by Troy Conway
“Oriental knife you said. Where?”
“In the left breast.” He looked surprised.
“Get your dirty mind off sex. I mean—where?”
“Oh, sorry. In her own private room at the Académie Sexualité. Top floor back. Just overlooking the quadrangle. It’s a large university. Almost as big as Fordham, say, in the Bronx, New York.”
“How do they tie her in with Gaston Corbeau?”
He dabbed at his lips with his handkerchief after he set the coffee cup down on the desk. He saw the duck feather on the floor, reached down and picked it up, balancing it in the palm of his hand.
“The usual. Trysts remembered by other students. Miss Lebeau boasted of an admirer high in government. Someone else recalls the long Daimler with chauffeur appearing at the campus to pick her up on weekends. To cement the thing for the Paris police, Miss Lebeau had the usual tribute from an admirer. Fur coat, platinum cigarette case inscribed. Et cetera.”
“Well, she lived it up before she died. That’s something. What about her personal reputation?”
His eyes narrowed. “Amazingly contradictory, considering the externals. Her fellow students think of her as a Joan of Arc type. Refined, elegant, almost virginal. This affair with an older man seems to have been a recent thing. You will have to tread very carefully in that area, Damon. Corbeau is an influential man with many friends. Should you incur his wrath in any way, he can have you kicked out of France. Remember that.”
“I will. Anything else to tell me before we kiss goodbye?”
“Yes.” He held up the feather and waved it at me. “What in God’s name is this doing here?”
“Duck feather. So what?”
He colored rapidly. “Dammit, are you taking to writing with a goosequill—er, duck quill?”
“No. That hot little number that walked out when you walked in is Minda Loa. In Polynesian circles, that feather is as artful an instrument as there is to excite male desire. Or female, for that matter.”
“How?” He looked bewildered, the poor man. He never has understood my thirst for knowledge.
“I can’t show you,” I said primly, “and remain a heterosexual man. You see, Minda put the feather in her mouth and bent down before me in the altogether and gradually flicked the feather up and down all over my thighs until . . .”
“Please.” His hands shot up. “Spare me the details. I may vomit.”
“Spoilsport.”
He stood up, brushed imaginary crumbs out of his lap and reset his iron bowler at a jaunty angle on his skull. His shrewd eyes appraised me with the usual quota of wonder and scorn.
“Damon, you are a shameless satyr. A cloven-hoofed, horned Sybarite who puts Petronius to the rear—”
“What, him too? Tsk, tsk.”
“—and will go to his grave, if ever, as possibly the sole male cadaver in history with an erection. That is, if the autopsy people don’t cut you off and pickle it in alcohol for the medical societies of the world.”
“I love you too,” I said.
“Go to Paris,” he commanded. “Sow your usual oats but do well and Godspeed. As you know, we are behind you all the way.”
“Nobody Greeks me.”
“Damn you!” He sputtered and kept on sputtering until in all disgust he waved a defeated arm at me and shouldered out the door. I tried him at all times. But for peace at any price, he would put up with all the jibes, witticisms and corny comebacks I had to offer. Actually, he was a lot of fun to needle. I knew he was only a Victorian facade who had a night side that would be most revealing if any of his own bedroom peccadilloes were ever made public. Many was the time on an assignment when he rode the gravy train with me, scooping up whatever delicious morsels that fell his way. The damn prude. He was as horny as the next guy. No, hornier.
It was a night of revolving doors.
No sooner had the tall, trim bastard disappeared than the small, bountiful darling came back. Minda Loa came hurrying into the room, a filmy baby-doll fluttering around her like a pale cloud of stardust. She glowed, olive skin and all, with that beaming happiness that precedes a lot more happy times.
“He is gone, Master.” Breathlessly, she came sweeping toward me on naked feet. In her hands were clasped a feathery pile of added duck weapons. “I came as soon as 1 could, knowing that you would want me to.”
“You read my mind. Where were we?”
She giggled, slipping the baby doll down over her shapely shoulders until it was halted by her shapelier breasts. Her eyes laughed and she let the handful of feathers sail to the carpet.
