The Flesh Of The Orchid Part 22

"Oh!" There was a moment's silence. "Revenge?" Miss Lolly asked, a new and eager note in her voice. "Is that what you want?"

"I want to find them," Carol said.

The chain grated, then the door opened.

"Come in," Miss Lolly said out of the darkness. "I am alone here now. Mr. Sherill left soon after you did."

Carol followed her down the long dark pa.s.sage into the back room, where a lamp burned brightly on the table. The room was full of old, shabby furniture, and it was not easy to move about without touching something.

Miss Lolly kept in the shadows. Carol could see her big tragic eyes looking at her. Around her throat was twisted a white scarf, hiding her beard.

"Sit down," Miss Lolly said. "So you are looking for them? If I were younger I would look for them too."

Carol opened her light dust-coat, pulled off her close-fitting hat. She shook out her hair with a quick movement of her head.

"Do you know where they are?" she asked as she sat down.

"But what can you do to them if you do find them?" Miss Lolly said, a note of despair in her voice. "What could I do? They are so cunning, so quick, so strong. No one can do anything to them."

Carol turned her head, and for a moment the two women looked at each other. Miss Lolly was startled to see the hard, bitter expression on Carol's face, and the icy bleakness of her eyes.

"I will make them pay," Carol said softly, "no matter how cunning and quick and strong they are. I will make them pay if it takes me the rest of my life. I have nothing else to live for."

Miss Lolly nodded, and her fingers touched the scarf at her throat.

"I feel like that too," she said, and two tears ran out of her eyes and dropped on to her hand. "You see, Max cut off my beard."

Carol didn't move nor did her expression change.

"Why did he do that?" she asked.

"Because I let you go," Miss Lolly said, clasping her hands. "I would rather they had killed me. I'm a vain old woman, my dear: it may seem horrible to you, but I loved my beard. I have had it a long time."

"Tell me what happened."

Miss Lolly drew up a chair, again adjusted the scarf round her chin, sat down. She put out a hand hopefully, but Carol drew away, her face cold and hard.

"Tell me," she repeated.

"They came back two days after you had gone. Frank remained in the car and Max came in here. I was a little frightened, but I sat where you are sitting now and waited to see what he would do to me. He seemed to know you had gone, for he didn't ask for you. He asked for Mr. Sherill, and I told him he had left here. He stood looking at me for a long time, then he asked why I hadn't gone too, and I told him there was nowhere for me to go." Miss Lolly fidgeted with her scarf, then went on after a long pause: "He hit me over the head, and later when I came to they had gone. He had cut off my beard. You may remember it?" She looked wistfully at Carol. "It was a very beautiful beard, and he burnt it. He's a devil," she said, raising her voice. "He knew nothing would give me more pain than that."

"And Frank?" Carol asked.

"He remained in the car," Miss Lolly said, looking bewildered. "I don't know why, for he is cruel, and it is not like him to keep away when someone is going to be hurt, but he remained in the car."

Carol smiled. Looking at her, Miss Lolly felt a chill run down her spine.

"He stayed in the car because he is blind," Carol said. "I blinded him after he had killed Steve."

Miss Lolly remained still. She was surprised that she felt a shocked kind of pity for Frank.

"Blind? I wouldn't wish anyone to be blind," she said.

Carol made an impatient movement.

"Where are they?" she asked, a harsh note creeping into her voice. "If you know, tell me, but don't waste my time. Every moment I remain here means they are getting further away from me. Where are they?"

Miss Lolly shrank back, alarmed at the suppressed venom in the green eyes.

"I don't know," she said, "but they had a room upstairs where they kept their things. They took everything when they left except a photograph which had slipped between the floorboards. That may tell you something."

"Where is it?" Carol demanded.

"I have it here. I was looking at it when you knocked." Miss Lolly opened a drawer, took out a photograph, laid it on the table under the white light of the lamp.

Carol bent over it.

It was a photograph of a girl whose dark hair was parted in the middle; the broad white line between the parting was p.r.o.nounced. It was a curious face: a little coa.r.s.e, full-lipped, wide-eyed and fleshy. There was something magnetic about it: sensual, animal quality; an uncontrolled wantonness; a badness that was scarcely concealed by the veneer of polished sophistication. Under the brazenly skimpy swim-suit she wore was a shape to set a man crazy. Across the bottom of the photograph, scrawled in white ink and in a big sprawling hand, was the inscription: To darling Frank from Linda.

