I worked my hands into her deep valley of femininity. She shuddered and widened the bridge of her thighs even further. The hanging gardens were rammed to my lips now and I was gently, then hungrily kissing them. Biting them. I heard her moan; I heard her cry out in jungle ecstasy and then impatiently, hurriedly, past all coolness, she was straddling me with her knees flanking me and both her hands guiding me into the balanced beauty of her own Valley of the Shadows.

  I thrust.

  She exploded.

  Being very big is one thing. Not killing the girl or simply filling her so that she feels overstuffed and incapable of moving or enjoying herself is something else. I’d been down that road too many times to bungle it. She appreciated the difference and she knew how to handle it. She was a fine student.

  With her first hungry orgasm out of the way, she settled into a rhythmic rocking motion that held me, receded a bit, held me again and then gradually worked up to the fever pitch that indicates another big coming. She never got too far away from me. I had both her boobs anchored in each hand and I could touch out my strength and always haul her back in. I’m big enough for that too.

  Something she realized and appreciated with great quivering gusts of air and rapid murmuring sighs and yesses. There wasn’t a No in her. She was the kind that only says “NO!” when she feels you about to leave her.

  We pumped rhythmically. I felt like ten men again. Why not? I was in the racket I knew best; the place I loved the most: my own bête noire, the divided path of a woman’s thighs, which is to me the road to the Emerald City, Shangri-la and Utopia all rolled into one.

  “Rod, Rod, Rod. . . .” Her voice was on the rise, timed to that next big one that should have been heard all over the building.

  “Adele, Adele, Adele. . . .” I kept the rhythm with her.

  “Oh, my Milwaukee ass!” She suddenly let out a low scream. “Now, please now—NOW!”

  It was easy to oblige. She was warm, bursting, heavenly. I opened the doors of the dam and we both washed away on a flood of bright lights, waves of delight and sated passions.

  We were a little quiet for a long time.

  We lay side by side. She kept her hand on my tool, I remained with my fingers clamped about her breasts.

  I’ve said it before. Ill say it again.

  A raise? A promotion? A medal? A new house? Hooey. I can’t think of one single momentary experience that can match a good bang with a very good girl. Sue me if you think I’m wrong. Bet the Judge throws you and your case out of court.

  She doodled with her fingers. It felt nice and squirmy.

  “Professor?”

  “Pumpkin?”

  “You really are good, you know it? You make me so—geezis, warm and crazy and nice! Pete and Tony, as big as they are, can’t hold a candle to you. No wonder you’re able to teach classes in Sex. You know what you’re talking about.”

  “Thank you,” I said humbly. “I had good instruction as a boy.”

  She wanted to know more about that, but I didn’t want to talk about me. “Besides,” I said, “you don’t have to bedeck me with all the posies. A man is really only as good as the woman is. And you are some woman.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “Be flattered. In a few more minutes, you’ll be flattened. I’m going topside this time. You’re going to find out what dive-bombing really is.”

  She trembled in my arms, as big as she was. “Don’t tease me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can’t really get it up again. Not after what we just had. Nobody could. Not so soon, I mean—”

  “Silly girl. This is Damon. I invented the big comeback. Don’t give it another thought.”

  “Oh, you—why did you make me wait all this time for you to come around? That first time, I was just a rookie and you were so wild and quick and strong—you remember, my induction day here? Last year?”

  “Uh huh. I remember now.” I did. She had a curious little scissor kick for such a big girl. I had made notes on it.

  “Listen, Adele. I heard a rumor. About Tony Eden.”

  “What did you hear?” *

  “That he’s kind of gay. Likes to swing both ways. That true?”

  She started to laugh. A low, girlish giggle. I waited for her to calm down.

  “Then you know something?” I said.

  “Nothing you could work on,” she sighed. “Yeah, Young Tony has his quirks. Oh, we balled fine. Nothing wrong there. But you know what he always liked me to do?”

  “That’s why I’m asking. What?”

