Lay me odds, p.1
Lay Me Odds, page 1
part #2 of Lady From L.U.S.T. Series
The Lady from L.U.S.T.
Book #2
The further misadventures of operative Double-OH-SEX. The World's Sexiest spy who is paid to sleep on the job.
LAY
ME
ODDS
by Gardner Francis Fox
written as Rod Gray
Originally printed in 1967
digitally transcribed by Kurt Brugel 2017
for the Gardner Francis Fox Library LLC
Gardner Francis Fox (1911 to 1986) was a wordsmith. He originally was schooled as a lawyer. Rerouted by the depression, he joined the comic book industry in 1937. Writing and creating for the soon to be DC comics, Mr. Fox set out to create such iconic characters as the Flash and Hawkman. He is also know for inventing Batman‘s utility belt and the multi-verse concept.
At the same time he was writing for comic books, he also contributed heavily to the paperback novel industry. Writing in all of the genres; westerns, historical romance, sword and sorcery, intergalactic adventures, even erotica.
The Gardner Francis Fox library is proud to be digitally transferring over 150 of Mr. Fox’s paperback novels. We are proud to present - - -
Table of Contents:
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
The room was locked and the windows were bolted from the inside, yet a man lay dead in the room into which I was trying to gain admittance. And judging from my quick glance into that room from the flag-stones of the back patio, Eric Downes could not have shot himself.
Eric Downes had been my contact man; he had a roll of precious microfilm which I was to pick up and bring back to L.U.S.T. headquarters with me. It was a routine job, there were supposed to have been no emergencies like a man shot to death inside a locked room. I was on a vacation here in merry old England after my part in the Balder Cunningham affair in Miami, and I wanted fun and games, not murder and sudden death.
I was supposed to rest up, soak in the sunshine at Brighton and the neon lights in a couple of private clubs in London. Instead of this, my fingers were working a slim length of metal in the study-door lock of the manor house that had been the property of Eric Downes.
My name is Eve Drum. They call me Double Oh Sex as a sort of joke (I hope) at that secret agent organization known as L.U.S.T., the League of Underground Spies and Terrorists. Only its enemies know about L.U.S.T., which is a natural child of the State Department by way of the C.I.A. Our job is to do those things which must be done to preserve peace and the happy continuance of O.A.S., N.A.T.O., and other assorted initial groups.
I am a female blonde, the sexiest spy in the business, with meaningful measurements of 38, 24, 35. I weigh a hundred and ten pounds in my smooth bare skin. I am the wearer of the red and white Sixth Dan belt in judo, an expert with rifle or revolver, ditto swimmer. I can throw a knife with reasonable accuracy, and I can usually open a lock like the man who made it.
Right now, however, this damned Chubb was resisting my every effort to pry its pin-tumblers loose from their cradles. I painted, I swore in a definitely unladylike fashion. I cursed David Anderjanian who is my case officer in L.U.S.T., and his thrice-damned assignment sheets.
Why do all these things happen to me? If the local constabulary should chance to pay the Downes manor house a visit, they would find a pretty L.U.S.T. agent bending over with her mini-skirt up to her behind, trying to make an illegal entry into a locked room where a recently dead man lay lifeless. I had the feeling this was the one morning the police would decide to stop in and exchange neighborly pleasantries with this man Eric.
This gee damn lock was fighting back at me, resisting my every effort to get it open. I leaned my head against the door and drew a deep breath. My father was a locksmith; he had taught his only daughter all he knew about locks and keys, which was plenty. I told myself I could open the eff damn thing, just give me time.
I bent to the lock, I moved the metal rod this way and that. I held my breath. The rod caught. I heard a faint click of metal on metal. Ever so gently—I did not breathe—I wriggled the rod. A tumbler clicked.
I pushed. The door opened.
I was staring into a wood-paneled library, the thick carpet of which held a twisted dead body that had been shot in the back of the head with an antique dueling pistol, The pistol lay on the far edge of the big desk where it had been hurled by the recoil action, its muzzle now pointed away from the dead man. Most of the walls were filled with books on shelves built into the paneling. There was a standing globe of the Earth, a library ladder, a couple of wooden prie-dieux holding huge volumes, and various assorted odds and ends which a British bachelor in his forties might possess.
I tiptoed across the carpet.
Eric Downes had lived alone. A charlady came in twice a week to clean up any messes he might make. He had not made much of a mess in dying. The hole in the back of his head was neatly round, faintly blackened by gunpowder. He lay huddled as he had fallen. Death had been instantaneous.
I straightened and touched the desk with my eyes. I would have liked to have found his murderer, but I had something more important to attend to. I must find the roll of microfilm I was to bring back to L.U.S.T. headquarters.
I have been trained to search a room. I began to do so, quietly and with thoroughness. I made sure the corpse did not have the film on his person, as best I could without destroying evidence. I went over the carpet and under it, the desk, the books on the bookshelves (and what a job that was!), the keyholes in the doors. Outside the door through which I had entered, there were two other doors to the library. One door led into the lavatory. The other was locked and useless, for it had been boarded up and plastered over on the other side to widen the dining room wall.
