The Best Laid Plans

by Troy Conway

  Sabine clapped her palms.

  The entertainment was about to commence. The young men and the girls knew their roles, they stood aside and let the maids—there were four of these serving wenches, each one as pretty as the next—remove the tableware, the silver, and the glasses. While this was taking place, the performers were slipping out of what few garments they wore.

  The table was the stage. The boys and girls made love to one another, while Mesdames Bree and Audibert and I sat watching. For me, a love-in is not a spectator sport, I much prefer to be a participant. But I went along with Sabine in her desires. My two days, which I’d won on a bet from her, would be coming.

  I am afraid I yawned, after a time. The will was just not there. I was tired of seeing these girls and boys perform. If I’d had a part in the action, it might have been different.

  Germaine Audibert saw my hand before my open mouth, and gaped. She had been interested in watching the girl named Daniella and her boyfriend perform the el nehati movement of the Shayk Nefzawi. Wide as her black eyes had been then, they were even wider now that she saw how apparently uninterested I was.

  “Sabine—he’s yawning,” she cried in dismay.

  Madame Bree whirled on me, lips open in disbelief.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she gasped. Her glance fell to my rampant manhood. “You can’t be bored—not with that evidence of your interest so—so prominent.”

  “Priapus is priapic not because of these childish carryings-on—but despite them, my good lady. You seem to make the same mistake every other erotically inspired female makes. You think voyeurism will automatically inspire a male to venery. This isn’t necessarily so.”

  “I believe him, Sabine,” panted Madame Audibert.

  “Oh, Germaine, do shut up,” Sabine breathed. “Professor, what can I do—or should I have done—to excite you spiritually?”

  “First, send the performers away,” I suggested with an airy wave of my hand. I had already examined them and found them wanting. None of them was the HECATE girl spy who was out to kill me if I didn’t kill Sabine Bree.

  “The first rule of rousing a man is to offer him something new,” I explained. “I’ve seen these people until I’m tired of them. Those four serving wenches, for instance —I’m saving you and Germaine for the finale, Sabine—together with that pretty maid of yours should be enough to get my tired old tendons into good working order.”

  Sabine raised her thin black brows. “It seems to me your tendons were never better. I think you’re putting me on about something, but I can’t discover what.”

  “Then why not find out?”

  Her wise eyes studied me, then she nodded. “Voilà! I will do it. I will see what it is you have to offer me. Girls! Boys!”

  Her crisp voice sent them packing. There were little protestations of annoyance, but Sabine told them they could stay downstairs at the bar and have themselves an orgy, if they wanted. They would be paid their full bonuses, as well. It was just that Germaine and she wanted privacy with me.

  Agnete blew me a kiss as she went out. Hannie looked back, laughed, and stuck out her tongue. Then they were gone and the two older women and I were left alone in the chamber lighted by the candles.

  Sabine looked at me inquiringly.

  It was up to me to offer madame le general something new and different by way of a sex gambit, one which she had never known, one that would have her climbing walls in her ecstasy. At the moment, I hadn’t an idea in my head.

  I dared not let Sabine know this, so I put a wise look on my face, caught her waist and that of Germaine Audibert in my arms and marched them out of the victory hall and toward a bedroom. Each woman was softly fleshed, expensively perfumed, each was a voluptuary, each had known the embraces of many men.

  “The Hindu ritual of the stag and his herd of does?” I mused. “Or the Arabic twin temptations of the honeybee?”

  “What are they?” Germaine panted.

  “Postures by which a man may please two women at the same time,” I explained. “Each person is involved, each posture affords the maximum in erotic pleasure. But since I want this to be an especially memorable evening, I’ve decided neither of those will do.”

  “But you have an idea—for another?” gasped Sabine.

  “I do. I think we shall attempt the Chinese posture known as planting-the-geranium-bulb-in-the-twin-flower-pots.”

  Germaine stared at me glassy-eyed. “At the same time? Can it be done?”

  “Wait and see.”