  “He always wanted me to keep pinching his ass while he was on top of me. Poor baby. He’s got the most black-and-blue behind in the university. I wondered about him because of that. Now that you tell me about the rumors, I’m not surprised. It struck me as a little queer—what with the little experience I’ve had, Lord knows.”

  I’d never noticed Tony Eden’s rump. Not that it mattered now. But he could have been killed by a bunch of perverts who weren’t spies and maybe the same thing happened to Rita Cortez and Doreen and poor Corinne Murphy—no, no! It had to be the Chinese Reds. What the hell was I looking for an excuse for?

  “And Pete Porter?”

  She snorted in the darkness.

  “His only trouble is that he’s a real animal. Whambam, thank you, ma’am, and then he’s gotta run out to football practice or something. Are all young guys like that, Rod? They want it, they like it, but as soon as it’s over, they run right out like they were leaving the scene of an accident That’s what makes a girl feel cheap. Nothing else.”

  “Youth. It’s Youth. Wise of you to notice, Adele. A young man feels if he hangs around he’ll get involved with the girl. Like love or marriage. So he runs. Of course, I’m talking about the way my generation acted. Your generation works it the other way around. They pretend extreme indifference and sloppiness and work it out that way. Good for Pete Porter. An old-fashioned boy, obviously. He’ll learn how to sit around and enjoy it, sooner or later. At least, he isn’t a Hippie.”

  She didn’t want to talk about them anymore. Just as well. I felt lousy talking about dead Tony like that. Poor very dead Tony. What a way to go. I shivered.

  Her fingers had stroked and stroked, almost absentmindedly and the Damon miracle had reoccurred. I am always big, you understand, but now I had firmed up into something she could really use again.

  “I don’t believe it,” she muttered in me gloom, almost to herself.

  “Tut, tut. It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing? You call that nothing!”

  I rolled away from her, got up on my knees and she scrambled to get under me, her long sturdy legs widening out in a waiting V. Her eyes shone in the darkness. Her breasts tumulted again. My being flooded with new vitamins and joyful masculinity. I felt like beating my chest like Tarzan after he kayoes the lion. Or crocodile, or what have you.

  “Oh, Rodddddddd. . . .” Her voice trailed off in awe.

  “You said it, baby,” I said in a low voice and plunged downward. My aim was uncanny. She came apart, widening to receive the delivery and her thighs immediately engulfed me. I pressed the throttle and drilled for oil. Honey. Both. She had both in huge, inexhaustible amounts. It’s great to be young, willing, eager and strong. Youth always had that on its side. We old Masters in our thirties, wiser perhaps, still can’t draw on the reserves and the resources of the very young. At nineteen, Adele Ash, with her build and mind and my instruction, was a super-woman.

  Quite an assortment of gushers sprang up between us. In the end, geysering more slowly but with complete satisfaction, we settled down once again into two limp loving lumps of fiery flesh.

  She huddled against my chest, kissing me.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “Sure you do. Now. This minute. You should. You can’t sleep like this without love being a part of it.”

  “No, no,” she protested, “I really love you!”

  “Nonsense. You’ll love the very next man that makes you feel like this. Women always do. You know how many times a girl has told me she loved me? Beyond number. And all those girls are alive and well and living in a happy marriage.”

  “Stinker.” She bit my chin and then kissed it to make it well. She was purring now, a six-foot pussycat. It was somehow incongruous but it was nice. She had driven all the fears and doubts and chicken liver out of my system. As regarded the Great Spy Hunt.

  I had almost forgotten about my poor student corpses.

  Almost but not quite. There’s always someone or something around to bring me back to the awful earth.

  The next voice I heard was that of the man I learned to loathe.

  “Damn you, Damon! Exactly what I expected! Half your staff brutally murdered and you go into mourning by indulging in a sex spree! Good God, man—have you no sense of decency!”

  Adele squealed and tried to hide under me and the cold wind from the front door that fanned my rump had brought in with it a roaring, insensate, really pissed-off Walrus-moustache. You were never safe when you hooked up with people like him. He somehow managed to get the keys to locked doors, ferreted you out of hiding places you holed up in and always got his man, if he was looking for you. The Northwest Mounties lost a great cop when he decided to pool his talents with the Thaddeus X. Coxe Foundation.

