"Crawford certainly gets hold of some classy dames. I thought his face wouldn't have been worth looking at now."
There was a short mirthless laugh and then some snapped orders.
"We'll hop over the wall and scatter through the grounds. Short of accidents we'll meet at the back and move in. Jacques, you'd better stay with the car-and be ready. We'll be in a hurry."
There was a quick movement of soft footsteps along the grass verges of the lane, dwindling to a hardly heard scuffling until it became just a sound in the ears and the men had gone.
I raised my head gently, peering through the close pattern of leaves, twigs and space. I could see the legs of a man-almost certainly the driver-standing motionless, waiting. Very gently I raised myself, got to my feet, quickly, with soft, nervous footsteps; I slipped along the hedge to a gate, opening onto the main road. I, in turn, had made a quick decision. I had no intention of returning to the mansion after the confusion the toughs would have spread. I grinned to myself. Some confusion, I thought, if they allowed their natural inclinations to run riot.
Softly, with my heart in my mouth, I squeezed through the wooden rails of the gate onto the grass verge at the roadside. Crouching low and tensed with a consuming nervous energy. I crept along the hedge to the angle of its unction. The car, long and powerful, stretched like a lurking animal along the verge and out of sight, around the junction was the driver. The road, little frequented by traffic, was deserted as I drew level with the back of the car, eased along in its shadow and inched with a quiet desperation to the thick, rough corner where the hedge so slightly partitioned me from him.
Bending low, body strained back, I peered through the rough, leafy edge of branches. The man had his back towards me and was gazing, hands in pockets towards the mansion grounds. Obviously he expected any excitement to come from that direction.
For a moment or two I hesitated, mentally fumbling on the likelihood of him turning. And while I hesitated I felt my chances slipping away in that inevitability by which we are left only the smallest portion of time successfully to make a gamble. I stepped forward quickly and firmly, drawing my gun from my pocket in the same movement. The man sensed rather than heard me and his body twitched in the instinctive tautening of a turn. Raised like a gentleman in matters of violence, I had frequently regretted my inhibited slowness to strike the first blow. This time a lot depended on speed and the twitch died in a relaxed slump as I smashed my butt on his turning skull.
The blow struck, I pulled the body feverishly into the base of the hedge, where it lay partly covered by the lower twigs and branches. I glanced along the lane. There was no sign of any of the others. With the morbid feeling that these men would materialize from nowhere if I turned my back on them, I retreated to the main road. There, I made a dive for the car, started it, turned it, cursing my clumsy slowness, and then, with a roar of acceleration, I was streaming back along the road to Cannes.
I had no immediate plan. My one aim was to get away from that spot as quickly as possible. The more distance I put between myself and these hired killers, the safer I should feel. It would be some time, I thought, before they could convince themselves that I was not hidden away in the mansion and even after that the return to Cannes by foot and bus would be a laborious process.
For a moment I had had the uneasy feeling that wherever I hid myself I should be dogged by these men and that thought made me suddenly wonder how they'd found me such a short time after my leaving Paris.
Monique! For some time with the car racing in an exhilarating surge of power, my mind wrestled with this new complication. I was very fond of Monique. The thought of her being hurt was not a pleasant one. But I could think of no other way by which they could have traced me to Cannes. True that even she hadn't known exactly where in the south I was going-nor had I for that matter-but a good guess and possibly a quick check at the main hotels en route might have led them to my hiding place.
It was the nagging thought that I owed a little to Monique for the trouble she'd endured that tipped the balance in favour of a course of action which, I hoped, would be sufficiently unexpected to ensure my immediate safety. I would return to Paris.
by the time I had abandoned the car in a Cannes side street I had quiet decided that would be the best ting to do.
In a smooth rapidity I settled at my hotel and made my way to Gene's hotel.
Before I had quiet reached the steps, I saw her pushing her way through the crowds from the opposite side of the road. She ran to me, eyes wide and anxious. She had been waiting for me to come.
"Oh, Harvey, you don't know what I've been through. I thought you might have been killed or something."
"Not quite-and I shan't be if I keep moving," I grinned, "Their transport facilities have been rather dislocated."
But Gene was in no laughing mood as she leaned towards me, hand on my arm regardless of curious eyes from the hotel foyer.
"What are you going to do? I saw them and they looked dangerous. Is it safe to come into the hotel or should we find a cafe?" Her words followed the fluttering incoherence of her thoughts and I held her shoulder tightly.
"Look, Gene," I said. "I've a little grace, I don't know how long, and in that time I've got to get well on the way to somewhere where they won't find me I don't know how the hell they got onto me from Paris, so it won't be easy."
"The car's round the corner. Let's go quickly."
We jostled through the holiday crowds, Gene leading me by the hand to the parked car. Soon we were streaking through the city towards a northern route.
"I've decided to go to Geneva," I told her as we blared aside strolling, jaywalking visitors, fumed impatiently at the lights. "I have friends in Switzerland and I'll be safe there for a time."
