by Troy Conway
Like now, with this nearly naked woman.
“Might I invite you to a coquetelle at Bertoncini’s?” I asked my companion, turning the scull toward the beach. “After you have showered?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” she smiled. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am the Baroness Zia von Osterreich.” Her tanned shoulders shrugged, as she added, “A meaningless title, an unknown name these days, but when de Maupassant and Matisse came here, the title and the name were very important.”
I took it I was accepted. It is not an easy thing to be accepted in Saint Tropez. It is a closed corporation, very clannish, very indifferent to most outsiders. I felt that Zia von Osterreich had been coming to Saint Tropez a long time, and that if she vouched for me, my stay here was going to a hoot.
She murmured, “I really must thank you for saving my life. You shouldn’t have been able to do so—against the mermen—yet you did.”
“Tell me, who or what are these mermen?”
A pink fingernail traced an unknown symbol on her thigh. Her eyes were downcast, watching what she did. Suddenly she shot a glance at me from under her long brown lashes, and just as suddenly she burst into laughter.
“You look like a poker player. Are you? This sign I’ve made”—her hand indicated her thigh “—you don’t know what it means, do you? Or are you familiar with it and won’t tell me?”
She had been doing some thinking, the baroness had. Maybe she thought I was one of the mermen, from the way I had polished them off.
“Do you?” I asked suddenly. “Do you think I’m one of them? Is that what’s in your head? You’re trying to find out something, I know.”
She giggled suddenly, as if delighted. “No, no. You are not a merman. This much I know, at least. But that you might be . . . somebody interested in them; this I do think.”
“Well, I’m not.”
I ran the scull up onto the white sand and turned to help Zia von Osterreich from the boat. She let me hold her hand a moment as she lifted a long bare leg and came over the moldboard to the wet sand. Then she seemed to stumble slightly and fell against me.
The touch of her big breasts and bare belly to mine touched off the explosive fury of my manhood. I grew up to full stature against her bikini pants. Her eyes narrowed to sensuous slits as she pressed herself into me.
“C’est par la, that’s why,” she murmured in perfect French.
“What’s why?” I asked stupidly.
Her laughter rang out as she nudged my swollen sex with her gold laméd front. “Cela! Your maleness.”
I must have looked ridiculous with my mouth hanging open, but she put a soft fingertip on my lips and ran it around gently. There was an odd tenderness in her gesture.
“The conquetelle, eh? At Bertoncini’s?”
I picked up the blue and white Pan-American satchel that had been given me as a first-class passenger on the big Boeing jetliner which had deposited me in France. I kept my wallet, the keys to the Alfa Romeo I’d hired in Marseilles, and my passport, inside it. My shirt and sandals were on the blanket where I’d left them to go sculling. A boy came running to retrieve the boat. I flipped him a twenty-franc piece. He would row the bateau back to its quay.
I walked beside the baroness to her own blanket, where she bent to pick up a white shirt and slide her arms into it. She knotted it three inches above her navel. She put her feet in wooden clogs and was dressed for going anywhere in Saint Tropez. There is no formality in this little fishing village.
I was dressed when I put on my own shirt and sandals.
We moved thigh to thigh along the white sand toward my Alfa Romeo. In the distance I could see the naked bodies of the sun worshippers who made a brief stretch of the Epi-plage into a nudist colony. Everything is free and easy here in this hot sunlight. The baroness giggled as she saw me staring, and suggested that tomorrow we join the nues.
We drove to Bertoncini’s wineshop. There were a score of little tables there, surrounded by chairs. We had to push our way into the shop through men and women who were so obviously tourists it hurt to see them. A bare arm lifted and waved. Zia cried out at sight of it and used me to run interference. We were soon shoved against a table where there was a single empty chair. I sat down and I pulled her onto my lap.
She gave me a surprised look then laughed. “I should have known such a one would have known the answer to the problem.” Then she turned to her friends, saying, “This is Rod—no dirty remarks, Claudine!—who just saved my life.”
