'Well,' said Lewis, reaching for his check book; 'I suppose fifty pounds.'
She took an open check for fifty pounds.
'Now clear out,' said Lewis, 'and take your daughter away from my theatre.'
She had not been gone a minute before Lewis called his bank and stopped payment on the check. He was perfectly safe, for the very fact that the mother took the money made her an accessory after the act.
I knew that Lewis would not be back that night for he usually selected one of his harem who pleased him most to take upstairs to his private suite of rooms at Runcorne's.
To diverge again, I might mention a really delightful stroke of business on Lewis' part during the time I was with him.
He bought a house in the smartest street and started a brothel there, a very flaring, giddy, up-to-date brothel. Naturally, the other residents resented the neighbourhood of the place, got rid of their houses and all the rents fell. When they had fallen considerably, Lewis took the opportunity of buying up the street, closed the brothel, and presently the street was once more a very desirable one, and the values rose again and he was enabled to sell at a very large profit.
But to return to Ah Sin. I looked him straight in the face when he came in that evening and said solemnly: 'Now Ah Sin, remember what happened last night must not be known to a soul, nor even suspected.'
He spread out his hands: 'Me not dlam fooi, Missee,' he answered.
'How do you feel this evening, Ah Sin,' I continued.
'Velly wicked,' he replied, 'me catchee big cockstand.'
I pleased myself with frigging it, making the veins swell up almost to the bursting point, while poor Ah Sin wriggled and looked at me with supplicating eyes. But he refrained from touching me, though I lay right under his eyes in all my tempting nakedness.
Of course, I let him at last; he forgot himself and promised me extraordinary delights. And he was as good as his word. He lay on his back on the rug and while in that position he lifted me in the air above him. Then, ever so gently, he fixed me onto his penis, and still holding me in the air, manipulated me on it with such dexterity that my rapture was heavenly. He seemed to anticipate the moment of my greatest bliss, and pressing me right onto his penis, till our hairs met and our heaving bellies came together, we mingled our torrents.
After he had bathed me, syringed me with the dexterity of a professional nurse, brought a heavenly cocktail, and massaged my limbs till my lassitude was entirely dispelled, I made him sit down and talk to me for a while.
The scene was an odd one: a beautiful naked English girl, her long hair enveloping her to below the waist, lying on the bed gracefully toying with the hairs on her mount of Venus.
On the walls a collection of suggestive French pictures, and in an armchair, a muscular Chinaman, also naked, his staff of love in the half and half condition that follows a heavy fuck, but is maintained in some degree of naughtiness by the sensual surroundings.
'Ah Sin, how is it that you do wickedness so nicely?'
'They teachee me in school,' was his astounding answer.
It appeared from the tale he unfolded that his mother was one of the famous prostitutes in a flower boat, and as she had connection with only very rich men, it is probable that his father was at least a Mandarin. In this floating brothel he had been brought up, and from his earliest days had been accustomed to sights of untrammelled lust. He soon knew all the tricks of the trade. 72
His flower boat made a specialty of providing indecent shows, and at a very early age, Ah Sin began to take a part in these. He underwent the usual operations performed on the male children born in a brothel and had his anus distended so that he could easily take a man's penis into it. He told me all this without the slightest shame, but added that he had not often been called upon to be buggered, owing to his efficiency in licking off the prostitutes as a show scene.
At the age of 17 he became assistant manager and head showman to a wealthy old pimp who ran three of these flower boats. In this capacity he produced some really fine pornographic shows for wealthy Cantonese and he referred to his triumphs with pardonable pride, his penis swelling at the recollection.
He produced one ballet of one hundred virgins and an equal number of handsome youths. They performed elaborate dances stark naked and then on grouped couches, the youths deflowered the virgins. He admitted, however, that perchance all the maidens were not exactly virgins, but 70 per cent of them were. It was the most expensive entertainment he had ever produced.
CHAPTER VIII
I stayed with Lewis for over a year. It was in a way pleasant, money was plentiful, and I was always the mistress of a charming little salon- but Lewis began to be trying with the women he forced on me.
I did not mind his smart London girls who were always dapper and frequently delightful, with their expensive frocks and their elegant lingerie, but when it came to his wandering Northwards for his inamoratas, well!
He had embarked in business with a Mr. Rudder, a wholesale merchant, in dancing girls and chorus girls. This man lived in Manchester in a mean street with a considerable gymnasium at the back of his premises, and hired out his harlots all over the world. He had no vice but one, Flappers, well not exactly flappers, but the class of ex-servant girl whom he generally found suitable for his companies and companions. They were about 20 or so in age, and they seldom washed. Some of them were clever and I did not mind their loose table manners, but there was one whom I could not stick to.
She was Scotch-a Glasgow girl-whom Mr. Rudder had picked up in Cowcadden Street, and she was certainly good-looking, when she was washed, which was very seldom. But she was ill tempered, feckless, vulgar, and her heart was as false as her teeth.
Lewis told me she was one of the best fucks he had ever had-she had been seduced it appeared by a fat proprietor of a Musical Comedy show, and I put up with her vulgarity for a bit. Common to the core, though she was, she had a certain female sympathy, and I used to lend her under clothes-I always burned the drawers when she returned them, which was not often.
Lewis brought her home many times-and I shuddered when she scratched her head, but when-after I knew she had been with him on the drawing room sofa, while I had been seeing to lunch-she scratched another portion of her body, I would have no more of it. I would not eat and I telephoned for friends.
Walker Bird was the first I got connected with-on the telephone-and he phoned me to come to the office.
I said goodbye to the Scotch lady, who excused her irritation on the score that her bladder was affected, and went to the Dial offices where Walker Bird was temporarily striving to keep the broker's men from the door. I met him outside, nervously pacing up and down.
'My dear child,' he said, 'Tm glad to see you. I can't go into that office; there are rude persons there, but I want to see my publisher and I want some one to go with me. I must have companionship. You ought to come with me, he's worth seeing, quite a curie. He comes from one of those appalling North Country towns, where everyone has money and no aspirates, or aspirations for that matter. His language may alarm you but he doesn't mean it really; it's only the drink bubbling.
'He used to be good looking and thinks he is still, and boasts a great deal about his successes with women. As a matter of fact he has been practically impotent for years but when he got just the right amount of liquor into him, he's amusing. When he hasn't, he's dull and when he's had too much, he's a hog. He's taking up religious stuff, it interests him in contrast to the more profitable part of his business, which consists in selling dirty books and pictures. He thinks he'll do me over the publications, but he won't; I know exactly the right mood to catch him when a contract needs signing.'
We got there at last, it was an Old World place in the riot of London life. A tattered man, smelling strongly of drink, let us in.
'That's a broker's man,' said Walker. 'Blythe has money really, but he always has them with him 'like the poor.' They are company with him, he gets on better with them than he does with the authors he has to meet and all the dear, dirty-minded poets he used to maintain are dead. As he truly says, broker's men are better than
