Dax laughed. "Shut up and go to bed, you horny bastard. It's not my fault you didn't get laid tonight."
But actually Sir Robert was sitting in his study studying the latest report on the Corteguayan situation. Tomorrow he would take it to the country to put with the others. It was safer there where even if the servants should pry it would have little meaning for them. His lips tightened grimly. The pressure was on him now. There were times when he felt an annoyance with his cousin. The baron was too French, too sentimental. What difference did it make that the Corteguayan consul was a man of honor? Besides, he was a sick man. Couldn't his cousin see that if they kept the ships away only a little while longer the government would be bound to fall? He was a fool if he couldn't.
It had to. Already the bandoleros were active in the hills. This time with English money and English arms. The peasants were hungry. How long would they continue to starve for el Presidente, who was nothing but a bandolero himself?
The ships had to be kept away. The loss of the two and a half million dollars was little enough to keep the present government from making an agreement with the Greeks. And when the government did finally fall, he would more than make up that loss once his own ships returned to Corteguay.
CHAPTER 11
It was a few minutes past seven the next evening when the station taxi dropped off Dax in the driveway of Sir Robert's country estate. The butler answered the door.
"Welcome, sir," he said, taking Dax's valise. Dax followed him into the house, which seemed strangely quiet, considering the turnout he had been led to expect.
"Where is everyone?"
"You're the first, sir. The young ladies will be coming on the ten o'clock. Sir Robert will be down tomorrow with the other guests."
He opened the door to Dax's room and put down the bag. "Do you wish me to unpack you, sir?"
"No, thanks, I'll manage. There isn't much."
"At what time would you like dinner, sir?"
Suddenly Dax was hungry. He glanced at his watch. "Just give me time to bathe. Eight o'clock will be fine."
Dinner did not take long. He ate quickly and voraciously and by a quarter to nine he had finished. "The wireless is in the master's study," the butler suggested. "And also the newspapers."
Dax nodded. He turned on the radio and sank into a soft leather-covered chair. After a few minutes he was bored, and went over to the desk for the paper. As he picked it up the letter upon which it had rested fell to the floor. Idly he picked it up and was about to replace it when he noticed it was in Spanish. Since it was already open and out of its envelope he casually glanced at it, then the signature caught his eye. Ramirez.
That alone was enough to make him read the first paragraph.
"I would like again to congratulate you on your foresight in the acquisition of the four Japanese merchant ships, thus preventing them from falling into the hands of our enemies. Information I have received from my compatriots at home indicates that the government is under extreme pressure to secure immediate relief."
Dax felt a cold chill inside him despite the roaring fire in the grate. What kind of man was this who with one hand offered you comfort and friendship and welcomed you into his home, while with the other he was helping your enemies to destroy you? He read on.
"The uprising is slowly gaining momentum. But, as you know, we suffer seriously from a lack of arms and munitions, and since the cost of obtaining these is prohibitive because they must be smuggled across the Andes from neighboring countries, I am reluctantly forced again to request additional funds. I hesitate to place again a burden on your ever so willing generosity but ten thousand pounds is an immediate necessity if our plans are to meet with the success we all hope for. If you cannot spare this, even five thousand would be of great help."
Dax's mouth twisted grimly. He wondered how much of the money Ramirez siphoned off before any of it reached his so-called compatriots.
"I will appreciate hearing from you at your earliest convenience and until then please accept the gratitude of myself and my compatriots for your aid in our mutual struggle to overthrow the despotic bandit who unlawfully seized control of our poor country."
Ramirez. If he weren't so angry he might have laughed. Ramirez the thief, the coward. Ramirez the betrayer. Ramirez was not one to bandy about names. Dax stared down at the letter. His father would have to be made aware of it. And the baron.
Suddenly the thought crossed his mind; could the baron already know? Could he, too, be a part of the scheme? He did not know whom he could trust. He folded the letter and thrust it into his pocket. He would have to caution his father.
He started from the room angrily. He would leave for
Paris tonight. Then he stopped. That would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Sir Robert would wonder about his abrupt departure; it might only serve to call attention to the missing letter. He would have to stay for the weekend, perhaps even longer. He forced himself to go back to his chair. When the butler came in to announce the arrival of the young ladies he was quietly reading the newspaper.
They looked enough alike to be twins, though they weren't. Enid, the oldest, was eighteen, her sister, Mavis, a year younger. "See, I told you he'd be down tonight," one of them said to the other.
Dax took her hand. "Hello, Enid."
She laughed. "I'm Mavis."
He smiled. "I'll never be able to tell you apart."
"Did mother and father come down?"
He shook his head. "No. The butler told me they aren't expected until tomorrow."
"Good," Enid said, "then we'll have the house to ourselves tonight."
"We'll have our own private little party," Mavis added. She looked at her sister. "Who might be around that we could ask over?"
"Why bother?" Enid looked at Dax. "I'm sure the three of us can have a perfectly marvie time."
"Parties?" Dax laughed. "Is that all you can think of? I'm so tired the only thing I can think of is another hot bath and a good night's sleep."
