and Haig case," he said. He opened another drawer and disclosed a miniature Mount Sinai of closely handwritten sheets thrown together in marvelous confusion. "The Stevenson Case. Don't you think that's a good name? It's a mystery novel I'm writing."
The girl sat down heavily in one of the deep leather chairs.
"And I thought it would be fun to work for a detective," she mourned. "Adventure...thrills! Now I find that you have to write books to solve crimes."
"Unfortunately, Miss Blair, I am finding that my general ineptitude extends even to the field of fictitious crime detection. It is rather embarrassing to find in the concluding chapters that the only possible agent of the crime must be your lovely heroine. There is no other solution. She must have killed Stevenson-and the insurance collector too. And such a gentle creature! I tell you, Miss Blair, it's...it's really distressing."
Miss Blair crossed her legs and sat staring at him as though he were some strange sea creature she was trying to identify. Several inches of the bare underside of her pale thigh were visible. Ralph Boston was detective enough to observe that without so seeming. But what he didn't notice was that his secretary, as observant as he, was very discreetly and interestedly eyeing the result of his visual exploration, which came in the form of a peculiar lumpiness in the region of the left thigh of his trousers.
"I know," the girl said at length, "it's Ronnie you remind me of. An Irish setter I used to have. He got that same wistful look. That's probably why I worry about your health. He was a stupid animal, you see, and when he began to get wistful it meant either that he had eaten something that disagreed with him, or that it was time for...well..."
"Miss Blair, my digestion is perfect!"
Forgetfully, he stood up, and the girl laughed outright: "That was always happening to Ronnie! He'd come in in the middle of a bridge party like that, and embarrass all of the guests by trying to make friends. And when he discovered why no one wanted to know him he'd be more embarrassed than anyone, and slink out, trying to hide it with his tail..."
Ralph Boston slowly sank back in his chair. He rested his chin in his hand, rubbing the side of his nose with his forefinger. For a moment he and the girl fenced with their eyes.
"It's not very nice to tease a man, Miss Blair."
"I didn't mean to. Really I didn't," She was serious now. "I hate women who do that. I should have known better."
His grin, she thought, was nice even when it had that male air of forgiveness about it. She found herself wondering how it might be to have that high, drawn cheekbone resting softly on her belly, the humorous quirk of his mouth changing to something else when his lips pushed down and down... She wondered how old he really was. Thirty-five, possibly.
"Business, I am told, should never be mixed with pleasure," he said. "Reasons of discipline and so on. But the fact remains that you are a very handsome woman as well as a typing machine. You know that, of course. It's in the way you carry yourself, every move you make. It's too much to expect me to remain ignorant of it."
"Oh, a proposal! Is it to be something about me being your office wife?" Her words and her tone were light, but the room seemed very still and suddenly tense.
"I'm sorry," she said after an uncomfortable moment had ticked away. "That was a dirty crack. Maybe we should start over. I'm getting us all balled up. I'll go over to the file, and you ask me why I don't go home."
"Don't do that. I'll ask you something else instead. Perhaps you will tell me instead why a man is considered, if not quite a wax-mustached cad, certainly neither quite a gentleman if he happens to be attracted to his secretary. Reasons of discipline! My God, is business so sacred?"
"Perhaps because the girl is in a discomfitingly delicate position. There's a job to think of, you know."
He was grinning again. It was funny how just that could make her feel so queer. When he did that, she felt that she could do almost anything he might ask. She pulled her eyes away from his face and studied the single, startling streak of pure white than ran through his otherwise jet-black hair.
"We can disregard that factor. A job doesn't mean much when your employer is too broke to pay your salary. I suppose we might as well disregard the insidious attack on the foundations of the business, too. There isn't any business."
Why must she say it? Why did she feel impelled to walk into this thing? She didn't love him. She shouldn't go any further...her eyes were open...
"That might change things," she said quietly.
He had two glasses on the desk. He partially filled them from one of the two bottles in the drawer, and syphoned a charge of soda into each.
"I don't believe in treating this sort of thing as though it were just a walk through Central Park or a visit to the Aquarium," he said. "At the same time, I won't want to stick pins into you or burn your feet with matches. Do you understand what I'm driving at?"
"I think so."
Every hair on his body seemed to stretch on end as he stepped toward her, a glass in each hand.
"Say it. Say it again."
"Fuck me. There. Fuck me. Don't make me say it any more."
She pressed her hips, her whole body to his as they lay on the couch. Under her dress his hand crept warmly up her thigh. His leg was pushed between hers forcing against her mounded delta, making her doubly conscious of his cock, that felt like a stone crushed between their bellies. He kept dropping his face time after time to stroke his cheek against the firm outline of her breast.
His palm caressed her fanny, slid easily under the lace frill of her simple undergarment, and he wrenched his mouth again to hers. Leaning slightly away from her, he made room for her hand to come between them as her fingers marched up his leg. She sought around his trouser front ... then he snatched her hand and pressed it swiftly to his cock.
"It burns even through your clothes," she whispered.
She held it tighter and rested her head on his shoulder, smiling archly while he foraged through her thighs from the back, and his fingers gently touched the hairy mouth of her cunt. Her legs moved slightly, a tacit invitation, and the tip of his finger wormed between the hot lips.
Boston slowly pushed the knitted dress higher on the girl's naked thighs, and at the same time ran his finger to and fro in the little valley that flooded so quickly at his touch. He could feel the small inner lips rolling under his finger and occasionally twitching. He explored further into the delicate expanding blossom of the girl's cunt, and slid his finger over the little clitoral knob. The girl preened, and slight pleasurable sounds purred in her throat.
"Take off my clothes," she said. "And...and fuck me. See, you didn't tell me to say it that time!"
Her delight was the simple delight of the young and unspoiled. The man thrilled, and pushed his finger further into her cunt, up into the gripping channel, which slowly opened as he advanced.
"First take out my cock," he urged the girl. And willingly, although somewhat timidly, she worked open the buttons of his fly and thrust in her little hand. Her fingers went up one leg of his shorts, retreated and found the proper aperture. Then they closed over his hot penis, feeling cool and soothing and glad.
His prick bounced elastically when she popped it out, and as she looked at it the girl's eyes swam with desire. She pulled out his testicles and joggled them in her hand.
"Now," she said. "Please." She clenched her fists over his cock until her knuckles were white.
Naked, a moment later, she writhed sinuously on the couch as the man added his own clothing to the crumpled heap hers made on the chair. He watched her fascinatedly while she turned and rolled like a great cat. Her teats flattened as she rubbed them against the couch, then sprang jiggling back to shape. The nipples were large and pink, and jutted prominently on the luscious globes, and when she twisted her shoulders they danced excitingly.
He was trembling as he stretched his lean muscled body beside her, and his hands shook violently, reaching for her teats. But once he held the yielding flesh, felt the stroking kiss of the nipples in his palms, his nerves were still. He dragged the girl to him and she came with a limp acceptance that was almost servile. Then, as he pushed his prick against her thighs, her body became vibrant.
She clutched his cock, squeezing the fiery head forward and rubbing it upward over her belly. She slid slowly down between his legs, her eyes those of one who is mesmerized as she drew the stiff organ over her satin skin. The head burrowed into her navel. She wriggled downward until her breasts were pillowing the man's belly, his balls and his prick held in the warm valley of the soft hemispheres. Then she suddenly moved even further, so that his crotch was at her face.
"Would you like me to suck it?" Her voice was almost inaudible. The man stroked her head, his fingers playing in the fine gold of her hair. He nodded, watching the delicate young face as the girl moved to please him.
Holding the big cock in her two hands, the girl lowered her cheek to it and tenderly nuzzled against the stiff, hairy base. She scrubbed her nose briskly into the thick mat of hair and rolled his nuts against her face. Then she drew her lips back up the heavy cock, her tongue marking a wet streak to the very tip. The tip of his prick pushed between her lips and thrust deeply, for at the same time the girl opened her mouth and dropped her head. Boston felt his cock being sucked back in the girl's mouth and her tongue licking at the knob. She chewed it gently and swallowed eagerly as the sweet flow oozing from the mouth-filling organ filtered into her throat.
Boston pulled away from her. He was in no way certain that he could trust his control tonight, and hesitated to let her suck for long. A sudden rush of jism in her mouth might not be quite the introduction the girl expected. He saw that she was puzzled-yes, perhaps even a little hurt-and he hastened to kiss her pretty yellow delta to show his appreciation.
But as her thighs opened to allow him more freedom in his mouth play with her twat, Boston shook his head and moved upward over her.
"We'll do that later," he said. "I want to screw you first."
The girl's cunt was soaked with the fragrant liquor of her sex, and when he lifted the lower part of her body, his cock slid smoothly into it. He took her in one long sweep, and their bellies slapped softly together as he rammed himself between the spread V of her thighs.
Her twat was close and humid, and his prick was so enlarged that the sensation was that of continual stretching. The girl, Boston decided, although no virgin, was certainly not actively engaged elsewhere. The thought rather pleased him, and he fucked carefully, doing everything he could to make the girl's pleasure the equal of his own.
The girl swung her hips as he drove skillfully back and forth on her. Her delta twisted against his mat of black springy hair and she gripped him tightly with her arms and legs to jam him closer to her as he frigged her. Her twat squeezed about his prick as he plunged it mightily in and out with a rapidly increasing fervor, and she heaved her lithe torso to crush her teats up to him.
All too soon they reached the apex of their passions. While Boston clutched great handfuls of the girl's tight ass-wondering, even as he fucked her, just how far the girl's passions might be eventually led-the hot cunt began to throb about his prick. The girl threw her body wildly about, dragging her very soul for the pleasure that beginning to rise in her.
He charged her with new fury, bouncing his groin against her fanny until his cords ached. Swollen and burning, his cock plumbed her innermost secrets, stretching her twat to its capacity. Then a sudden stab reaching outward from his balls...an indescribable oozing sensation throughout his prick, and his jism was spending triumphantly, scorchingly into the girl's cunt, just as a querulous cry marked her own orgasm. He let his cock rest deeply in her, pouring its fertility in fitful spurts, and the girl lay hot against him, calling and calling his name...
'My place!"
"No; mine's nearer." "We'll toss a coin."
Boston searched through his pockets. "I had a coin only this morning..."
The telephone rang with a nerve-shattering jangle that echoed suddenly in the deserted outer office. Boston reached for it, and the girl slipped off his lap, patting his prick regretfully and sliding it back into his trousers. As he recognized the voice that answered his "hello", Boston's brows rose in surprise. Out of habit, he eyed the clock, making a mental note of the time: 11:15.
"Mr. Boston?" asked the voice. Then: "This is Herman Cartwright speaking. I've been trying to get you at your apartment. I called a few weeks ago, you remember, and..."
Boston's square jaw was set, and a smoldering light appeared in his grey eyes. His voice was icy as he interrupted one of the country's smaller private manufacturers of army munitions.
"I remember quite well, Mr. Cartwright, and I gave you my final answer at that time. I believe that the workers at your plants have a legitimate grievance, and I refuse absolutely to have anything to do with strikebreaking, even if you triple your offer. That should be clear enough."
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the sound of a radio playing somewhere in Cartwright's penthouse apartment. The arms magnate was a powerful, self-willed man, and few people had ever dared to oppose him so bluntly. But his voice was mild, almost apologetic as it next came over the wires.
"There might have been some difference of opinion there, I'll admit. Not that I think I'm wrong, remember... But that isn't exactly what I called you up about. You've read about my nephew's death, of course?"
Boston murmured something; it really wasn't necessary to answer. Every tabloid in town had set the headlines in letters an inch and a half high: PLAYBOY DIES IN AUTO CRASH.
Cartwright went on: "Silly young fool, a little too impetuous ...all that sort of thing, you know. But hardly such a fool, Mr. Boston, as to try to handle a hundred-and-fifty-horsepower automobile when he was drunk.
"Please come to the point, Mr. Cartwright." Boston's fingers drummed a rapid tattoo on the mahogany desk top.
"I have reasons to believe that my nephew's death was not, as the newspapers stated, the result of drunken driving. Today I came across something which leads me to suspect that his death was a carefully planned and executed murder!"
Ralph Boston sat bolt upright and forgot the cigarette for which he had been fishing.
"Why didn't you call me sooner?" he asked quickly.
The voice at the other end of the phone hesitated.
"I think perhaps I have already said too much over the phone. The whole matter is rather delicate, you see, and..."
"I'd say it must be absolutely fragile," Boston said. "To hold up, a report on a ... an accident-"
"But will you come over? Immediately?" A touch of actual urgency and something of fright had crept into the suave voice. "It's imperative that this matter be taken up at once. As to payment...I have already taken the liberty of mailing to your bank a check made out to your account-a check for $15,000."
The detective's brow furrowed at mention of the sum.
"Your methods are rather unusual, Mr. Cartwright. I don't know if I care to go any further into this, even at that kind of money. But I'll come over, and we'll talk about it."
Only when the man at the other end had hung up and the receiver hummed on a dead connection did Boston lean back in his chair and, placing the forgotten cigarette to his lips, thoughtfully light it. He hummed tunelessly through the smoke, turning the blackened paper match between his fingers.
"He said fifteen thousand. Fifteen thousand dollars."
The girl had her purse open and handed him a key.
"I know my cue," she said. "But this will let you into my apartment when you're through talking to Cartwright."
Boston stood up, his infectious grin belying the air of decision with which he slipped on his shoulder holster.
"As long as you have your purse open, Miss ... what is your first name anyway? Betty. Could you let me have ten dollars?"
Herman Cartwright's apartment was on Park Avenue, some twenty odd blocks uptown from Boston's office, and as the taxi dodged nimbly through the double line of northbound traffic that streamed up the broad avenue, the detective had ample time to ponder the few hints which the arms manufacturer had given him over the telephone. He sensed something big behind this-something which, to Cartwright, at least, was of even greater importance than the death of his nephew. But although there were ideas which kept popping up in his brain like so many jumping jacks, when the cab finally pulled to the curb before the impressive apartment house, Boston was as much in the dark as ever.
He paid off the cabby and stepped to the curb, his broad shoulders hunched against the blustering wind that whistled around the corner of the building. He turned to the canopy leading to the apartment foyer, then whirled as a woman's shrill scream cut the night like a jagged knife. At the same time, there was a muffled crash of glass breaking.
"He's falling!"
Boston turned his eyes upward in the direction where the woman and her escort stared in paralyzed horror. Then, as half a dozen pedestrians scattered wildly for cover, the detective saw the body of a man plummeting downward. The flailing form fought helplessly in the air, turning slowly. Then, over the sound of shattered glass ringing on the asphalt, came a sickening popping sound as body struck on the curbing and half bounced, half rolled against the rear end of a parked car.
So suddenly had the thing happened that for an instant no one moved, stunned into inactivity by the quick horror of what they had witnessed.
A scared youth stumbled blindly against the detective, his doughy complexion tinged with a greenish cast.
"Oh, God, mister, did you see it? Did you? Grabbing for something to hold onto and nothing there..." He leaned weakly against the building and was violently sick.
Someone gently turned the crushed body, testing uselessly for some flutter of life. And Boston, staring at that broken face, had no need of the doorman's hoarse whisper to identify it.
"Mr. Herman Cartwright!" the doorman exclaimed.
"What the devil are you doing?"
Boston looked up from behind the radio and grinned. He stood up, wiping dust from his hands onto a handkerchief, and faced the police inspector.
"I was just being helpful, Danny," he said. "You boys miss things once in a while, you know."
The other man snorted scornfully and reached for his pipe. The air about him was a blue haze of rank tobacco smoke before he answered.
"That's the trouble with you correspondence-school Sherlocks," he said between puffs. "You can't recognize a suicide even when it happens before your very eyes. Suppose you just sit down and watch. And in the name of God, turn the radio down. It's getting on my nerves. The old guy must have been deaf as a fish."
"Thanks," said Boston, "but if it's all the same to you, I'd like to make a phone call. And by the way," he added as he left the room, "I didn't expect you to notice it, but that happens to be Zona Avalon's program."
"You know, boss," a uniformed cop helpfully added, "his girl friend. It was in Winchell's column."
"Singing at him when he did it, huh? That's a hot one."
There was a phone in the library. Even with the door to the next room closed, Boston could plainly hear the station announcement. This must have been, he decided, the phone that Cartwright had used to call him. He glanced at his wrist watch as he dialed the number of the star. Twelve midnight on the dot.
"I want to talk to Tony Shaw," he said. Then, after a few minutes, "Hello, Tony? This is Boston. I wondered if you had the Cartwright story yet."
"Oh, hello Boston! The suicide? Yeah; something came in a couple of minutes ago. I was just going up to look things over."
"You won't have to come up. I can give it to you from here. What I can't give you, you can find in the morgue. I'm at Cartwright's place now."
"It sounds more like a barroom," the reporter offered. "What is that racket, anyway?"
"That's just the radio. Listen, do you want the story or don't you?"
"Sure, sure, Boston. Take it from...leaped or...feli..."
In a few words, the detective rapidly sketched the story. He lighted a cigarette, stared at the smoke as it curled upward and disintegrated.
"Where was I?" he asked suddenly. "You were just getting to 'foul play hinted,'" Tony said.
"Keep that stuff out," Boston said sharply. "This is just suicide, see? The police say so." "Okay, okay. What else?"
Boston sucked reflectively at the grey Chinese agate in the massive ring he wore. From the next room came the booming laugh of Inspector Donovan. Boston's voice was low when he finally replied.
"Find out for me what happened to that car Cartwright's nephew was driving the other night. And oh yes, see what you've got on this Zona Avalon. I'll call you in half an hour or so."
"Listen, Boston, why don't I meet you at Joe's place? Say, in an hour?"
"Getting interested, eh?" the detective said, grinning to himself. "All right then. In an hour."
He hung up and went back to the room where the police were gathered.
"If you boys are through pawing things over," he greeted, "maybe you wouldn't mind if I took a short glance at what's left."
"Go ahead," said Donovan. "I always wanted to see how a real detective works."
"He starts with a question," Boston said, walking to the broken window. "Isn't it normal for a suicide to open the window before he jumps out?"
Donovan lolled in a chair, relighting his pipe.
"That one's simple," he answered. "The answer is that if he makes it look like an accident, his relatives stand more chance of collecting his insurance."
"Smart boy," Boston applauded. "Suppose we just forget there was any window. Here. I'll close the blinds. It's too drafty in here anyway."
He dropped the heavy Venetian blind and yanked the cord that closed the fins. Something crunched underfoot, and he stopped to pick up a small piece of glass.
"This isn't window glass," he said, holding it on his palm and poking it curiously with his forefinger.
"That's right," Donovan said drily. "The window glass all fell outward, in accordance with a simple law of physics. That's part of a light bulb from the lamp that was knocked over." His pipe gurgled gleefully as he drew on it.
Boston set the lamp upright beside the window and then sat down in the nearest chair. He looked closely at the bit of glass he held, and then reached to pick up another piece.
"I guess I'm stopped," he admitted. "Why, you haven't even begun," Donovan joked. "Aren't you going to look for hidden passageways? The doors were locked, you know. There must have been some other way for somebody to come up and throw the man out of the window."
Boston coughed and fanned his face with his hat. "That's a rare blend of seaweed you smoke," he observed. "Perhaps I should have left the blinds up." He went to the window and opened the shade.
"Not going, are you, Mr. Boston?" the police inspector asked as Boston pulled on his hat and dug in his pocket for his gloves. "Why, we were going to have an old-time get together here tonight. Faber's coming up any minute now. You ought to have a lot to talk over."
But if he expected Boston to show annoyance at the mention of his shady opponent, he was disappointed. The detective merely smiled blandly and continued buttoning his coat.
"I will leave the pleasure of Mr. Faber's company to you," Boston replied politely. He bowed to the police inspector and left him contentedly smoking beside the radio.
Some time later he was sitting at a table in a bar in the Fifties when Tony Shaw walked in. The reporter strode immediately over to his table, and Boston, finishing the drink he had been nursing, hailed the waiter.
"Say, what's going on?" the reported demanded. "Something smells funny to me."
Boston waited until the waiter had gone before answering.
"What you smell," he said quietly, "is murder."
"Oh boy," the reporter enthused, "a whodunit story under my by-line! And that, by the way, reminds me: who done it?"
"That," Boston said, "is what we have to find out. Also, we have to learn the motive and the method. From there on, it's a cinch."
"What do you mean, 'we'? I've got a job to hold down. I can't afford to run around chasing an idea of yours down an alley."
"I thought you wanted to be famous," Boston said sadly. "Well, let it go, then. Just tell me what you learned about this Avalon woman."
"There doesn't seem to be much. The earliest I could find on her was something about her being in a show at the Club Royale. That was about a year and a half ago. Lately she seems to have been getting along pretty fast."
"Cartwright was behind that. How about the kid's car?"
"That seems to have been towed in by some little garage just out of Scarsdale, where he cracked up."
Boston sloshed his drink around in his glass. He chewed his lip reflectively.