She told the story amid exclamations of delight and fright from the artists and their women crowded in around our table. Somebody came and put two conquetelles before us. I sipped at mine while Zia wriggled her behind around on me. I think she delighted in stirring me up.
I was the fair-haired boy-hero after she finished her tale. Her friends—I caught the names Gaby, Pierre, Marina, Ange, Serafin and Claudine—insisted on standing treat, and one or two of the girls leaned across the tabletop to give me open-mouthed kisses in gratitude for the fact that I had brought Zia safely back to shore.
One fact about the recital I had noticed as Zia related it. There had been no mention of mermen. Instead, I had saved her from a shark that had somehow found its way in close to the beach. According to her story, I’d had a knife in my travel bag; I had used it to kill the shark that had been last seen drifting toward the bottom with my knife still in it.
We talked about sharks for a while. Cousteau had made a movie about them, he had mentioned them in his books, and these people had read him very thoroughly. They knew as much about them as any marine biologist. They also mentioned the fact that sharks were almost unknown in the Mediterranean.
“A loner,” I contributed.
“Oui,” murmured the baroness, glancing at me slowly, “an underwater Jack the Ripper.”
We talked about Jack the Ripper.
Then Zia got off my middle and stretched, saying, “It’s time I had my shower. Rod and I are going to the Esquinade.”
This was news to me, but I was all for it. I told everybody I had to go take a shower too—unfortunately not with Zia (at which they all laughed)—and be ready for my big date. We walked off hand in hand with our bare thighs brushing.
The baroness told me she owned a little house some miles outside town, not far from the hill village of Ramatuelle. She had ridden a bicycle into town, but she would make better time back and forth if she borrowed my Alfa Romeo. I stood on the cobbled street and watched her drive off, barely missing a middle-aged man in the red and white uniform of a bravado.
In my room at the Hotel de la Tour, I slid out of my shirt and swimtrunks, poured myself a glass of red wine, and contemplated my navel. During the past year or two, ever since I have been a Coxeman working with the Thaddeus X. Coxe Foundation, I have been discovering a new side to myself. Formerly I was content to be a university professor and founder of the League for Sexual Dynamics. Walrus-moustache, my case officer for the Foundation, changed all that.
He made me a secret agent. He also turned me into a living radar unit, continually tuning my instincts in on intrigue. I knew damn well Walrus-moustache would want to know about these mermen who could swim underwater for indeterminate lengths of time, who could get the oxygen their bodies needed from the water itself. I admitted I would like to know more myself.
So I spent a few bucks and telephoned the United States.
It was not all that fast. I put in my call, I walked into my shower and frothed up a lather. I stood and let the cold water drum down on my manhood as it clamored for attention whenever I thought about the baroness. It took a lot of cold water, but I was relatively calm and half dressed—in skintight pants and sandals and a clean shirt—when the telephone shrilled.
“Hello, hello?” I asked.
“Who’s this?” a faint voice answered.
“Your special agent, Chief—your man in Saint Tropez.”
“I thought you were on a vacation.”
“I am. But something’s come up——”
“Not again! Stop bragging.”
“That isn’t what I mean.”
I clued him in on the mermen.
There was a little silence, then he said, “Hold the fort, Professor. I’m coming. I want to learn more about these mermen from the lady herself.”
“She may not talk.”
A dirty chuckle was my answer.
“So okay,” I agreed. “I have ways, but you’re going to let me do it on my own. Neither the lady nor I like audiences, I think.”
“All right. Find out what you can. I’ll be there in a day or two. And, Damon—be careful.”
“Your concern has me all hung up.”
“If those men tried to kill the baroness, they may succeed in killing you. Be warned.”
“I’m warned. So for now, au revoir.”
I hung up and walked downstairs and out onto the promenade. I had not long to wait before my Alfa Romeo braked to a stop before me. The baroness was at the wheel, her dark brown hair piled up like a crown on her head in an upsweep with tiny pearls winking through it.