Without change of expression, Carol turned the photograph, read the name of the photographer stamped on the back: Kenneth Carr, 3971 Main Street, Santo Rio. Then she once more turned the photograph to study the girl's face.

Miss Lolly watched her closely.

"She is the kind of woman a man wouldn't forget easily," she said, leaning forward to peer over Carol's shoulder. "She's bad, but attractive. A man would return to her again and again. Find her, and I think you will find Frank."

"Yes," Carol said.

Santo Rio is a small, compact little town on the Pacific Coast: a millionaire's playground. It has no industry unless you call every form of lavish and luxurious entertainment an industry; in which case Santo Rio's industry is a thriving one. The main bulk of its citizens earn their living by entertaining the rich visitors who come in their thousands to Santo Rio all the year round. Gambling, racing, yachting, dancing, ordinary and extraordinary forms of vice, night clubs, theatres, cinemas and so on employ those people who are not smart enough to stand on their own feet and run their own rackets.

The smart ones-of whom Eddie Regan was a leading member-make a comfortable living out of blackmail, con. tricks, being gigolos or practising any other nefarious racket that brings in easy money.

Eddie Regan was tall, wide and handsome. He had black curly hair, a tanned complexion, excellent teeth as white as orange pith, and sparkling blue eyes that proved irresistible to rich, elderly women who came to Santo Rio to kick over the traces, probably for the last time.

Eddie made a reasonable income as a dancing partner to these elderly women, and supplemented this income from time to time by blackmailing them when they were foolish enough (as they often were) to furnish him with evidence which they would be reluctant for their husbands to see.

Making love to elderly women was not Eddie's idea of a good time, but he was smart enough to realize his talents were only suited to such a career, and so, being a man of considerable vitality, he consoled himself with youthful beauty in his off-duty hours.

His present consolation was Linda Lee, the subject of the photograph that had been overlooked by the Sullivans when they had packed up and left the old plantation house for good.

Eddie had come upon Linda quite by chance. He had been lounging on the beach one afternoon keeping an eye open for any elderly woman who happened to look lonely when he observed Linda coming out of the sea for a sun bath. Now, Linda had the kind of figure that looked its best in a wet swim-suit: anyway, Eddie thought so, and he was, in his way, an expert on such matters. Elderly women were immediately banished from his mind as he gave his undivided attention to the sensational torso that was moving his way.

Eddie had seen nothing like it before, and in his long life of amorous experiences he had seen many pleasing sights. Without hesitation he decided it was imperative that he should become closer acquainted with this torso, and as soon as its dark-haired owner had settled down on a beach wrap and handed herself over to the hot rays of the sun, he crossed the strip of sand dividing them and sat down by her side.

Linda was quite pleased to have company. Maybe Eddie's handsome face and sunburnt, manly chest had something to do with it, but whatever it was, she received his advances graciously, and in a minute or so they had become old friends: in under an hour they were lovers. -That was the way Eddie liked his women: smooth, polished, quick and willing.

Eddie, who was a cynic, fully expected that by the end of the week Linda's charms would have palled; as the charms of so many other young women who had also been quick and willing had palled in the past. But, instead, he found himself thinking about Linda night and day; neglecting his work to be with her; and even pa.s.sing up a golden opportunity to levy a little blackmail just to take her out to an expensive night club.

Their a.s.sociation had now lasted three weeks, and so far as Eddie was concerned he was eager and as amorous as the day the a.s.sociation first began. He was even willing to secure proprietary rights over Linda, a step he had avoided in the past as not only unnecessary, but as a direct menace to his freedom.

Linda, however, had no wish to lose her independence and freedom. Receiving Eddie every day and two or three nights a week as a lover was one thing; but Eddie as a complete lord and master, to say nothing of being a permanent lodger, was something else besides.

So Eddie was kept in check and was not allowed all the freedom he might wish. He was baffled by the luxurious standard by which Linda lived. She owned a charming little villa which boasted its own private beach and a small tropical garden which a negro gardener attended to with colourful and fertile results, and which was hidden away in a quiet secluded spot along the coastline.

The villa was furnished in style and comfort; the meals provided by the negro cook were excellent. The upkeep of such an establishment must have been considerable: where then did the money come from? Where did the money come from to keep Linda supplied with the smartest clothes, the smartest shoes and the smartest hats to be seen in Santo Rio? Where did the money come from that bought the glittering blue Road Master Buick in which Linda drove around town or out into the country when the spirit moved her?