After three hours, I was dirty, dusty and defeated.
The microfilm was nowhere in the room.
I had no time to search the whole house. This was a task which would take weeks. I went over to the desk and stared down at the dueling pistol that had killed my contact man. It was a beautiful piece of work. It was a rare ivory flintlock made by Van den Brock of Mastricht about the middle of the eighteenth century, long and slim and deadly, for all its beauty. The butt was shaped in the head of an Oriental girl.
I tried to think back to the last briefing I'd had from my case officer, David Anderjanian. He had told me, Eric Downes would turn over the microfilm to me on presentation of my authority, which consisted of a set of my fingerprints which he would take. Since he had my prints already on plastic-coated paper, he could verify my identity easily enough.
Eric Downes had gotten the microfilm from his own contact, a man David knew only by the name The Satyr. Later, I was to learn the name was very appropriate. The Satyr hung around the strip joints in Soho, and was in the habit of asking the strippers to step out with him after work.
It would be like hunting the proverbial needle in the fabled haystack. I did not know whether finding The Satyr would be any help to me, he probably knew no more about the microfilm than I, but I had to do something
The thought occurred to me that Eric Downes might not have contacted The Satyr, that The Satyr might still have the film on his person. I dared not let even that slim chance elude me.
I would go back to London. I would visit Soho. First, I slipped the plastic-covered paper that held my betraying fingerprints into my handbag. Then I closed and re-locked the library door, and tiptoed down the long hall and out the front door into brilliant sunshine,
The English countryside in this very early springtime of the year was a brilliant green. I have never seen grass quite so green as English grass, anywhere. It leaped out at you from lawn and meadow and sodded field. It made me glad, suddenly, to be alive.
Poor Eric Downes I wondered who had shot him—and why. It might have been a H.A.T.E. (the Humanitarian Alliance for Total Espionage) agent, a spurned girl friend, even a jealous husband. H.A.T.E. was the likeliest choice, however, for H.A.T.E. is the bugaboo of L.U.S.T., our own personal bogeyman with which we maintain a constant vendetta.
I went around the side of the house and just before I stepped onto the patio I saw two footprints, one oddly deeper than the other, and where this deeper print pressed into the loam there was a shallower rut just behind it, as if it dragged something behind the heel. I studied them a moment, but could not understand what might have made that deeper imprint.
On the patio flaggings I peeped in the big library window once again, seeing the desk almost within arm's reach of me, except for the thick pane of glass between. I ran a gloved hand over the glass, wondering if by some crazy chance I had missed a bullet hole.
No bullet hole, nothing to show how the murder might have been committed. It began to look more and more as if the dueling pistol had been jarred into firing, catching my contact in the back of the head with its smooth round ball. A damned crying shame, because Eric Downes had been a good man. An R.A.F. leftenant shot down during the battle of Britain, he had gone into espionage work when the doctors certified that he was no longer fit to fly a Spitfire.
About ten years ago, Eric Downes had retired to putter about on his estate here in Somerset. From time to time he accepted small assignments for a fee, perhaps out of sheer boredom, perhaps to make ends meet. I never knew his financial sta tus.
Now fate had caught up to him in the shape of powder and ball. Oddly, I felt that it might be all my fault.
There was no sense standing around and blaming myself for accidents—or deliberate murder, if murder it was. I had to lam out of here and back to London.
To Soho and The Satyr. I ran to the Austin Healey Sprite I had rented in London, and started up the engine. If The Satyr dated strip teasers, if he had a thing for ecdysiasts, then I would peel down with the best of them. I revved the motor, shot the shift into gear, and roared down the gravel path.
I had to have a plan of action. I felt sure that places like the Sunset Strip and Raymond's would have more strippers waiting for jobs than I could shake a gee-string at. I needed a gimmick.
I scooted the Sprite along a narrow twisting road that ran from Glastonbury toward Wells. There was little traffic, a Frames bus filled with vacationers, a small truck bearing crated eggs, an MG Midget driven by a bearded man. I had plenty of time to think.
Sure, David Anderjanian had nicknamed me Double Oh Sex, but I am modest enough to admit that there are plenty of females with just as good shapes as mine, even maybe with just as good breasts and legs. So I had to do more than show my nipples or my bare behind to a lot of sex-surfeited onlookers, assuming I could get a strip job.
I could be Cleopatra in an Egyptian kalasiris of sheer linen and with an uraeus on my golden locks. I would do a sort of snake dance with a make-believe asp.
Yeeech!
I might make a good Lolita for the crowd, in baby dolls and a braided asp.
Yeech again.
I might make a good Lolita for the crowd, in baby dolls and a braided wig.
Nahhh!
So how about Lady Godiva? I refused to share the billing with a horse.
Still, I had to come up with something!
Think, girl spy: Think of men and what men like. I knew plenty about men and what they liked. But I couldn't go on a stage and do anything like that.
I had no other ideas. My mind was blank. I wheeled the Sprite into London by way of Old Brompton Road, passing through South Kensington and Knightsbridge. There was a spot of traffic here and there so I had little time to think about the gimmick I needed.