“Bonjour,” she caroled.
I hopped in, seeing that she was wearing a micro-skirt and black patterned stockings, with a frilly shirtwaist that was as transparent as mist. I could even make out the dark areolas of her large brown nipples. She looked like a tourist lady. She laughed when I told her so.
“I thought you might enjoy seeing me like this.”
She had excellent legs and the patterned hose made them very modish. She could have been an American jet-setter. I was hardly in the seat than she was off with a screech of tires on the cobbles.
“We are not going to the Esquinade,” she informed me, eyes ahead to watch the road. “I have another cave cafe in mind. The Diabolique. You’ll like it.” Her eyes slid from the road to my face for a moment.
“I do admit being in a hell-raising mood,” I commented.
Her soft chuckle was a compliment to my wit. She drove easily and with a competent manner that made me wonder if she would be as skillful in a bed. I intended to find out before the night was too far advanced.
The Diabolique was one of those entertainment spots like the Esquinade and the Tropicana. There was an oaken door set in what looked like a ordinary hill. Twin torches flared on either side, illuminating the carved face of the devil himself, carved in rock above the door. There was a parking lot to one side of the hill. A uniformed boy came running as the baroness braked.
We moved toward the oak door.
An instant before we touched it, the door swung open. Electric eye beam? I wondered. Then I saw a girl devil in tight red nylon pantihose, with bare breasts shoving out invitingly at us, her pretty face masked in a scarlet domino. She wore a devil-cap with pointed ears above the mask.
“Madam, monsieur,” she whispered.
The baroness patted the girl’s right breast. I figured it might be some kind of password, so I patted the other one. The girl giggled and wriggled a little as we caught her nipples and tugged gently on them.
“Ca chatouille,” she protested. “That tickles!”
“We may see you later, Violane,” Zia murmured. Turning to me, she asked, “You enjoy a troilism occasionally, non?”
“Occasionally, yes,” I nodded, and catching Violane, I kissed her bare shoulder, pressing myself against her scarlet behind and finding it soft and yielding.
“He is tres fou,” the girl shrieked, doubling up with laughter, managing to back herself still harder into me.
“He’s an Amerloque,” commented Zia, as if my being American explained everything. “But he’s a nice Amerloque.”
“A nice Amerloque,” murmured Violane reflectively, continuing to sample my size with her buttocks.
Zia caught my hand. “Come, darling. Don’t pay any atention to the little tart. She’s only agitating for a tip.”
I let myself be drawn along by the hand but I slipped out a hundred-franc note, folded it and sailed it through the air at the girl-devil. She caught it and blew me a kiss between giggles.
There was a worn stone staircase before us, lighted by a row of red-flaring torches. If I didn’t know better, I would have said this was one of the entryways to Hell itself. There was a sign in French reading, “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.” Just like the real thing.
A man in a devil costume, complete with tail and trident, stood before a door heavy with erotic carvings. I would have paused to study them—with my role as president of L.S.D. in mind—but Zia tugged at me.
“Entrez, entrez,” she cried.
I followed her through the door.
Out of the shadows to the right another devil came leaping. He appeared so suddenly I had no time to stop him. He held a naked knife in his hand. With a bloodcurdling scream, he plunged the steel shaft into Zia von Osterreich’s soft belly.
The blade went deep, out of sight.
CHAPTER TWO
I stood frozen in utter horror.
Then my nerves unwound and I catapulted forward, my right hand rigid, chopping down at the scarlet neck of the red-clad killer. For a moment I was insane with fury.
Zia screeched, “Gott in Himmel! Nein! Nein!”
I tried to stop the blow but the edge of my hand landed and the devil went flying across the floor to land up against a table containing a small fortune in trays and glassware. The table skidded and splintered. The glasses went flying, shattering and breaking all over the place.