“For later,” she murmured. “Now, you must show me that Kentucky—what is it you called it?”
“Runaway. Not to be confused with the Georgia Gallop, the Texas Twister or the Pennsylvania Prance.”
The baby-doll came to a rest around her knees. Her bronzed body glowed and she stepped toward me. A waft of perfume filtered across the atmosphere, getting a stranglehold on my nosrils. Man, she smelled good.
“I will be your mount,” she whispered. “Do with me as you will; it is an honor.”
“Turn around.” I laughed. “Now bend forward. That’s it. No, hold your hands back. They are the reins for me to hold. Now you just try to get away from me, Minda. Just try!”
She did as I told her. She took one last longing look at me over her shoulder. Her eyes were as big as Pacific moons. When she saw my riding crop, her whole body quivered with delight.
“Will you whip me, Master? Please . . . ?”
“That depends. Giddyap, Horsey!”
And away she went. With me not too far behind. Just close enough to let her feel the whip intermittently, just far away enough to keep her rotating, twisting derriere out of range until she was exhausted and couldn’t and didn’t want to get away anymore. She loved every lap of our race around the room, using the desk and one big chair as pylons and far turns. When I eventually flagged her down, it was right under the big windows that faced the campus proper. Only the full moon saw us.
What an exciting ride. Who needed a saddle?
A bareback excursion that left all previous memories and experiences in the barn. Minda Loa was a thoroughbred all the way and even though she wasn’t born in Kentucky, or even raised in Georgia, I sure liked her peaches so she let me shake her tree. I’m mixing metaphors here but what the hell. She was eager, marvelous and tireless. So she wanted to find out about Texas and Pennsylvania and pretty soon we were working our way all across Rand McNally. She loved every state in the union, up to and including Hawaii.
Along about six o’clock in the morning as the new sun spilled gold in through the windows, she shouted in delirum: “Five-Oh! Five-Oh! Master, we have accounted for every star!”
“And a few stripes too.” There were lovely long scratch marks all over my thighs where her nails had raked me with unbridled ecstasy. Her own tawny torso was a love map of bites and swollen kisses.
“Oh, Master. I call you that truly for I will be your slave forever. You have shown Minda Loa so much for her own thesis on lovemaking in the United States.”
“I’m glad.”
I really was but all night long and into the dawn, with the pile driver from Polynesia, I hadn’t been able to remove from my mind the picture of a murdered student who had sent me a death message. Miss Danielle Lebeau.
The murdered mademoiselle had tainted all my fun and games, somehow. Damn Walrus-moustache and his blasted Coxe Foundation. Damn having to go to Paris. Damn having to leave great stuff like Minda Loa to play James Bond again. Sometimes, it just wasn’t fair. Who the hell can really feel idealistic at dawn in the arms of a naked Goddess who doesn’t know how to say No?
Believe me, it isn’t easy.
When Minda Loa, who should have gone back to the dormitory hours ago, wriggled into her baby-doll and started for the door and then came back, waving a feather on the ball of her palm with that look in her eyes, who could have the heart to say, “Beat it, baby. You’ve had enough
!”
I couldn’t.
The sterner stuff I am made of is not that thing called Nobility or Self-sacrifice or Courage. Also, I should have been halfway to Paris.
“Master.” Her arms went around my neck, she forced me down into the swivel chair again and she dropped to her knees, gently prying my thighs apart. “Let me blow you once more to the island of Paradise where the bird of love is always on the wing . . .”
There was only one bone left in my body.
“Be my guest,” I muttered hoarsely. “Enjoy, enjoy . . .”
And so she did.
I loved Paris, I wanted to find the fiend or fiends responsible for the murder of Danielle Lebeau, I wanted to save the Peace Talks for the world and dear old Coxe Foundation High, but as sure as they made dames and as sure as they made me to love them, Paris was going to have to wait.
No kid in the universe has ever parted with his ‘horsey’ with deeper regrets.
“Master.”
“Now stop it. I got to get packed and get out of here. There’s a plane I have to catch.”
“Yes, yes. I will help you. But will you come back to Minda Loa? Promise me you will.”
