He turned on his Zenith portable stereo. When the music came in soft and dreamy, he came across the room, pulled me from the easy-chair where I was relaxing into his arms. To my surprise, he was a pretty good dancer, old-fashioned but with good rhythm.

  I didn't dare give him a fourth drink; he was high on three. So I brought him out into the kitchen, seated him at the table, and began working on the indoor grille and glowing red coals covered by a thick filet mignon. I made a chicory and escarole salad with my own special Italian wine vinegar, olive oil and spices dressing.

  He damn near proposed to me when he was done.

  I have made a study of men, since knowing what men like is very vital to a girl in the L.U.S.T. secret service. I am a sexpert, natch; but I am also a damned good cook. I let Adrian beam at me for a few minutes before I sprang the punch line.

  I said casually, "Now to bed.”

  He came close to choking on his swallow of coffee. His face got all red and his eyes bulged, but there was a big grin on his not unshapely mouth.

  "I'm not used to such honesty," he managed to say when I asked him what the trouble was..

  "It's just the generation gap,” I giggled. “We're a lot more honest than your crowd is. When we want something, we admit it. You want me, I know—but you'd die before you'd say so."

  He nodded like an automaton.

  I reached for his hand and drew him to his feet. Then I walked ahead of him, tugging him by the hand out through the living room. I figured he could walk upstairs without my hand tugging him along, so I went before him, lifting off my transparent gown as I did. All I had on were my purple pantyhose.

  His hands caught me before I reached the top step. An instant later his lips were browsing all over my bare back, up and down my spine and down around and over my nyloned buttocks. I wriggled and twisted lazily, because his mouth was getting to me right where I did my living.

  "I love that," I whispered.

  He made guttural noises that I finally sorted out to my satisfaction. "I've dreamed of a woman like you all my life. I've never met one. Eve—I want you so badly. So badly!”

  "So goodly, honey," I breathed. “Think positively!”

  His laughter rang out, happy and assured. “I feel I can say anything I want to you. You're some kind of love goddess! You aren't just an ordinary human being. Which one are you? Isis? Ishtar? Venus?”

  Well, hell! He was a scholar. He was entitled to talk like that if he wanted. Besides, he went on kissing my buttock cheeks while he did his talking, and I was enjoying it to no end...no pun intended.

  “I'm all of them, honey. I know ways to make love that will curl your hair, to say nothing of your other parts. Come on upstairs with me. I want to see what a prize I've won.”

  "I'm not sure I..."

  I whirled and covered his mouth with a palm, which he kissed immediately and with all the signs of sexual starvation. “Ssssh! Don't talk like that. Think positively, remember? You can do anything you want to, and I'm the girl who'll prove it to you."

  Adrian Trent was like a fresh breath of sea air. He was unspoiled, he had no preconceived notions of how a man should make love to a girl. He was like clay in the hands of me, sculptress.

  I undressed him, dropping the Casanova robe and his Battaglia pajamas to the floor. He stood naked, like some sort of pagan god, slightly aged. His maleness was like one of those carved wood priapi which the old Roman wedding god, Mutunus Tutunus, used to possess. I guess I gaped at him in surprise, because he chuckled.

  "It's been a long, long time. I have a lot of loving stored up inside me."

  I nodded. “That's the spirit—and the flesh as well, I might add. Positive thinking is in."

  I wore only my purple pantyhose as I writhed against him, clinging to his torso and letting him know how hard my breasts had become by rubbing them against his almost hairless chest. I opened my thighs to accommodate his urgency, and then I tightened my upper thighs on its massiveness.

  Adrian Trent began to groan.

  I didn't keep him in too much suspense, but I didn't hurry, either. I wanted him to remember this night; I wriggled and writhed my hips where he was imprisoned with a slow sensuality that had him panting with his tongue out. His hands were running over my nyloned buttocks in gentle heat and there was a dreamy glaze over his eyes.

  "We'll borrow a love leaf from the Chinese," I whispered to his open mouth.

  "In the classic, I Ching, it says that the sex union of a man and a woman gives life to everything," he re plied.