  We were outside Madame Bree’s bedchamber. There was something I needed from my luggage if I were to indulge in the geranium-bulb-planting-in-twin-flowerpots. I explained to Sabine and Germaine that I would be back inside five minutes.

  “No tricks,” murmured the Frenchwoman suspiciously.

  I grinned. I was as anxious to try the geranium planting as she and Madame Audibert. I’d read of the posture but had never come across the opportunity to employ it

  “Be patient,” I advised.

  I opened the door and ushered them in.

  Then I ran for my own room.

  Among the erotic impedimenta I had purchased in certain shops in Paris—together with the penis splint I’d used on Margot Metayer in the Plaze-Athénée Hotel—was a lifelike replica in pink latex rubber of the male organ. This dildo was necessary to the proper technique for geranium planting.

  Something moved in the shadows as I walked into my room. The lights were out; only the moonlight illumined the furniture and the unlighted lamps. The unknown girl from HECATE? Was she already in the room waiting to kill me? I doubted that she would strike so soon. HECATE was in no hurry. I had a week to spend in the villa, seven days in which to find a way to kill Sabine Bree.

  I moved toward my luggage, threw open a valise.

  Not by so much as a sidewise glance did I betray the fact that I knew someone beside myself was in here with me. Out of the corners of my eyes I had spotted that single movement. So when I leaped sideways, both hands flashing out, I caught the intruder by complete surprise.

  I also caught her across the temple with a karate chop. Not hard enough to kill, just powerful enough to stretch her out unconscious at my feet. She gave a little squeal as the edge of my hand belted her, then she was collapsing into a tiny huddle on the floor.

  It was the blonde maid, Noelle.

  I yanked cordings from the window drapes, I tied her wrists behind her, and her slim ankles. I stuffed a handkerchief between her jaws and knotted it tight in her mouth with a third length of cording. I picked her up and dropped her on the bed.

  She would be here, helpless, when I got back from my attentions to Sabine and Germaine. I ran my hands-over her skull and in the cerebral cortex—the outer layer of her brain—just behind her right ear, I found the bump. Noelle was from HECATE. The stimulator in her head would compel her to kill me if I failed HECATE a second time.

  Bound and gagged, this would be impossible for her to accomplish. I wanted to have a nice long chat with Noelle. But not now. Later.

  Carrying the dildo in my hand, I walked toward Sabine Bree’s bedroom. Pink straps dangled from the apparatus. I would tie those straps about my loins so that the lifelike rubber organ would appear to be a tail jutting outward above my backside.

  The women were waiting for me, nyloned legs crossed, nervously smoking cigarettes. Their eyes brightened as I entered, my manhood as rampant as ever thanks to the aphrodisia powder Noelle had rubbed into my skin and the thorn apple drink. Their backs straightened, their hands went out to crush the cigarettes in ashtrays filled to overflowing.

  “At last,” Sabine breathed, eyes wide and worshipful.

  Their eyes fell to the pink straps I was fastening about my naked loins. Understanding came to Sabine, she gurgled laughter and stood up, bending to catch her skirt in her hands and lift it.

  “So then, I begin to comprehend,” she smiled. “Darn clever, these Chinese.”

  “Unfortunately, the
real meche cannot cope with the performance of the false,” Germaine Audibert murmured.

  “Au contraire, my dear,” I commented. “It shall be a tie. You women shall be the first to call quits.”

  Her voice was muffled by the cocktail gown she was lifting off over her graying blonde hair as Sabine said, “Margot named you properly. You are a braggart.”

  “Want to bet?” I grinned.

  She was sliding her arms out of the black satin gown, making an exciting sight in her Merry Widow corset out of which her heavy white breasts were bulging. The black garters bisected her plump white thighs, below which taut black nylons encased her handsome legs.

  “I’ve already lost one bet to you,” she laughed. “No bets. Just a performance to equal your words, that’s all I ask of you.”

  I moved toward Germaine, putting my hands on her zipper, sliding it down, baring her pale back. She was a beautiful woman, as Sabine was, and I ran my lips down her spine to the black of her garterbelt. She breathed faster, glancing back over her bared shoulder at me.