  I climbed off Adele Ash, who then burrowed under a sheet to hide—she was still a schoolgirl after all and she had been humping in her room, which is strictly against the regulations of a university that even had a Rod Damon going for it—and reached for my pants. The man in the bowler hat, with moustache and attaché case to match, had turned on the lights in a very ungentlemanly way. He stood by the door, still glaring at me, nearly apoplectic with moral justification. Balls. I was tired and mad myself. What right had he to come busting into my love life again? Like he always did—without knocking even!

  “You,” I said, “are definitely not wanted here. Couldn’t you phone me?”

  “I have been ringing you for an hour. Then instinct and a rueful remembrance of your peccadilloes led me here. You were seen by one of the students, entering this room—a Miss Clovis Lee.”

  “A jealous fink.” I buttoned my shirt and patted Adele Ash’s twin buttocks outlined under the sheet. She had her ass up and her face down. “It’s all right, honey. Don’t worry. You stay where you are. I’ll take this noisy prude back to my room.”

  Walrus-moustache exploded at that. His attaché case fell out of his hands down to the floor.

  “By thunder, you are a scoundrel, Damon. With all this mad murdering going on—those poor students of yours, and it was your idea, I might add—you stoop to this. A banquet of the flesh. As God is my judge, I have lost all respect for you. You are beneath contempt!”

  I saw red, blue, green and orange. What right had he to be my judge? Him! The biggest butcher of all—who played at being Spy.

  “Will you stop sounding like the sound track of a Cecil B. deMille movie?” I roared. “You sanctimonious bastard. I didn’t kill Fat-Ass, I didn’t gang-bang Rita Cortez, I didn’t cut Tony Eden’s whatsit off and I certainly didn’t carve up Corinne Murphy with a Bowie knife—and I certainly didn’t leave all those notes—”

  I stopped. I could have bitten my own tongue off. Adele Ash had materialized from under the sheet, her great breasts rising and falling. Her face was as white as the sheets. Walrus-moustache, for all his anger, was stunned by the beauty of her. Adele looked at me, her red mouth and tumbling honey-colored hair awry.

  Shock and agony filled her eyes. It was a helluva way to learn the awful truth.

  “What’s he saying, Rod? Tony—Corinne—” Rita’s gang-bang hadn’t really bothered anybody that much. Most of the girls had thought she had it coming to her for being so damn uppity and formal.

  “Satisfied, you bastard?” I snarled at Walrus-moustache before turning back to her. “Sorry, Adele. Yes, it’s true. Tony and Corinne were murdered. Him, yesterday—last night. Her, today. I didn’t want to tell you. Truth is, I didn’t know how—”

  “And you let me make love to you all the time knowing—”

  Her mouth puckered, her breasts undulated. She started to say something to me, something that Walrus-moustache would have approved of, I suppose, when the double horror hit her. Her eyelids fluttered, we saw the whites of her baby blues and then with a soft moan, letting go the sheet, she toppled in a dead faint.

  In bed.

  She looked like she was sleeping.

  I stared at her, trying not to run across the room to smash my old friend and spy mentor in the chops. Boy, did he have it coming. But all I felt at that particular moment was a great sorrow and shame. Yes, shame. Maybe the world is right. Maybe I am a whoremaster. But does crying or the social amenities change things? Anything? Does it bring people back from the grave?

  “She’ll be all right,” I said in a low voice. “Let her sleep it off. Best thing for her. Come on. We’ll go to my room.”

  Walrus-moustache stared at Adele Ash for a moment longer.

  “Lovely thing. So blonde and fresh.” His manner was like night and day now. “Sorry, Damon. I shouldn’t have done this. Spouting like a spinster at you . . . I do apologize.

  “Forget it. You can’t change your bad habits. I can’t change mine. That’s the way the friendship crumbles.”

  We walked back up to my floor, after carefully closing Adele Ash’s door. Walrus-moustache was contrite and silent now, he who had come roaring in like a lion. I didn’t like him as a lamb so I changed the subject.