"That seems to be as good a starting place as any," he said at last. "Would you like to take a little ride tonight?"
Half an hour later, in a rented Ford sedan, the pair sped up through the Bronx, headed for highway 26.
"Didn't you do an article a couple of weeks ago about some old-time glass blower around town?" Boston asked as he swerved to avoid a lumbering truck. "A Frenchman who blows models of germs, or something like that?"
"You mean Celine. Yeah; he's one of the glass-blowers from the forest of St. Gobain. Lives in a little room over on the East Side. You ought to see some of the stuff he has over there."
"Maybe I will, tomorrow. I've got something I'd like him to see."
"He's a funny old guy. Wanted to show me a gargoyle on a church over there, so we went out, and he took his lunch with him in a paper bag. It makes you feel queer to see a man like that so down and out when you see the work he can do. But then, what did any of our scientists ever get besides a kick in the ass? Look at Steinmetz. Or even this fellow Szabo who worked for Cartwright. Worked all his life in Cartwright's laboratories, and then..hey! There's a suspect!"
"Fine!" Boston laughed. "Where was he at about 11:45 tonight?" "I don't know. Where?" "Home in bed with his daughter." "WHAT!!?"
"I mean he and his daughter were both in bed. In separate beds. It's so ordinary that it's practically a perfect alibi."
"I hope this garage man isn't in bed. I hate to think of making this drive for nothing."
"He won't be. These fellows are like ghouls, waiting up for an accident to happen."
Boston was right. When they arrived at the garage where the wrecked car was held, they found the pumps lighted and the proprietor playing solitaire behind a small candy counter.
"Sure," he said when asked about the car. "Go ahead and look her over." He switched on the garage lights and stood by, wiping his hands on a piece of waste while the two men examined the car. "That wreck's the best advertisement this place has had yet. Seems like everybody that goes by wants to take a look at it. Why, Mr. Cartwright himself drove up to see it this afternoon. That's the uncle of the lad that was killed, y' know. Went out of the garage pale as a ghost when he saw how it was smashed up."
"My God, what a mess!" the reporter exclaimed, following Boston around the wreck. "He must have been moving."
"Speedometer says 85," the garage man offered. "But you can't go by that. I'd say it was a lot faster. Them foreign cars go like a bat out of hell, some of them."
"Smashed the radio, too," Boston observed, bending to look at the dial. He snapped the switch several times.
"Smashed up that boy, too," the garage man began. "Why, when I got there with the tow car-"
"Thanks," Boston interrupted. "I guess we've seen all there is to see."
He bought a pack of cigarettes, and the two men walked back to the car. Boston sat behind the wheel, tearing the pack open with his teeth.
"Interesting, eh Tony?"
"A nasty smash-up, if that's what you mean." He accepted a cigarette and lighted a match. "Didn't you notice that the windows wouldn't work?"
"Well how in hell could they work? There wasn't a piece of glass left in one of them."
"They wouldn't have worked anyway. The rollers were wedged. And that must be what Cartwright was talking about when he called tonight."
"You mean that both of those accidents were murder? But how was it worked?"
"I don't know. But it was murder."
There was a light still burning in his secretary's apartment when Boston let himself in, but the girl was asleep, curled up in a chair with a book. She smiled herself awake at his touch and reached her arms to him.
"You took a long time," she accused. "I was beginning to think you'd forgotten about me."
"Business!" he grinned, seating himself on the arm of her chair and kissing her. "A conjure-word for me to hide behind. But I really was busy. Our client just couldn't wait for me to get there."
As rapidly as possible, he told the girl what had happened.
"I'm sorry," she said when he had finished. "Not about him. I guess he wasn't a very nice man. But you did need that money, didn't you?"
"It would have been nice to have," he admitted. "I don't have another thing in sight."
"What do you usually do when you go broke this way?" the girl asked.
"Something has always fallen into my lap at the last minute. This time the something's gone sour."
"Of course I could fall into your lap. Or perhaps you'd rather fall into mine."
Boston eased his weight onto the girl, hanging his legs over the arm of the chair.
"I'm too heavy for you," he said.
"No. I like it."
"You won't be able to breathe." "I like it."
Boston leaned to the girl, taking her golden head against his chest. His lips brushed her hair, and he felt her nose nuzzling into his armpit. He looked down at her breasts, that lay crushed against his side. He reached through the top of her knitted dress to touch them.
"Do you know," he said, "I was almost afraid to come up here tonight. I was afraid...oh, that I might find you in a fluffy negligee or something."
"You object to girls who dress for the occasion?"
"I distrust the French boudoir attitude. It implies that it's necessary to prettify fucking with slinky gowns and exotic perfumes."
"I see," she said. "Simple and to-the-point."
The girl twisted in the chair and looked quizzically at the front of his trousers. Her fingers stole up his leg and rested lightly on the warm, bulging spot where his prick lay.
Boston's fingers fumbled with the opening at the neck of her dress, and then he cupped his hand under the vibrant flesh of each of her breasts as he lifted them out to lie gleaming in the soft light. He touched the orange-pink nipples tenderly, prodding them to awareness.
The girl moved her shoulders, pressing her anxious teats into his warm palm. Her fingers wormed into the opening of his trousers, weaving like delicate tentacles toward his prick. They touched it for an instant, and then drew back to impatiently open the buttons of his fly. Then her whole hand slid into the humid warmth of his crotch, reaching down to find the hairy balls. She fondled them for a moment before drawing her fingers up the hot length of his prick.
The man's body tensed as her fingers curled over the straining knob, and he drew a quick breath when she drew back the skin.
"It burns my hand," the girl said. "Your cock burns me."
She pulled the swelling organ out of his trousers and carefully lifted his balls out after it. She leaned forward and playfully blew on them, and Boston trembled as her eager face came nearer to his throbbing prick. Her breath was cool, but exciting, and her shining hair spilled forward, brushing his balls. Boston sat very still, hardly breathing as her lips grazed the exposed tip.
Suddenly the girl lifted him from her and slid from beneath him. She thrust him backward into the deep chair and impulsively knelt between his legs. She seized his huge cock in both small hands and stared at it, her eyes wide. Her hands caressed it fiercely, and then she lowered her face to his prick, her red lips quivering. She rubbed it over her cheeks and touched the fiery knob to her eyelids, her brows, even her ear lobes.
Boston's fingers played in her hair, but he made no reply but to smile at her. Betty dropped her head again to his crotch, and she pressed a kiss on the knob of his cock. Then her lips opened slightly and encircled the tip. Her tongue curled around the velvety wet skin and probed the tiny mouth-like slit. Her fingers traced meaningless little patterns through his bristling hair and over the sensitive skin of his groin. They stole under his balls and tweaked gently at the scattered hair. Then quickly, imperatively, Betty thrust her head forward and rammed his cock far back into her throat, pulling at it with her lips and tongue. Her strong little teeth closed around the hard tool and she chewed and sucked with such evident enjoyment that Boston knew he could not for long restrain the burden of sperm in his balls.
He stroked her hair restlessly as waves of sensation flooded electrically upward and outward from the bursting organ which was plunged deeply into the girl's throat. Then, with only time enough to touch the girl warningly, the tightness in his balls broke blind-ingly. His semen flooded into the girl's mouth, washing thickly into her throat. She swallowed deeply, even as another and then another burst of jism scorched her throat. She continued to drag at his prick after the stuff had ceased coming, until his tool was quite empty.
Then she raised her head and looked at him.
"I didn't think it would be so nice," she said.
Boston pulled the girl up to the chair, where she curled herself about him. For a few moments he lay back in the chair, not talking, waiting while new life flowed back into his veins. Betty touched the spent prick, prodded it lightly, running the tips of her fingers back and forth along its flaccid length.
The man's hand had lain quietly on her thigh. Now Boston pushed up her skirt and trailed his fingers along the milky inner sides of her thighs, feeling the fine down which was sprinkled imperceptibly over the smooth flesh. He stroked upward, feeling the girl's tension as he moved closer to the hairy lips of her cunt. Her legs dropped apart, and her twat lips seemed to spread also, inviting his caress. He touched the spot with his fingertips, teasingly, and the girl squirmed in anxiety. As his fingers slid smoothly into the moist groove, Betty wriggled and clutched his prick more tightly.
Boston fondled her twat dexterously and was gratified at the response it called forth from the girl. As his finger burrowed deeper through the furry lips and hooked into her vagina, the girl tossed herself about excitedly, not loosening her hold on his cock. The damp channel closed hotly over his finger as he probed inward, seeming to pull it further.
Betty released his prick and leaned back over the arm of the chair. She arched her back, raising her cunt to the man's caresses, and her ass brushed his prick as she weaved sinuously on his lap. Her jiggling teats, her mounded belly with its patch of yellow fuzz, her whole lithe body invited him as it stretched and arched before him. He bent over her, crushing his face to the pink-tipped breasts. He rubbed his cheek over the satiny hillocks, breathing the faint, clean odor of soap they exuded. His mouth drew in one of the erect little nipples and he sucked at it avidly, running his tongue around the little whorl of pinkish-brown skin. The nipple stiffened in his mouth until it felt like a small pebble. He sucked first one breast and then the other, and Betty rubbed her plump ass back and forth over his prick, and caused his cock to swell and harden again, and he pressed upward to return the kiss on her smooth ass.
His lips moved downward from her teats, down over her creamy skin to the soft mound of her belly. He pushed his tongue into the little dent of her navel and followed with his lips the imperceptible line of fine hairs down her belly to the point where they spread into the more abundant patch of her delta. He traced with his mouth the line leading from the patch to her twat...the tender crease of her groin...the tiny lines of hair reaching away from the yellow mat like roots.
Boston slipped his hands under the girl's bottom and raised it still nearer his face. His nostrils caught the musky odor of her cunt, and his fingers, as he reached through her buttocks to her twat, detected the sticky juices which were flowing so abundantly from her cunt.
Then he buried his face into her soft fuzz. He dipped his head further, and then his mouth touched the moist twat lips. His tongue reached out and pushed between them, and he licked the delicate inner lips burningly. The girl wiggled ecstatically, and her slim legs waved aimlessly in the air, while Boston's tongue probed deeper.
"I like that," she said in a small voice.
Boston picked the girl up in his arms and carried her through the curtained doorway and into her bedroom. A small light was burning beside the bed. He dropped her gently onto the wide bed and stood over her for a moment, smiling. Then he reached down and unfastened the buttons of her dress, pulled it over her head.
Betty lay passive while the man removed the few remaining pieces of her clothing...her brief, lacy underwear, her silk stockings. He left them where they fell, and knelt for a moment to kiss her bare ankles and the pink soles of her feet.
Then he climbed up on the bed where Betty lay waiting. Her head was pillowed on one round arm, and her legs were slightly spread as Boston came up beside her. He ran his hands over her belly and thighs, sensing in their palms the height to which the girl's excitement had reached.
Her lips touched his shoulders and neck while his fingers moved down her arm to her fingertips. Then the girl pushed Boston's head back to the spot which he had so delightfully caressed a moment ago. She pushed his nose again into her fuzz, and twitched her hips in invitation. Boston nuzzled willingly into the sweet-smelling cunt and commenced to lick it with long, slow strokes of his quivering tongue.
The spiced juice flowed heavily from Betty's cunt as Boston licked it with all the skill at his command. His tongue caught up the scented liquor as it poured forth, and darted again and again into the hot channel to procure more of it. He pulled with lips and tongue the hairy outer lips, while the girl rolled and twisted on the bed, urging him on to stronger measures. At length he was nibbling fiercely with his tongue and teeth, and drawing strongly on the sensitive inner lips.
The girl's breath was coming in quick little gasps, and she thrashed about wildly as Boston's tongue pushed into the drenched opening. She flung her legs about his shoulders and pulled him stiflingly close...he was locked in the warm embrace of her thighs. His tongue reached in and out of her rapidly, and the inner walls of her cunt clutched at it each time that he thrust it forward, reluctant to let it go again, even for an instant.
His tongue searched further...back from her cunt toward the hairy crack between her buttocks. Then it touched on the sensitive ass-hole. Betty stiffened puz-zled; then her legs fell away from his neck to allow him more freedom.
His wet tongue poked at the little aperture...he licked over and around it, and returned to again seek entrance. Presently it twitched in response to his questing, and the hole relaxed slightly. The tip of his tongue pushed into it and wiggled about. Then it withdrew and returned to her dripping cunt.
He licked insistently now, drawing his tongue upward in long, sweeping strokes, or pushing it strongly into her cunt. He could sense the tenseness that presaged her orgasm... And then the climax of her mounting desires was reached.
Her cunt twitched and quivered frenziedly, and her perfumed cunt-juice flowed more copious than ever. The tremors spread outward to her whole body, and for a moment she was uncontrollably shaken by the force of her spending. Then it was gone. Betty rolled onto her stomach and lay motionless.
At length she turned and sat up. She brushed the damp strands of her hair back from her forehead, and her eyes smiled at Boston.
"I guess you'd better give me a cigarette," she said.
Boston reached for the package on the night table. He gave one to Betty and took one for himself. As Betty leaned to touch her cigarette to the match he held, he saw that her hand and her lips trembled slightly.
They lay back together, watching in silence the blue curling smoke column as it drifted upward, the two columns breaking and mingling as one. The hour was very late, and only an occasional far-away street noise broke the stillness.
Betty reached over to Boston to take the stump of his cigarette, then crushed his and hers in a tray. She commenced to take off his clothes.
She managed very awkwardly to undress him, and Boston watched amusedly. She knotted his shoelaces and pulled a button from his shirt, and was quite unable to master the intricacies of his belt until the mechanism was explained to her. At last, however, she managed to get all of his clothes off. She hung them neatly over the back of a chair and picked up her own scattered garments and deposited them on another chair.
"I can't seem to overcome the tradition of 'a place for everything and everything in its place'," she said as though apologizing.
She came back to the bed where Boston was still stretched out. She lay down near him and rubbed her naked body against, his curling like a cat when her breasts touched his shoulder. As she nestled up to him he ran his hands over her smooth back and followed with his fingertips the intended line from her shoulders down to the end of her spine.
He pressed both palms to the jiggling mounds of her ass and moved the yielding flesh under his hands. He pinched it gently and looked over the girl's shoulder to see the little pink blotches he made on the creamy flesh.
His fingers sought into the little hairy crack until they pressed against her ass-hole. He turned Betty over onto her stomach and bent down to kiss the smooth skin of her buttocks and bite them playfully. He pressed the cheeks apart and looked for a moment at the little pinkish brown hole, nearly hidden by the golden fuzz growing back from her cunt.
Betty rolled over again to face him, and pressed her body to his. Her hand reached between them to fondle his prick. She rolled its burning length against her belly and moved to scratch against her hair. Their hands touched each other longingly, trying to be everywhere at once.
Then Betty slipped off the bed and gestured to him. He rose too, and stood in the center of the room, his huge prick waving grotesquely before him, while Betty turned back the covers of the bed. She slipped between them and beckoned urgently to him.
"Hurry!" she said. "Come now! Don't stand there like that!"
The man crossed the room and got into bed beside her. Their bodies fused instantly, and they caressed each other in a fervor of impatience. Her breasts were crushed to his hard chest, pressed flat against him. They seemed almost to want to hurt each other as their bodies rocked together and their hands wrenched at each other's flies. Betty's sharp nails dug fiercely into the man's buttocks as she pressed her belly up to his fiery prick.
Boston ground his prick against the soft belly, feeling the flesh give and seem to embrace his cock. His hands tore at her ass, and the pulsating desire in him would not let him restrain their ravages. His lips pressed brutally into her white throat and moved searing down over her quivering teats. He seized a great mouthful of one soft globe in his mouth and sucked it ardently.
Betty could not stifle a little cry. Boston looked up as the tiny sound burst from her lips.
"You weren't hurting me...really you weren't," she said quickly. "It's just that...oh, it's so good! I can't explain, but don't stop," she finished confusedly.
Despite her reassurances, the man became more gentle in his caresses. He drew the stiff little nipple into his mouth and licked it for a moment. Then he pressed the girl's shoulders back to the bed and leaned over her, cupping a satiny teat in each hand. He sucked first one and then the other, watching the small nipples as they became as hard and sharp as pencil points.
"Oh, fuck me! Fuck me now!" the girl said. She tried to draw Boston's body over hers. She wriggled downward, reaching with both hands for his cock. She held it tightly for a moment and then plunged it deeply into her mouth. She sucked it eagerly for an instant, and then left it, more burning and wet than before.
She slid up beside Boston, and he grasped her roughly, murmuring unintelligible endearments as he pushed her onto her back again. He lifted his body and swung over her, and the girl seized his prick to guide it to her cunt.
She rubbed the burning knob over her wet lips, through the slippery groove and into the eager channel. The man did not pause as his cock entered, nor did the girl try t& hold him back. His hips drove forward, swiftly and smoothly, and his prick plunged into the depths of her cunt in that one long stroke.
Betty lay back then, her arms outstretched, almost purring with plaintive pleasure as the man plumbed her cunt. Her hips weaved slightly in time to his frigging, and commenced to rise a little each time he shoved forward. The upward motion gradually replaced the circular one, and soon she was lifting her ass enthusiastically to his probing prick. Her arms went about his waist, and she pulled herself rhythmically toward him with each stroke until their mats rubbed crisply together.
Boston frigged her with long, even motions that sent his prick deep into her, and he felt that he was reaching the innermost depths of her cunt. The humid channel was alive with myriad twitching and pinching, which increased as the tempo of his frigging grew more rapid.
The man slipped his hands under her ass and helped to raise it to his probing cock. He took great handfuls of the smooth buttocks and squeezed them furiously as they drove together. His weight lay heavily on her slight body, but the girl did not seem to notice.
She hooked her legs around his to send him even deeper into her, if that were possible. The enormous prick was sunk in her so far each time, that the man's balls slapped against the stretched opening. Yet her twat felt pleasingly tight, despite its elasticity, and while it seemed to absorb easily an ever-increasing amount of his cock, it continued to pinch and contract around the swollen tool.
Boston rolled away from the girl momentarily while he turned her over to lie on her stomach. Then he came over her again, this time to send his prick through the hairy crease of her buttocks and into her soaking twat. The big tool met with somewhat more resistance at this angle, and it penetrated her cunt more slowly.
He worked his cock into her as patiently as he could, finding it difficult to restrain the impulse to jam forward suddenly, devastatingly.
Betty wriggled her plump ass delicately, finding new pleasure in this manner of frigging. Apparently the difficulties which the man encountered were not noticeable to the girl, for, impatient at this restraint, she suddenly raised her ass sharply to meet the down-thrust of his prick. The movement set the stiff thing deeply into her, and the hot well closed bindingly over it.
The man drew back slowly and sent his cock cautiously into her again. Finding no obstacle to his probing, but discovering an added advantage in this new tightness, his stroking gained momentum until his belly was smacking her bottom. The girl lifted her ass regularly to feel the crisp hairs burning her skin as the man drove into her. His hands went around her to find her breasts and fondle them roughly as they frigged...and the girl invited strong measures by the way in which she anxiously thrust herself upward to him, impaling herself time and time again on the granite-like tool.
Boston found himself continually on the verge of spending, but each time, he postponed it by frigging more slowly, dragging his cock out until only the tip clung to the outer edges of the girl's flaming cunt.
The girl too seemed to be near her orgasm, but she shared his unspoken wish to prolong the keen pleasure of the moment as long as possible. Time after time they brought themselves breathtakingly near the maelstrom, and each time they delayed the crisis and drew away.
Betty slipped from beneath him and turned to lie on her back once more. The man pulled her forcibly to him, and his cock entered her quivering cunt in a single, splitting thrust. His balls seemed about to explode, and his entire body was taut and strained with the restraint he had placed upon it. He plunged recklessly into the clinging depths of her cunt, and the copiously flowing juice oozed out and around his prick in little streams, down the inner sides of the girl's thighs.
The girl heaved her buttocks upward. She strained to weld her body to his, and her sharp nails scratched patterns he could not feel on the tight flesh of his buttocks. Their pubic hair tangled together and their bodies burnt each other as they drove wildly.
Boston strained forward, sending his cock to its very roots in the seething inner tissues of the sweet cunt; then the terrific accumulation of tension in him gave way. His sperm poured in hot flashes through his exploding prick, flooding to the depths of the girl's cunt. At that instant her own orgasm swept over her, the waves of hot sperm magnified enormously throughout her body. They clung trembling together as the tide washed over them and fell back.
Betty raised her head and looked at the man beside her only after long moments had passed. Only his eyelids flickered. She slipped out of the bed and weaved toward the window. With a tremendous tug, she raised the window an exact twelve inches, and staggered back to the bed.
The last thing Boston remembered was the gentle pressure of her warm buttocks against his.
"Are we being dispossessed?"
The secretary laid her purse and gloves on her desk, moved hastily aside as two burly workmen trundled a packing case through the doorway. Boston looked up from the checklist and, noting the number of the box which had just been delivered, came over to stand by the girl's side. From the small room off his inner office came a sporadic hammering and the shriek of nails being drawn from wood as the crates were opened.
