Two other Americans were swaggering along the curved row of adobe houses, banging on the doors and making similar demands.
Gold remained where he was in the shaft of light from the cantina doorway, able to see because of the rise in the street, over the heads of the gathering audience to the scene that was the centre of attention.
This was the top of the steps at the centre of the stoop. Where two men were in process of making Seth Harrow a helpless prisoner between the flanking pillars that supported the stoop roof in the area of the house doorway. The old-timer’s wrists were already lashed above his head and out to his sides to opposite pillars. And now his legs were forced apart, and his ankles were tied to the base of each pillar.
The shouting had ceased and there was an excited murmuring among the watching crowd, the audience growing larger as Mexican men, women and children shuffled reluctantly along the street.
Neither Hal nor Eve Delroy were in sight.
‘What did he do, mister?’ Gold asked the scar-faced man, who gave a grim-faced jerk of his head to hurry the bartender and the fat woman toward the scene of the potential beating.
‘How the frig would I know, stud?’ came the rasping reply. ‘We’ll all hear soon enough.’
He glanced along the curve of the street to check that everyone except Gold was out front of the big house, then ambled away.
Gold ate bread soaked in chili and looked toward the house stoop as the old-timer was made secure - seemed to be unconscious in the way his head hung low between his up and outstretched arms.
‘All ready for you, Miss Eve!’ a man called.
Now Gold looked back along the deserted street. Up at the towering cliff face. At the beached boats on the ridge of sand that hid the ocean. But even if there was a chance of escape while all attention was held by the punishment of the hapless old-timer, it would be without a horse. And a mount was the sole reason why he had come to this morose community.
The doors of the big house swung inwards and Hal Delroy waited for the murmuring to finish before he said, ‘Ah, the entertainment.’
He had company now. An ash-blonde woman of about thirty with a beautiful face and a statuesque body who stood a head taller than her escort. She was dressed as appropriately for a formal dinner as was he. And, like Delroy, was cradling a brandy balloon in both her ring-encrusted hands. But while his smile was of pure pleasure, the one she wore had a strained quality. Which was even more apparent when Seth Harrow lifted his head to look at the two people on the threshold of the house.
‘Come, Eve, the night air is chili!’ Delroy called.
And swayed a little from the effects of liquor as he glanced over his shoulder.
Gold felt his hunger pangs diminish but knew it was just a temporary reaction to what was about to happen. And he hurried to finish the meal, setting aside an anxiety that he might vomit in a more drastic reaction to the impending violence.
Eve Delroy appeared at one end of the stoop and her footfalls rapped hollowly on the boarding as she strode purposefully along it, like an actress moving to the centre of the stage, clearly illuminated by the light from the windows.
She no longer wore a dress. Instead, English-style riding jodhpurs, tight fitting and tucked into knee-high boots. Black. And a white blouse with an upturned collar, unfastened low enough from the throat to reveal the upper, inner swell of her low breasts. She carried the short handle of a whip in her right hand while she ran her fisted left back and forth along the thin thong.
Even in his present predicament, Seth Harrow had not dared to plead with Hal Delroy. But when he twisted his head to the side and saw the top man’s sister, he began to beg for mercy again.
‘Please, Miss Eve. It weren’t my fault. I told the folks in the store exactly what you said you wanted. Showed them the picture. Just like you told me to and...’
Eve came to an abrupt halt and lashed out with the whip. It cut through the air with a sharp crack that erupted a cry from the old-timer and caused the woman with Hal Delroy to jerk backwards.
The short, fat man in the dinner suit rested a comforting hand on the arm of the ash-blonde and spoke soft words to her. Then took a swallow of brandy.
Because Harrow’s body, spread-eagled in the upright position, blocked the way to the steps, Eve swung lithely over the rail to the side and faced the audience, a grim expression of evil spite on her face that looked not at all pretty now. Her dark eyes searched the crowd for some moments before she spotted Barnaby Gold standing far to the rear, in the light from the cantina doorway.
