own as her muscles contracted time and again, releasing them both from the agonizing torture they had been subjected to for the last thirty minutes.
For a quarter of an hour they lay on the bed. At first they had panted, but the tremors had subsided and they breathed normally. Greg reached to the bedside table for a cigarette. 'Why did you do it?' he asked her simply as he lit a smoke for both of them. 'Was it just because I had neglected you or have you fallen in love with him?'
'No, he-he forced me,' she said.
'How the hell could he have forced you,' Greg said, a little angry that she could have allowed something like that to happen… unless…
'I don't want to tell you…' she started to say.
'Now,' he said. 'Don't waste any time. How did he force you?'
Still sorry that he had not told her about what he had been doing with the company money, she began to relate the story. Greg sat with disbelief in the dark as she continued. '… and so that's how. I couldn't take a chance. I didn't know if he was lying about what you were doing or not.'
'He wasn't lying,' he said with a defeated tone in his voice. 'Everything he said was true.' But that was what she didn't want to hear. Why had he become a thief? Why? Now what could they do? He was so bright, the head of his class at the small Midwestern college where they had met. He was always voted the most likely to succeed. What had gone wrong?
'I don't understand how Martin could have found out,' he continued. 'If he could, then anyone else can if they have the right connections.'
'Why, Greg? Why did you do it to begin with?' she said. She was looking for a bridge back to their marriage. If he would tell her perhaps she would begin to understand this man. Perhaps, they still had a chance.
'Mismanagement, I guess,' he said. 'I could manage my job alright, but for some reason, I couldn't seem to balance our personal budget. There were always too many things we wanted. Too many nights out, too much money spent entertaining prospective contacts, in the higher offices. Maybe I could have done it with a bigger expense account, but there was no other way. I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't started taking a little.'
'Oh Greg, darling.' Janet sobbed gently next to him. 'If only I had known.'
'It wasn't much at first and it was too easy. There is no problem at all padding loan repayments and adjusting the company books. No one else could have done it without being the manager. In fact, even so, they might not have. I did do a good job, or so I thought. I just don't understand how Martin could have found out.'
'He's been with the company a long time,' she said. 'It probably wasn't hard for him. He's certainly not a stupid man.'
'He's a lot smarter than I ever thought,' he said.
Janet said nothing more as her husband turned on his side to sleep. What Martin might do was foremost in her mind. She adjusted the covers and settled down for a sleepless night. Tears filled her eyes in silent prayer. She could see no solution and obviously Greg couldn't either. He hadn't even tried to see a way out. The shock must have been too much for him, she thought. He could only wonder how Martin had discovered him. His pride in being caught had been more injured than anything else. He didn't even seem to care about what Martin had done to her.
She closed her eyes and drifted into the half-sleep she would endure for many nights to come.
CHAPTER SIX
Darleen pulled a beige leather glove onto her left hand. It was two thirty, Wednesday afternoon, five days after her husband had seduced Janet Richards. Her mind had been involved in nothing for the last few days, except to originate plans for the younger couple who were under Martin's power. She had only to wait for word from him as to when Greg Richards returned home from his trip and she could initiate her first step. She picked up the car keys and turned towards the door but the brash ringing of the telephone stopped her.
'Hello, baby,' she heard Martin's ringing voice at the other end. He rarely called her at home unless it was extremely important. Maybe for once it wouldn't be she almost hoped. Maybe he would just ask her to meet him for a drink after work.
'I'm on my way to do some shopping,' she said. 'Is anything wrong.'
'To the contrary. I thought you might be interested to know that Greg is at the office today. He came home last night.'
'Wonderful,' she said. 'Did he give you any indication that he might know what happened?'
'None that I could see. I don't think that Janet was foolish enough to tell him. We'll have to find a way to do that ourselves. I'm going to ask them to come to the beach with us for the weekend and with the proper preparations there'll be nothing to worry about. Both of them will find that they can enjoy our company much more than they had ever imagined.'
'Good,' she said, 'When do we leave, darling?'
'Sometime Friday. I think I can talk Greg into leaving the office early.'
'There's something I want to ask you, Martin,' she said, hoping that he would agree to her proposition. 'You said the other night that we could take them to Peter's club for a party, and watch Monroe giving it to Janet. You practically promised.'
Martin laughed into the telephone. 'Sometimes I think you must be some kind of pervert,' he stopped for a moment, still not able to control his laughter. 'You go right ahead and do whatever you wish. See Peter this afternoon and make some arrangement for next week. We can't take them there until we've broken them in good ourselves. You understand that they must be perfectly primed. I want Greg in my palm as much as I have Janet or he might blow the works.'
'Oh, thank you, darling,' she cooed over the line. 'You're so sweet to me. Sometimes I think you're a little too lenient.'
'Well,' he said, 'Don't worry about that now. I'm leaving the office to see Janet. I want to impress upon her the importance of the weekend trip and then I'll see you about six thirty.'
Darleen hardly heard the click in her ear as Martin hung up. She was preoccupied with the new events at hand. Now she would be sure to get her revenge on Janet for attracting her husband, and at the same time, be able to take Greg for a ride. There was no thought of shopping in her mind as she left the house. She was going to see Peter Grant immediately and assure herself that everything would be arranged when they brought the Richards to meet Peter and his wife, Deborah.
Grant's Tomb was almost obscured from any passers by. The single black door was decorated with a small gold plaque, the club's name engraved in black Old English type on its face. No other sign adorned the entrance. It could have been a private apartment, set between the thriving businesses on Sunset Strip.
However, the unadorned entrance was no indication of the club's reputation. Peter Grant had owned a number of night spots in the Los Angeles area. Each time he closed out and moved to a new location he brought his old customers with him, as well as building a larger clientele from newer contacts.
The Tomb's reputation was Peter's. The army of followers that had come with him through the last ten years were impressed not only by his taste for elegance, but by his taste for the bizarre. Most who came for an evening's entertainment got more than they expected and were pleased. Few complained about the high prices. A select minority of the customers, however, found more than simple nightclub entertainment.
They, too, enjoyed the fine dinners and floor-shows. A few of these even stayed to dance for a while. But if one were to look about him in the later hours of the evening, they would see that a few guests were escorted personally by the owner, or his hulking bodyguard, Monroe, through a thick black curtained door and no one ever came out from behind the curtain before two o'clock, the regular closing hour.
An especially observant person might have thought that Peter was running a gaming club through the large, locked door behind it. But it would take a long stretch of the imagination to figure out exactly what kind of gaming