"Must you always be so serious? Don't you ever think of having fun?"
"Tomorrow I'll think about having fun."
He leaned back in the big marble tub and closed his eyes. The steam came up to his face and he relaxed, then he heard a faint sound and his eyes opened. He looked back toward the door to his room. There was no one there. The sound came again. A puzzled expression came over his face.
Then abruptly the door opened and the two sisters stood there, along with a cold blast of air from the empty corridor behind them.
"For Christ's sake close the damn door!" he yelled, grabbing for a towel. "You want me to freeze to death?"
But Mavis was quicker. She pulled the towel just out of his reach, laughing, while Enid closed the door. He stared at them, trying to cover himself with his hands. After a moment he gave it up as a bad job. They were still laughing. "What's so funny? Your bathtub out of order?"
Enid sat down on the stool next to the tub. "We thought since you were so tired the least we could do was give you one of our medicinal baths."
"Medicinal baths?"
"Yes, they're very stimulating. All the girls at school take them." She reached over and turned on the cold-water tap.
Dax almost jumped out of the tub when the icy water hit his back. "You're both crazy!" he yelled.
The two girls pushed him back into the water.
"Sit there, don't be such a baby. Here, take a drink of this," Enid said, holding out a bottle.
"What is it?" he asked suspiciously.
"Brandy."
He took the bottle and squinted at it. It was half empty. "Where'd you get this?"
"From Daddy's liquor cabinet."
"Half empty?"
"We were bored," Mavis said. "What did you expect us to do? You didn't want to have a party."
"Then we got the idea of giving you a medicinal bath," Enid added. "Miss Purvis, at school, always claims they're the best remedy for physical tiredness."
That explained
it. They were both high. Dax shrugged his shoulders and took a swig of the brandy. At least it warmed him.
Mavis touched the water. "I think it's cold enough now. What do you think?"
Enid put in her fingers. "It's cold enough."
Dax took another swig of the brandy, and lay back in the tub, resigned. "Now what?"
"You'll see," Mavis said. "Get out of the tub."
"All right. Hand me a towel."
"No." She held the towel just out of his reach. "Get out of the tub first."
"I will not."
"Oh, no?" Enid giggled. Quickly she turned on the cold water again.
He was out of the tub almost before the icy spray hit. He stood there shivering as they began to slap at him with the rough Turkish towels. "Hey, that hurts. Cut it out!"
Instead they flicked the towels harder. He jumped around trying to avoid their attack and at the same time not drop the bottle. Finally he managed to duck past them into his bedroom. He dove into bed, pulling the covers up over him.
They stood at the foot of his bed, owlishly watching him.
"Now that you've had your fun, why don't you go back to bed?"
A curious look passed between them. "All right," Mavis said. "Give us back our bottle."
Dax took another sip. "Why should I?" He began to feel the spread of its warmth. "I think I'm entitled to something after all I went through. I may even come down with pneumonia."
"We won't leave without the brandy."
He was beginning to feel good now. "If you want it you'll have to take it away from me."
They moved toward him threateningly. He pushed the bottle under the pillow and crossed his arms on his chest. Abruptly they snatched the blanket away, leaving him naked on the bed. This time he made no move to cover himself. "Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"Did you ever see anything so immensely beautiful?" Enid whispered in an almost awed voice as she reached up to unbutton the blouse of her pajamas.
Sometime during the night one of the sisters had gone out and fetched another bottle of brandy but Dax was not sure which. They kept changing places so often that he was never quite clear which was which. The one thing he was certain of was that this was not the first time they had played games like this together.
Now Enid—or was it Mavis?—took a drink from the bottle. "I don't know ever when I felt so well screwed." She sighed, and looked down at Dax's face in her lap. "And to think we had you down for a fag."
Mavis—or was it Enid?—raised her face from his lap and saw the puzzled expression on his face. "You know—fagot, queer, homosexual."
He laughed. "What made you think that?"
"So many are, you know," she said seriously. "It's these damned public schools. They all get buggered so much they begin to like it."
"With girls like you around?" he said, reaching for the bottle.
"That's the only way some of them will do it," Mavis replied. "They say it's better that way." She rolled over and took the bottle from Dax. "Next time we'll try it that way."
"Fongool," Enid said, giggling.
Dax woke at the first morning light. He flung out a hand and touched warm naked flesh. Sitting up in bed, he reached across Enid and picked up his wristwatch from the night table. It was almost five o'clock. He looked down at the sleeping girls. The French were right about English women; they did not have the charm of their own women. But when they were in bed there were none like them; they had all the amatory instincts of alley cats.
He reached over and shook them. Mavis opened her eyes. "It's morning," he whispered, "you'd better be getting back to your own rooms."
"Oh." She sat up and stretched. "Is Enid up?"
But Enid wouldn't open her eyes and in the end the two of them had to carry her back across the hall. Dax dropped her onto her own bed and turned to leave.
Mavis stopped him, her hand on his arm. "Dax."
He looked down at her. "Yes?"
"It was a good party, wasn't it?"
He smiled. "It was great."