"I'm having a small laboratory set up," he said. "It was a bargain. I've needed one for a long time." He ran his fingers through his hair distractedly as a number of small boxes were brought in. "I have thirty days to pay for it."
The girl sat down and pushed her hat to the back of her head, man-fashion. She looked startled as a bearded gnome of a man danced excitedly out of Boston's private office and brought up short at the water cooler.
"Floozies!" the old man exclaimed. "Nevair! Nevair have I worked where there is floozies!"
He surveyed the girl, laying one finger along his nose. Then a large crate caught his eye as it was carried past. He skipped after the puffing workmen. He stopped and ran back to the water cooler, gulped a cup of water.
"All right," he decided. "This one time I work with floozies." He popped back into the office.
"That was Celine," Boston told the astounded girl. "Nice old fellow, when you get to know him."
Tony Shaw came out of the door marked "private," arguing with a workman and gesticulating dangerously with a hammer. The man grunted phlegmatically and plodded stolidly out.
"A drunken newspaperman-nobody you'd care to know." Boston said to Betty. He took the protesting reporter by the arm and led him away.
When he returned five minutes later, he found the girl still sitting where he had left her.
"Would you please tell me what's going on?" the girl asked. "I'm just the least bit curious about all this."
"I'm rendering service," Boston told her. "I've decided to take the Cartwright job...and the check he sent me."
"And what about Santa Claus?"
"Celine? Oh, he won't bother anybody."
"Well, why is he here?"
"He's here to blow a piece of glass to match one that neither he nor I ever saw. I picked up a fragment at Cartwright's last night, and it took me most of the morning to get Celine interested in matching the original. He was making a model of a streptococcous."
A workman, pausing to tie his shoelace, looked curiously at Boston and passed on.
"I'll bet you haven't had lunch yet," the girl said. "Have you?"
"No," Boston grinned, "but I've thought seriously about it. I'll go out as soon as we get this next table set up."
But it was only a few minutes later when the phone rang and Boston was forced to change his plans.
"Funny," he mused as he slowly returned the receiver to the hook. "I didn't know he had any relatives beside that boy. Well..."
"So the heirs are beginning to appear already," commented his secretary.
"Says she's his niece. But I don't see why she'd want to see me."
"This office isn't very impressive just now...if that matters."
"It doesn't. She asked me to come to her hotel." "Something tells me that isn't good news," the girl said gloomily.
It wasn't good news. Boston sat in the hotel room, facing the anger of the little redhead while Faber and one of his strong-arm men lolled grinning in the background.
"But you never worked for my uncle!" the girl stormed. "Mr. Faber was in my uncle's employ, and there was no reason why you should have been called in!"
"Perhaps..." Faber suggested suavely. "Perhaps Mr. Boston could tell us just what this mysterious 'business' was? After all, if he was employed, there must be some tangible evidence to show for it."
Boston longed to knock the silly smirk off the man's crooked face. His own face was quite pale with anger, but he forced calmness into his voice.
"It seems unfortunate, Miss Hayes, that you have placed your affairs in the hands of a man who allows himself the liberty of going through his clients' check stubs. As I understand it, Mr. Faber was working as an industrial spy in your uncle's plants. I fail to see why he should have any interest in Mr. Cartwright's private affairs."
"Mr. Faber is working for me," the girl said coldly, "and I have instructed him to trace every cause of an unusual drain which seems to have been put on my uncle's income lately. And an unaccountable check for fifteen thousand dollars calls for an investigation!"
"And...uh...what did you say you were supposed to be doing for Mr. Cartwright?" Faber persisted.
"I didn't say. I'll return the check to the estate immediately."
Faber spread his hands and turned to the girl with a bland smile. Boston put on his hat and left.
Seething with anger, he strode through the hotel lobby and out to the street. He started for the subway, but he had gone less than a block before he realized that he was being followed. He turned and crossed the street, walked up to the fellow who was staring into a store window with a great show of unconcern.
Boston looked hard at the fellow for a minute. Then he took two short steps and delivered a kick that sent the man sprawling.
"Don't forget that in your report to Faber," he said. He left the fellow ruefully rubbing his ass, and walked into the nearest barroom for a drink.
"You see," Celine was saying, "the oreeginail was frosted. I has not done that to these."
He set three small glass globes on Boston's desk, and dragged at his baggy pants with one hand. The globes looked more like soap bubbles than glass, so fine they were, and the slightest breath stirred them. Boston tapped one with the end of a pencil and it tinkled musically. He struck it somewhat harder and it suddenly shattered. Celine sighed. "They is vairy fragile," the old man said. "I do not see just what they is good for."
"You're sure this glass is the same?" Boston asked. "The same formula and everything."
"Everyt'ing the same except the other was frosted. I can make those that way, if you say."
"Do that tomorrow. Right now you'd better go home and get some sleep. You've been here all day, and it's after nine."
The old man protested like a child forced to relinquish a new toy. But finally he gave in and left, with a promise to be in early the next day. Boston called goodnight and then, as he heard the outer door close, returned to the book he was studying.
He had been alone only a few minutes, however, when Tony Shaw walked in, a new brief-case under his arm.
"I feel like a god-damned lawyer, carrying all this junk around," the reporter said, dropping the bulging case onto the desk. "And God help me if this proves to be a fizzle, Boston. I just won't be a newspaperman any more."
He unstrapped the case and began pulling papers from it.
"It took me two hours to talk that filing clerk into letting me have these," he said. "The kid was scared to death that I wouldn't get them back to him in time, so he's waiting down the street in a drugstore."
Boston absently fingered his scalp where the startling white streak ran through his hair. He handed his friend a pencil and indicated a chair.
"Chemical Warfare" The reporter read the title of the book which Boston had been perusing. "Sounds interesting."
"Let's get started on this stuff," Boston suggested impatiently.
"I hope it amounts to something," Tony said. "It cost me twenty-five bucks to get my hands on it."
It was almost two hours later when Boston threw down his pencil and stretched. The reporter pushed back his chair and walked stiffly to the water cooler.
"Well, I guess we've found enough," Boston said, taking a bottle of Scotch and two glasses from the drawer. "If we went any deeper into this stuff, we'd be busy for months. But you can see right now that something's screwy with Cartwright's business."
"Jesus, maybe he did kill himself, Boston. If anybody found that out... Say, what have we found out?"
"We've found out enough to make us believe that he was selling arms illegally," the detective grinned. "And for the last time, the man didn't kill himself...at least not intentionally."
They drank. Then Tony started collecting the scattered papers and stuffing them into the brief-case.
"You want to talk to that kid?" he asked. "Maybe he knows something."
"I don't think so. He'd have spilled it to you."
"Well, what do we do next?"
"We ought to have more on this Zona Avalon. Why don't you take her to lunch tomorrow?"
"Me? Hey, I'm just a reporter! Do you realize what that dame's been used to?"
"I have an idea that she won't be sore at the idea of getting a little more publicity. She's going to need something, now that her meal ticket has all the holes punched out. Sure; talk to her in your journalistic capacity."
"Well, I'll see you in the morning anyway?"
"I'll be here. Wait; I'll go down with you."
Boston left his friend at the entrance of the building. Then he walked down the street to the corner. He caught a crosstown bus, and then, changing to the subway at Broadway, took a Brooklyn express.
The house in which Doctor Szabo lived with his middleaged daughter was one of a row of depressing stucco bungalows, each distressingly similar to its flanking neighbors, each with its tiny patch of front lawn and its gravel driveway. With one or two exceptions, the houses were all in darkness. Directly in front of the Szabo house, a street light flickered Wearily.
Boston walked briskly up the block past Szabo's house, making certain that no light burned in it or its immediate neighbors. At the corner he turned, walked more quietly past two more unlighted houses, and at a third, from which came the noise of a bridge party, walked unhurriedly up the drive and into the back yard. In a few minutes he was climbing over the back fence into Szabo's yard.
He carefully lifted the slanting cellar door and then stepped down half a dozen narrow steps. His light flashed briefly on a second door. Testing it quietly, he found it locked. He went to work on it, and ten minutes later swung it slowly open.
Szabo had gone to some pains in converting his cellar into a laboratory, and, undoubtedly as a protective measure for some of his more expensive equipment, had bared all the windows as well as painting them black. Noting this latter fact, Boston decided to risk a light, found the switch, and snapped it on. Then, unhurried, but working swiftly, he began a search of the place.
A soft sound brought him quickly upright as he bent over a rack of dirty test tubes. He chuckled silently as a large, angular cat stalked in through the partly opened door. Szabo's own cat, he thought. It ignored him and leaped easily to a low shelf over the table, where it settled down with an air of familiarity.
Boston returned to his search. He noticed that the cat soon left its perch and went quietly nosing about the comers of the cellar. But he did not notice the snub-nosed muzzle of a revolver slowly push through the crack of the door.
A sudden scurrying in the far corner of the room startled the detective, and he jerked back nervously. That movement undoubtedly saved his life, for in the same instant there came a report that roared deafening-ly in the small cellar, and a bullet snapped past Boston's car to ricochet snarling off the wall. Boston heard footsteps running past the window by the drive. An engine roared into life on the street.
A snarling and spitting brought the detective's eyes back to the spot where the cat had been. For a moment the detective thought the bullet had struck the animal. It whirled dizzily, battering itself into the corner, to slump in a quivering heap. Then Boston saw the spilled glass of spheres, so fatally like those Celine had made for him, saw the curling wisp of something like mist...
Suddenly he was smothering. He pulled his handker-chief over his face and groped toward the door, which seemed somehow unreasonably distant.
"How do you feel?"
"Much better, thanks." For the first time, he noticed the reddish welt across Betty's face. "But what happened to you?"
The girl's fingers gingerly examined the mark.
"That son of a bitch slapped me with his gun when he came up the cellar steps. That's my own private score to settle. But that's what I get for snooping after you, trying to play cops and robbers."
Boston sat up too quickly, and his head swam. He settled slowly back in the bed.
"Does the light bother you? I'll turn it down," she said.
"It's all right. You think you'd know the fellow again?"
"I'd know him. But, you know, I don't believe he knew who you were when he shot at you. He couldn't have, because I'd followed you all the way from the drugstore downstairs, and I'm sure there was no one following you...or me. The car drew up after I'd been hiding by the garage for about ten minutes. And from the way he tried the first floor windows, I'm sure he was after Doctor Szabo.
"He acted strangely?"
"His face twitched. He hunched his shoulders." "Hop-head. Probably someone they imported for the job."
He sat up slower this time. He felt the grip of nausea, but it passed. Damn, he felt lousy!
"Anyway," the girl said, "you know how Cartwright was killed.
"Not exactly. I do know how he felt when he ran for the window. But I don't yet see how the gas was released."
"You have this Doctor Szabo definitely connected with it, though. Why not arrest him at once?"
"I am afraid," said Boston, "that Doctor Szabo is in the unenviable position of being bait for our hooks. If we keep our eye on him, he may lead us to the brains behind this. They'd get out of sight, of course, if we picked him up now."
The girl rose from the side of the bed and pushed Boston back gently. He snapped at her breasts with mock viciousness, and winced as a raging pain tore through his head.
"You've got to get some sleep," Betty announced. "See if you can get rid of that headache." She tucked the covers around his neck.
"What are you going to do?" Boston asked suspiciously.
"I'm going to bed too...on the living room couch."
"Hey!" he protested. "What's wrong with this bed?"
"You," the girl said firmly. "You're in no condition to have a woman with you tonight."
"Honest to God," Boston swore seriously, "I promise not to touch you."
"I've been around," Betty said flippantly. "I know what a queer thing a man's pride is. I don't want to watch you breaking your heart trying to fuck me when you feel so terrible. Ask me again tomorrow."
Boston looked petulant and wide-eyed, like a little boy. Betty felt that she could cry when he looked like that. She bent swiftly to kill him.
Boston watched her turn out the light and step lightly to the door. She turned and lifted a finger in parting.
"Shit," said Boston. "Shit, piss and corruption."
That made him feel somewhat better. He called the girl to tell her about it, but she continued on her way. He could hear her doing things to the studio couch. Then came the soft whisper of silk things as she undressed.
For a few minutes after her light went out they lay talking through the curtained doorway. In the middle of one of Betty's reminiscences of her childhood, concerning a black kitten and a Christmas tree, Boston went to sleep.
Boston stepped from the inner office and walked over to the desk where his secretary was fitting together a jigsaw puzzle. He reached over to set in a piece of the game.
Straighten your necktie, Mr. Boston," said the girl as she looked up.
The detective flushed and yanked his tie straight. He bent confidentially over the desk.
"Where did this woman come from?" he asked.
"She just walked in and said she wanted to see you. Why?"
Boston looked abashed. He tapped his ring nervously on the desk.
"She's taking off her clothes," he confided. Betty looked at him, blank-eyed.
"Need I express my admiration?" she said. "You couldn't have known her more than fifteen minutes."
"This isn't funny. What should I do?"
"You just run right back there and wait. When the time comes for you to do something, it will come to you just as naturally as breathing. In the meantime, I'll run out for a soda."
"Don't you dare go away and leave me alone with her," Boston said exasperatedly. There's something phoney about this. You're a woman; tell me what she's trying to pull," he demanded unreasonably.
"What's her story?" Betty asked, reaching into her purse for her nail file.
"She says she's looking for a detective to tail her husband and some other woman so she can get a divorce. Then she started to show me where the bruises used to be when he beat her up."
Betty held one hand off and surveyed her nails. She carefully filed down a rough edge and then went to work on the other hand.
"And wants to be tailed some herself, hmm? Well, right now I should guess that she was trying to find out what's in your little laboratory. Faber probably wasn't able to get all the information he wanted on that, because the boxes weren't all opened when those men were here."
"Why that lousy little bitch!" Boston started for his private office, but the girl's voice halted him.
"Don't just throw her out," she said. "I locked the lab when you and St. Nick went out to lunch, so she won't get very far. Let's have her followed, just to see if I'm right. I like to have people followed. It makes everything so mysterious and exciting, don't you know."
"All right," Boston laughed. "We might as well spare no expense; we can't meet expenses anyway. I'll hold her for a while longer, and you call...let's see...call Billy Taub. I don't think he's busy."
It was twenty minutes later when Boston and his secretary, watching from a window, saw a slight, nondescript young man saunter from the cigar store across the street, pause to light a cigarette, and then start off in the direction taken by the woman who had just left the office.
"You sure must be well-liked," Betty remarked. "You sit here without two dimes to rattle in your pocket, and half of New York goes to work to help you solve a crime. Tony brings you the report the police made of the case, this boy goes out after some chippie with a bruise on her thigh, you have a man watching Szabo... By the way, what do you have old baggy pants doing?"
"He's over in the park feeding the squirrels," Boston answered, grinning. "And by now, Tony should be having a tete-a-tete with Zona Avalon."
The girl turned away from the window as the young man she was watching passed out of her range of vision. Boston followed her across the room with his eyes. Her buttocks joggled interestingly as she swung her long, slim legs in lengthy strides. She bent to pick up a pice of paper, reaching for it without bending her knees. Her skirt rose several inches on her thighs, and her broad ass jutted enticingly. Boston felt the familiar flashing stab in the pit of his stomach.
"Suck it!"
Again he offered his cock, shoving it insistingly in her face, dangling his balls against her cheek. Betty looked up inquiringly.
"You forget it's a game," she protested mildly.
Feeling a little ashamed, Boston lifted his knees from her upper arms and drew away. But no sooner had he done so than the girl struck for his prick with the rapidity of a cat, and dragged it to her mouth. She lifted her head to hold it as he rose from her, and she laughed excitedly at the wet sound it made when it finally escaped her. She ran her tongue up his belly and chest.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry," she said. "Do it to me again."
"No. I didn't play pretty."
"Call me that name. Do it to me again."
"Darling."
"Cocksucker. That was the one. Call me that." "Darling."
"It means the same thing now. Put your cock in my mouth again. I'll be your cocksucker."
She lifted her open hps to receive his cock as he brought it to her again. The hot tip touched her, and she wiped it with her wet lips. Then the glorious thrill as she sucked it deeper and deeper into her mouth... Boston twisted his hips from sheer pleasure as her tingling tongue moved smoothly over the tip. He fell onto his side and fucked, while the girl's arms went around his waist.
Her fingers, dancing on his back, stole down to his ass, ran down the backs of his thighs to his knees and lack up again. He felt them stealing between his legs, Beaching blindly for his balls. Then her palm cupped under the puckered bag. She held his nuts limply. She pulled her lips the length of his cock and let it slip away from her.
"Oh, why can't I suck them all at once?" she protested. "Why do I have to take turns?"
She dropped her mouth lower and pushed his balls, one at a time, between her lips. She sucked them gently, rolling them on her tongue. Finally she stuffed them out, wet and quivering. She licked Boston's groin and his thighs until he slid down by her side.
Betty's hands followed his cock as she felt it slide over her belly. Then, captured, it thrust between her thighs, caught in a fuzzy embrace of plump, yielding flesh. She moved her hips, rubbing her cunt against its burning surface. Her juice was wetting it, and her darkened outer sex-lips seemed to be reaching around the pithy length.
"I could come this way," she said. "I could almost come to have you rub your cock anywhere on my body."
Boston smoothed his hands over hair, ran them down to her warm shoulders, to the still warmer teats. He touched the nipples and bent his face to their fleshy little bodies. His tongue circled in spirals over the vibrant mounts, closing in on the upright tips. He closed his teeth over one and shook her breast.
"Let it go in me. Don't hold back that way!"
Betty pushed the knob of his cock between her cunt lips and rubbed her twat with it. She rolled her hips and worked herself down until her cunt pinched half of the hot length. Her avid parts gripped like a toothless mouth. She looked down at their joined sex. Boston's cock was red and monstrous, shoved into the slit that looked too small for it. She contracted her stretched cunt lips and laughed. Boston's prick throbbed visibly.
"What was that word you use? What am I?"
"Split-tail."
"Yes, that one. Look at me. You have me split."
He sidled his tool slowly into her. Betty gasped as it stripped its way in, and she gripped his arms. She waited, not moving, while he pushed all of it into her. She was not hurt, he knew, but she shivered as though stung by a scorpion. Relaxing, she laid her belly against his and dropped her head on his shoulder.
"It wasn't like this. Not ever before when I fucked."
"Think about this one, not the others. This is a hell of a time for reminiscing."
"Listen. I want to tell you. With the others, no matter what I did, I still belonged to myself. But when you're in me, I feel taken. There's none of me that you don't have when your cock is in me."
Her fingers went between them and she tweaked his cock at its base. She ran her fingers along it to the point where it disappeared within her. She stretched her outer lips and pulled them until she could rub them in his hair. Taking his hand in hers she pulled it around her fanny. When he started to slide his cock back and forth she drew the upper part of her body back from his so that she could watch it.
"It's almost indecent to look at yourself like this," she laughed. "I'm really blushing."
Boston stabbed his prick rigidly into her and contracted the muscles at the root of it. He could feel Betty's cunt move responsively when the thick body swelled. The girl jerked her hips back and forth, punching the steely cock in her body deep.
"Lie on your back. Let me fuck you," she urged in a low tone.
There was a note of lascivious heat in her voice. Boston drew back, pulling his cock from the soft grip of her twat. He stretched out, and the girl came over him. She spread her legs and knelt with her knees pressed close to his sides. Her teats swayed when she bent forward.
She brushed her open cunt lightly on his belly. Then, more anxiously, she rubbed the hairy lips up over his skin. She rocked and twisted her hips, pressing her cunt hard and marking his flesh with its juice. She lifted herself high, brought the quivering twat over his chest. Boston raised his head, smashing his lips against her hot belly and the yellow splotch of her delta.
"I have a beard," she said. "See my beard!"
She wove her hips lasciviously from side to side, jerking forward to press the curls to her kiss. She put her hands behind his head and held him to her body, to the fragrant origin of the juice that dried cooly on his chest. Holding herself high, back arched, she demanded his mouth to take her cunt.
Boston ran his tongue curiously over her swelling cunt lips. With his face against her bearded belly he tasted her twat, reaching his tongue's tip into the mouth-like organ. He slid his hands up her sides and clutched the full breasts. Betty came slowly forward until the moment was complete and her cunt covered his mouth.
The skin of his face felt tight and drawn when she moved away again, and the liquor of her twat began to dry. Betty bent forward and kissed him, licking his lips and then his cheeks, where the sticky stuff gleamed wetly. She reached through her thighs for his cock, and her golden hair dropped against his throat as lightly as fine silk.
"Why doesn't it burst?" she murmured. "It gets so hard and big that it seems ready to split."
She pulled the stiff rod over her ass, yanking the tip excitedly through the moist groove that burnt between her legs. Then she took her furry lips in her fingers and spread them. She twisted her ass until she caught his prick, and then stuffed the knob between her fingers and into her cunt. Lowering her hips, she took a bit of it into herself. She fucked experimentally on the swollen rod.