  He wasn't all egghead, this boy. At least he read the right books. I let my fingernails slide down his bare chest and taut belly to his impudicity. He gave a low cry when my fingers went around him.

  “I bought a pillow book at a rare art auction,” I breathed. “It was called The Pillow Book of Heavenly Passions. You do know what a pillow book is, don't you?"

  "A book of erotic pictures, usually given to a bride and groom on their wedding day. In China, that is."

  "Some of them are extremely valuable, they've been done by great artists. Chao Meng Fu himself is supposed to have done mine."

  "It—must have—cost a—fortune."

  Actually, it had been a gift for a job well done by Eve Drum of L.U.S.T., but I didn't tell Adrian that; let the dear man think me rich, if he wanted.

  "The Chinese have wonderful names for their love positions," I said softly. "There is the 'wailing monkey embracing a tree' and the ‘bamboos near the water', for instance.”

  “I'd love to—try them all!”

  “Oh, but we shall. But in a very special way. You know about the ying and yan principle of Chinese eroticism? How they believe that yang was a vital force in men, and yin in women. For a man to shed his seed too often was to lose some of that vital force.

  "And in the old days, a man had many wives, many concubines. He must spend himself very sparingly, you understand. So the master of the house would make love with a number of his concubines—without letting go—and then he would finish himself off in one of his wives, in the hope that she would conceive a fine, strong son filled with the same yang principle.”

  I led him toward an upright chair as I talked. I pushed him back so he was sitting there, like the statues of the god Mutunus Tutunus I've already mentioned, on whose rigid wooden manhood Roman brides were wont to sacrifice their maidenhoods on their bridal nights.

  I breathed, “Consider me as one of your concubines, master. You must make love to many of us before you get to ball your wife. Regard me as the 'plain girl' of Chang Heng in his second century poem.”

  I slipped out of my pantyhose and slid down on his jade stick, easing myself over it, clasping it as the plum blossom clasps the morning dew. Up and down I posted, caroling, "See how the fish plays among the water plants, dear lover."

  His hands were on my breasts, holding them with long fingers and supporting palms. From time to time he tightened the first and second fingers of each hand, between which my brown nipples protruded stiffly, sending bolts of enjoyment down my spine. We were both gasping and grunting by this time, but I did not want him to lose his yang essence; not so soon, certainly; I wanted this to be a long night.

  I tightened up on him, holding him without motion. He sensed my excitement, adding to it by bending his head and drawing in on the nipple nearest his mouth. From this he went to the other breast, and back again, playing the game of bee drawing out the flower food that is a garden variety of Chinese erotic terminology.

  “Now for the next pillow book scene, the 'general smashing the enemy'. In this," I went on, “the manner of the strokes is most important. You must flail to left and right as the Yellow Book suggests. You understand?"

  He watched as I lay down on the bed and rested my heels on the mattress edge. My split peach was offered to his stare, and must have been very pleasing to his sight because he let out a low growl and flung himself down on his knees before it. His hands went to my thighs, his palms sliding up and down as his head dipped and his mouth offered me what the Chinese term 'the sipping at the medicine of the three mountain peaks'.

  In seconds I was yowling as the Lady of the Vase had yowled when Hsi-men was giving her lotus blossom the tongue and lip treatment as told in that Chinese love classic, Chin P’ing Mei. He was some general, Adrian was. I lost my head for a little while, but I recovered before he spilled his yang juice.

  “Tired of the plain girl?” I wondered, rolling over on the bed and getting to my knees. I walked across the bed on my knees and then moved across the room toward a bureau. I gripped the edge of the bureau with my hands and projected my backside at the gaping scientist.

  “Ever try 'the hound and the bitch in the love gardens of Shou Lou'?” I asked.

  He could hardly mistake the posture that is known as the 'manner of the ram' in Hindu circles, and Venus reversa among the ancient Romans. His hands slid up to my dangling breasts as he shared his yang with my yin. We made the music of the jade scepter for long minutes.