‘Don’t you duck out on this, Gold!’ she instructed. ‘You stand and watch and be ready when I want you!’
Some members of the audience turned to look at him. Their expressions varied from contempt to mocking amusement, from pity to mild sympathy.
‘All right!’ Eve snapped to recapture the attention of all. The reason this man is going to be beaten is that he did not do what he was told by a Delroy. I specifically told him I wanted a dress that was black with white piping. What he brought me back was the exact reverse of that.’
‘It’s reason enough,’ her brother allowed after a few moments of pondering, like a judge considering evidence. Then his voice hardened. ‘But five at most, Eve. Seth is very useful to us. And he’s an old man.’
His sister grimaced her dislike of the sentence. Then turned sideways on to her victim and took a measured pace backwards, the thong of the whip trailing on the ground. Then she nodded her satisfaction that the range was correct.
The old-timer’s head was hanging down and a low moaning sound trickled from his throat.
Hal Delroy’s hand no longer rested lightly on the arm of his beautiful companion. Instead, it encircled her narrow waist and held her rock-firm, barring her from retreating into the brightly lit house.
When Eve swung the whip gently, to check that she had clearance, the Mexicans who had been forced to the front of the crowd pressed backwards, fearful of being struck by the tip of the thong.
Then, with a smile of unmitigated evil inscribed deep into the lines of her face, Eve Delroy landed the first blow.
The thong lashed across the centre of the old man’s thin back and his body responded to the stinging pain by becoming rigid, as his head was forced up so that he was staring past the front edge of the stoop roof at the night sky. To which he directed a shrill, long lasting scream.
The ash-blonde gasped and wrenched her head to the side. Hal Delroy sipped his brandy. The crowd remained still and silent. Eve glanced momentarily toward the front of the cantina as she ran the tip of her tongue along the undersides of her exposed upper teeth. And Barnaby Gold felt sweat ooze from every pore in his body with the strain of resisting the impulse to draw the Peacemaker from the holster.
When Seth Harrow became limp, Hal Delroy spoke above the old man’s whimpering. He said, ‘One.’
The second lash was delivered with greater power and the thin strip of leather cut through the fabric of Harrow’s shirt, the skin beneath, to draw blood.
Only the ash-blonde’s reaction was different. She began to sob. Against her weeping and the punished man’s weak wailing, Hal Delroy said, ‘Cut that out, Emily. Two.’
Then sipped some more brandy as his sister laid the third stroke across Harrow’s back. An inch higher. The brandy balloon slipped from Emily’s fingers and she crumpled to the stoop boarding, one of her unfeeling outstretched arms thudding down among the shards of broken glass. And drew blood. But not so much as that which was soaking the shredded shirt of the flogged man.
‘A criminal waste of fine liquor. That’s three, Eve.’
Harrow’s mind had been driven to that point beyond which it was incapable of accommodating further pain and he was unconscious. So there was neither a physical nor a vocal response to the fourth bite of the whip.
This aroused a frenzied anger within Eve Delroy, who vented an animalistic sound as her brother gave the count. And she used every ounce of strength in her
body to deliver the final blow - directing the thong with expertise at her victim’s buttocks.
Then she leaned against the stoop rail, bent slightly from the waist, like she had been winded by great exertion.
Her brother drained his balloon dry and announced in a dull voice, ‘All right, you people. Entertainment is over. As always, keep this in mind whenever you’re told to do something by a Delroy. Joe, Vic, bring him down and make him comfortable. And have somebody clean up my porch.’
He leaned down, grasped the wrist of Emily’s bleeding arm and dragged her unceremoniously back across the threshold of the house.
The crowd began to disperse. Except for the scar-faced man and one with an inch-wide black beard that followed his jaw line and joined his sideburns, and an elderly Mexican woman who waited for them to cut down Seth Harrow so she could start to pick up the broken glass.
Eve Delroy straightened up and coiled the whip in one hand. Yelled, ‘Gold, give me time to clean up! Then come to the upstairs front room on the right!’