“Promises, promises. Tell you what. When I get back, which will probably be sometime before your final exams, I will show you a whole new thing about sex. “The Tran-sylvanian Method. It’s real weird.”
“You will?” Once more, her arms and legs locked about me and the baby-doll was never going to stay on her. Her bronzed skin was glittering with the pearls of her passion. There was no surrender in the splendid young tiling. In pure pagan terms, she was fantastic.
“I swear,” I said.
Immediately her cool hands vised around the idol to whom she had yielded fealty for a good eight hours. Her dark eyes suddenly held all the wisdom in the world.
“Will you swear on this . . . that which is your very heart and soul?” Her ten supple fingers curled over the family jewels.
What could I do?
I swore.
It was only then that she left me to my packing, kissing me all the way to the last walk to the door. I felt like the love object of all time and I was firmly convinced I would have to toss out all my Polynesian research and start all over again. After all, Minda Loa had added a whole library full of addenda. Wowee.
“So long, Minda. Keep a sliced pineapple in the window for me.”
“Aloha, Master.” The poor kid was crying her eyes out. I was touched. “I can never forget what we shared this golden night.”
When she left, finally, she was doing an impromptu hula in the corridor as she sashayed and flounced toward her own room. The quiet halls of the university building echoed with the slithering passage of her bared feet. Regretfully, I watched the finest fanny in the world disappear around the bend in the corridor. She was crooning some native ditty to herself and if it had been a rain dance, I think the whole sky would have opened up.
I was taking French leave from my studies but what the hell, I was my own boss, could write my own ticket. Let Walrus-moustache smooth out the details with the Faculty. As I was sure he had probably already done. He’s no slouch when it comes to arranging things to suit his own ends.
I usually did all right in that department too.
My end was always well taken care of.
I’m like the Borgias in that respect, I guess,
The end always justifies my means.
A funny thing happened to me on the way off the campus. As I strode down the curving walks, bordered by a long line of elms, I was discovered in the act of departure by some of the fine young fillies from my lecture classes. They didn’t need a guide book or a translation or an explanation. I had the look and manner of a man who was quitting the campus and it was too much for them.
Their voices blended in a universal wail of disappointment, which immediately transformed into a huge uproar of agony. Before I could smile away their fears or allay their suspicions with a trumped-up story about anything, they sprang for me, arms outstretched, skirts flying, tight sweaters juggling with offers. I started down the hill on the dead run with my suitcase firmly clasped under one arm. At any other time, such homage would have tickled the pants off me but who has time for about twenty hungry coeds at the break of day? I didn’t. Minda Loa notwithstanding. I had to make that plane for Paris with something left over. And then some. Otherwise I wasn’t going to do the Thaddcus X. Coxe Foundation a bit of good.
“Professor Damon, don’t go . . . oh, you old meanie!!!!”
I knew them. All of them. Mary, Jennie, Jeanie, Irene. Samantha, Leona, Belle, Tonia, Sally . . . every one of them a poem, each a plum. But what the hell? There were lots more pebbles on the beach.
Down the hill they thundered after me. Screaming my name, crying out their wares, but it was hopeless. I had a fifty-yard start on them, and luckily a campus cab was waiting for me, flag up, motor purring.
I made it just in time, getting the door closed before they could touch me. The cab raced away, taking me from one form of university life toward the waiting world of another.
Little did I know, to coin a shopworn phrase.
CHAPTER THREE
The Académie Sexualité was a fooler, all right. It did not come as advertised by Walrus-moustache.
Only twenty-four hours after I planed out of the States, landed at Orly, and registered in a baroque hotel on the Champs de Renée about five hundred yards from the gurgling Seine—which has to be the dirtiest river in the world—I was trooping up the marble steps to the Académie. Walrus-moustache had described the place to a T. The quadrangle was as large as a football field and was flanked on all four sides by a low, two-storied Gothic structure that resembled a walled city. Like the Kremlin. The building was ugly terra-cotta with a somewhat modernistic gabled roof effect that was all wrong. A lot of green lawn and spreading chestnut trees dotted the corners of the quadrangle. The place looked like a temple of high learning. As academic as hell. One would never have expected the terra cotta barricaded a veritable army of panting, streamlined, mini-skirted broads from ‘ the outside world.