Boston mashed her breast in his hands, his fingers pulling at the nipples. He lifted his hips so as to get more of his cock into that fuzz-covered, deliciously overheated cunt. Then his hips were knocked back to the couch as Betty settled her weight on him, threading his prick completely to its end. She fucked him wildly, abandoned, completely losing herself.
She half leaned, half fell away from him, her face flushed and her hair a disordered tangle. Boston remained still for an instant, then rammed his cock into her as they lay side by side. The girl let him fuck her for a moment, then pushed him away.
"There was something else you wanted," she said. And she rolled away from him, then snuggled back with her smooth ass pressed against his groin. She nibbed her ass against him with a gentle stroking motion.
Boston's cock stood stiffly as she took it in one hand and petted her buttocks with the tip. He put his arms around her, finding her teats with one hand and sliding the other down over her belly to her delta. He pressed his finger rhythmically against the upper part of her twat.
Betty took his cock to her cunt and moved it there, through her thighs, until the knob touched Boston's fingers. Together they pushed it back in the wet valley. Then he was into her again. But Betty shook her head.
"You wanted to do the other. You wanted to put it up in my ass."
She moved forward until his cock dropped away from her. Then she put the end against her ass's pink little hole. She pushed back, but nothing happened.
"I don't know," she was forced to admit. "You'd better do it."
Boston placed her hand at his prick again. Then he pressed his thumb tips at either side of the hole, spreading the puckered opening. He was not able to open it very far, but he managed to get it wide enough for the very tip of his cock to enter like a wedge. He felt the muscles move under his thumbs.
Tensing his thighs, Boston shoved his prick forward. The girl's ass was forced wider and wider. He stopped, but without releasing the pressure.
"Does it hurt you?"
"No. It feels funny. It makes me want to laugh, like being tickled."
Still holding his cock, he took his nuts and rubbed them forward against her cunt. She wriggled her ass and urged him to fuck her.
"It doesn't hurt. So screw some more there."
Boston jerked his hips gently forward and back, losing less ground than he gained each time. Inch by inch his cock went into her, the bulging, burning tip unaccustomed to the tightness, his cock itself as hard as bone. Betty's hole closed over the knob, contracted fiercely, and then re-opened to receive the rest of the hot cock as it was worked with piston-like relentless-ness into her.
The girl quivered and shook. Each successive thrust seemed to give her some new and unexpected pleasure. She fingered her ass to investigate this strange sensation and to open herself more completely to the prick that occasioned it. She tickled the man's balls and, now that it was no longer necessary for her to hold his cock to her ass-hole, began to masturbate him.
"That's a bitchy way to act," she said. But she laughed as she said it, and continued to slip the skin on his cock back and forth until there was hardly room for her fingers between her ass and his body.
The detective pulled her hand away from his cock then and rolled with her so that she lay on her belly. He wrapped his fingers tightly around her wrists and held her arms to the couch above her head. Supporting himself on hands and knees, he lifted his hips, swung them freely in a wide circle, and suddenly banged the last free bit of his cock into the girl. She arched her back and fought him with her legs, but he held her until she was still.
"Oh, Boston, fuck me!" she exclaimed as she dropped weakly away from him. Her tensed muscles relaxed, and she gave herself entirely over to him.
Boston released her wrists and braced his hands just below her armpits. He fucked her with sure, arrogant strokes that drove his cock to the very depths each time he threw his weight forward. The girl lay limply, only her buttocks tensing to meet the slapping of his groin and belly.
But she could not remain passive for long; the new sensation was much too demanding for that. She moved her head restlessly, drew her long legs slightly upward, raising her ass. Her hips began to move, to anticipate and to rise, ready to meet each blow of the man. She pulled her elbows under herself and came to a low crouch.
"A little more. Harder." Frankly jerking herself up and down, she aided in each movement. She was soon fucking much more anxiously than Boston.
"Your jism...soon .... now!" She thrust one hand between her straining thighs and grasped his nuts. Her palm clung hotly to them, as though she were trying to force his sperm out. She laid the sharp tips of her nails lightly on the bulging underside of his prick and rasped the sensitive tool each time that it moved back and forth. She pressed her twat with her thumb, pushing it finally into her cunt, where she could feel the bulging cock through the lower tissues.
Without warning, his cock doused her suddenly, vomiting its burning froth into her ass. Betty stiffened as the thick stuff choked from the throbbing organ. Boston rammed his cock as far up her as it would go and held it there. The jism boiled out of his balls in rivers. Boston closed his eyes and clung fiercely to the desperately struggling girl.
It was a long time later when he realized that she had fainted.
She pushed away the glass of liquor. She shook her head to clear it.
"One's plenty, thank you." Boston drained the glass and set it on the desk. "Don't frighten me that way again," he admonished her. "I'm much too old for that kind of excitement."
The girl reached for his cock and drew him to her. Boston sat down on the couch beside her. She played languidly with his nuts.
"I guess I'm a softie. But when I spent with your prick in my ass and your jism shooting into me, I...I felt as though I could fly. I just made the mistake of trying it."
"Do you want to get up now?" "It's nicer to lie here. Lie down with me while I tell you how nice it was to be fucked that way." She moved over to make room for the detective to stretch his lean body beside hers.
"We won't do it that way again if it's going to make the lady faint."
"I won't faint again. That was just because I'd never done it that way before. I'll bet lots of girls faint the first time they have their asses fucked." Along the white band of his scalp she ran one fingertip, outlining it. That's such a strange mark. I wish you had one down at your cock."
She looked down at his limp prick. She pushed the skin back in folds until the red tip peeped out, looking meek and helpless. Her fingers pinched it around the base and she shook the limp organ roguishly. It stiffened slightly in her fingers.
"I like to suck your cock when its small like that," she said. "It fells so strange when it grows and grows in my mouth."
Boston slid partway up on the couch, and she moved down. She touched her tongue into his navel. Then she thrust his prick into her mouth with both hands. She forced the tip into one cheek with her tongue, and pressed her finger against the bulge it made.
"I hardly ever sucked a man before," she said. She pulled the still-limp prick between her lips and looked at the tip. "I don't know why I so like to have your cock in my mouth."
She moved her fingers up and down the organ, licking it tenderly until it began to grow, then she bent it between her fingers and put all of it in her mouth again. In a minute it began to stiffen and enlarge, pulling itself out of the cramped pocket of her cheek into which she had facetiously forced it. The end slid back over her inner cheek as it straightened, and try as she would, she could not keep it from doing so.
She masturbated him some more, envincing a strange pleasure as the tip was covered and then uncovered within her mouth. She moved her hand up and down, holding the lose skin between her lips, and produced the same effect in that manner.
"It's queer," she said, pausing and leaning back to look in Boston's face, "but I get two different sensations when I suck you. When I have the skin pushed back and I'm sucking the bare end, it seems all naked and powerful. But when the head is covered, I'm more acutely conscious of just what I'm doing."
Boston took his cock in his hand and rubbed it against the girl's face. She raised her teats to it and pressed the nipples against it. Then the man pushed it into her mouth again. But he could not be unaware that her legs were tightening around one of his...that she was pressing her fuzzy mound against him. He twisted his body downward so that he would be able to place his mouth to her cunt even while she sucked him.
Her cunt was overflowing with juice. He licked the wet lips, and his tongue delved into her. Her twat quivered at the soft touch, and the girl opened her legs, lifting one of them across his head. Boston sucked loudly, with wet, appreciative noises. He pushed his mouth hard against the hot, hairy organ.
The girl was dragging his hips back and forth, insisting that he fuck her, and now she moved her own fanny with the same motion. And, as if his sucking could not give her all the pleasure she wanted, she pulled his hand to her cunt and pushed one of his fingers between her sex lips. Boston brushed her hard button with his fingertip. Then he jabbed his finger into her and moved it rapidly back and forth in her twat.
Betty bit his cock peevishly and sat up to watch him sucking her.
"Fuck me, Boston. I'll suck you off afterward if you want me to. But now fuck me."
He turned and clambered up over her, dragging his prick stiffly over her breasts and down to her belly. The girl eagerly spread her legs and thrust the wet rod between them. With a single motion he drove into her. His arms went under the small of her back, lifting her until the tip of his prick was pressed as high in her mounded belly as it could reach.
They were both ready to spend. Boston fucked the girl with a hot ardor which found an eager response. Their arms went around each other, their legs inevitably intertwined. The detective's cock rammed sharply in and out. His nuts felt full and heavy when the girl touched them. She forced her hips harder against him, ignoring the biting rasp of his hair on the tender inner sides of her cunt lips. Harder...harder...
"I wonder where Tony can be."
"Wait. Don't put on your shorts yet." She fell to her knees and licked the surplus of jism and cunt juice from his cock and balls. When it was clean, she kissed it and dried it with her hair.
Then she stood naked, watching him dress. She wiped a spot of jism from her thigh and surreptitiously put her finger to her mouth. Boston caught the action out of the corner of his eye, and smiled to himself.
"He should be back by now," he said.
"And wouldn't we have been in a pretty situation if he had come back on time! You're unreasonable."
Boston grinned patiently and went to a small mirror to adjust his tie. When he turned around, the girl was sitting on the couch, pulling her stockings high on her fine legs.
"You're lazy, too," she continued. "I'm sure that you'd get along faster on the Cartwright case if you didn't spend all your time in the office."
The telephone rang, and Betty, clad only in stockings and slippers, answered it in sharp secretarial tones that seemed ludicrously incongruous to her costuming. She handed the instrument to Boston.
It was Billy Taub. He had followed the woman from Boston's place to an address which Boston recognized as that of Faber's office.
"I wish I could pay you right now, Billy," Boston began, but his secretary interrupted.
"Tell him you'll send him a check in the morning", she said.
"What the hell would I back up a check with?"
"I'm down to a bank account of a hundred and fifty. But I'll put it into this job-at usurer's rates. I want two hundred back when you clean up."
"You aren't such a smart girl as I thought. What if I took you up on that?"
The girl took the phone.
"He'll send you a check in the morning," she said.
Boston was restrained from further conversation by the sudden entrance of Celine. The old man came into the inner office without seeming to notice Betty's charming lack of dress.
"Hello, floozies," he greeted briefly. He rattled the door to the small laboratory. "You let me in now, please. I got works to does."
Boston's secretary practically dived into her dress, and made a bee-line for her purse in the next office. Boston lighted a cigarette and leaned back against his desk, holding one knee in both clasped hands.
"It took you a long time to get rid of your peanuts," Boston remarked. "Didn't you find any customers?"
"The squirrel in thees park is very snootsy. I eat the peanuts myself, with a friend."
"A friend?"
"A Doctor Szabo. Not so good a friend. A colleague, more. Szabo. You hear of him, perhaps?"
Boston had bitten his cigarette in two. He spat the butt out and ground it into the carpet with his heel.
"I've heard of him."
"He is crazy," Celine confided, staring at Boston through his thick glasses, and pulling up his baggy trousers. "We talk a time, and he is very friendly. Then he ask me what I am do these days. Next minute he is rush off. Not even good-bye. But what are wrong? You feel sick?"
"No...nothing's wrong."
The old scientist turned to the door as the girl appeared with the key.
"I thought you look bad. I do works now. Okay, Miss Floozie."
Boston looked at his watch. He hunted through his pockets for another cigarette.
"I wonder where Tony is," he said distractedly.
The woman knelt meekly and kissed his prick at the tip. Tony lay back on the chaise lounge and watched her. She licked the clear cock-milk from the knob and tasted it.
"I have needed a cock." the woman said. "A real sturdy one again."
"Old Cartwright didn't have what you wanted, did he?"
She quickly squeezed more of the tasty stuff from his cock and licked it away from the slit. Her cheek rubbed his cock softly, his balls...
"He was all right sometimes. There were times when he would fuck like fury. But there would be whole days at a time when he wasn't any good at all. That's why I went with the boy, his nephew. He had a key to this place. Herman suspected it, I think. That's why he put him to work at the factory. But let's not talk about that. It makes me feel sad. Let's fuck. I don't want to be sad while you are here."
But Tony caught her head when she bent again to his tool.
"Wait a minute. I didn't know this boy worked at the factory."
"Some silly office job to keep him from me during the day. But no! You make me sad."
The reporter raised his hips and shoved his cock between her lips. The relish with which she took it and sucked it could not be ignored. Tony fucked her mouth slowly, then more rapidly, while her fingers scrabbled in the hair around his balls. Zona Avalon's public would have been shocked to see how enthusiastically she was accepting the attentions of this man who two hours ago had been a stranger to her.
"Lift yourself," she said, pulling her mouth free of his cock. "I'll do something for you."
Her tongue ran under his balls and almost to his ass-hole. Then it hurried back. Her face was scarlet.
"That always makes me blush," she explained. "At heart I'm just an old-fashioned girl from the Bronx."
But she bent forward again, and this time her tongue touched the puckered hole quite boldly. She pulled the man onto his side, facing away from her. Still kneeling, she kissed the backs of his thighs and his buttocks. Then her face was pushed in between his ass cheeks. She held the fleshy buttocks apart with both hands and sought his ass-hole again with her mouth. Her tongue licked it, and her lips brushed it in a soft caress.
"I'm going to suck your ass," she announced in a stifled whisper.
And she did, grabbing at the hole with her lips and reaching about his groin to hold his nuts and play with his prick. Her mouth worked on his ass and she rabbitted the tip of her tongue continually over it. For several minutes she did this. Then she ducked her head through Tony's thighs, licking between them until her tongue touched his balls. She kissed the heavy testicles and brushed them aside with her nose, pulling his cock down to her lips again.
She stood up then, retreated a few steps, and danced archly toward him, shaking her dark breasts flamboyantly. She stood beside him, jerking her hips invitingly. The reporter stared at her black-bearded cunt and licked his dry lips.
"Come onto the floor," the woman invited. She dropped to her haunches. "Come on. Frig me."
"I won't be able to hold back," the reporter warned her.
"Wait, then." She pushed him back onto the chaise lounge. "I want it to last a long time when you screw me. I'll suck you off first."
She tripped across the room for an extra pillow, her ass jiggling with female heaviness. She threw the pillow down beside the couch and dropped to her knees. The reporter spread his legs to either side as she came between them.
The woman's hands went up his thighs, the palms hot and pressing tight to him. Her fingers trembled as she touched his groin, tickled around his nuts. She touched his belly, his navel...
Her tongue's passing left long, damp streaks on his hot legs from the knees upward. She licked the hairs that sprouted from around his cock and washed his belly. The reporter rumpled her dark hair, spreading it over her shoulders. He took her head in his hands while she took his prick in hers. He pulled her down.
The woman's lips parted as his cock touched them. She pouted and took the big rod wetly into her mouth. The knob slid over her tongue and she drew it well back into her throat. She commenced sucking, and at the same time chewing gently on the gristly tool. An almost continuous flow of cock milk soon had her swallowing thirstily.
There was no need for the reporter to do anything but keep her from becoming too enthusiastic. He could not have fucked her pretty lips more expertly or more eagerly than she herself did. Her head rocked rhythmically up and down while she slid her lips over the knotty prick. Her lips moved vibrantly and her cheeks bulged when she stuffed it fully into her mouth.
She held her palms closed around the reporter's balls. And, as she continued to suck him, she could feel them moving nervously, pulling upward on their cords. The furrowed skin of the sack grew tighter, and she was not taken by surprise when he spent.
Suddenly his nuts throbbed violently. His cock started like a frightened animal. It beat heavily, and a choking rush of jism came in rushing to her mouth. She swallowed noisily, gulping the sweet substance with pleasure that she made no effort to disguise. It filled her mouth wetly, its heavy body as thick as curd...
"Sit down, will you? You look awfully silly pacing back and forth like that. Here, try this jigsaw. I've done it twice already."
Boston sat down, nervously sucking at his ring. He tapped the stone against his lower teeth, attempting a tune by opening and closing his mouth.
"Where the hell is everybody? Why don't they let me know what's going on?" he demanded petulantly.
"Well, you might watch grandpa in his workshop. He's making a perfectly thrilling pneumonia germ in technicolor."
"Johnson should have called me on the hour. It's fifteen after already."
"There isn't always a phone handy," she remarked to him. "Maybe Szabo is taking a row in Central Park."
"A hell of a note," Boston fumed. "Tied in this office."
"It was your idea to do things this way. You shouldn't be mad if someone else gets the fun along with the work."
Boston's reply was interrupted by the abrupt jangle of the telephone. He leaped to answer it.
"Boston speaking."
"This is Johnson. Something just happened to this Szabo fellow. It wasn't my fault, though. Honest, Boston, I didn't have a chance to do a thing."
"All right, all right! What is it? What happened?"
"Well, Szabo meets some old guy in the park, see? They sit on a bench and talk for a while. Then all of a sudden Szabo gets up and starts off like he was going to a fire. This other old guy had whiskers-big white ones, like...like-"
"Santa Claus. What else? Hurry up, will you, man?"
"Yeah, Santa Claus. Know him anywhere? Well, as I was saying, Szabo goes off, with me almost running to keep up with him. Then I think he's gone nuts, because he isn't going any place. He starts off one way and then goes back the other. He's practically walking in circles. And me behind him."
"What happened? WHAT HAPPENED?"
"I'm telling you, Boston! All of a sudden he seems to get an idea, and we start due east, like the crow flies. I figure this is where things begin to happen. Szabo's going some place, see? And guess where? Guess where, Boston?"
"For God's sake, Johnson-"
"To the East River. And before I know it, he's in the drink. Just walked right off the end of the pier without even stopping. Just like he was Jesus going to walk on the water. So some guys working there go in after him. Me, I can't swim, Boston, or I'd have jumped in too. Anyway, they get him out after a while, but he's not much good to us any more, I guess. Anyway that's *hat I figure, so I guess I'll go home now. After working me into a sweat to keep after him, to just jump in the river that way! And now he's dead!"
Tony Shaw stepped jauntily into the office, his stride a springy bounce.
"Did I get screwed!" he enthused. "Did I get screwed, or-
He saw the girl, and gulped embarrassed. Betty smiled sympathetically.
"That happens," she observed, "every once in a while. Quite frequently. In fact, some of my best friends have been screwed."
"So you let us wait around while you sat drinking in some cat-house," Boston said disgustedly. "Fine! Did you see Zona Avalon at all?"
"I sat in Zona Avalon's apartment," the reporter defended himself. "It took a long time to draw her out."
He pulled up a chair and sat down. It was a strange thing, Betty thought, to look at a man you knew had just been with a woman. She let her eyes run over his body, wondering what he would be like naked, trying to picture him lying on a woman. Would he be like Boston? Would he be gentle, she wondered? Forceful? Would he want a woman to be bold and laughing, or meek, submissive? Would he suck her? Would he be surprised if she-She wrenched her mind away, a little shocked at herself. But her eyes turned again and again to Tony. She decided that she'd better get out and buy herself some coffee.
When she came back again, the two men were seated at Boston's desk. The detective was speaking.
"Then she had nothing to gain by Cartwright's death, and she knew it. The new will he made turned everything over to his niece. Too bad, isn't it, that the boy had to be knocked off, when she'd gone to so much trouble to insure herself against the possibility of Cartwright's death."
"She was afraid H. C. might kill himself, all right; she knew he was worried about something."
"You mean that's what she told you!" Boston grinned. "You were probably ready to swallow any story this afternoon. I never trust the judgments of a man with a hard-on. Nor his statements. That's a good rule for marriageable virgins, by the way."
"The kid obviously earned too much at this job he had down at the factory. Maybe he took a look at those records, too, Boston."
"If it was just that, Cartwright would never have been so anxious to have the boy's death investigated.
He'd not have called me that night. We're lacking a lot yet. I'd give a lot to know just how many people know be made that trip up to look at the wrecked car that afternoon."
"His valet would have, I suppose. By the way, wasn't he at the house when Cartwright went through the window?"
"Don't laugh, but he was going to a funeral. I mean, he was on his way to one that was to be held next morning. A perfectly respectable old lady who had been a friend of his family when he was a kid in Pennsylvania. And at the moment that Cartwright was killed, he was playing bridge in the smoking car. He'd been gone since around nine in the evening."
"Anyway, Boston, now that Cartwright isn't around to pour money into the night clubs Zona Avalon sang in, she's going to need some kind of a break. She knows it, too. She practically fell on my neck."
"I've heard her sing," Boston remarked drily.
"She's lousy, isn't she? But I might as well give her a break in my sheet. It won't cost anything, and she's no worse than most of these bitches on the air these days."
"Open your legs. Open them wider."
He stroked her thigh with his cheek, put his mouth on her cunt again, where the usually curly fur was now straight and darkened from his having licked it. The lips were flushed and heavy with blood, and they felt thick between his lips. He forced his tongue past them and scooped it through the velvety crevice.
"Don't lick me any more. Fuck me now. Or let me suck you, too. This isn't fair."
Boston's humorous grey eyes looked up over the swell of her delta, creasing at the edges as he smiled at her. He shook his head.
"It's fair enough when you suck me off," he said. "Why should it be any different when I do it for you?"