She pointed with the hand holding the whip to the window of her room. And the homegoing Mexicans and the Americans returning to the cantina looked at him with the same range of expressions as earlier. This as he lit a cheroot, the flame of the match in his cupped hands reflected in the green eyes that looked dead, so lacking in expression were they.
The unconscious Harrow was cut free and carried into the open doorway of the big house in the wake of Eve. The Mexican woman moved on to the stoop and squatted on her haunches, carefully picking up the broken glass and dropping it into the pouch of her dress between her thighs. A man smoking a pipe and picking at his fingernails with the point of a knife was the last member of the crowd to approach the cantina entrance.
His teeth, clenched to the pipe stem, gleamed in an embittered smile as he said, ‘Instead of a horse you get yourself a she-cat, stud. But I reckon she’s nice and ready to give you a fine ride,’
Barnaby Gold clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
CHAPTER SIX
THE activity in the cantina was resumed in a manner that suggested it had been interrupted by no more than a call to witness something which had been of no interest to anybody.
The black-clad stranger to Oceanville was paid not the slightest attention when he went inside to get his gear. When he re-emerged, the Mexican woman was shuffling back home, the hem of her dress held up to retain the broken glass and her head averted so that she did not look at him.
Joe and Vic came out of the house as he started up the steps and they leered at him as they stood to either side, to usher him inside with mocking gestures.
‘What does making the old man comfortable mean?’ Gold asked.
‘It means he’s been took care of in the third best room in the house, stud,’ the bearded man answered.
‘Who by?’
‘Couple of Mex whores who make the cantina tail look like somethin’ that’s been stampeded over, stud,’ the scar-faced man told him. ‘Right, Vic?’
‘Sure, Joe. But we can wait, can’t we?’
They went to either side of Gold and down the steps.
‘Don’t reckon we’ll have to wait long for that well-stacked Emily?’ the bearded Vic said conversationally.
‘Sometimes the best lookers are the worst hookers,’ the scar-faced Joe responded.
And they both laughed.
‘Almost time to change the guard,’ Gold heard one of them say wearily as he entered the house and closed the door behind him.
A great deal of money had been spent on the sumptuous furnishings of the hall, stairway and landing, which were the only parts he saw on his way to Eve Delroy’s room. Deep pile carpets covered the entire floor area and there were gilt framed oil-paintings of great age hung on the wood-paneled walls.
There was too much furniture, with chairs and sideboards, settees and tables, desks and highboys cluttering every inch of available wall space. With an overabundance of porcelain ornaments littering flat surfaces.
Barnaby Gold could admire the fineness of the porcelain without knowing anything about it. The furniture he could date as from the Federal Period and take pleasure in seeing the craftsmanship with which the mahogany and maple, the satinwood and birch, had been carved. Knew from his own experience of working with seasoned timber what labors of love had gone into the vast array of furniture collected in this house.
But he did not indulge himself deeply or for long in appreciation of the cabinet-making craft that was displayed in the house, nor did he allow these examples to re-awake anticipation of the much greater treasures that were in Europe.
He neither saw nor heard anybody on his slow approach to the door of Eve Delroy’s room, to one side of which there was a padded feather-back chair. Where he sat down and waited for perhaps ten minutes, smoking the cheroot and knocking the ash into the lid of the open tin.
Until the door opened and the woman thrust out her head, mouth wide to yell a command. Until she saw him sitting there and uttered a gasp of surprise that became a sound of pleasure accompanied by a smile of delight.
‘I was going to call for one of the servants to bring you to me, Barnaby Gold. It’s gratifying to know you are eager enough to make that unnecessary. Come on inside.’
She was wearing a nightgown of the sheerest fabric, but comprised of so many layers that the garment as a whole was not diaphanous. It was fastened with a tie at the throat and she held it closed at the waist with a hand. She smelled freshly bathed and perfumed and her long hair had a sheen from recent brushing. She had made up her face with expertise, skillfully highlighting her best features.