I parked at the car rental garage. I would walk to Soho by way of Oxford Street. It was not a long walk, but maybe by the time I reached Oxford Circus, I would have thought of something. It began to rain when I was about four blocks from Regent Street.
It rains in England every other hour, just about. The rain lasts maybe ten minutes to half an hour—just long enough to get you soaking wet—and then it stops and the sun comes out. You would swear it pours at the exact time you are unprepared for it. Now I know why Englishmen carry umbrellas. They never know when they might need them.
I only got half soaked, actually, because I ducked into the entrance to a bridal shop. I looked at the rain, I watched the people walking along unconcernedly, I told myself I simply must develop an English nonchalance to rainwater.
I even looked in the display windows at wedding gowns. After a time the rain was gone and the sun with with it. I departed the bridal shop door and moved on Soho. I walked happily, I even hummed a bar or two. For now I had my gimmick.
I would be a brand new bride stripping down for her bridegroom. It was a natural. I would be eager, yet shy, bashful but bold. I told myself the theater manager would be a fool to turn me down.
Soho is that area of London that falls between Mayfair with its Georgian buildings and fancy shops, and Holborn, which houses the Smithfield markets, where at one time you could buy somebody else's wife if you had the urge and the cash, and Lincoln's Inn Fields. It is the theatrical section of swinging old London, and Shaftesbury Avenue is its Main Street.
The strip shows starts in the morning, at a quarter of high noon, and go on long into the night. Breasts for breakfast, if you eat late, or behinds for brunch. You can get ecdysiasts with your eggs and ham, if you like the mixture.
I bypassed a couple of places, like the Red Rooster and the Revue Bar. I was going to settle for something not quite so plush. After all, while I've removed a Maidenform bra before a man in my time, I've never slipped off my unmentionables in front of a big crowd. The sign read: OFF LIMITS. It hung before a big glass door, to one side of which was a display board behind a glass panel, crammed with pictures of strippers in pasties and panels. They were all good-looking girls, but they didn't scare me. I could strip down with the best of them.
My only worry was, did The Satyr frequent the Off Limits? I told myself he must, if he specialized in this type girl. After all, how many new strippers came along for him to date? A new body would catch the eye and make tongues wag.
I walked into a dim interior to the sound of a piano and the sight of a girl strutting on a little stage along one wall.
There were maybe twenty men seated at the tables sipping bitters, as our English cousins name their beer.
I paused a moment, staring. The girl was down to a black cache-sexe. She was doing a slow grind, her white thigh-flesh rippling as her hips dug and twisted. Her breasts were like small melons, shaking and jiggling, and the nipples were a bright red. I thought that voices should be raised and feet be pounding the bare floor planks, but the room was silent except for the piano. Englishmen are very polite. I moved toward the bar. "I'd like to see the manager,” I told the lady barkeep. "I'm the manager,” she answered gruffly. "And we don't need any more strips.”
"Not even a bashful bride baring her bod?" She hesitated with a hand on the tap. Something glinted in her eyes. "Bashful bride?” she repeated slowly.
I hooked a nyloned leg over a stool and leaned closer. "Every man in the world has either spent a wedding night or is looking forward to his wedding night, when his little bride will hop between the sheets with him. I give some a preview. I make others remember.”
The woman looked past my shoulder at the girl onstage. She was turning her backside to her audience, shaking the soft buttocks she exposed. The room was so silent I could hear a man slurp his ale.
"No imagination," I murmured.
"And you have?”
"Try me for a week,” I invited. "Fifteen pounds the week. You bring in trade, I'll up it to a hundred," she told me.
I pouted. "Fifteen pounds won't even pay for my props. Make it twenty and you've got a deal.”
She scowled; she knew the value of a shilling, did the lady. Suddenly she grinned. "Tell you what, ducks. You put on your act and I'll see about making it twenty. I'm not one for buying a pig in a poke.”
I shrugged. I did not need the money, this was only a temporary thing, until The Satyr showed up for a date.
“So okay, so I'm out dough if you don't like me." I muttered.
She grinned. "I'm doing a British girl out of a job, Yank."
“You've got to prove yourself to me. You colonists think you're all so smart."
"How did you know I'm an American?”
"Ducks, all you have to do is talk.”
“What time's the first performance?”
"Be here at six. First show starts at seven, with you in it. Two more shows, at nine and then eleven. After that you're on your own."
I was a little surprised that the show should end so early. The lady manager shrugged her plump shoulders, explaining that she could not compete with such posh places as Raymond's and The Whiskey a Go-Go.
Under the law in England, no woman may appear nude and move, in a public place. It's okay if she is naked and does not move, however. The catch—word is public. To get around the legal ban on strippers who parade naked all over the place, these strip joints become private clubs. There are no such laws for private clubs.
“Ta ta then,” I said, wiggling my fingers. I had to go practice being a bride. It was raining again so I ran for the bridal shop. I had no time to waste on such luxuries as staying dry during a brief thundershower. I had to buy a white satin wedding gown and assorted accessories.