Linda had explained away her wealth as a legacy received from an uncle who had made a fortune in oil. But Eddie was a little too smart to believe that, although he allowed her to think he accepted the story. Linda was just not the type to have an uncle in oil.

The obvious explanation never occurred to him. He was confident that Linda could be in love only with him. He decided that Linda had devised some new kind of racket to keep herself in luxury, and he was curious to discover what the racket was.

But the obvious explanation was the answer. Linda had a lover, who was so besotted by her that he had set her up in this magnificent luxury although he seldom saw her, as his business took him all over the country. But never for a moment did he forget her, nor, even when a.s.sociating with other women, did he cease to imagine that it was Linda he held in his arms.

Linda was quite content to let this man supply her with money, to keep her in luxury and to demand so little of her. She thought him a bore and a ghastly little sensualist (as he was), but far too useful to break with. The fact that he so seldom visited the villa (he saw her only four or five times during the year) more than compensated her for what she had to put up with when lie did make his visit. He was generous and wealthy, and in her opinion harmless, but here she made a serious error of judgment. But then she had never heard of the Sullivan brothers, and if she had she wouldn't have believed that this fat-faced man she called Frank was one of the dreaded brothers. She might have been a little less careless and a little more faithful to him had she known this fact.

She had met Max once or twice and had taken a dislike to him. He was the only man she had ever met who was not influenced by her beauty and who had not looked a second time at her sensual and sensational figure.

Max had scared her. His eyes had the same glittering stillness as a snake's; and Linda was terrified of snakes.

It is doubtful too whether Eddie would have been quite so enchanted with Linda had he known that she was the mistress of one of the Sullivan brothers. Eddie had heard a lot about the Sullivans, although he had never seen either of them. But what he had heard of them would have been quite sufficient to have cooled his ardour for Linda if he had learned the truth at the beginning of his whirlwind courts.h.i.+p. Now, however, he was rather far gone, and even the threat of the Sullivans might not have deterred him.

This day, then, on a hot, sunny afternoon, Eddie drove along Ocean Boulevard in his cream and scarlet roadster (a parting gift of silence from one of his elderly women friends) and felt that all was well with the world.

He made a das.h.i.+ng, handsome figure in his close-fitting white singlet and immaculate white flannel trousers. His big muscular arms, the colour of mahogany, were bare, his large smooth brown hands rested on the cream-coloured steering-wheel and his carefully manicured nails glittered in the sun.

He drove with a wide smile on his face because he was exceedingly proud of his big white teeth and he saw no reason why he should not show them. Many a female heart fluttered as lie drove along and many a female head turned to look after him. Eddie was aware of the sensation he caused and was gratified.

He arrived at Linda's villa a few minutes after 3.30 and found Linda pottering in the garden, in which flowers of every hue and shade put technicolour to shame. Linda was wearing white duck slacks, red and white open-toed sandals over bare feet and scarlet toenails, a scarlet halter that, accurately speaking, should have been a size larger to conceal what it attempted to conceal, although Eddie found no fault with it, and on her pretty nose she wore a pair of red horn sungla.s.ses with the lenses the size of doughnuts.

As she moved her curves jinked before her, and her smooth hips flowed like molten metal under her close-fitting slacks.

Eddie sprang from the car, ran across the lawn and jumped a flower-bed with athletic ease as she turned to greet him.

"I was wondering if you were coming," she said in her carefully cultivated deep-throated drawl. "I thought it would be fun to go for a swim this afternoon."

But Eddie had other ideas.

"Not yet," he said firmly, and touched her wrist with his brown fingers and then moved them along her arm to her shoulders and behind her neck. "By six the water will be perfect. We'll wait until six."

She relaxed to the touch of his fingers. No one she had ever met had such an exciting touch as Eddie. His fingers seemed to emit sparks of electricity that flowed down her skin.

"Then come inside and have tea," she said, linking her arm through his. "Would you like that?"

Eddie thought it was as good an excuse as any to get her into the house, and together they wandered into the cool, sun-screened lounge, which looked on to the garden through folding gla.s.s doors.

Linda took off her sungla.s.ses and dropped on to the white, suede-covered divan with a little exclamation of pleasure. She raised her shapely brown arms above her head and regarded Eddie with a cool smile. She looked a little older than the photograph that had been left in the old plantation house; her eyes were harder and her lips not quite so ready to smile, although they smiled for Eddie; but then Eddie was favoured and he knew it.