Barnaby Gold rose from the chair, lifted his gear and carried it into the large room. An obviously feminine bedroom tastelessly overcrowded with fine furniture, pictures and ornaments, its centerpiece a Pennsylvanian four-poster bed hung with brocade drapery.
A door in a side wall was open and from it wafted some steam which was aromatic with perfume. Only as the door from the landing was closed and the key was turned in the lock did he do a double take at the pictures and ornaments and see that each one depicted or was styled to show some facet of the sexual act.
‘Get those stinking clothes off, Gold,’ she rasped as she came around him and went toward the bed. ‘I’ve never been more ready to get screwed.’
She was still stirred up from the effects of flogging Seth Harrow. But her cultured tone of voice remained as she reached the bed, unfastened the tie and allowed the nightgown to slide off her shoulders as she turned to face him.
He clicked his tongue at sight of her nakedness and dropped his gear on the floor as he answered, ‘Be my pleasure, lady.’
He started to get out of his own clothes.
‘And it better be mine, Gold. It has been a very long time since I last had a man.’
She watched his every move as he undressed, her wet lips slightly parted and her dark eyes bright. While his gaze roved over her slender body and limbs, lingering on the erect nipples that were so dark against the cream-colored low mounds of her breasts, the even darker luxuriant triangle of hair at the base of her Oat belly and the lithe lengths of her splayed thighs.
‘He was a lot older than you. Gold. And flabby at the gut. Good, but lacking in stamina. Did I have to work on him after he finished too fast the first time! But after a week here he was the way I like my men. Well now, I think I may have the same trouble with you. After the first time.’
He was naked, standing amid his discarded clothing. As slim in masculine terms as she was slender. Not muscularly over-developed, but his flesh firm. With the hair on his chest, at his armpits and the lower belly as blond as that on his head. His readiness to give her what she wanted was thrustingly apparent.
Her eyes feasted hungrily on the sight of him, then flashed with anger as he stepped toward her.
‘I’ll tell you when, Gold!’ she snarled.
‘Shut your mouth, lady,’ he told her, softly but with a more command
ing tone than she had used.
‘What?’
He quickened his pace and she took a backward step and banged into a tea table set against the wall, which caused her to cry out. He halted and reached forward, to curl a hand around the back of her neck. Gazed with dead eyes into her frightened ones for a moment. Then shoved her hard to the side. So that she was sprawled, with another cry, across the bed.
‘If I scream, every man in...’
‘You wanted a man and you’ve got one, lady,’ he rasped. And knelt on the bed between her splayed legs. ‘So if you ain’t woman enough to take what he’s going to give you, start screaming.’
She remained fearful as he gently cupped each of her breasts and began to move his palms on the nipples, trapping her eyes with his own. They had contracted when he had frightened her, but now they responded to his tender attentions. At the same time as the clouds of dread were drained from her eyes and the former light of desire entered them.
‘Oh,’ she uttered softly. And raised her arms, hands hooked to fasten behind his neck.
He lowered himself slowly to the floor, his head between her splayed legs which she closed toward him. He trailed his lips along each thigh in turn and drew moans from her. Her hands demanded that he advance the touch of his lips to the centre of her want, but he refused to comply.
‘Damn you!’ she hissed, but threw her arms wide to the sides to submit to what he wanted of her when he wanted it.
Whilst his hands continued to keep her breasts aroused, his lips encroached further along her thighs. Her flesh quivered and became sheened with sweat as a low moaning trickled from her wide mouth. He spared a single kiss for the centre of her black, moist want. Which caused her thighs to draw apart to their limit.
‘Now you bastard, now!’ she groaned.
He rose up on to the bed, his hand shifting from her breasts to the nape of her neck. He forced her head up from the bed, so that her lust-inscribed face with its tear-filled eyes looked down the length of her body between the low valley of her breasts. And she saw that part of him she wanted most as it began to penetrate her.
Funeral By The Sea Page 4