His blonde secretary leaned back on the pillows with a sigh. She looked at him again and laughed.
"You look so funny licking my cunt," she told him. "You have a fat blond mustache that doesn't match anything else about you. And my hair fluffs up around your face like a set of curly whiskers. It would make a perfect disguise! Why don't we shave off my hair to make false whiskers for you? Like old Celine, only not so long. And then my cunt would be bare, and you could find it easier. You wouldn't have to spend so much time hunting through all that forest of hair."
Boston contentedly took one of her twat lips between his teeth and chewed it. The girl rested her hands on his head, tracing a finger over the streak of pure white that ran through his black hair. Then, because he was still watching her, she took both her creamy breasts in her hands and shook them, teasing and exciting him.
"You could wear dark glasses and carry a cane, and totter when you walked," she went on. "No one would think it was a disguise, because it was so queer. They'd think it was a sort of natural phenomenon, like your prick when it gets hard."
She twisted her head about to look at the lower part of his body. His cock was erect, thrust out from his groin like a thick red pole. She tried to touch it, wriggling her fingers excitedly when she found it to be just out of her reach. She pouted.
"Let me," she said. "Let me! Let me! Or I won't let you lick me any more."
Boston slowly moved his body so that she was able to grasp his cock. She tightened her palm around the burning ball of flesh at the tip, and laughed triumphantly.
"Cunt-licker!" she whispered. "Cunt-licker!"
But Boston merely licked her harder. He paused to pick a hair from his tongue and laid it on her belly. The girl brushed it away.
"Let me suck you too, Boston. Come up on the bed further."
"Shall I bring my prick?" the detective asked.
"Don't tease me. Come up further."
She pulled his body toward her with a strength that was surprising. Then she laid her face on his belly. She stroked his nuts and his cock with warm, tender fingers.
"Oh, your prick is tough!" she exclaimed. "It feels like a thick, hot piece of gristle!" She bent it slightly in her hands, then suddenly thrust her head forward and clenched her teeth along the thick core of the knotted penis. She chewed it, wetting and sucking the part that was in her mouth, while her fingers clung to it at the root and at the tip.
"You look as though you were playing the harmonica," the detective joked.
"Don't. Don't make it ridiculous," the girl exclaimed. "I'm so terribly aroused, Boston! I feel a little crazy when you suck me." She put her mouth back to his prick, but this time her lips closed over it at the tip.
She closed her eyes as the detective pushed forward, as her mouth was filled with his cock, and her throat with the sweet taste of it. Her tongue clung around it, and she pulled the skin away from the tip to be able to taste it better. She closed herself in between his legs, pulling them together rightly around her head until she was imprisoned.
Boston looked at the pretty, still face. The girl's lips were shoved apart by the big cock, and her cheeks were full and slightly bulged from its stuffing presence.
Her mouth worked eagerly over it, and she swallowed quietly as he watched. But then her fingers sought his head and pushed his mouth back to her twat.
Boston put his arms around the girl, his thumbs hooked together in the deep crevice of her fanny. He shoved his lips into the wet heat of her cunt, striving to drive his tongue completely into the hairy thing. At the same time he jerked the lower part of his body around, tightening his legs and driving his prick forward and back in the hungry mouth that held it.
I shouldn't, Betty thought; I mustn't do that. But she was. Even while she was sucking Boston's prick, she found herself thinking of Tony Shaw. And she could not drive the thought of him out of her mind. She wondered if what she was doing now, Zona Avalon had done to Tony. She wondered if he had licked the showgirl as Boston was licking her. With her eyes closed she could almost imagine that she was with Tony now, that it was his cock that she was sucking, and his mouth upon her twat. With a start, she yanked herself back to reality and opened her eyes.
The detective's body was hard and lean, and it bore rigidly against her. She suddenly put her arms around
Boston and held him in the same way he was holding her, straining their two vibrant selves tensely together. She drove her mouth upward on the tight-corded prick until it gagged her.
"Boston!" she said, lifting herself on one arm and staring down at him. "Oh, Boston, fuck me, fuck me now! Don't lick me any longer."
He slid upward over her twisting body, bearing her down, and taking possession of her with all of himself. He stiffened his arms, holding her shoulders down, and then let his weight come down upon her, fusing their bodies. His wet prick probed at her dampened delta. She reached for it joyfully, and placed it upon her cunt, but even as the lips of her sex were rent by it, she found herself imagining that it was the reporter who took her.
Boston drove his penis slowly up in the open twat, wanting to spend at once, but waiting until Betty should be ready to spend with him. He put his mouth to her teats, one after the other, and involuntarily dug his fingers into her arched back as he strained to keep off his impulse to spend. His nuts lay in the hot pocket formed by the cheeks of her fanny, and they lifted as he slid his cock into her, until they were close upon her ass-hole.
Boston's prick swelled and burned in the girl. His black hair was pressed closely against her delicate blonde delta, and her breasts were squeezed against his chest until they actually ached. The girl had turned her face to one side, but the detective gently turned it back, and then drove his mouth full on hers. Their tongues slipping softly together...his tasting sweet with the essence of her cunt, hers swollen and sensitive from his prick pressing against it.
There was a quality about Betty which Boston became more aware of each time he fucked her, although he never mentioned it, perhaps because it was too intangible to put into words. He thought of it now as fecundity...a fertility that teemed in her and expressed itself in every sensuous movement of her feline body. It was in the scent of her, and the feel of her warm self pressed against him, and the clasp of her warm thighs about his. He could see it in the deep light of her eyes when, heavy-lidded, she stared at him after he had screwed her. It was beyond the sterile lechery of the majority of the women he had fucked, for beside her they would have seemed sexless and barren. She was such a woman as a man would leave feeling replete, satisfied, with no sense of defeat or futility.
The knowledge that he was within her, that his prick lay hot and bursting in her belly, seeking her womb, was emphasized. Her cunt enfolded his cock, hinting, demanding ... hungering. He had a sensation that his penis was tightening like a balled fist, tensing until the muscles commenced to quiver and the nerves to scream. The rich, yeasty fruit of his loins impetuously flushed up through his staff and swirled into her cunt. The girl's lips moved wordlessly as she felt it pour through her twat, and she spent...
"I like your place." The girl moved about the room, pausing to examine a small Chinese vase that stood on a table. Boston lighted a cigarette and leaned apprais-ingly back in his chair. It was strange, he thought, that even when he had just fucked her, when his body was tired and his mind peaceful, he felt passion for Betty. There seemed to be an appetite in him that was fed just by the sight of her. He watched her ass as he rested her weight on one leg and threw her body sideways.
"I would redecorate to suit the tenant," he said. The girl shook her head, and turned, leaning her hips back against the table.
"There's something I want to tell you. You won't like me, I'm afraid." Eyeing him gravely, she wetted her lips, her fingers gripping hard on the table edge.
"Will I be able to take the shock sitting up or should I lie on the couch?" His eyes were still smiling.
If only, die thought, if only he wouldn't look at me that way. It made her feel somehow guilty, although she was guilty of nothing ...yet. And when I tell him, he won't be angry. He will just look and not smile too much, because that would be false, but he will not be quiet and hurt.
"I like to be in bed with you ...or anywhere with you and be screwed by you..." He had tensed as though he knew what was coming: but...but...BUT...
"You make me so happy," he said lightly. He lifted his brows as a signal for her to continue.
"Tony. Tony Shaw. I want him." It was said and done. The words could not come back.
"A serpent in my Eden!" Yet how careful he was to keep his tone from mere flippancy. "Does he want you?"
"That hasn't come up yet. I don't know. But I want him. I'll go to bed with him if I can. So you see why I can't live with you." She went to the couch and sat down.
"He wants you. Even though he hasn't said so. Any man would." He seemed to consider something. The smile was wistful, but she knew that it was not intentional. "So you're to be my little sister! I never had a sister before." But she shook her head emphatically.
"I hate that sort of fraud. I've fucked you, and I like it. And I want to fuck you again. I wouldn't try to live with Tony, any more than I can live with you when it's like this."
"I see."
"I hope you do," she said. "I wanted you to know before anything happened. Maybe he won't even want me." She felt compelled to add: "But I hope he does."
"I hope he spurns you from his door," Boston said earnestly. "Honestly I do. But he won't. If he does, you always know where you can find good old Uncle Ralph Boston."
"You haven't told me any of the bad things about him. Aren't you going to tell me that he drinks too much, that he follows anything in a dress, or that he orders the wrong wine with the fish? Or will you be noble and tell me what a fine chap he is?" Boston picked the head from his cigarette against the side of the ashtray and killed it with the butt.
"He was a fine chap yesterday," he said. "But tonight I seem to see him in a different light. And I think you should know..."
Boston was dawdling over his second cup of coffee when someone slid onto the stool next to him and he was addressed by a familiar voice. He looked up from his newspaper. It was Donovan, the police inspector.
He wanted to crow a little.
"Well, Sherlock," he said, "looking for a job already? Maybe I know of something for you. I could get you on morgue duty. Of course that isn't much for a man like you, but you could have a badge and everything, just like a real detective.
"Hello, Iron Hat," Boston greeted him. "I was just reading about Zona Avalon. You remember, her name was mentioned incidentally in that murder case you haven't solved yet." Donovan furrowed his brow and took out his pipe. Then:
"I guess you must mean the Cartwright suicide. Why, sonny, that happened over a week ago. You're practically living in the past." He paused to order the thirty-five-cent breakfast special. "What does it say about the young lady?" he went on with exaggerated polite interest.
"It says that she is tired and unnerved and does not think that she will accept any engagements just now. I can't see to read the rest of it. There seems to be a blue haze over everything."
The inspector contentedly sucked his pipe.
"We've all been shivering in our boots down at the office," he said. "We were sure that by now you would have ripped the town wide open with something big on that Cartwright affair. Of course the little item of you having seen the man jump out of the window may be just a mite discouraging. But look at all the good suspects you have. The butler: he was on a train, three hours away, but he might have thrown him out of the window by telepathy. Or this woman of Cartwrights:
maybe she sang something he didn't like, and he killed himself in a huff. That would make an interesting case. Why don't you make it come out that way?"
"They both sound good," said Boston. "Did you ask the butler if he did it?"
"He seemed like too nice a man to be mixed up in anything sordid like that. So we just asked him if the Western Union boy did it."
"Western Union boy?" Boston was puzzled. "Where did he come from?"
"Don't get excited about it. He just came by at...oh, about eight-thirty, maybe. Business message. We looked into it."
"A business message at eight-thirty?"
"It wasn't three o'clock yet where it came from. I told you it was all right."
Boston waved the smoke from Donovan's pipe away from his face, watched it drawn upward and sucked through a ventilating fan.
"I never trust the judgment," he said, "of a man who smokes a pipe before breakfast. I'd like to talk to that boy."
"Sure," Donovan grinned. "Got a pencil? I'll tell you where you can find him."
"No, I didn't see Mr. Cartwright at all. I just saw the butler. He signed for the telegram." The boy glanced at the secretary, saw her disapproving glare, and carefully unhooked his feet from the chair rungs.
"You said you had been sent to that address before?" Boston asked.
"Yep; lots of times. The butler always signed." He looked back at the secretary. She wasn't watching him any more, and now he could look up under her skirt without any trouble. He cracked his gum and looked blank.
Boston tapped the rubber end of his pencil nervously on the desk, and ran his fingers distractedly through his hair.
"You never were in the apartment? You didn't know how it was laid out or anything about what was inside?"
"Naw. The butler always took it at the door, I told yer."
"You didn't hear voices inside?"
"No."
"Nor a radio playing?"
"I didn't hear anything. I didn't see anything. Only a traveling bag inside the door. I can't remember all these things very good. I go to a lot of places every day, mister."
Boston nodded and followed the boy's glance back to his secretary's legs. The girl found them both looking at her, and primly pulled down her pleated skirt.
"Think hard now," Boston urged the boy. "Was there any one thing...anything at all that was unusual about it?"
The messenger pushed his peaked cap onto the back of his head and scratched his scalp with his thumb. He pursed his lips and frowned. Then:
"There wasn't anything I noticed. Only that he was in a sort of hurry. But that isn't what you'd say was unusual. Most people are in a hurry more or less when they get a telegram. That's why they have telegrams."
"Perhaps he acted like someone who has been interrupted at something and is in a hurry to get back to it?"
"I couldn't say about that. How should I know?"
"One thing more! Did you see any trace of grease or dust on his hands? As though he had been...working on something?"
"Naw!" There was contempt in the boy's voice. "He had hands like a woman. The hardest work he ever did was shake drinks, I'll bet."
Boston shook his head.
"That's all," he said. "Will you pay him, Miss Blair?"
The messenger winked suggestively at the girl as he closed the office door behind him.
"That wasn't a hell of a lot of help." said the detective when the boy was gone. He walked up to the water cooler for a drink, then went to the hat tree for his topcoat and grey felt. "I'm going out for a while. I'll be back in an hour."
"Hello, Floozies!"
Celine suddenly popped from the little laboratory, holding up his pants with one hand, clutching in the other hand a paper carton. He turned from the girl to Boston. "Look."
He set the paper box on the desk and lifted the cover. Inside were six glass balls, each a different color.
"Flavors," he announced with a show of pride. "I make them in six delicious flavors. They smells bad insides. Stink bombers."
Boston lifted one of the feather-light globes from the box and rolled it on the palm of his hand. Celine tottered backward, hiding his face in his beard.
"Don't breaks them! Not in here, don't breaks them!" he cried, motioning Boston to set the ball down again. Holding his nose, he ran back to his laboratory, banged the door shut.
Boston looked ruefully at the girl and then at the box of glass spheres. He tucked the box under his arm and grinned suddenly at the girl.
"He thinks I'm screwy," he said with a nod in the direction of the laboratory. "I'll have to think of something else for him to do. How would you like a nice glass diptheria germ for your living room table?"
"You could use them for Christmas tree ornaments. They could have a pine odor, so if they broke...you get the idea. It's commercial."
"We'll have to consider that," said Boston. "For that matter, I could consider it right now. At my favorite bar."
"Hello, Mr. Boston. How's things?"
The detective looked at the jerky little man with the knife scar at the corner of his mouth. The wise, wizened face was drawn in a perpetual half smile that twisted into the grimace of a grin as Boston turned to him.
"Hello, Storky," Boston said flatly. "Aren't you out of your element here? I thought Pete's Poolroom was your hangout."
The little man winked and sat down in the chair opposite Boston's. He jerked his head around to look furtively toward the bar, then gestured toward a waiter.
"Gimme a shot of rye," he ordered as the waiter came up.
"You're paying for it yourself, Big Shot," Boston told him. But the stoolie did not seem at all disappointed. He cracked his face into a wink and dug into his pocket for a wad of bills.
"I'll buy you a drink, Mr. Boston," he offered as he returned the roll.
"Thanks. I'll pay for my own," the detective replied. The arrogance of this little bastard was bothering him. "Were you looking for me?" he asked suddenly.
"No, no, Mr. Boston. I just happened to be going by, like yourself. Maybe there's something you'd like to know about, though. Just ask me. There was a bank job upstate the other night that might interest you. An old friend of yours was in that, Mr. Boston. You got him sent up for five years once. You know who I mean?"
"I'm not interested in that." Boston waited until the waiter had set the drink on the table and made change. "If there's anything I want to know, it's who took a pot shot at me the other night. What about that?"
The stool pigeon was genuinely puzzled, but he made a show of having some secret information. He grimaced and winked and rubbed his hands.
"I could find out about that, Mr. Boston. Offhand, I couldn't say just which one of the boys was in that."
"Quit stalling," said Boston. "You don't know a dammed thing about it The son of a bitch who did it still doesn't know who he was shooting at."
But the stool was not abashed in the least. He downed his drink and called for another, then slowly finished the beer chaser. He took a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and patted the corners of his crooked mouth.
"I didn't say I knew anything about it yet, Mr. Boston; I just said I could find out for you."
"Aren't you getting pretty careless with that worthless hide of yours?" Boston asked, ignoring the last remark. "One of these fine mornings the boys in the back room are going to get tired of looking at you, and you'll wake up to find it perforated. You .look as though it might do you some good if they made a few boles to let the sunlight get at you."
"That isn't funny, Mr. Boston. That isn't a bit funny. You know I've always been a right guy, Mr. Boston. I always pay my debts and keep on the right side of everybody, Mr. Boston."
"Someday you'll be on the right side of a thirty-eight. Some of the boys around Pete's are going to wonder about that roll, Storky. They know the fences don't pay off that big for that two-bit glass you pick up"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Boston. You know how I make my money. I got a system to beat the horses."
"I see," Boston said drily. "Listen, Storky, this isn't friendly advice, because I don't like you. But it's good advice. Get out of town while you can. Because if the boys at Pete's don't give it to you, somebody from the department is going to accidentally point his revolver your way. You're getting too cocky, Storky. You've talked too often, and you haven't been smart enough to whisper. It can't last much longer."
The stool pigeon winked and grinned.
"Thanks, Mr. Boston," he said acidly. "Thanks for nothin'. I'll be around a long time yet."
Boston watched him swagger out of the place. He lighted another cigarette from the one he was smoking, eyeing a well-dressed young woman at the bar who stood sipping a martini. A youth who looked like a college boy was trying to draw her into conversation, but she ignored him. She went out and the boy went to the mechanical phonograph and put a few nickels into it. It was playing too loudly, and one of the waiters did something at the back of the machine to quiet it.
Boston was thinking about his secretary, wondering what he was going to do about the things that had happened between them. The smart thing, he mused, would be to do nothing. Let things go and see what happened. If she wanted to screw Tony, that was her business...and Tony's. But he wanted to fuck her himself, and who the hell's business was that.?
I shouldn't be sitting here, he thought. I shouldn't be here doing nothing on her money. It won't last much longer, and in the meantime I'm getting nothing done on this Cartwright thing. I wonder if she knows why I left the office. Can she know that I don't dare to make a pass at her...or let her make a pass at me until I see what's going to happen with her and Tony? That I can't bear to stay alone with her in the office?
The bartender sent him a drink on the house. He drank it and ordered another one, not because he wanted it, but because he felt that he needed it, which was somehow a different and a lot more important reason for drinking more than you ought to.
I need to be fucked, he thought. I need to go out and find some woman and screw her until my balls shrivel up. Get this out of my system. Wait, I'm thinking like a sophomore. Like the boy with the fancy shoes playing the phonograph. I must be getting drunk. I'd better get out of here now.
He had made no movement. He had not even touched the box which rested on the table. But from under the paper cover he heard a muted pop. A putrid stench filled the air. He opened the box and looked in. Three of the colored glass spheres were shattered.
Boston clamped the cover on the box and, holding it at arm's length, hurried out of the bar to drop it in the nearest trash basket.
It was Tony, and her heart leaped at the sight of him. Or let's be honest, she told herself, was it my heart? The door clicked behind him and he looked around:
"Where's Boston?" he asked, and in the same breath: "Anything new?"
Keep your voice calm, and for God's sake keep your eyes away from the front of his pants. There's more to a man than a prick. See how tall he is, and how the lines of his body melt together. "He's out," she said. "I'm not sure, but I think he's having a drink. You're not in a hurry, are you?"
He neatly ringed the peg of the hat tree and started taking off his coat. He dresses better than most people who work on newspapers, she thought. More carefully, His clothes are pressed.
"I'm not in any hurry. I'm off today. I wanted to tell him about this Hayes girl-" "Cartwright's niece?"
"Yeah. She's moved. She's not at the hotel any more. She's moved into the apartment Cartwright had."
"I marvel at the way these things get around. It's like the news that a girl gave up her virtue at last night's dance. How do you do it?"
Tony folded himself into a chair and stretched.
"We have a cub at the office reporting on what big shots are stopping at what hotels," he said. "He phones the desk managers every evening. So I just had him ask if Miss Hayes was still there every time he called her hotel. Last night she wasn't. I called Cartwright's place on Long Island-he has a house out there, see-and the maid told me to call the apartment. I didn't have to, but just to make sure, I telephoned the apartment and pretended I was trying to sell her an automobile. So I talked to her. I had a little trouble when I found out she really wanted to buy a car, but I got out of that by telling her the firm dealt in second-hand Austins only."
You can't just tell him that you want to have him fuck you, that you'd go to bed with him in a minute if he asked you. You can't do that, even if you are so excited just by his being around that you wiggle all over and are squirming on your chair as though your pants were cutting you. You can't...
"It sounds very simple, the way you say it."
"It was. You're forgetting, it's Boston who's the detective. I'm just a dumb reporter."
And what a lucky bastard he was, too, having a woman like that to work with all day and to go to bed with at night. Does he lay her right here in the office? He must lay her here too, sometimes. A man couldn't be around her all day and not have a yen to take off his pants.
"An awfully dumb reporter?" she asked. She was afraid of what she was doing, but at the same time she wanted him very much. She repeated. "An awfully dumb reporter?"
He did not answer for a long time, but when he did she saw that he had guessed:
"Not that dumb." He appeared nervous. He crossed and uncrossed his legs.