Half a hundred diners and drinkers froze into shocked silence.
I was standing at the balustraded entrance into what looked like a grotto out of Hell. The walls were gray stone, and were hung with the pitchforks generally associated with Beelzebub, also with glossy photographs of naked men and women in varied love poses. Some of them were mural size. There was a bar in the far distance, where devils served as bartenders. Half a dozen girls in black kitten costumes—witches’ familiars—were serving drinks on trays.
Everybody stopped and stared.
Zia was screaming. “It is the joke, the scare thing. Mein Gott! You have already kill two men today. ’Ow many you want to kill?”
When she got excited, Zia forgot her precise English. I stared at her unmarked belly, at the knife with the retractable blade that lay on the floor, at the inert man in the devil costume lying amid the splintered ruins of the table.
“Sorry about that, Zia,” I mumbled.
A roar of delight exploded in the room. Knives clanged against glasses in a symphony of sympathetic understanding. A man in evening clothes came hurrying through the din, his face white.
“Your highness! Baroness!” he pleaded. “What is it?”
I bent and picked up the knife. I touched its dull point. The blade slid back into the long handle. I went red with embarrassment. Zia spread her hands as she looked around the room. She loved audiences, I decided.
“This man is an Amerloque,” she began. “This afternoon he saved my life from a shark. It is getting to be a habit.”
The room roared with pleasure. This was something new, a little lagniape to break the monotony of small-talk and familiar drinks. I caught a few phrases here and there.
“Teach the beggar not to pull those stunts!”
“I wish you’d done that, Henry!”
“Mon Dieu! I think he killed Raoul. Somebody go see.”
“Baroness, trust you to find Tarzan in Saint Trop!”
The man in the tuxedo was flowing with apologies. I offered to pay for the damage, but he would not hear of it. It was worth it in entertainment value, M. Ambert assured me. Himself out in front, he escorted us to a table. I threw a look back over my shoulder. Raoul was coming to, being assisted to his feet by the devil-clad doorman and two black kittens.
Zia said, “I need a double brandy after that, M’sieu Ambert.”
“Make it two,” I echoed.
M. Ambert hovered above us, still murmuring his apologies, interspersing hi words with Ga
llic gestures to a kitten and a barman. “Not for the world would I have had this happen, your highness. Not for two worlds! Ha-ha! It is most unfortunate that you are so embarrassed.”
Zia was not embarrassed. She was preening herself, smiling at grinning faces, winking and making moués of her full red mouth as she blew kisses or gurgled happy laughter at the women. The thought touched me that had she wanted me to stay out of the action, she would have warned me what might be coming, and not to be startled.
The minx had wanted to see my reactions!
I put a hand under the scarlet tablecloth, reached up under her skirt to her soft inner thigh and pinched. Zia lurched and gave a mock scream.
“Darling, control yourself! This is not the place.”
“If we’re in hell, I’m going to be a devil,” I shouted.
This drew a round of applause. Mr. Ambert beamed. Our black kitten waitress was beside me, holding her breath, her green eyes wary behind her cat mask. This black nylon kitten costume was very cleverly fashioned. Two holes in front permitted her bare breasts to protrude, so that they shook and jumped as she moved. A black netting stretching from her navel to her upper thighs all but exposed her shaven femininity. And from behind, as I was soon to discover. . . .
The kitten bent to hear what Zia wanted. This presented a fluffy cat’s tail to my inquisitive hand. I reached out, caught hold of it and lifted. The girl whooped and bucked. I found myself staring at a stark naked behind, very plump, very attractive.
M. Ambert exclaimed, “Where did you find this one, highness?”
The uproar in the cave casino was hitting about a hundred decibels. My ears ached with the noise. In the background, men and women were standing at their tables, the better to see what the mad American might be doing. Zia was giggling fit to kill, while the kitten was staring at me with less fear and with something like invitation in her green eyes.
“My uncle was an explorer,” I told the room.