  Adrian Trent was just about ready to burst his cloud, as the Chinese put it. His hands were like clamps on my breasts and he was swelling in that preliminary manifestation of the yin chu yang.

  I pulled away just in time. “Eve, my God!” he almost screamed.

  "I know, I know. But we aren't done yet. I've been the 'plain girl and the 'dark girl'—which are symbolic representations of the concubines of an old-time mandarin. Now I'll become the lady of the house, the wife, with whom it is legal to share the tiu explosion.”

  I ran ahead of him to the bed. I lay down on my back and raised my thighs, parting them. “This is to be the 'making dragon and tiger sport together. The bursting of both our clouds, honey. So open my 'gate of life' and get busy with the ‘jade stalk'."

  We played the game of alternating deep and shallow strokes, the 3-5-7-9 of Taoist discipline, for a long time. I think Adrian Trent was a little out of his skull at his prolonged endurance feat. He was strong as the bull man of the Hindus, the vrishabha. He speared away like fabled Hercules banging the fifty women of his thirteenth feat of strength.

  But all good things must come to an end. We ended in a convulsed ball of vibrating, panting flesh at the foot-board, doubled up and gripping each other as our clouds burst and went on bursting for an eternity of pleasure.

  We slept like that, with all the lights on.

  He woke me in the middle of the night, kissing my breasts like a confirmed mammaeist. I responded as he hoped, sliding a pillow under me and myself under him.

  "Just plain American this time," he panted.

  We were patriotic like that for about half an hour, after which we fell asleep again. Sometime during the night he must have waked and turned off the electric lights, because when I opened my eyes the bedroom was lighted only by shafts of early morning sunlight.

  My hand went questing for my bed partner. "Adrian?”

  I sat up, puzzled. The man must have been very tired. He ought to be snoozing away here with me under the covers. Instead he was prowling around the house. I sniffed, figuring he might have gone to make coffee, but there was no coffee smell.

  Something was crawling around inside me.

  Fear. Worry. Anxiety. Something was wrong. My female instincts knew it.

  I leaped from the bed and snatched at my Neil Bieff dress. I slithered it over my curves and ran out into the hall and down the carpeted stairs. I yelled his name but I didn't get any answer. I went into the kitchen. No Adrian. I went out on the wooden deck overlooking the rock garden and the tiers of little pools. Still no Adrian Trent.

  I ran back into the living room. I felt cold. I noticed then that the front door was ajar. My hand on the big wooden door shoved it open.

  My eyes stared in utter horror.

  What was left of Adrian Trent lay in a pool of his own blood and shattered brains, sprawled out on the graveled walk. Somebody had blown the top of his head off at a distance of about a yard. I felt sick but I have seen death before, many times. I swallowed a couple of times and darted back into the living room.

  I phoned Rhea Parker.

  She was still full of sleepy-time somnambulance. “ 'Lo?" she bleated.

  “You stay where you are, Rhea! This is Eve Drum talking. Somebody's just killed Adrian Trent. I think that somebody is on her way to kill you, too. So you stay put. Don't you dare answer that doorbell if it rings, no matter what the person says—until I get there!”

  I hung up and dialed the police, cluing them in on my identity and that I was one of L.U.S.T.'s working people. I waited until a patrol car came up the drive with siren screaming and red light flashing.

  Five minutes after I promised the officer to drop in at headquarters and make a statement, I was on my way. I could have told the cops I thought Pamela Frost was the murderess, and that Rhea Parker was to be her next victim, but I didn't. Oh, I would in time, but the police would have thrown a cordon of blue-coats around her apartment house, and I didn't want that.

  I wanted to act on my own.

  Rhea answered my voice, fully dressed. She was shivering a little, eyes big and her full red mouth quivering. "Is Ah—Adrian really dah—dead?” she whispered.

  "He is, and if I know a killer when I see one, Pamela Frost has you on her list for her next victim."

  “Oh! Oh my God! But—why me?”

  "Adrian worked on Kenneth Frost. So did you. In her crazy, mixed-up mind she blames you both.” I hesitated, frowning. “Still, she didn't seem the sort of person to go off the deep end like that. Too cold, too calculating. But what's her motive, if that's not it?"