"How did you know what I meant?" she asked him.
"I didn't know. I'm not even sure yet. But I know what I'm thinking, and what I've been thinking ever since I came in here."
"And that was?"
"That if Boston hadn't found you first, I'd do my best to try to take you to bed."
"If Boston hadn't found me first?"
"You couldn't expect him to give me his blessings if I tried it now, could you?"
"Old Dog Trey!" "That wasn't nice."
"You needn't feel bad about it. I turned down an offer to live in his very nice apartment just to be able to go to bed with you...if you asked me." Under the desk, her knees felt weak as water. She wondered if she would be able to stand without swaying. And because she was afraid she couldn't, she stood up and walked into the inner office, with Tony trailing her. Stubborn stubborn bitch. He doesn't want you now.
Tony sat down backward on a chair and watched her go into the empty laboratory and get a fresh box of paper cups from a closet. When she came out, she stopped and looked at him.
"Boston laid me on that couch," she said. "It was the first time he fucked me, and I liked it more than anything that had ever happened to me. But when he wanted me to live with him, I wouldn't. I told him why. But it was here, in this office the first time-"
He had her in his arms, flinging his lean weight over her, pressing her to the couch while he tore off her clothes.
"No. No, here. Touch me here. Like that. Oh, Tony! Tony!"
She shivered in his arms and held herself tightly pressed to him while he stroked her delta. She looked up from under his arm and watched his face.
"It's good to be held naked in your arms like this," she sang in a whisper, putting her hand against the hard-molded muscles of his leg. "You look at me so...so lecherously. Can you see right through me? It's as though even my bones were to be seen when you watch me that way."
He slid his fingers down, caressing the mound with the heel of his hand. Their ankles twined together, one of his knees forced open hers.
"You're hard. Look. Look at your prick already." Betty let her hand fall across his belly and tickled the tip of his penis with her fingers. She looked at him, at herself where his hand was on her.
"It's been like that since I first saw you. I've wanted to do this since the day we met in the laboratory. Just thinking of you-"
"Don't tell me. Don't tell me any of it. You can do it now. You have me... You have me..."
Little by little she put the tips of her fingers further down along his staff, touching it lightly as though she were painting its outline. She kissed his arm, laid her cheek over his chest and shook her hair in his face. Tony's fingers were creeping, stealing her from herself.
"Am I hurting you?" Already he had two fingers in her twat and was slowly squeezing a third in beside them "Shall I stop?"
"No. You're not hurting me, Tony. Tony. No man ever hurt me. Tony, I sound crazy. I think I am a little crazy when I need fucking as much as you make me need it. Oh, Tony, your prick!"
She clung to his cock and rolled against him, weaving wildly in his arms and hiding his prick between their bodies. It was scorching on her skin. She wound both her legs around one of his, rubbing her delta and her damp cunt upon his thigh.
"What shall I do, Tony? Tell me. Tell me, what shall I do?" She clutched his nuts and held them against her satin thigh, moved away from him and lay on her back, held his prick tightly, her knuckles white. Tony pulled her back to him.
"Just let me look at you," he said.
He did not touch her at all for a few seconds. Then he cupped both of his burning hands on her teats, put his head at her breast with his mouth between the imprisoned globes and kissed her. He drew one hand away and kissed that breast, touching the nipple with his lips, then kissed the other in the same way. His hands slipped over her body and down her sides, clutching her hips, closing about her ass.
"Will you suck my cock?" he asked thickly.
"I won't tell you." Betty was biting her lips from excitement. She took her hands away from his prick, wanting him to be strong. "I won't tell you unless you ask me with your body."
Tony grasped her shoulders and pushed her down. She slid slowly, stiffly resisting, then turned her head and slid her lips over his belly, crouching to his cock. The reporter held his staff in one hand, offered it to her mouth.
"It looked so funny at first," she said, "without any skin over the end. Your cock is naked all of the time. Doesn't it hurt?"
"Stop teasing yourself. You want to suck it as much as I want to have it sucked.
He rubbed it on her cheek and thrust it under her nose, pushed the end over her upper lip.
"Just to smell it makes your eyes look hungry," he continued. "Betty. Tell me, don't you really want to suck my prick?"
"I want to suck your cock and do anything else that would be nice for you." She opened her mouth, slid forward, closed her lips over most of the vibrant penis. She pinched her teeth into the india-rubber staff, pulled her head back and sucked the end. It was burning in her mouth.
Tony stroked the back of her head, turned onto his side where he was able to see her face. Betty's lips moved slightly on the tip, and she held her fingers nestling around the turgid cock, walking her fingers now and again up his flat belly or down his lean thighs while Tony continued to stroke her head.
His legs squeezed together over one of her teats. Betty leaned eagerly to the man's thighs, loving his hands on her, loving everything he did. She sucked his cock harder, not at all ashamed of the wet, sticky noises when it slipped back and forth in her mouth. The taste of his prick was sweet in her mouth, a strange, new taste of an unfamiliar man, intoxicating, thrilling. She moaned in her throat and crushed the cock in her hands with a primitive ferocity.
"Suck it, Betty! You've wanted it, and now it's yours! Suck it as hard as you can." Tony called softly. He laid his hands on her cheeks and pressed her lips together from the sides.
Betty responded ardently, pushed her mouth downward, her body writhing, her eyes swimming blindly. She took Tony's testicles in her hands and clung to them, their hair covered surface tickling the palms of her hands, feeling big and manly. She lifted her legs over Tony's, bearing her weight on him, lifted her lips from his cock and paused to kiss the furrowed sac which she held tenderly in her two hands.
"If there was nothing else you wanted from me, I could be contented just sucking your cock," she said. "It thrills me to have only that. If that was all you wanted to give, if you said that, and told me I could suck your prick and nothing else, I would be contented with that."
She rubbed his prick on her tongue, moved it in her mouth with her hands, shoving the tip along her cheeks and rasping the tough skin on her sharp teeth. She thrust her tongue out, his cock lying red and wet on it, the tip sticky. Her mouth closed over it with quick presses, moaning distractedly.
"Put your hands on my cunt again, Tony. Oh, Tony, put your hands on me!" she cried. She lay with her cheek against his wet penis, her mouth at his testicles. She slid her tongue out and over them, licking upward over the hair on bis belly to the dent that was his navel. Tony held her head in his hands, brushing her mouth against himself, spreading his legs and pushing her face into the hot V so that her voice was muffled. Her words were garbled against him. She wrenched her head away.
"Touch me there! Put your fingers in my cunt! See, oh, see, Tony, how bare and naked I am, and how I want you!"
Dragging his hand to her cunt, she held it between her body and his thigh. She opened her mouth, grasped for his cock, held it in her hands and tried to thrust it to her lips again. But the reporter slid away from her, lay on his back and triumphantly watched her eyes, that stared, greedy and hysterical, at his prick.
"Kneel over me," he said, "and when you have put my prick into your twat by yourself, I will fuck you." He took the girl's hand in his and dabbed it at his up-standing cock. Her fingers caught around it and held it tight.
Betty flung her body on his, pressing his shoulders and his arms and his mouth, ran her fingers through his hair and then down his sides. She took his penis in her hands and clutched it, lifted her hips and tried to thread it into her twat.
Tony put his legs together, and Betty spread hers, sitting on his thighs with one knee on each side of his legs. She raised herself to a sitting position, holding his cock so close to her body that it seemed to be a part of her. Raising and lowering her body, she rubbed her cunt with the turgid penis, arched her back and lifted herself higher until her cunt was over the end of it. Her breasts jutted sharply, like carved marble; her thighs and her fanny were damp on his legs, and hot.
Tony caught her by the shoulders, his fingers sharp in her over-heated flesh. She looked at the dense circle of hair between her legs...Tony's hair. Their bodies met, his prick slipped wet and searing into her cunt, and she twisted in ecstasy.
"It's hotter in me than it was in my hands," Betty said softly, looking at Tony with a strange intenseness. She caressed his belly and his chest while at the same time she slid her body up and down with a slow, rocking motion. Under her fanny she could feel his legs tremble. Her weight was on him now, and his cock was in her cunt so far that the very hairs that surrounded it were cramped into the lips of her cunt.
Tony's body felt strong between her legs. He twisted from side to side, and she could feel his hard muscles moving under the slick skin. She pushed one ringer straight up from his cock to his chest, then touched his tiny nipples and pinched them. She felt his testicles, soft and squashed under her ass, joggle when he moved his body.
"Did you think I was afraid to fuck you?" she asked. "Did you think I was afraid to take something I wanted...wanted very badly?"
Tony did not reply at once. He put his arms around her waist and threw her body over to one side. His prick bounced out of her twat, and Betty grabbed it quickly and slid back onto it. She jerked at Tony's balls, but only in play, and with no intention of hurting him. She rested her head on his arm and bit him.
"I thought you would like it," Tony said. "Did you like it? Do you like to fuck me?"
"I'd rather have you fuck me," Betty said. She scratched her fingers on his belly and in his pubic area where it sounded rough, as though she were scratching sandpaper.
"Your hair is like wire. Like fine black wire, and mine is soft and silky, like a kitten's. See? See how it is with us?" Betty moved back and they both looked down along their bellies. Tony's cock, red, moist, bridged the little gap between them. Betty slid her hips away from the reporter, and his prick jumped out. He took it in his hand and moved close to her again.
"Do you know what I'm going to do with you? Can you guess what's going to happen now?" he asked.
"You're going to stick your prick into me."
He laughed, and moved forward, slipping the end of his penis on her thigh and into her twat.
"You don't like it much," he said. He moved his hips back, then shoved his cock into her with greater force.
"I do like it. I like it a lot. Oh, Tony, I like to be fucked! I like everything that has something to do with being fucked. Do it hard like that again."
"What, for instance?" He held his prick with just the tip touching her, advanced it a fraction, and then withdrew it. "What has something to do with being fucked?"
Betty tightened her legs around his and pulled herself forward onto his cock. She put her fingers between his thighs to feel where it had gone into her, and tickled his testicles, jerked herself back and forth. Then:
"Anything. Having your hands on me. Or Boston's. Having my teats or my cunt sucked. Putting your prick or Boston's prick or maybe anybody's prick into my mouth. Kissing you all over, and getting my mouth into all the funny places where it feels good to you, and where no really well bred girl would ever let her mouth get. Playing with your cock...oh, all of it!"
"But that's just fucking," Tony teased. He slid his prick out of Betty's twat and held it between her legs, moving it to the hot, gripping place where her thighs met her body. Her hair tickled against his cock, and her thighs felt soft and smooth at that place.
"Then it's just fucking I like," she said. "But if all that is just fucking, then there are a lot of women who don't fuck, even if they think they do. I know. Women talk about what they do with men, the same as men talk about what they did with the women they screwed last night."
"You said something about Boston. Something about sucking his prick. Do you still feel that way about him?"
"Yes. Whatever it was I liked about him at first, I still like. I'd like to be able to go to bed with him any time he asked me." She looked anxiously at Tony, to see how he was taking this news. "I like the way he fucks me."
Tony smiled wrily, a bit sheepishly.
"I thought this was an exclusive. I didn't know it was just a regular press release."
"Don't be nasty. Put your prick back in me."
Betty twisted her body under Tony's and pushed herself upward onto his cock, guided it with her hands and drove herself onto it.
"I like the way you fuck me," she said. "Why don't you fuck me?'*
"You're a bitch!"
"Don't Don't say that Put your prick in me." She reached for it as he drew it away. "I'm not Don't! Don't! I want you to fuck me. Let me! Yes! Let me have it.
Slowly his penis slid into her, and slowly she eased her body back to the couch. She held him desperately, drew his head down to her shoulders.
"Betty." Her eyes were closed. She was sliding herself up and down on his cock, holding it in her hands, and her hands were wet from touching it. "Betty, you're not a bitch."
"Tony. Tony! I'm spending!"
His cock burst ripely in her, making her feel heavy and swollen and completed...
He knew as soon as he came into the office that it had happened. It was in her eyes, in the lazy, heavy movements of her body. It made him feel queer, now that he knew it had actually happened, but he did not feel hurt, or angry, as he had been afraid he might. He merely felt more possessive toward her. When Tony was out of the way for a minute, he asked her simply:
"Was it everything you wanted it to be?"
Betty smiled at him and nodded, her fingers straightening his tie. It was almost as though she was closer to him now. He caught her fingers with his mouth as they slid on his shoulder, and kissed them affectionately. When Tony came back:
"What's in the box, Boston? Something for the lab?"
Boston smiled mysteriously and lifted the box from the chair on which he had set it, carried it into the inner office and put it on his desk. He fished out his penknife and cut the manila cords:
"Is Celine around?"
"He went out just a few minutes after you did," the secretary said. "He said he needed relaxation and was going to a burlesque show."
Boston stuffed wrapping paper into the waste basket, tangled the cord into a ball and put it away in the top drawer of his desk.
"It's amazing how people get away just when I need them most. Well, we'll have to get along without him. Tony, you can start sharpening your pencils. Your whodunit story is just about ready to break."
"You know who killed Cartwright?"
"I'll demonstrate for you. The answer has been staring me in the face since the night the man was killed, but I had to fall over it in a bar this afternoon. First of all, though, do you remember what we found out about the car the kid was driving when he was knocked off?"
"You said the window rollers had been wedged. I hadn't noticed it."
"That wasn't all. But let's start from just that, and then you tell me who killed Cartwright."
"Do you want me to call a policeman?" Betty asked flippantly. "I really believe that I'm going to get my investment back." She pulled up a chair beside Tony's. Boston sat easily on the edge of his desk, beside the carton which he had not yet broken open, and lighted a cigarette.
"On the night that Cartwright was killed, Tony," he began, "I called your office from his apartment. The phone I used was in the library, next to the room in which he had been sitting just before he went through the window. I had a cigarette, just as I have now. Watch."
He pointed to the stream of smoke that rose from his cigarette straight up into the air for a few inches, then was caught in an invisible air current and dispersed.
"This office and every modern apartment building in town," Boston went on, "is ventilated by an elaborate pumping system that drags in fresh air, washes it, maybe puts a few extra vitamins in, for all I know, and forces it through a series of vents which are more or less concealed, thus insuring sweet, clean air for the baby who has been smart enough to pick parents with an income that enables them to live in such a place. In the library, therefore, the smoke from my cigarette did just what it is doing now. It was washed away."
"What has that got to do with the mysterious box you won't open?" Betty asked impatiently. She hunched her chair closer and looked for some lettered hint of what was inside. Boston continued:
"But the ventilating system had been blocked off in the room in which Cartwright was killed. With the blinds drawn, it took about three minutes for that ancient boiler our friend Donovan smokes to make the place unlivable. Now--"
"The butler!" the secretary exclaimed. And in the same instant:
"Or someone in his confidence," Tony added.
"Probably the butler," Boston remarked, opening the drawer of his desk where he kept his liquor, and taking out a bottle, "for this reason: he was too far away when the thing happened. It would have established his alibi just as completely if he had merely gone to the corner drugstore for a few minutes. But he was afraid. He had several days to think over the part he was to have in the death of Cartwright. The funeral of his old schoolteacher or elderly aunt or whoever she was came at exactly the right time. But the average person doesn't go to the trouble of attending an affair of that sort. He might send flowers, but he wouldn't ride all night on a train to get there."
"Do you think he monkeyed with the windows on the kid's car, too?" Tony asked.
"No. You remember the story...that he had driven two girls to their home upstate and started home that same evening. He stopped off at a road house for a drink. Half an hour later, at about twelve o'clock, they found the car. The windows hadn't been touched when he left New York-he wouldn't have driven out of the city with them like that-so someone must have been trailing him in another car, and did the job either before he started back, or when he stopped at the road house.
"I'm not very brilliant," his secretary said. "I still don't see who killed them or how it was done."
"Get me one of those globes Celine has put away on the shelf in the laboratory," Boston requested of her. He poured three drinks into glasses he had taken from his desk, and charged them with soda. When the girl came back with the fragile sphere cupped in one hand, he had opened the carton and was on his knees under the desk, plugging a wire into the floor socket.
"A phonograph!" she exclaimed. "Are we going to dance? Tony, may I have this one?"
"There's a drink for you," Boston said. "Sit down and listen to this. It isn't exactly dance music."
"That looks like a nice machine," offered Tony, who had examined it interestedly.
"I got a pretty good one. I wanted to be certain of good reproduction." Boston switched on the mechanism, and as the turntable commenced to revolve, placed on it the single record that had been packed with the machine. He set the needle in the groove and sat down behind the desk.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" the secretary asked, holding the glass globe toward him. Boston took it and placed it on the desk.
"That sounds like...that is...Zona Avalon," said Tony, as a voice broke through the thread of the melody pouring from the phonograph.
"It sounds pretty awful," Betty said. "I'm glad she didn't make very many records. Why don't you get some good ones, Boston?"
The recording played through to the end, and the detective lifted the playing arm and shut off the mechanism. Then he finished his drink.
"Well," Tony asked blankly. "Is that all?"
"I don't get it," Betty put in. "Keep your pants on. Let's play the other side," Boston suggested.
He turned the record and put the playing arm in place. As soon as the music had started, he got up from the desk and set the glass ball on the top of the filing cabinet.
"Now watch that," he said.
The record played through two choruses, and then the voice of Zona Avalon took up the melody. She sang breathlessly through most of it, then held a strong minor note that buzzed vibrantly in the needle head of the machine.
"Look!" said Boston.
The glass ball suddenly exploded, shattering into a thousand splintered bits that gleamed like ice on the carpet where they fell.
"Then Zona killed him," Tony said as he stood up to shut off the phonograph. "And that radio in the car, Boston..."
"That radio was set to the same station that Cartwright was listening to when he got his. I've checked with the broadcasting company and found that she was on the air when the boy was killed."
"But I can't believe it, Boston! Remember, I talked with her. She seemed straight. And what has she gained by his death? She's out of job right now."
"She didn't have any more to do with it than Marconi. This job was engineered by a scientist working under the direction of someone accustomed to utilizing the jealousies and bitterness of men toward each other, without ever exposing himself to anything unpleasant."
The door of the outer office opened and Celine came in. He looked at the apparatus on the desk with interest, but without comment.
"Didn't you go to the burlesque?" Betty asked him pulling down her skirt when she saw him looking at her legs. Celine took off his glasses and wiped them on his beard.
"They cheats," he said. "When they has only one little pieces over their ass, they hop them behind a curtain. I gots back my monies. There is better to see in this damn office, Floozies."
He went into his laboratory, leaving the girl open-mouthed.
Tony got up. "I might as well go home and get this story in shape. Then I can run in the first few sticks when you break it. You can call me at the house if you want me. And by the way, this niece of Cartwright's is at his apartment now."
He talked with Boston for a few more minutes, and then left. The detective went into the laboratory:
"I'd like you to get a couple of light bulbs, Celine. Cut them so that you can set one of these bulbs into the head of them. They ought to be frosted, too. Can you do that?"
"Easy I can do that. But they don't work then. They don't lights."
"That doesn't matter, as long as they look like regular bulbs. I'd like one by tonight. And no smells, if you don't mind."
"No stink bombers? Let me tell you something, Mr. Boston. I does not tell the girl exactly how it was. I tooks a stink bomber to the show and brokes it. I does not get back the monies."
"Good," said Boston. "That's just how I feel about them. But remember, no smells in these."
He went back to the outer office and found Betty yawning. He patted her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. He looked down the front of her dress at the valley of her breasts, but when he kissed her again, he was careful to kiss only her throat.
"You don't have to act like that. Nothing between us has stopped. It hasn't gone any further than it was, that's all," she said, pulling one of his hands down to her teats.
"You look tired. And completely contented. I didn't think you were in the mood."
"This is the mood I'm in," she murmured, turning her head and laying her mouth to the front of his trousers. "I'll always be in this mood as long as you're around. Just remember that."
He stroked her gold hair while she rubbed her nose on his prick. She opened his buttons and felt for his penis and testicles, slid them out and kissed them.
"Celine is liable to surprise us," he warned her. But she held him close.
"See how quickly you get stiff when I do this? Here. Lean back against the desk."
She trumpeted her lips, snatched the tip of his cock into them, sucked in his whole prick while her finger played lightly under his nuts. She pushed her head hard against him, leaning far forward on her chair. Boston's hands squeezed her around the breasts.
"It's better if you have your clothes off. If we both have our clothes off."
"We can't now. Not here."
She looked at his cock, stiff and full. She closed her hand around it and deliberately rubbed the tip over her mouth, touched it with her tongue, put it back between her lips.
"Betty, you're not doing this just to show me something? If it's because you think I feel hurt about you and Tony, you needn't." He turned her face up to his and stared at her gravely. She shook her head out of bis hands and laid her cheek back on his cock, felt it beat boldly and hot on her satin skin.
"Can't we lock Celine into the laboratory? I need you now. Don't say that about Tony. It isn't like that. You know that. Boston, Boston, I'll never stop wanting you and needing you to fuck me!"
