concerned about. Go and tell that to Ashad and get me down off this wall. I've had enough.' He was shocked and pleased. I wondered what sort of a pitfall I had dug for myself. 'This is simple stuff, easy to tell. Why not tell us before?' he asked shrewdly.
'Because there was a friend of Miss Harding's in it,' I floundered. 'His name is Mynarski. I didn't see why he should get murdered too.'
'This Mynarski, what does he do?'
'He's a sort of financier. He arranges deals.' I must have struck the right note. He departed, grinning. It was not long before Ashad and Jennie made an appearance. Neither of them were smiling. Jennie carried something I could not see.
'Put them on her.' Ashad's order was crisp and definite. What had I done wrong! Opening her hand, Jennie disclosed, not one but two, of the avid jawed battery clips.
'But I've told you!' I wailed. 'I've told you what you wanted to know.'
'That's the trouble, love. You knew what we wanted so you gave it to us. Mind you, I can understand you wanting to get down off that wall.'
'Girls are stupid,' Ashad said contemptuously. I gave my best gasp of horror yet when it became evident where I was to get the clips. 'No, no, no, not on my nipples!' I pleaded. No one gave heed. All of Jennie's attention was focused on my breasts. With careful deliberation she opened the jaws over one of my nipples and pushed it to encompass the aureola, then let it close. I screamed. Jennie calmly positioned and let bite the other set of jaws on my other breast. Holding my flesh beyond the base of each nipple they had the anchorage to stick out arrogantly like enormous metal teats. I screamed again.
'You're sure they won't damage?' Ashad's anxiety was not humane.
'We certainly can't leave 'em on her all night.' Jennie sounded faintly on my side. My heart went out to her. 'Let me down, oh, please let me down.' I sobbed without caring for anything except an end to the punishment. 'I'll do or say anything!'
'You've said too much, love.'
'I'm sorry. I apologize. The pain is so awful…'
'How long do you want her to hang?' Jennie asked her master. Ashad shrugged. 'Does it matter! It keeps her out of the way.' He laughed grimly. 'If we have to hold on to her, she'll be obedient.'
'The clips… my breasts!' I wailed. 'I've said I'm sorry. Please take them off me.'
'Of course you're sorry, love. Stands to reason… ' Jennie seemed to think I was belaboring the obvious. I expect I was.
'Let her wear them for an hour. Next time she can have one on her tongue too.' As far as Ashad was concerned, his crisp order disposed of me. I tried to feel lucky that I had to wear the beastly things on my breasts for only an hour. But I couldn't feel lucky about anything, I hurt too much. I was getting hysterical.
'If you'll stop torturing me and let me just… just wear handcuffs I'll join your… ' I was about to say 'gang', but thought better of it. 'your… your movement,' I ended lamely.
'Women!' There was a wealth of derision in Ashad's one word. He swept angrily from the cell.
'Those clips on your tits must really hurt!' Jennie observed sagely. 'How about another pair down below?'
'Please kill me, I've had enough.'
'You almost mean that, don't you! I wish things were different, kid. I'm beginning to like you.' Then Jennie, too, was gone. I just hung there with my eyes closed. The cell was too depressing to look at. Once in awhile I would open one eye to examine the metal things protruding from my breasts. There was about them an up-tilted jauntiness that, despite their pain, kept a spot of heat alive in my loins. I suppose I really am hopeless. I was quite sure that if I had been able to put my hand on my puss I would have found her sopping wet. The hours wore on. I knew their passing by the changing light. Little by little I knew something worse. The clips were not taken from my breasts. They remained fixed upon my nipples, biting on and on. The hour of my sentence to wear them had been violated. I wept and wept again. I screamed for help a few times. But the sound of my voice frightened me and did no good; no one came. If I had not been weakening rapidly I would have been in a fine old panic. Alone and forgotten! The day drifting into twilight. When James Pollard walked in I thought I was delirious.
We looked at each other in startled disbelief. But then joy and relief flooded me in a wave of thankfulness. James's angry eyes absorbed my punishment.