  “What’s new?”

  “Nothing much. I have managed to keep this all quiet, as you may have noticed. I’ve got men checking out that bowling alley and travel agency as you mentioned in your reports. And the pier. And that posh apartment house where the Murphy girl was killed today. Nothing much, I’m afraid.”

  “So am I. Scared purple. What can we do?”

  “Sit tight and wait. It has to end. That club, The Alarm Clock where Tony Eden was supposed to have gone with Murphy—it burned to the ground this morning. Strange fire. Grease on the stove or something.”

  “Or something.” We had reached my room door. “Let’s face it. I’m a bust as a spy. Get someone else before more of the kids get killed. I’m beginning to feel like Judas Iscariot.”

  “Nonsense, Damon. Don’t let minor mishaps dampen your spirit. The Mexican traffic still very merrily goes on. We still have to stop it. It’s our duty.”

  “Duty, schmuty. I’m thinking of those kids. Pete Porter, Adele, Norma Davis, Alice Potter. Even Rita Cortez, maybe. You want to get them all slaughtered too?”

  “No, of course not. I have a plan. Care to hear it?”

  We stepped into my rooms and I locked the door. He smiled at me. I smiled back. We were friends again.

  For a little while, at least.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  With the door locked, we got cozy. I rummaged for a bottle of Johnny Walker, set up two glasses and Walrus-moustache, despite his severe-looking kisser, relaxed.

  “Damon, I have a question for you.”

  “If it’s about my love life, skip it. No more lectures. If it’s about this spy-ring-around-the-rosy, let’s have it.”

  “I come not to reproach you anymore. My word on it.” He raised his glass and drained it in one gulp. I was surprised. Even he doesn’t hit the sauce that way unless he’s terribly impressed with something.

  “Go on,” I said. “This should be good.”

  “It is. Very well, I shall. Now, Question: how does the Enemy seem to know so much about your operation?”

  “Answer: I don’t know. I’m clumsy, I guess.”

  “Nonsense, my boy. You’ve done your utmost, in spite of my, ah, statements upstairs in the lady’s room. She one of your flying squad, by the way?”

  “She is and I don’t want her getting killed.”

  “Precisely my point. You enlist the aid of several of your students, seven in all I believe you said, and nobody else knows what is going on. So how can they all be killed like this—especially as harmless looking as they are and how much could they have known that would have led someone to kill them in such a ghastly manner? Also it’s inconceivable that four of them—the fat one, the man and the other two ladies should all have tumbled onto something important enough, all in different parts of town, that would force the Enemy to kill them. Are you following me?”

  “Yes, I think I am. And I don’t want to. You’re not trying to tell me that—”

  “Exactly. There’s a traitor in your midst. A double agent. And for all your codes and passwords, you’ve played right into the hands of our enemies. It’s the only possible answer for this blood bath.”

  “You’re guessing or you’ve got proof. Which is it?” My mind boggled at what he was saying. One of the kids a traitor—Pete Porter, Rita Cortez, Adele Ash, Norma Davis, Alice Potter? It wasn’t really possible.

  “Proof,” he said, sourly, reaching into his inner coat pocket for something. “But our traitor must be a man, you understand. Because all of the women were brutally assaulted sexually as well as murdered.”

  “Hold on, this Glee Club is a bunch of gang-bangers. Men and women. Remember the notes and remember what I told you about the night I bailed out Rita Cortez. That wasn’t one man, that was an army.”

  “Well, let’s put it this way. Miss Cortez was not killed. It is entirely possible that is the one isolated case in all these assaults. From what you’ve told me about Miss Cortez, she very well could have merely run into a bunch of wild boys—”

  “Maybe, but I don’t think so. It has to be the same bunch. And what’s that you’re holding in your hand. The proof?”

  He was holding a small roll of something in his hand that looked like microfilm. It was no longer than the stub of a cigarette. His smile was deadly calm. He was sure he knew what he was talking about. I waited for him to go on.

 

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