The detective moved gently away from Betty, distractedly running his fingers through his hair. The girl watched him button his trousers.
"Then come to my place tonight," she said. "There isn't any reason why you shouldn't let me suck you off right now, but if you won't, Boston, come to stay with me tonight!"
But he shook his head.
"I have a date."
"A date?"
"With a redhead. She doesn't know about the date yet. I'm going to surprise her. Have you heard of Miss Hayes?"
Tony Shaw got out of the taxi and turned to the doorman:
"Can you direct me to the apartment of Miss Hayes?" he asked.
He asked almost the same question of the elevator boy a moment later. Then, leaving the lift, he walked directly to the indicated door and covered the bell button with his hand. But he did not press the button, and when the lighted car had dropped out of sight, he walked quietly down the hall to the emergency stairs. He went down a half flight, sat down and glanced at his watch.
He sat on the steps, smoked a cigarette, and waited. After a while he glanced at his watch, went up the stairs again and back to the elevator. The car appeared, he was dropped to street level, and walked out of the building. The doorman signaled a cab and assisted him in.
"Grand Central Station ."
As the taxi slowed for the first light he glanced quickly back through the rear window. Another cab had just left the curb. He grinned, but did not look back again.
He left the taxi on the Forty-Second Street side of Grand Central and walked through the restaurant into the lofty corridor, stopping to buy a paper, and went past a row of telephone booths to the subway entrance. Taking the shuttle to Times Square, he walked to a downtown platform and took a local train.
"Is Miss Hayes in?"
Boston stepped inside, and the maid disappeared. He became interested in a small vase in the foyer, and did not look up at once when he heard footsteps returning. The cool voice of a young woman interrupted him.
"Mr. Boston, I believe?"
The detective straightened quickly.
"I beg your pardon. I was just noticing the vase. I didn't see it last time I was here."
"A compliment to your observance. I placed it there this morning. Did you want to see me?"
"I did, Miss Hayes." Boston moved forward, holding his package under one arm. "Urgently."
"I can't imagine why. Our previous meeting left little to be said."
"There remain a few things which must be explained. May L..?"
"In the library. Leave your things here. The girl will take care of them."
Still clinging to his package, watching the soft roll of the girl's hips, Boston followed her.
"Are we alone?" he asked as soon as they were seated.
"You make this seem very mysterious. Are you afraid of witnesses?"
"In this case, yes. Are we alone?"
The seriousness of his manner left the girl somewhat deflated.
"The maid will be in her room."
"She's from your uncle's other house, isn't she? Then the butler has gone back there?"
"No. He's left altogether. Why do you ask that?"
"You will understand that in a few minutes. By the way, I am expecting a phone call.
"A call here? I must say-"
"Don't say it yet," Boston grinned. "Let me explain this whole affair. I know that you'll be interested."
"I would appreciate an explanation of a great many things. My uncle's death seems to have unearthed a great deal which requires explanation."
"Ah!" Boston leaned forward. "Then you have run into some of it too! It's this business with Faber, isn't it?"
"Suppose you tell me what you have to tell."
"Let me guess something first. Faber has been rather interested in the business your uncle left, hasn't he?"
"He evidently had a great deal more to do with my uncle's affairs than I imagined at first."
"He wants you to part with the actual operation of the plants under his supervision?"
"According to Mr. Cain, the manager, he was in charge of part of the business when my uncle was alive."
"Evidently he had his stooges lined up a long time before your uncle was killed. You, of course, made an effort to check on that?"
"Naturally. But it has been very difficult to learn anything."
"I can see that it would be. Now, just one more question: Did Faber suggest that you live here instead of staying at the hotel?"
"Yes, he did. It's much simpler for me to be here, of course."
Boston reflectively sucked the stone of his ring. Then he opened the package he carried and held it toward the girl. She looked in while he questioned her:
"What do you see?"
"A light bulb, of course," she said.
"Not an ordinary light bulb. Look at it closely."
"It has a seam in it. A very fine seam. What about that? Am I being obtuse?"
"This is a light bulb very much like the one that was the cause of your uncle's death. The seam shows where a delicate glass globe has been fused in." Quickly Boston explained it and the working of it to the girl, acquainting her with what he had discovered.
"But it sounds fantastic," the girl exclaimed when he had finished.
"Absolutely fantastic," the detective agreed. "But if you spend a little time in the laboratories of your munitions plant, you will see men doing things that are far more fantastic. But I don't advise you to do that just now."
"You say my cousin's death was caused by one of these too," the girl said, still unconvinced. "But really, a light bulb in the car..."
"They didn't have to disguise it as a light bulb, in his case. A globe of this size could very easily be hidden under a seat. The pieces were of course lost in the wreckage.
The telephone rang.
"That must be your call," the girl said.
"I have it," Boston said to the maid, who was on the extension. Then, as the receiver clicked: "Tony?"
"I'm in Staten Island," the reporter's voice came back. "I don't know if I lost them or if they just gave up. I was followed to the station room of the ferry, but I haven't seen anyone on this side. I have an idea they got wise to the fact that I was just giving them a chase. They are probably on their way back now. There were two men. And by the way, either the doorman or the elevator boy seems to be a lookout. Maybe both. Did you get past them all right?"
"In the service entrance and up the stairs. But Tony, I just thought of something. They might have this wire tapped."
"Cheerful. After all the running around I've done. Want me to come up and get slugged too, when you try to get out of there?"
"That won't be necessary at all. Listen, Tony, I'll call you in an hour and tell you what I'm going to do. I'll call you at Betty's."
"Betty's?"
"Yes, Betty's place, you lousy bastard. Give her my love. All my love."
He hung up and walked back to the chair he had been occupying. The girl's eyes questioned him. Nice eyes, he thought. Oh well...
"Faber has some of his blood hounds watching you. That's why he suggested that you move here-easier to keep track of you than at the hotel. Damn, that son of a bitch is lazy!"
"Then they know you're here?"
"I don't think so. The fellow who just called me drew them off for a while. But I'll be seen when I leave."
Boston rubbed a slight bulge near his left armpit and smiled.
"I don't expect to have any trouble."
The girl looked down at the carpet. She rubbed her heel over the nap of it. Then:
"I don't want to stay here alone. I'm afraid to be alone after what you've told me."
"I hadn't thought of that." Boston settled back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the arm of it. "I suppose there is the possibility that Faber may realize he's overplayed his hand and try to clean everything up."
"He's been annoyed when I've tried to learn anything about the business except what he wants to tell me. He hasn't been really nasty, but...but he's asked so many questions... I'm sure he's suspicious."
"If I were in his shoes, I'd be suspicious of everybody, including myself," Boston said. "How far did you go in trying to check the losses the estate has had recently?"
"Not far enough to learn that they represented blackmail payments, as you say some of them were. And I never dreamed about the illegal shipments of arms you mention."
"Faber expected to take that end of the business over for himself. He and the manager, this Cain, could handle that very nicely."
"As far as I'm concerned, they can have the whole thing. Really, Mr. Boston, I don't want to run a munitions business. I'd rather be manufacturing ...baby carriages, or...anything else."
"That's something to consider later. The problem now is to force Faber into a move that will finish him. Something that will give him away."
"You mean that he can't just be arrested? After he's murdered at least two men?"
"Technically, we haven't got a thing on him. And by now he and your uncle's manager-Cain-have probably covered every trace of illegality at the plants."
"You make it sound hopeless."
"I don't mean to. There's a weak spot somewhere."
"I'm sorry that I was so rude to you at first.' That check you returned..,Fll make out another one tomorrow."
"Don't worry too much about that." His eyes ran down the girl's slim legs and back up again. In contrast to Betty's sturdy beauty, she was almost frail. But her slim figure was perfectly proportioned.
"I'm so glad that we are going to be friends, Mr. Boston. I really liked you that day at the hotel, even if I did think you were trying to cheat me."
Her breasts, he saw, were almost perfect ovals under her dress. Rather small ovals. They would feel hard in a man's hands, he guessed. Or perhaps hard was the wrong word. Say firm, then. That was trite. But that I was just what they would be.
"My friends omit the 'Mr.'," he said quietly.
"Boston? Just Boston? I suppose people would get used to calling you that, just as I have gotten used to my nick-name. I won't tell you what it was, though. I'd rather be called by my first name: Virginia,"
And if you lifted her dress, he was thinking, her legs would be fuller than you expected. And softer under your hands. Her body would be a surprise. Almost any woman's body is a surprise.
"I've been very lonely in New York," she said. "My uncle, you know, was very queer about somethings. He didn't have many friends, and if he had had, I wouldn't have known them. He didn't pay much attention to our side of the family, and none at all to me after my parents died. I was a stenographer, believe it or not."
"You haven't any friends in New York?"
"I have one now," she smiled. "A very good one, I believe." Boston moved with some lack of ease. He had noticed, but could not be sure of, the intimate note in her voice.
"Unfortunately, we are more or less stranded here for the night, I am afraid. Otherwise, as your only friend in this friendless city, I should be glad to take you on a Cook's tour of the place."
"Two people should be able to find entertainment at home, Mr....Boston."
No doubt about it, now. She was leading him on. He felt easier now that he was certain. The girl took a cigarette from the box on the table and offered one to Boston. He stood up and picked up a lighter from the table. Her fingers closed around his wrist to steady the flame.
The girl looked up through the veil of smoke, the tiny flame dancing in her eyes.
"I've been very, very lonely, Boston," she said.
Tony sat on the floor, his head in Betty's lap. She was naked. He pushed his shoulder between her knees and laid his cheek on her belly.
"Why don't you take off your clothes now? It seems funny for me to be naked and you to be dressed." She touched his hair and his ears.
"It was your idea."
"That was ten minutes ago. I wanted to undress for you then. Now I want you to undress for me."
"You can get at my cock when I have my clothes on. Look." He opened his trousers and showed his prick. "I don't have to take my clothes off to fuck you."
"I could just pick up my dress, too. I've been fucked even when I had underclothes on. That isn't much fun, though. Let me see your prick again. Hold it this way."
She bent forward in the chair, taking his penis in her fingers. Tony took advantage of the opportunity to kiss her teats. He held his open mouth under them, and when she bent forward, the nipple of one dropped into his lips.
"Tony! Don't bite it!" She pulled away from him and touched the nipple gently. "You're as greedy as a pig."
"I'm as hungry as a pig. Why doesn't it give milk? When I was a boy we had a cow, and it-"
"There's some in the ice box. You mustn't do that. I don't want to hear about the cow."
"Betty, Betty..."
"What?"
"May I suck your cunt?"
She opened her thighs to him, and his burning mouth found the lips of her sex. He shoved his tongue between them, and made a loud noise doing it. She twisted and closed her legs.
"You're embarrassing," she said.
"I can't suck you without making noises. It's the way you're made."
"I don't make noises when I suck your cock."
"You do. Anyway, that's different."
"No." She slipped out of the chair and ran her arms around his waist. She fell upon him, caught his prick in her lips. "There."
"Your mouth is wet. Your lips. Leave it that way, then."
She rubbed her lips on his thigh and then on his testicles. She opened his belt and pulled his trousers down.
"If you won't undress for me, I'll undress you myself; and why can't I leave my mouth wet?" she said. "Are you afraid that someone will walk in and guess
I've been sucking you off? Are you ashamed of having me suck your cock? If you are..."
Tony grabbed for his trousers and pulled them up. He started to unbutton his shirt:
"Betty, never take a man's trousers off first. It makes him look funny, and he'll never feel the same toward you again."
"You think you look romantic that way, with just your pants," Betty jibed. "Like a shipwreck. You're vain. You're proud of your chest."
"I'm proud of my cock," he told her. He pressed it against her belly. Betty took it in her hands and made a pretense of mounting a horse.
"I'm proud of it too. But I wish they hadn't cut the end off it. I like to play with the loose skin on the end. It's not tender, either. You can't feel anything when you fuck me."
"I don't know where you get those wonderful ideas of yours. I can screw you twice as long with my cock fixed this way. Wait. Don't move. Don't tell me I can't feel. It's going right into your cunt."
"It's too dry. I don't like to stand up, either. You won't fuck me very long this way. You can't fuck as long as Boston, either. Boston fucks me better than anybody."
"Forget about Boston."
"I won't forget about Boston. I wish he were here right now. He'd show you how to fuck me."
"That ale was too much for the little girl. You don't know what you're saying. All right, let's lie on the floor."
"No. Not on the floor. I always get rug-burns. And I do know what I'm saying. If Boston were here, I'd fuck him, because I like Boston a lot. I like you a lot, too. Maybe I'd let both of you fuck me. Would you like that?"
"On the couch, then." He lifted her and carried her to it. He set her easily upon it. "And shut up about Boston...dear."
"When I'm with Boston I think about you. I must be a little crazy. Really, I'm not drunk."
"All right. You're not drunk. You're crazy. Have it your own way. But here, put this in your mouth."
Betty let the tip of his cock slide over her lower lip, ran her tongue under it, sucked it a bit and let it go. Tony stood by the side of the couch, watching her push her lips down its length and back again. She lay in front of him, on her back, pushed her tongue straight up and licked the underside. She placed her hands on his hips and pushed him around with his back to her.
"I thought it would be nice if I kissed your backside."
"What did you call it?"
"Your behind. Your ass. Move back. No. Here...that way."
With her head between his thighs, she kissed him, his legs and the cheeks of his ass, and his testicles. She made the V of his legs wet with her mouth, spread the wetness with her lips, kissed his ass-hole, pulled him back to the couch until her head was between his legs and her lips on his cock.
"I don't care if they cut the end off it," she said. "I like your prick just the way it is." She kissed the bottom side of it first, then the tip. "Tony... Tony, if I suck you this way will you spend? Will you spend while I'm sucking you, Tony? In my mouth?"
"Do you want me to?"
"Yes. In my mouth. I want you to spend in my mouth, Tony."
"Let me get on the couch."
"I like it this way. Your legs squeeze me. Do that...squeeze me with your legs, Tony." She held his thighs with her arms and hugged them close to her head, bit the furrowed sac dangling in her face. Bit it with a measured ferocity.
"You'll tire yourself. It's better on the couch. Don't be obstinate."
"Then you get on the couch and I'll kneel on the floor. It's more appropriate to the occasion for me to be kneeling when I suck your cock."
She slithered her body to the floor and bent over Tony as she pushed him backward. She dropped her hands limply on his body and slid them restlessly over his skin. Her head rested on his knee and she played with his penis and testicles, curling her hair around her fingers, poking his cock with the tip of one finger. His staff was big in her hand, the tip swelling and bulb-shaped.
"If you don't stop that, it will be too late to suck it," he said, running his thumb along her spine. Betty's shoulders shrugged with pleasure and she stroked her breasts on his knee.
"You wouldn't like that, would you? Even if I did it like this..." She put the end of his prick in her mouth and sucked it while she rolled the rest of it in her fingers. "Tony, tell me: Did you ever have a girl suck your cock while another one played with you?"
"No." He pressed his hips to her face. "Would you like to?"
"I guess so. Yes. I'd like to. You can't talk and suck me too. Would you rather be fucked?"
"Did you ever fuck two girls together, Tony? Wait. Tell me that."
"Yes. Suck my cock, Betty."
"More than two? How many? I have to know. Tell me, Tony."
"Three, once. That was too many. Two together are fun. One is enough. You are enough."
"I had to know. Because I...two boys, one time...we drank too much But I didn't..."
"You didn't what?" Tony sat up, looking bored
"I didn't get screwed. Not by both of them together. All right, you don't care. I won't suck you off, then."
"Yes, you will!" Tony sat up suddenly and caught her with his legs, held her mouth against his throbbing penis. Betty let him struggle, keeping her lips tightly closed.
"See, you couldn't make me do it. You might be able to rape a girl, but she has to want to suck you off. Because if you tried to make her do it she could hurt you. But I won't hurt you now. Put it back in my mouth again. Put it in now."
"You're very good to me," Tony said sarcastically. But he slipped his wet prick between her lips.
Betty pushed her head down and sucked. Her tongue moved back and forth on the bottom side of his cock, and she nestled his testicles in her hand.
"And you said I made a noise!" Tony exclaimed. Betty stopped sucking him.
"Come in my mouth, Tony." "I'm ready to come now," he said.
Betty answered in her throat, for his prick was in her mouth again. She sucked harder, and his cock surged between her lips.
His jism spread slowly through her mouth. She held it on her tongue, let it slide back, and gulped. It was sweet. She sucked for more...
"A fine time for the phone to ring."
"Better now than five minutes ago. Don't bother. It'll be Boston." He picked up the receiver.
"I'll see you tomorrow," was all Boston had to say.
"It's fun if you do it right, Boston," the girl said from across the room. "Don't you want to try it?"
He turned away from the telephone and looked at her sitting there. She was curled cozily in the big chair, both naked legs over one arm of it. One of her arms was behind her head, and her armpit was exposed. The breast on that side of her body was lifted higher than the other. He noted the colored nipples, her lower legs' slow swinging. He could not see the rest of her body because she was sitting sideways. He stood up, and then he could see her.
"You're a very little girl," he said, coming to her chair. "Something could go wrong too easily, and that wouldn't be fun."
She touched his nuts, made room for him to sit beside her, and put her free arm around him. Her arm slipped down his side, and she pushed her fingers along his thigh.
"Nothing would go wrong. I've had three men do it to me, and nothing ever went wrong. I like it. And they liked it, too."
"I know. It's fun," Boston agreed. He put his nose under one of her teats and nudged it.
"You were going to do it. You were all ready to do it when we were screwing, and then you didn't. And you're getting another big just thinking about it."
Boston's eyes followed her hand as it slid to her thigh and crossed to his cock.
"What do you call that?" he asked.
"A big. I knew a girl who used to call it that. Well, it is big, isn't it."
Boston cupped the edge of his hand under one small breast and shook it. He squeezed it and then let it go. Virginia moved her hand up and down and his prick grew harder. She played with one of the big veins in it, pressing it with her thumb, then releasing it and watching the blood shoot through again.
"Didn't you ever bugger that girl you were telling me about? Betty?"
"That sounds awful when you say it," Boston said. He licked between her breasts, licked her throat.
"Won't she let you?"
"She'd let me. We didn't get around to it, that's all. And I only told you that about her so you wouldn't think I was-"
"I know," Virginia said hurriedly. "We're just friends. Boston, won't you bugger me now? If it isn't any fun, we'll stop. Let's get into the bed."
He had his hand between her thighs, one finger between the lips of her sex. It was wet when he took it away, and he wiped it in the soft curls that spread over her delta.
"We'd better take our clothes," Virginia said when they stood up. "We won't be coming back here." She gathered her own under one arm and skipped ahead of him.
"It's a little too masculine for me," she said when they were in the bedroom, "but it's nice. Wait, I'll be right back."
She left the room for a minute, and the detective threw himself on the huge bed. When she came back she jumped on the bed beside him and slid her body over his.
"I could eat you, you lovely thing," she addressed his prick. She tapped it with a warning forefinger. "But if you hurt me, I'll bite your head off!"
She drew the skin back from the tip and kissed the moist underside. Then she rolled onto her back, her legs open and straight up in the air, toes wriggling, and turned toward the ceiling. Boston crouched on his knees below her, his shoulders braced against her knees at the undersides. She lowered her legs and he crept further between them.
"A pillow!" Virginia said. "I'll have to have a pillow to get my fanny high enough." She dragged one down from the head of the bed, lifted her hips, and helped Boston shove it under her.
"Can you see me, Boston? Can you see my funny little ass?"
"You don't know how little it is."
"I know how big you are. But I can't see your cock! I won't be able to see what's happening."
"I could get you a mirror." Boston put the tip of his penis against Virginia's tight hole and pressed upon it.
"That would be silly. Oh, Boston! Look! Look! I can see everything in that mirror over there! I can see almost all of it."
"Don't do that again," Boston said, relaxing again. "I thought you saw six thugs coming out of the closet."
He put his palms on the girl's belly, his thumbs along her cunt. Her own hands crossed his reaching toward his cock.
"I'll be good. I won't say a word. I won't say a word if you'll bugger me. I'll...I'11...0h, Boston, it's going in me!"
She wriggled her body, and Boston pressed forward. The tip, now more of his prick slid smoothly into the tight hole. He dug his thumbs into her cunt, straining forward as she pressed down. His prick tensed as her muscles relaxed, growing as it was pushed in.
"Your thumbs. Not there. Put them in the center. Boston, Boston, don't stop. Put it in. In further. More..."
He rubbed the little knob under his thumb-tips, moved his hips slightly.
"It feels good when you do that," Virginia whispered urgently. "Do it faster. Harder."
Boston shoved his cock deeper, fucking her steadily, squeezing her cunt with his thumbs.
"What would happen if I spent right now?" he asked. "Now, with my cock in your fanny?"
"I'd sprout wings and fly. Or I'd burst with joy. I'd faint. Spend, Boston. Right now. But rub my cunt harder."
She did not fly, nor burst, nor even faint. But when he spent, his prick throbbing out the jism, both thumbs deep in her cunt, she cried out rapturously, herself spending.