  My hands pushed the evening dress down past her pallid hips, clad now only in the frilly garterbelt. Her hips were wide and firm, her buttocks pale and plump. She was somewhat slimmer than Sabine, but as she turned her body to step out of the gown, she revealed as large a pair of breasts.

  I caught Sabine by a hand, drew her close, bending to kiss the white breasts poking out over the lace top of her Merry Widow. As I took their brown nipples between my lips, I heard her sigh. My hands were busy with Germaine, stroking her upper thighs and across her mounded belly into the ebony bush between her thighs.

  Sabine and Germaine reached out themselves, they took my straining manhood into their fingers. Their caresses were gentle at first, but as my lips and hands roused them more and more, they became almost savage in their touchings. Germaine was whimpering, Sabine was sobbing softly.

  I turned them, walked between them toward the bed. This was to be a complicated maneuver. I let Sabine sink down on the mattress and lifted her stockinged legs.

  Her voice drawled, “If you don’t last as long as your tail—I’ll hate you to pieces, Professor!”

  Then she grunted, lifting her pale hips and writhing as I stepped forward, entering her. Mechanically her legs locked about my hips, she raised her arms to put them about my neck. My hands under her buttocks eased her forward and upward and she sank down upon me.

  I lifted her, turned.

  Germaine was staring at the movements Sabine was making, her hips working back and forth on me, as her tongue came out to moisten her lips. I said to Germaine, “Lie down. You’re going to have to guide me.”

  “Later we switch?”

  I nodded, grimly determined to wear out these two sex-pots so that they would be soundly sleeping when I left the bedroom to go and question Noelle.

  Madame Audibert positioned herself, thighs wide apart, hand reaching for my tail. I backed into her. She guided the rampant dildo until it was deeply fleshed. She cried out, she danced her hips, she sent out her nyloned legs like snakes, seeking a hold on my body.

  Sabine lowered her own legs without missing a beat, giving Germaine a chance to wrap her knees about my hips. Her arms banded themselves about my chest.

  Then I stood up, the two women hanging on me, clinging like love-in limpets. Their hips were never still, they drove and looped and slammed, and I began my walk about the room listening to their soft cries of delight.

  I could never take this posture on my feet. I needed help. I sighted a narrow vanity bench before the ornately mirrored table where Sabine Bree put on her make-up. I straddled it, sank down upon it. The bench was long enough to support both women and myself.

  For half an hour we maintained the geranium-bulb-planted-in-twin-flowerpots position. Then Sabine wanted to try me from the back so the women disengaged themselves, exchanged places, and began again.

  They moved three more times in the next two hours. I had begun to wonder if I’d met my match in these older girls. They seemed insatiable. Then I noticed that then-heads were getting heavy. Behind me, Sabine was resting her cheek on my naked back; before me, Germaine was sinking her head on my shoulder.

  They were almost asleep.

  If I could come up with a real sexual smasheroo, I might exhaust them both. I ransacked my brains, my memories. There had to be a final bit of fiddle-bow fireworks that would do the trick.

  The bride testings of the Kokah Pundit? That inspired epic of erotic enterprise, in which the fabulous Punditjee searches with an eternal erection for a female capable of matching his staying powers in ruttee, contained positions and postures enough to satisfy my needs. Then there were the fourteen erotic postures for three persons as related by Friedrich-Karl Forberg in his Manual of Classic Erototology.

  None of those would do. I needed something special.

  There was the Chinese wild-goose-seeking-a-lake-to-land-in, of course, in which one woman lies stretched on her front while her fellow female reclines on top of her, face up. This presents the male with two targets at the same time, where he stands at the edge of the bed. But such a posture would give them rest, flat on their fronts and backs.

  No, no. The women must do the work and—

  Ahhh!

  The feeding-of-the-baby-birds—a bit of Chinese imagery—might be just the medicine required. The man would lie flat here, the girls would be the ones using the energy.

  I clapped Germaine on her rump. “Up! We’re going to finish off our fun fest fireworks with a bit of Chinese fortune nookie.”