  Rhea shook her head numbly. She had caught my worried excitement. She tried to speak calmly but her fists were clenched so tightly she was driving her long fingernails deep into her palms.

  "It must be her, it must. Adrian didn't have any enemies. That Frost woman knows Ken and I are the only ones who worked the whole bit on Ken. We're the only ones who have the specialized skill and know how to bring him back to what he was..."

  She broke off, gasping.

  “I think you hit the bullseye, Rhea. It's exactly why she's killed Adrian and will try to kill you—but why does she want to kill you both? What I mean is, with Adrian and you dead, there'd be no hope for Kenneth Frost.

  “He'll always stay an Un-human. Why should she want that? Of course, it could be for the money he's accumulated but that doesn't seem a sufficient reason."

  Hopefully, Rhea said, “Maybe we have it all wrong. Maybe she isn't the one who did it."

  “Did Adrian have any other enemies? Did he gamble? Did he hang around with bad companions?”

  The woman smiled faintly. “No. He worked long hours in the compound, he didn't have any energy left to gamble. And he had no enemies. He was utterly inoffensive.”

  I knew the answer to this one already, but I asked, eyebrows arching, "How about girl friends? An ex wife?"

  “No. None of those.”

  “Then we're on pretty safe ground. Look, I think you'd be safer at the Institute than here. We'll take a run out there right now. You can bed down in the hospital section. Go pack a bag."

  "What about you?”

  I smiled faintly. "I'll stay here in the hope she comes gunning for you. I have a lot of experience with firearms and the people who trigger them at other people. Please, it's for the best.”

  She turned away but could not resist flinging over her shoulder, "Was Adrian good last night?”

  I had on my poker face. “I stayed to protect him. He was the perfect gentleman." And lover, I added mentally. I was damn glad Adrian Trent and I had done a bit of buttonholing last night. At least he had died happy, in a sense.

  She bought it, or at least she made no further allusion to my having been gone all night. I don't think she really cared. My hunch was Rhea Parker cared more for a female than for a male. This was a belief I meant to prove one of these nights.

  She packed her bag in ten minutes.

  Rhea led the way to her white Mustang with me at her elbow, looking around for signs of Pamela Frost. My right hand was inside my Gabrielle shoulder bag, clasped about the ivory butt-plates of my Belgian Bull dog revolver. At first sight of her I would whip out my gun and hold her until Rhea could bring the cops.

  Pamela Frost didn't show.

  Rhea slid into the driver seat of the Mustang. I climbed in beside her. I saw that the gas tank was full as she switched on the ignition and hit the starter. The motor purred to life with a sweet sound. She backed from the parking slot in the apartment cellar garage and drove out into the traffic. Her hands were so tightly clenched on the steering wheel, her knuckles showed white and bloodless.

  "Relax," I breathed. "Otherwise you'll have an accident and we don't want any more complications."

  I turned and looked behind us as she sped along Mortimer Street. A red Camaro eased out from the curb and came after us. A woman was driving, but I couldn't tell from this distance if it was the Frost dame or not.

  I said nothing to Rhea; she was worried enough. But my hand tightened a little more firmly on the Bulldog. I was happy to see that Rhea was driving faster now that we were out of Valley Rill and moving for the mountain road. If the girl in the red Camaro was Pamela Frost, we'd know soon enough.

  I did some thinking. The mountain road was lonely all the way to the Bionics Research Institute. If that woman was Pamela Frost, she would have a long stretch of roadway along which to overtake us, force us into the ditch and shoot us.

  The suicide seat window of the red Camaro was down, I noticed when the morning sunlight failed to reflect off it. She would have a clear opening through which to fire. And she was fumbling at something on the seat beside her. Getting a gun? Were her fingers tightening around a handgun the way mine were clutching the Belgian revolver? I was damn sure they were!

  The red car was coming closer, closer. Its right front wheel was level with the Mustang's left rear wheel. I could see the woman clearly now.

  The Camaro moved forward, gaining steadily.

 

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