Gene was silent for awhile, weaving, tight-lipped, through the traffic.
"I didn't believe you when you said it was a cafe fight," she said after a while. "But, Harvey-how bad is it?"
Foul deeds will rise, I thought with a mental chuckle.
"It's very bad," I answered. "It's my life that's at stake."
We drove out onto the smooth, tree -lined north road in a long, forboding silence. Gene seemed a little shocked.
"There was no point in telling you-so I made up the cafe fight." I put my hand on her thigh, tenderly and she smiled at me quickly with pain behind the smile.
She looked back, fixedly on the road ahead, unable to maintain the smile.
"Oh Harvey. Don't ... don't think I'm ridiculously sentimental ... and I know I shall probably never see you again after today ... but I should hate anything to happen to you. A tear forced itself down her eyelashes and dripped miserably onto her cheek. I tightened my grip on her thigh. Any woman would have felt the same about someone she'd just found and was forced to lose. She knew as well as I did that it wouldn't last a day-well, perhaps a day-but her sadness got across to me and I felt inclined to indulge in the safely temporary emotion.
"We can see each other again," I said quietly.
"You know perfectly well we won't." She even grinned sadly at my absurdity, but inside her, I knew, was the hope that as I'd said the words, it could be true.
"Why not? You'll be around for some time yet-and I'll be going back to Paris in a few weeks if I'm still able to."
"Darling. So much can happen between now and then."
"But I intend to go back to Paris."
"Harvey?"
There was a note of anguish in the tone and I looked at her sharply. "What is it?"
"I'd like you to make love to me just once more-the last time."
As I looked at her, I felt the momentary twinge of a doting husband looking at his dear little wife whom he loves very much. Gene must have fallen for me rather a lot.
by now we were well clear of Cannes with a long stretch of dusty, hot road between us and what had probably not yet even developed into our pursuit. Anyway the pursuit, once started, would almost undoubtedly take the w
rong direction-unless, of course, they gave up and headed back for Paris.
"All right," I said, pressing my fingers gently into the flesh of her thigh. "But we'll have to be careful in case we're taken unawares."
"We'll be careful." she whispered.
We drove on for a few more kilometers and at the first lane, Gene turned off, without looking at me and pulled up as soon as we were out of sight of the main road.
I moved to take her in my arms, but she restrained me, her hand tenderly pressing at my chest.
"No, not here," she said, a hint of pleading in her voice. "I don't want it to be cramped and difficult."
She opened the car door and stepped out into the dusty little lane looking back at me as if, for a moment, she was afraid I wouldn't follow her. As I stepped out after her, her hazel eyes softened and a semblance of a smile quivered around her full lips.
We pushed our way through a gap in the hedge on one side of the lane and clambered down the unexpectedly steep drop of a field to a flat stream bank where the grass was long and lush. On our side of the stream the field, humped with a few odd cows, stretched away to another distant hedge; on the other a thick little wood of willows dwindled down to the stream's edge.
"It couldn't have been a more lovely little spot." Gene's eyes flashed a brave, rueful little smile as she spoke and I felt momentarily embarrassed by the initial formality of the affair.
Gene sank to the grass slowly and began to take off her clothes. She was determined that our bodies should be in full, naked contact and, sensing that, I began to strip without demurring.
The sun, closing down on our nudity, sent a prickly heat under my skin after the initial thrill at the sudden exposure of my loins to the comparative coolness of the air away from the trapping heaviness of clothes. My penis rose as if in a sudden sun worship, reveling in the rays.
Gene, patches at her loins and breasts showing pale and unprotected in the surrounding darkness of her tanned skin, caught her arms around my legs as I stood for a moment breathing in the sun, and hugged them to her breasts.
I looked down at her, at the deep rift between her fine little breasts and her head tipped back and she gazed up at me. Her eyes dwelt on the jutting underside of my penis and its large suspended accompaniment. She ran her hand up my thighs, between my legs, until her fingers dug gently into my pelvis, and then she slid her hand forward, drawing my testicles out from my body, holding them, as if gently weighing, in her hand. Climbing up onto her knees, so that as I looked down I could see the slender mounds of buttocks, the mesh of hair down through the valley of her breasts, she kissed my testicles, running her lips lovingly over them. Suddenly, as if she had been fighting against it she seized my sun-warmed penis with both hands and closed her lips over it, sucking it in gentle contractions of her soft mouth.
It was as I looked up and beyond her towards the tops of the trees on the other bank of the stream, concentrating on the pulsing contraction which sent a throbbing undulation in constant motion through my loins, that I saw the man. He had obviously been fishing. I could see the rod perched and deserted further along the opposite bank. He himself, old and white-bearded with peaked cap and dilapidated clothes, was half hidden by the trees only about fifteen feet from us on the other bank. I gave no indication that I'd seen him and he, obviously, in the blindness that old people so often have, thought he couldn't be seen. He must have seen us arrive, I supposed, and had now moved along for a better view and a thrill of a type he probably hadn't enjoyed for many a year. Gene's body-her buttocks were towards him-must have looked the picture of slim, lovely elegance to a man so advanced in years and I decided not to spoil his pleasure. It even added to mine-a little thrill of delight at our observed licentiousness. He seemed like some Old Father Time come to witness our fading moment together in a kindly extension.