  Germaine blinked bleary eyes at me. Behind me I heard Sabine whisper, “I don’t think I c-can take any more. Lover, you’ve been unbelievable.”

  “The two baby birds feeding,” I cajoled. “You’ve never lived until you’ve tried that. Up, up, both of you!”

  They protested, but they got off me so I could undo the pink straps of the dildo and toss it to one side. Then I lay flat on my back on the long bench. Both women stared down at my excitement which was still unabated. Germaine I drew upon my lap, face turned away and downward. The student of eroticism will recognize a take-off on the kechef el astine posture of the Shayk Nefzawi. There is a difference, however. In the Arabic mutual-study-of-the-buttocks position, the woman sits upright; here, Germaine Audibert lay flat, letting her breasts rest on the velvet top of the vanity bench between my calves while her hands gripped the edge of the bench.

  Sabine straddled my hips, facing me, at the exact point where Germaine and I were joined. She stared down, she looked at me.

  “I’m not part of it,” she complained.

  “You will be. Just trust the professor.”

  Germaine was moving her hips slowly, panting with the sensations filling her flesh. Sabine was resting her hands on either side of my chest, staring back between her legs at what her friend and I were doing. I took her dangling breasts in my hands, fondled and caressed them until she was breathing harshly.

  Then I moved back and downward while Germaine cried out softly, and Sabine screeched as she sank down upon me. She rode me ferociously, for a little while. When she tired, I slapped the naked leg Germaine had stretched out beside my hip. The woman responded lethargically. She was exhausted.

  When I was done with her, Madame Audibert was asleep. It was now Sabine’s turn to be ridden to sleepy-bye time. It took about eight minutes before she collapsed on me, her body a limp, sleeping weight.

  I slid out from under them, carried each woman to the bed, pulled the covers up over them, and turned out the lights. As I closed the bedroom door behind me, I heard the faintest of feminine snores.

  Noelle was awake when I entered my own room. Her blue eyes were wide, somewhat fearful as she watched me close the door and advance across the moonlit room toward the bed where she lay gagged and tied. I switched on the bedtable lamp.

  “Now then, we’re going to talk,” I smiled.

  I unfastened her gag. To forestall a possible scream, I told her that I kne
w she was working with HECATE, and what her job was.

  “For the record,” I went on, “I want you to know that I do not intend to kill Sabine Bree, nor do I intend letting you kill me when I do not.”

  She digested my words, staring at me thoughtfully. At last she said, “I’m glad. I don’t want to kill you. But, I’ll have to. There’s no way to escape it.”

  All too vividly I remembered my fight to escape from killing Henri Planget. I nodded my head. “Yes, it means I’m going to have to keep you tied up—until I can get a doctor to remove that radio thought stimulator in your head.”

  “HECATE would know—and stop you.”

  “HECATE isn’t the all-knowing octopus you seem to think it.” I smiled, and told her how I had outwitted Doctors Roger-Viollet and Matelot by using the hypnotic device. The more I talked, the wider her eyes got.

  “If you could do that, you could hypnotize me too,” she breathed. “You could make me think I had killed you. Then I wouldn’t have to.”

  I had been thinking along much the same lines. But I had an even better idea. I would hypnotize her into believing that I had killed Sabine Bree. In that way, we could travel together back to Paris. I had even more than that in mind, where Noelle was involved.

  I lifted the table lamp and moved it back and forth across her line of vision. Her eyes shifted, following it from left to right, from right to left, from left to right. I told her she was sleepy, that she must sleep and while she slept, she must put her confidence in me. She must tell me whatever I wanted to know.

  Inside ten minutes, her eyes were closed.

  She slept peacefully, quietly.

  “What’s your real name, Noelle?”

  “Noelle Berlet is my real name.”

  “Berlet is a French name. Who were you in France before you went to work for HECATE?”

  “I was the daughter of Pierre Berlet, Doctor Pierre Berlet,” she answered dreamily.

  “Doctor Berlet. Have I heard that name before?”

  “You should have. He owned the hospital at Dam-pierre—before HECATE took it over.”

  I sat up straighter.