Paris was having a nice summer day. Blue skies, fleecy clouds and a squadron of sparrows chirping overhead. The quadrangle was sleepy and tranquil as my heels thumped along its marble corridors. Inside, the Académie was something else again. As I meandered among the wall paintings and marble busts of the likes of Freud, Henry Miller and Yankowski and Nabokov, my blood began to sing merrily in my veins. The dump was bursting at the gunwales with females. All sizes, shapes and colors. All wearing the same regulation dress of leather mini-skirt, white middie blouse with a daring V slash that went down as far as the buckled waist. The students wore psychedelic hose with patterns that would drive a Penny Arcade entrepreneur crazy. The girls, and they weren’t all jeunes filles, were English, American, Latins, Orientals and Eurasians. Everybody had kind of a stainless steel look; despite the healthy display of bazooms, ample backsides, and red gashes for mouths and bouffant hairdos in all shades of the spectrum, nobody talked. There was a zombie-like, no-nonsense demeanor that prevailed. I walked among this horde of pulchritudinous knowledge-seekers and not one of them so much as looked to the left or right until I casually spoke my name aloud to another poised, shimmering creation sitting like God Almighty behind the Registration Desk.
Also, the marble corridors reeked, literally reeked, of an amalgam of exotic perfumes. Soft music, all string and ultra-sexual, seemed to emanate from the walls. Unobtrusive, erotic. Like Night and Day counterpointed with Ravel’s Bolero with dashes of Speak Low and Going Out of My Head Over You thrown in.
The creature behind the desk looked up from the book she was reading. Red mouth, white teeth, peaches and cherries complexion and hair so taffied you’d want to eat it. She was chesty too.
“Oui, Monsieur?” she said evenly in clipped, precise schoolgirl French. She had America written all over her.
“Knock it off,” I growled. “I’m Professor Damon from the U
nited States. I want to see your head lady around here.”
“Damon?” The taffy blonde’s eyes started from their sockets. She forgot her book which turned out to be a dogeared copy of Candy and almost clapped her hands together. But her tremendous whim-whams got in the way. “Rod Damon?”
“One and the same. Heard of me, eh?”
“Oh, Professooooooorrrrrrrr!” The French habit slipped out of her and she sat up higher in her chair, peering over the desk to look at my crotch. “Yes, yes, it is you! What are you doing here? To think—me, Mady Morrow from Chicago, should run across you like this! Oh, Professor, I think I’ve read Linger Longer and Love It over a dozen times—”
I run into this sort of thing all the time. It is embarrassing, even if it’s heady stuff. I leaned across the desk.
“Please tone it down, Mady. You want to start a stampede? Just send me to your head lady and I’ll come back, I swear, and you can tell me all about it. Okay?”
She shook her head vehemently, wiggled off her high stool and came around the desk. She mashed up against me and began to rub like she had St. Vitus. Her red mouth reached up and bit my ear. Not hard, just painfully.
“No, you don’t,” she hissed. “You’re the reason I enrolled in this high-priced joint. I’ll take you to Madame personally. You’re not going to slip out of my fingers—”
“I don’t see how I can.” It was true. Like so many true believers before her, she had to touch the miracle, feel it, weigh it in her hand. “If you’re through now, let’s go, huh?” I indicated the tall, sexy automatons sleepwalking past the desk on the way to their studies. She nodded quickly, winked, locked my arm in her own and practically dragged me down the marble corridor. She didn’t seem to mind leaving the desk unattended. Nobody paid much attention to us. Maybe the rest of the dames thought she was doing her homework. After all, the Académie Sexualité was in existence solely to instruct females in the sexual arts. What a curriculum they must have had. I could almost see it: “For tomorrow’s lesson, you will sleep with one oversexed male and come back with a ten-page report on all that he says and does. And for the afternoon symposium on ménage à trois, each of you must tape-record all comments made during coitus. In this way, mademoiselles, we will learn much of the male animal and his sexual thresholds. . . .” Open the door, Richard!