"Ring the bell, darling," she said, closing her eyes. "And they'll bring tea. I've asked them to cut you some of those tricky little sandwiches you like so much-remember?"

But at the moment tricky little sandwiches were not of the slightest interest to Eddie. He stood over this voluptuous creature and experienced a sudden difficulty in breathing. Blood pounded in his ears and his heart raced uncomfortably.

"I think we'll skip tea," he said, and bending over her, caught her up in his arms and began to walk swiftly across the big room to the door.

Linda was worldly enough to realize that, unless she took immediate evasive action, she would miss her tea, so she began to kick and struggle, but Eddie had not developed his muscles for nothing, and he continued on his way without any considerable inconvenience, climbed the stairs, kicked open the door of Linda's luxurious if over-ornate bedroom, and laid her, still struggling, on the bed.

"Really, Eddie," she gasped as soon as she could get her breath, "you are the most disgusting man I have ever met. No! Don't you dare touch me! You're not always going to have your own way. I mean it this time! We're going right back to the lounge, and we're going to have tea, and then we're going to have a bathe . . . ."

Eddie drew the blue and white curtains across the windows without paying the slightest attention to this diatribe. Having satisfied himself that the room was now cloaked in a dimness that created a more intimate atmosphere, he returned in time to prevent Linda from getting off the bed.

"Everything in its proper order," he said firmly. "Tea and a bathe later," and he took Linda in his arms with the intention of smothering her resistance with kisses, which, from experience, he was confident would quickly bring her to unconditional surrender.

But this afternoon Linda felt perverse, and had no inclination to submit to Eddie's rough, violent wooing. She was getting a little tired of being taken for granted. Cave-men were all very well once in a while, but too much of that kind of thing was too great a strain on a girl's nerves; so when Eddie, a confident gleam in his eyes, grabbed hold of her, she gave him a resounding box on his ears.

"I said no!" she told him angrily.

For a second or so Eddie sat staring at her, his big hands still gripping her back, his face still close to hers, but his eyes were no longer confident: they were angry and a little spiteful, and the desire in them was by no means checked.

"So you want a fight, do you?" he said. "Well, you've certainly come to the right guy if that's what you want."

Linda scrambled hastily off the bed and made a dart for the door. She had had one fight with Eddie in the early days of their tempestuous wooing, and the following morning found her not only covered with unsightly bruises but also feeling that she had been fed through a wringer. She had no desire to repeat the experience.

Eddie's long arm shot out, grabbed her, jerked her across the bed.

"Now, please, darling," Linda begged as she found herself helpless in his grip. "Please, darling, let me go. Don't you dare hit me . . . you know how I bruise. Eddie! You're not to. . . .

Oh! You beast! Oh! Oh! Eddie, stop it! The servants will hear you!"

A few moments later, bruised, smarting and breathless, she surrendered.

"You are a devil, Eddie," she panted, digging her fingers into his hard, smooth shoulders. "You've hurt me . . . you've bruised me . . . but, d.a.m.n you, I love you."

He grinned down at her, ran his fingers through her thick hair, his finger-tips exploring the shape of her hard little skull.

Her arms strained him to her, and she crushed her mouth against his.

There was a long stillness in the room while they were caught up in the vortex of their pa.s.sion. The hands of the little clock by the bedside moved forward, its blank face seeing nothing of what went on in the dim-lighted room. The evening sun slowly crept round the house and reflected on the blue and white curtains.

Eddie was the first to awake. He moved his head, stretched his thick arms luxuriously, sighed, opened his eyes. Then suddenly his stomach turned a somersault and his heart stopped beating for a split second and then began to race. A man was sitting on the foot of the bed, watching him.

For a full minute Eddie stared at this intruder, believing he was still asleep and dreaming. The man was a nightmare figure, dressed in black, whose white, lean, granite-hard face hung over Eddie like an apparition from a horror play.

Eddie clutched Linda, who woke with a start. Terror struck her speechless, for she instantly recognized the figure in black. She was so paralysed with fear that she could make no move to cover her nakedness, and lay still as a statue, her heart scarcely beating.

"Tell your gigolo to get out of here," Max said softly. "I want to talk to you."

The sound of Max's voice broke the hypnotic spell that had gripped both Linda and Eddie.

Linda gave a horrified scream and s.n.a.t.c.hed up a big cus.h.i.+on with which to cover herself. Eddie sat up with an oath, his eyes blazing with embarra.s.sed fury, his great hands closed into fists; but that was as far as he got.