She hesitated; her glance fell before his. "Will there be a next time?"
"Of course."
She looked up into his face and smiled. "The house will be too full this weekend. Too bad you can't get down to Brighton during the week. We have our own apartment near school."
"Who says I can't? Will it be all right if I bring a friend?"
"Of course." Then she looked up at him, a worried look in her eyes. "But—"
"He's all right, he knows how to keep his mouth shut. You know him. Sergei. The Russian who plays on the French polo team with me."
"Oh, yes." She began to smile. "That could be real fun. When would you come?"
"Monday night, if that's all right with you."
Later that morning, before anyone arrived, he went down to the village and called Sergei at the hotel in London. As a reward for winning, the whole team was staying over. He wasn't worried about Sergei not coming once he'd explained. Sergei would know just what he was talking about.
CHAPTER 12
Sir Robert looked down at the photographs on his desk. His face did not change expression as he looked up. "You could go to jail for this, you know."
Dax remained impassive. He did not answer. He knew that Sir Robert was bluffing. Silence fell into the room; only the faint hum of commerce seeped through the walls from the banking area outside.
Sergei had used almost the same words when Dax had broached the idea to him at the hotel in Brighton but Dax had laughed. "On what grounds? Do you think Sir Robert would want the publicity? Don't forget it's his daughters who will be involved."
"Just make sure my face isn't in the pictures," Sergei had said, acquiescing.
"It isn't your face I need," Dax had answered. He paid the luncheon check and got to his feet. "Let's go. We still have to buy a camera and some film."
"You'd better get developing equipment as well. You can't take pictures like that into the corner store to be developed. But what if the girls won't go along with the idea?"
"When they've had enough to drink they'll do anything," Dax had answered, and he'd been right.
Sir Robert shuffled the photographs and placed them in a small neat pile in front of him. "How much do you want for these?"
"Nothing," Dax replied, "they're yours."
The banker looked at him for a moment. "The negatives then?"
"There are four ships in Macao that were promised to my father two years ago. When they arrive in Corteguay the negatives will be mailed to you."
"That's out of the question," Sir Robert said. "I don't control those ships."
"Ramirez thinks you do."
Sir Robert stared at him. "So that's what happened to the letter."
Dax did not answer.
"Is that your conception of honor?" Sir Robert demanded angrily. "To betray your welcome in the home of your host?"
The beginnings of anger stirred in Dax's voice. "You're not the one to lecture me. When your own value of honor is how much you gain by its betrayal."
It was Sir Robert's turn to be silent. He stared down at the pile of photographs. "I do what I think is best for England."
Dax rose to his feet. "For your sake, Sir Robert, and my own, I would much prefer to believe that than to believe you acted out of greed."
He started for the door. Sir Robert's voice stopped him. "I need time to consider this."
"There's no hurry, Sir Robert. I'm returning to Paris today. If, say, by the end of next week I do not have a favorable reaction to my request, Ramirez' letter will be shown to your cousin the baron, and to my father. Then a thousand duplicates of each of those photographs will be distributed all over Europe."
Sir Robert's lips were tightly pressed together. His eyes stared coldly at Dax. "And if I should, as you put it, react favorably? You surely don't expect me to communicate with you directly?"
"No, Sir Robert. I shall learn of your decision soon enough from my father."
"A
nd Ramirez? Don't you want me to do something about him?"
A yellow light flashed in Dax's dark eyes. The banker felt a chill run through him at the sudden savageness that came into the boy's voice. "No, Sir Robert. I have my own plans for him."
Sir Robert's breakfast coffee slowly turned cold as he read a headline in his newspaper the following morning:
former diplomat and aide murdered on italian riviera
He felt his hands begin to tremble as he remembered the look in Dax's eyes. He shuddered, recalling how he had urged the boy to stay with them when he entered Sandhurst. Beneath it all the boy was nothing but a savage; all the education, the polish, was merely a thin veneer covering up the jungle. There was no telling what an animal like that might do. They might all have been murdered in their beds.
It was strange how suddenly near at hand it all seemed. No longer was it merely numbers and notations on a balance sheet at the bank. Now it was people, human beings, himself and his daughters, life and death.
His daughters. He felt a chill as he thought of them coupled with that savage. Whatever had possessed them to behave as they had? They had never given him the slightest trouble before. He hadn't been able to bring himself to talk to them about the pictures. They were such proper young ladies he did not know how to begin to discuss it.
Suddenly he was angry. It all came clear to him. He was a fool for even having doubted them for a moment. Everyone knew that savages in the jungle had access to mysterious potions that even modern science knew nothing about. That had to be it. Somehow the boy had managed to give the girls an aphrodisiac. Perhaps in a harmless cup of tea.
He realized suddenly what he had to do. He had to get them away from here. His wife came into the breakfast room and sat down opposite him. "How are you, my dear?" she asked, spreading marmalade on a slice of toast.
"The girls are going to your cousin in Canada!" he exclaimed angrily.
She stared at him in surprise, her toast forgotten. "But I thought we agreed that they didn't have to. That Chamberlain would never permit a war in Europe."
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