"Good morning, Mr. Boston."
"Good morning, Miss... I'm afraid I've forgotten your name."
"Let it go," said Betty. "I'll remember it later." She half spun on the swivel chair as Boston hung up his hat. "Did you spend a pleasant evening?"
"Edifying. Very edifying. And you?"
"Marvelous. Ah, Brooklyn Bridge at midnight! The lights, the stars in the water...
"I thought you were yawning when I came in."
"The dog! He's probably home in bed. I would fall for a man who works on a morning paper. Mother always warned me."
She handed Boston the morning's mail. He shuffled through it, dropping most of it into the waste basket. "How hard have you fallen?"
Betty tapped her white teeth with one fingernail, looking a little sheepish. "Must I confess all?"
"All. To the last piddling squeak of the bed." "This is serious, then. I don't know, Boston. I'm not certain yet. But I think maybe I'd like to take up your offer and move in with you."
"I warned you. I said he'd beat you."
"He's nice. But now that I've been fucked by him, it seems that was all I wanted. I don't think he'd make as good a house pet as you."
"Just another woman, talking about her own petty affairs." Boston was discarding another quarter of his mail as soon as the envelopes were opened. "Not a word of inquiry about anything I might have done last night."
"You fucked that Hayes person. I could tell that just by looking at you, if I didn't know it already."
Boston squinted at her through the smoke of his cigarette and frowned.
"Hayes person," he mimicked. "She's a nice girl. Everything is going to be all right."
"By the way," Betty said, "maybe you'd better go in and turn off Celine. He's already made about six thousand light bulbs like the one you wanted, and I can't convince him that you won't need any more. I'm afraid to go into the laboratory, too. He caught me there and started to feel me up. And he's pinned a lot of pictures on the walls in there. He's scandalous."
"He's harmless," Boston laughed, dropping the remaining letters on the desk. "If you don't have anything better to do, you can answer some of these."
"I know he's harmless; that's why it's so scandalous," said Betty. "Oh, I let him feel me a little bit, Boston. It didn't cost anything, and it seemed to make him awfully happy."
"That big, soft heart of yours is going to get you into trouble some day," Boston said as he left her.
He was sitting in the inner office talking on the phone to a man who wanted to turn off the office electricity, when Tony walked in.
"You're up early," Betty greeted him. "Won't they be surprised down at the paper when you get to work on time!"
"I said I'd mail you a check!" Boston shouted at the phone. He hung up and left his desk.
"I'm not going to work." Tony grinned at both of them. "The boss called me a little while ago and told me I don't work on the Star any more. I got my dates mixed, and yesterday wasn't my day off. So he said..."
"I can imagine," said Betty. "Oh, Tony, that's lousy."
"That's swell," Boston contradicted. "Tony, we've got a day's work to do, but if we're lucky you'll have your story by tonight."
"And no paper to print it in." "With this story in your pocket, you can write your own ticket on any paper in town." "Maybe. Well, what's up?"
"Cartwright's butler has skipped. But not far. He won't go far from Faber...yet. If we can dig him up, wave one of Celine's phony light bulbs under his nose..."
"Find him today? In this place? Boston, you're crazy."
"Then Tm crazy. But I'll bet it can be done. Don't bother to take your hat off; we're leaving right now."
"So you did it. I really didn't think you could. Did you mail yourself to him?" The girl looked from Tony to Boston and back. "My heroes!"
"Old Eagle-Eye!" Tony nodded to Boston. "Ask him. I still don't know. We went to trucking houses, employment agencies, half a dozen brokerage concerns... Don't ask me how. We called hotels... My God, what a day!"
"And where is he?"
"We don't know," said Boston. "That is, we don't know where he is at this very minute. But we know where he lives. He has a two-room apartment downtown. We'll see him tonight."
"It's almost six already. I didn't leave, because you said you'd be back. By the way, there's a registered letter for you. I'll get it."
"Open it," Boston invited, when she returned with it in her hand.
"Do I dare? If the government doesn't sue me, maybe that Hayes person will. That's who it's from."
"Open it," Boston invited again. "It's a sort of surprise."
"Fifteen thousand good green, American dollars," Betty murmured, staring at the pale green slip. "I guess you did fuck her, Boston. You must have fucked her good."
"That makes it my treat," said Boston. "Let's have supper at Primo's."
"That spaghetti made me sleepy," said Tony. He stretched on the couch and rolled lazily. "You go up and catch the bad men, Boston. I'll stay here with Betty."
"I'm not going to stay here." Betty shook her head. "I'm going with you and catch crooks."
"Woman's place is in the adding machine," Tony said. "You're going to stay here, with me. Boston's going to go out and be a hero and get shot. Aren't you, Boston?"
"Don't say that. Don't say that. Boston, can't I go with you?"
"No. You were slapped once with a gun; wasn't that enough?"
"But I feel reckless. I want to slap somebody with a gun."
"She can't drink." Tony lowered his head to peer under Betty's skirt. "She can't drink at all. Look at what a little of Primo's red ink has done to her. This isn't going to be reckless, darling. We are cold, methodical gang busters, closing in ruthlessly on our prey. Businesslike. No fuss, no muss, no bother. The magic Chef does it all."
"Boston, make Tony stop looking at me like that. No; Tony, you make Boston stop looking."
"Come here and sit by me, Betty."
"The couch is more comfortable, Betty. And Boston has his work to think of. I don't have any work any more. Come and sit here."
"I'll sit on the couch with both of you." And as Boston looked at his watch: "Is it getting late?"
"We have plenty of time," said Boston. He let himself be dragged to the couch.
"Yes," said Tony to Betty as she whispered in his ear. She turned to Boston and whispered.
"Of course," he answered.
"Then it looks as though I'll have to fuck you both," Betty said.
"Pardon me." Tony half rose. "I'm leaving. I was just going, really. I can't stay."
"Don't be vulgar," said Betty. She pulled him down again. "Why can't you both fuck me?"
"Well, you see, it's like this..." from Boston.
"You're a nice girl, Betty. We like you," Tony finished.
"If I'm a nice girl, why won't you fuck me? You just don't want me to have any fun. You, Tony, you've fucked two girls. Three girls. Why can't I have two men? Did you ever go to bed with more than one woman, Boston?"
"That hasn't anything to do with it." "It has everything to do with it." "Anyway, I was in college."
"Don't boast." She laid her hand on Tony's lap and found his prick hard. "What's that for if it isn't to fuck me with?"
"That doesn't mean a thing," said Tony.
Betty ran the zipper down the upper part of her dress, shrugged her shoulders, and shook her breasts free. They jiggled heavily for an instant, then lay still. She slid suddenly to the floor between the two seated men, one hand feeling for each cock. She opened Boston's trousers, ran her hand in and closed her fingers around his, tugged with impatience at Tony buttons.
"You're hot," she said. "Both of you are hot but Boston is all little and soft."
"Boston, I want to apologize. I'm not quite a gentleman. I may fuck her and to hell with it. But not with her. I think she's swell," said Tony.
"Don't hold my wrist, Tony. Don't hold my wrist." Betty pushed her hand into his open fly. "Do you think I'm a bitch, Tony?"
"I told you that big, soft heart would get you into trouble," Boston said to Betty. "If you don't stop squeezing my prick you're going to lose your reputation. I refuse to be responsible for anything I do."
Betty slid his cock out and held it, soft, but stiffening, on her palm. She rested her head on his thigh and brought her lips down to it, kissed the restless tip. Then:
"I'm not a bitch," she said. "Not really. It's because of the way I feel about both of you that I'm not a bitch. It isn't being a bitch to let somebody fuck you if you like. It's whether you care or don't care about how you feel toward each other that makes you a bitch."
She turned to Tony and looked at his cock, now that she had it out. It was red and thick and very stiff in her hand. She rested her cheek against it, stroking the dry, satin surface on her face until the tip had streaked her skin in a damp line. Then, kneeling, she sat back on her heels and played with both pricks together.
"They have personalities. They're not at all alike." She slipped the skin away from the tip of Boston's penis, cupped the end of Tony's in her hand and covered it with her thumb. "They're not the same in my hand or when you're fucking me or when I have them in my mouth. They don't even taste the same." As though to prove it to herself, she bent forward and took the nearest one in her mouth. It was Tony's, and while she sucked it she clung to Boston's with both hands. Then she transferred her hands to Tony's tool and took Boston's in her mouth.
Boston laid his hand on her arm. She took it and pulled it to her breasts, grasped Tony's arm on the other side and led his hand there too.
"It reminds me of the subway," she laughed. "Wait. I'll take my clothes off. It's better than the subway."
In a minute she was naked; then she hurried the two men as they too undressed.
"Let me. No. Let me help you. Then I'll lie on the couch and you can fuck me when you're ready. What is it the little boys say when they go swimming? Last one in... No, Fd better not say that."
Boston slid over her to the side of the couch near the wall. She clutched for hidden things between his legs, caught his cock and held it. She reached for Tony's as he lay down in the space on the other side.
"Feel of me. No, here. My cunt. Both of you. Tony, you too." She pulled Tony's hand to her delta, where Boston's fingers were already wet from touching her, threw her legs widespread over Tony's on one side. Boston's on the other.
The reporter put his free hand on her teats and played with them. Betty offered one to his mouth. He took it and sucked the nipple hard, but when she offered the other one to Boston, the detective shook his head. Boston squeezed her fanny, slid his fingers between the warm cheeks and touched her ass-hole. Tony took Betty's other breast and sucked it.
"No." The girl shook her head as the men pressed her between them. "You can't both fuck me at once. I don't have that kind of a cunt. And then I'd have to turn my back to you if I did, so it will have to be some other way. You, Boston, I knew you first. That makes you first now. What do you want to do to me?"
"I want to bugger you," Boston said.
"You can't. You can't do that. No, not while Tony's here. I won't do that while either of you are here. It's much too personal for now. What do you want? Do you want me to suck your cock, or do you want me to fuck you?
Boston ran his fingers through his hair, rumpled the white streak until it stood out like a crest. He looked helpless. "I'll suck you off and Tony can fuck me," Betty decided for him. "But first I'll suck Tony's cock a little. And you can fuck me a little, too. Watch. I don't think I ever believed I could do this while somebody was watching me."
She rolled from between them, crouching between the reporter's legs. She put her hands around his penis and kissed the tip, paused and looked at Boston. With her face partly toward him, she pressed Tony's cock upon her mouth. She slowly opened her lips, and with them parted slightly, sucked the tip at one side. Opening her lips bit by bit, she tantalizingly stuffed the tip into her mouth, then grabbed his whole cock and sucked loudly. Her fingers closed tightly on his testicles.
"Now," as Tony's prick was slipped through her lips, "Now you fuck me, Boston."
It was she as much as the detective who put the ready and waiting cock in, forcing forward until he had taken possession of her. Betty wriggled as it took full rights within her.
"Boston... Oh, Boston, you fuck me better than anybody ever did! I told Tony that. Tony, didn't I? But no more, Boston. Not now. Til spend if you don't take it out. I want to fuck Tony."
She slid to the reporter as Boston released her, legs waving, fingers curling for his penis. She encircled his body. His cock was wet and her cunt was ready. Even as she slid under him, their sexes joined.
"Put your prick in my mouth! Boston, don't do that. I don't mind if it's been in my cunt! Don't wipe it off! Quickly, Boston, before I spend, let me suck it!"
Her cunt burned with hot fertility as Tony growled deep in his throat. And she too spent as her senses responded. Tony's prick had ceased throbbing in her twat and was rapidly growing limp and small when she tasted the fist-like cock in her mouth seeping the first flow of jism.
"There isn't any hurry. He'll be there. This time it doesn't matter."
"It's my fault. I made you fuck me. If it's a botch you can blame me." She looked at Boston, who had been doing something at his desk, and then at Tony, who already had his coat on and was waiting. And: "I wish you'd take me with you."
"When the photographers come around, I'll see that you get into all the pictures," Tony said.
Boston rubbed the almost imperceptible outline of his revolver. He tied a string around the little package on his desk.
"I wish you weren't going to do it this way. Why don't you take a policeman with you?" Betty worried.
"Didn't you know? He is a policeman," Tony said, tearing open a package of cigarettes and offering one to the girl. "You just be a good, gutty girl and we'll bring you back a rabbit's tail. I'll tell you something: I wish we were taking a policeman too. I'm just a reporter. I'm only supposed to write about how other people do this hero stuff. Listen, if I don't come back, there's a whale of a good story on this in the second drawer left of my dresser. The landlady will let you
"It's my fault if anything goes wrong. I made you late."
"There isn't any hurry," said Boston.
"No," said a thin voice from behind them. "There isn't any hurry."
The three whirled. Leaning against the door jamb of the outer office was a slight man whose face appeared to be made from cheese. Two men flanked him: one the typical thug, thick-set, dull-eyed, the other smaller than the other two, nervous, with popping, too-bright eyes, long white fingers that plucked restlessly at his coat. Betty gasped as she took a good look at the third man, and he looked at her curiously, his head hung to one side, like a bird.
"A social call from Mr. Faber," said Boston in a dead, flat voice. "And two...friends?"
"Businessmen," Faber said with meaning. The larger of his two companions grinned. It was as though a ham had suddenly grinned. The small man still looked at Betty. "This is a business call," Faber added. He came through to the inner office, the pair lolling after him.
"Yes, I thought we should be seeing each other on business very shortly," said Boston. "Mr. Shaw, will you get another chair from-"
"We'll stand up. We won't be here long. You know why I'm here. Talk!"
Boston sat on the edge of his desk, sucked his ring reflectively, shook his head.
"I don't get it. But if it's private... Miss Blair, will you leave the room please?"
"She don't have to leave the room. Nobody has to leave the room. And don't start fixing your necktie, Boston. I know where you park that iron."
"Miss Blair, will you please-"
"She stays here!" The hard edge of menace cut through Faber's thin voice. "Now take it easy. This boy here is primed, and he's awful nervous. You get what I mean, Boston?"
"I think I get the general idea. I didn't expect you quite so soon, though. To tell the truth, I didn't expect you at all. Do you know why you're here?"
"Yeah, maybe you thought you'd be calling on me, Boston. Only Fve been watching since I learned about the check the old man sent you. And when I found another stub today..."
"You take it upon yourself to go through Miss Hayes' checkbook?"
"I'm guarding her interests, Boston, the best I know how. And then I've got mine to think about, too. So I had to ask her a few questions, Mr. Boston, and guess what she told me?"
"You could go to hell, I suppose."
Faber winked at the beefy man at his side, who grinned back faithfully.
"Jimmy persuaded her, Boston. So we got the whole setup. You get what I mean? So we thought we'd come and have a little private talk with you. You want to talk, Boston, or will Jimmy have to interview you in private?"
"Your monkeys won't have any workouts, Faber. But what does it get me to talk? I mean your best offer?"
"There's no offer, Boston. This is the last stop. The end of the line. But if you talked real fast, you might get a running start to the door. I'm a sport, Boston."
"Send the girl out."
Faber shook his head:
"She's got no place to go. I got the whole thing figured pretty good. I know who's in this."
"Just a minute." It was Tony. "I've got something to say about this. You know me, Faber. And you know what happens to the boys when they mistake a reporter for somebody else. The surest way of getting a reservation in that little room with the chair in it is to knock off a reporter."
"Nobody's going to get knocked off!" Faber barked. "There ain't going to be any mistake. But there might be an accident."
"What are you driving at?" Boston asked quietly.
"You've got a laboratory here, ain't you? And don't accidents happen in laboratories sometimes? Explosions and fires? Well, wouldn't it be too bad if that happened here? Right now? And you three never had a chance, it was so sudden?"
"It won't work, Faber." It was Tony again. "I've got the whole Cartwright story ready for the composing room. Somebody's sure to find it. Let the girl go now, and I'll kill it."
"That's fine, strawhead! Thanks for the tip! We'll just look that story up when we get through here. Jimmy, Mr. Boston looks kind of heavy around the middle. Maybe you'd better take his harness off."
The beefy individual stepped forward and yanked open the detective's coat, stripped off his shoulder holster and tossed it into the outer office. He stood close to Boston.
"Now, Mr. Boston," said Faber, "just where did you think you were going when we came in?"
"I'll show you what I was taking with me. Then perhaps you can guess."
"No you don't!" Faber's voice was quick. The man named Jimmy almost spun Boston off his feet as he reached for the small box on the desk. "Bring that here," Faber ordered.
Faber pulled the string from the box and opened it. The bigger thug looked over his shoulder. "Jesus! Handle 'at thing easy, boss!" Faber snorted with contempt, but he clutched the box gingerly. He nodded at Boston.
"A little trip downtown, eh, Mr. Boston? And I'll bet you weren't a bit scared carrying this thing around with you, were you? Reef, take a good look. This is the guy you missed the other night." The little man nervously cocked his head. "That's the dame there," he nodded at Betty. "Did you ever tell your monkeys to take a good look at themselves in the mirror every morning?" Tony said. "Because any day may be the day you're through with them, the way you were through with Szabo."
"These boys ain't so dumb. If Szabo was dumb enough to leave these things around where they could be picked up, he was dumb enough to talk. Only we didn't have to touch him, see? He was so dumb he just walked into the river one day."
"Boss ..." The small man's nose twitched like a rabbit's, and his head jerked. "Let's get out of here. Let's finish this off and get out."
"Yeah. Okay, Reef. I can see you got the fidgets. You can go to work in a minute, and then bring the girl up from the taxi, if the boys ain't fucked her to death already. Jimmy, you can-"
He never finished that sentence. From behind the laboratory door came a high cackle, then the sudden sound of music. The tune was cut off abruptly, then another, somewhat slower one began. It played louder.
"Open that door!" Faber ordered. "Jimmy, open that door! Keep your eye on those bastards, Reef!"
A heavy automatic appeared magically in the right hand of the small man. He leaned against the wall like a man who is very tired, or very bored, his left hand in his pocket, only his eyes quick.
"It's locked! Boss, that record! It's the same tune..."
"I know it. Kick the door in. All right, get out of the way, then!" The three shots he fired were deafening. Glass shattered on the other side of the door. But the music played on, and above it came a shrill laugh.
"Boss! Get rid of that thing in your hand! Drop it! Let's get out!" The big man's voice rose in hysteria as the voice of Zona Avolon swept into the melody. The little man leaned against the wall, dispassionate, watching Boston and the reporter and the girl.
Faber looked at the door and the box in his hand.
"You yellow bastard!" he spat at the thug. He walked to a window, threw it up, and tossed the box out into the night. He walked back to the door. "Now get it open."
The man put his shoulder against the door and heaved. The hinges groaned. The record had played to the end, and for a second there was no sound but the panting of the man and the dead scratch of the phonograph needle. Then the transom opened.
A light bulb arched through it, exploding with a pop on the side of Boston's desk.
Another followed. And another. A stench rose in the air.
"Gas. Get out o' my way! I'm choking!" The big fellow barged for the door, knocking Faber aside. Faber staggered for balance, fired after him. The man went down heavily on bis face.
A light bulb struck the wall beside the slight man. For just an instant his attention wavered. And in that instant Boston flung himself forward, sweeping low for the man's knees with his whole body. The pair scrambled on the floor.
Tony swung a chair, followed it with a leap, and caught Faber's gun as it was coming up. He struck out. Just once. Faber slumped against the filing cabinet and was still.
Betty stood over the pair struggling on the floor. She watched them closely, then suddenly kicked out. The man beneath Boston sobbed sharply and, paralysed, clapped his hands to his testicles.
"He hit me with a gun," she said to Tony, who looked shocked.
"Cord. In that top drawer," Boston ordered. He dragged the little man out of the corner.
"You won't need to tie this one up," said Tony. He nudged the big man's body with his foot.
"Phone," said Boston. "Headquarters. They can pick up those boys down on the street in three minutes. Here. I'll talk to him. Tony, you better tie Faber up."
Celine's whiskers appeared through the cautiously opened door.
"So you were there all the time! A nice old man like you!" the girl bantered.
"I work here lots of nights. It is not my fault if people are suddenly fucking in the office. You should go home for that."
Celine stroked his whiskers.
"You needn't mention that part to Donovan," said Boston. "You can forget that."
"Open another window," said Tony. "This smell is getting me."
"Good stink bombers, isn't it? You wants more stink combers, Mr. Boston? I can make one."
"No more of those." Boston lighted a cigarette. "But you can count on having something to do around here as long as you want to stay."
"I can tell the papers about the stink bombers?"
"My god!" Tony leaped for the phone. "I forgot the papers! Hey," he yelled in the mouthpiece, "give me the Star!"
"That reminds me. I had a story around here someplace myself." Boston opened the top drawer of his desk, ruffled through some papers. "I think I've got a suspect for the murder."
"May I have your autograph, Mr. Boston? And where did you get the idea for your last book?"
"That's very good of you," Tony was saying on the phone. "Now can it and let me talk to the Old Man. And I'll bet you ten bucks it's an extra."