'The son of a bitch!' In a fury of motion he was at my bonds. The box beneath my feet was heaven while he worked at the leathers on my thumbs. The battery clips had been unclipped from my breasts and tossed aside in a gesture of disgust. Looking down at the indented points of my twin curves I wondered if they would ever get rid of the vivid marks of the jaws. When my hands fell from their stretched captivity, I raised them to look at the damage. My thumbs were scarlet and white, but were still there even though I could not move them. They were hurting. When my rescuer lifted me from the box, turned me around, and handcuffed my wrists behind my back, his act seemed the most natural thing in the world. I made no protest, but stood while I was made painlessly helpless, pure bliss flooding every crevice of my being.
'Sorry about this whole damn thing, Phemie.' James turned me about again and implanted a kiss, this time on my lips. It didn't quite erase my torture but it helped. 'My boys have got Ashad and that girl safe and sound. The other two left an hour ago. Come on! This lot is dangerous, they kill.' I'd been a bit weak at the knees at first, but excitement sent the blood surging. I was alive, alive! I was free. At that moment I did not feel my handcuffs as an impediment to anything. The male hand on my bare arm was so warmly reassuring I would have let it lead me anywhere. I did not even wonder where we were going so long as we went. I wondered, afterwards, if any neighboring eye beheld James put a naked handcuffed girl into the little car. At the moment I did not care. I was like a small pussy cat, utterly dependent, unknowing, having no voice in anything its owner chose to do with it. James Pollard was my new owner. I was content. When he covered my nudity with a car rug I went to sleep. I'd had a hard day. You know what it's like sleeping in a car. Here and there you will sleepily 'rouse in response to motion or sound. But the motor is a lullaby soothing you back into dreams. I am so accustomed to being handcuffed I am unaware of them unless they stop me from doing something urgent. But the male hand that occasionally patted my knee told me urgencies were gone. I slept a long time. It was the gunshots that woke me.
'They've been on our tail all the way,' James told me grimly. 'I used this little beetle to be unobtrusive, but it won't shake what they're driving.' The sleep had done me good. But now, rested, I was again vividly aware of being in the middle of something big and menacing. The revolver in James lap was frightening. 'What do they want?' I asked, as if I did not know!
'You.'
'Have you got another gun?' I asked boldly. It evoked the amusement most of my remarks seem to make. 'You're handcuffed, Phemie. But, no, I don't have one. Never expected this wild west chase.'
'Where are you taking me?'
'I was taking you to one of Bolling's country places.' His use of the past tense was grim. My next question was cut short by a bullet through our roof. James twisted the wheel so that we dived into a gateway. Leaning through his window he fired again and again at a target down the road. There was a metallic jumble of sounds that ended by a number of spaced shots under which our small car actually flinched. Its motor coughed and died.
'Damn!' said James. 'This way, Phemie.' I knelt with him behind the bush. I was shivering with cold and fear. My owner endeared himself to me forever by clasping the rug around me from front to back and thrusting its 'loose ends into my captive hands. 'Hold on to it, sweetheart,' he whispered. 'It's all you've got.' Without pause he reloaded his empty gun. I'm so used to handcuffs that getting a firm grip on my only protection against the night was not too hard. It never occurred to me that James could use his key and give me my arms back. I made myself as small a bundle as possible in the dark. I have read a lot of books. Sometimes when Yola had me chained in the dungeon she would let me read. Always when perusing the adventures of Bill or Suzy I resented the descriptive passages that really didn't matter. I've already said this about telling of being whipped. The thrilling chase is only motion that gets the characters from point A to point B. So I'm going to absolve you from following James and me from bush to bush and tree to tree. Somewhere along the way we lost the two bloodhounds; that was what really counted! The only trouble was that, arriving at point B we found ourselves on a dismal stretch of moor with only an occasional copse of sad little trees and a few sheep. By then it was daylight.
'This is ridiculous!' James's boyish grin was troubled. When he turned it on me there was a touch of apology.