My penis, by now, was beginning to feel full and heavy and I sank down to my knees facing Gene and bit her breasts. She fell back, lying flat on the grass, sideways to the old man and her thighs flopped open. She pulled my hand down between her legs and I fondled her for some time, running my fingertips up the insides of her thighs, around her vagina and eventually inside it, holding off while she became more and more excited.
Wriggling her hips hotly, she caught hold of my penis again.
"Put it in, now, Harvey," she whispered.
She stretched her thighs wider as I moved over between them. I lowered myself onto her soft belly, sank, cushioned onto her body, feeling the points of her nipples, like little hard buttons, pressing into my chest. Her arms clasped me hard on her, her lips moving, pressing like live things on mine. Her legs twined in mine, rubbed against them as she moved her soft belly under me so that I could feel the flesh brushing against mine.
My penis was a rigid, hurting core, longing for moist, enclosing relief and, when it reached the point where I could stand its isolation no longer, I sank it into her, up between her legs, gliding through the soft portals. The relief swept through my whole body and gently and smoothly I worked into the depth of her in that wonderful squeezing sensation, until my testicles were brushing against her buttocks, below the no longer visible crevice where I'd entered and there was nothing between us except a pressing expanse of pelvis-no gap to be bridged.
Undulating my hips into her, I moved my face over hers, letting it sink down to one side of her, biting her ear. She, her face looking over my shoulder, ran her tongue furiously over my neck. I turned my face sidewards in a quick movement as if in passion and was able to see the old man. He had moved out from the sheltering trees a little, his trousers were undone-he was masturbating. You dirty old bugger, I thought with an inward grin.
Gene was quite unaware of the third party to our passion and was writhing in the throes of a desperate last intimacy. I could sense that she wanted me to crush her, to possess her utterly, hurt her even. As I held her thighs and pushed them out in an arc from her body. I wished I had the dimensions of the black race.
The realization that this was perhaps the last time of intimacy with someone I'd come to feel for with some affection added a certain sensation to my enjoyment also-gave it a new edge as if we were making love for the first time.
Gene, working her hips desperately, screwing herself down onto my thick stem, began to pant with a quick even heaviness of breathing and I increased the strength of my thrusts, snorting heavily, too, through my nostrils.
As, quicker than usual, the climax began to approach for both of us in a rushing fever which convulsed our limbs and cleared our lungs out into the sunlight, I heard sudden low gasps from the other side of the stream and allowed my head to rock in that direction as I twisted. The old man-with an organ unblemished by his age-was on the brink of explosion. As he shot furiously onto the grass in front of him he stifled a groan which-although he presumably thought it inaudible-would have been easily heard by Gene had she not been so abandoned to the passion which was drawing to its inevitable close.
I turned my attention fully back to her, raising myself up from her body, raising it, with my hands cupping her buttocks, up after me. I felt the draining pull staccato in my stomach, developing from its source into a great rapid and then shooting down to explode in her channel, bespattering her soft inside as it burst from my organ.
Gene, face working like a mad woman's called my name in quick passion-filled gasps as she too was drained of her vitality.
I lay on her, breathing heavily, allowing my penis to rest limply inside her. She held me, eyes closed, body raked with agitation. After a while, I rolled my heaviness off her and lay on the grass. The old man had moved back into the trees and was watching.
Gene left her thighs wide open, hips thrust forward as if offering herself to the sun, giving him an inviting view of the prize ready for the taking.
"When will you be back in Paris," Gene asked heavily without looking at me.
"We'll say three weeks time. That's sure to be safe," I replied with
out hesitation.
She made a quick calculation.
"That'll be the 17th-are you sure you'll be there? But, of course, how can you be sure." Her voice was resigned, deadened, unhappy.
"Darling, short of accidents I'll be there. I want to be there. I want to see you again."
"Do you?" She rolled over onto her side-presenting the old man with another delicious view of her slim back-and looked at me.
"Of course," I smiled. "You're the most delightful companion I've ever had."
She smiled in turn at that.
"What a silly thing to say-you can't possibly remember. It's very sweet though."
We lay in silence for a while and she traced her fingers over my chest. The sun was still hot although sinking and I felt my body regathering the energy I'd spent, growing strong and powerful and full of life again in its soft bed of grass. Gene's hand on my chest was a cool, foreign pressure reminding me of the unusual freedom my body was enjoying. I felt my penis stir on my thighs, slowly thickening with a return of the tingling pleasure it could contain.
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