Now, after dinner, in the cool, sweet-scented darkness out of doors, Big George was once more the genial host. Cupping his hands around a Q emblazoned brandy glass, he announced, 'No excursions tonight. Well keep the party here.'
The majordomo, waiters, and musicians had discreetly slipped away.
Rhetta and Avril, who were drinking champagne, chorused, 'A party here!'
By Stonebridge raised his voice to match the girls'. 'What kind of party?'
'A swinging partyl' Krista declared, then corrected herself, her speech slurred slightly from dinner wine and champagne. 'No, a swimming party, I want to swim.' Stonebridge challenged her, 'What's stopping you?'
'Nothing, By, darling! Absolutely nothing!' In a series of swift movements, Krista set down her champagne glass, kicked off her shoes, unfastened straps on her dress and wiggled. The long green dinner gown she had been wearing cascaded to her feet. Beneath it was a slip. She
pulled that over her head and tossed it away. She had been wearing nothing else.
Naked, smiling, her exquisitely proportioned body with high firm breasts and jet black hair making her like a Maillot sculpture in motion, Krista walked with dignity from the terrace, down steps to the lighted swimming pool, and dived in. She swam the length of the pool, turned and called to the others, 'It's glorious! Come in!'
'By Godl' Stonebridge said, 'I reckon I will.' He tossed off his sport shirt, slacks and shoes, and naked as Krista, though less alluring, padded over and dived.
Moonbeam, with a small high giggle, and Rhetta were already taking off their clothes.
'Hold onl' Harold Austin called. 'This sport's coming too.'
Roscoe Heyward, who had watched Krista with a mixture of shock and fascination, found Avril close beside him. 'Rossie, sweetie, undo my zipper.' She presented him her back. Uncertainly, he tried to reach the zipper from his chair.
'Stand up, you old silly,' Avril said. As he did, with her head half turned she leaned against him, her warmth and fragrance overpowering. 'Have you done it yet?'
He was having difficulty concentrating. 'No, it seems to be. ..'
Adroitly, Avril reached behind her. 'Here, let me.' Finishing what he had begun, she tugged the zipper down. With a shrug of her shoulders, her dress fell away.
She swirled her red hair in the gesture he had come to know. 'Well, what are you waiting for? Undo my bra.'
His hands were trembling, his eyes riveted on her, as he did as he was told. The bra dropped. His hands did not.
With a minimal, graceful movement, Avril pivoted. She leaned forward and kissed him fully on the lips. His hands, remaining where they were, touched the forward thrusting nipples of her breasts. Involuntarily, it seemed, his fingers curled and tightened. Electric, sensual waves shot through him. - 'Um,' Avril purred. 'That's nice. Coming swimming?' He shook his head.
'See you later, then.' She turned, walking away like a Grecian goddess in her nudity, and joined the other five cavorting in the pool.
G. G. Quartermain had remained seated, his chair pushed back from the dinner table. He sipped his brandy, eying Heyward shrewdly. 'I'm not much for swimming either. Though once in a while, if he's sure he's among friends, it's good for a man to let himself go.'
'I suppose I should concede that. And I certainly do feel among friends.' Heyward sank down into his chair again; removing his glasses, he began to polish them. He had control of himself now. The instant of mad weakness was behind him. He went on, 'The problem is, of course: one occasionally goes slightly further than intended. However, if one maintains over-all control, that's really the important thing.' Big George yawned.
While they talked, the others, by this time out of the water, were toweling themselves and slipping on robes from a pile beside the pool.
Two hours or so later, as she had the night before, Avril escorted Roscoe Heyward to his bedroom doorway. At first, downstairs he had decided to insist that she not accompany him, then changed his mind, confident of his reasserted strength of will and positive now he would not succumb to wild, erotic impulses. He even felt assured enough to say cheerfully, 'Good night, young lady. And, yes, before you tell me, I know your intercom number is seven, but I assure you there is nothing that I'll need.'
Avril had looked at him with an enigmatic half smile, then turned away. He immediately closed and locked the bedroom door, afterward humming softly to himself as he prepared for bed. But, in bed, sleep eluded him.
He lay awake for nearly an hour, the bedclothes thrown back, the bedding soft beneath him. Through an open window he could hear a drowsy hum of insects and, distantly, the sound of breakers on the shore.
Despite his best intentions, the focus of his thoughts was Avril
Avril… as he had seen and touched her… breathtakingly beauteous, naked and desirable. Instinctively he moved his fingers, reliving the sensation of those full, firm breasts, their nipples extended, as he had cupped them in his hands.
And all the while his body… striving, burgeoning… made mock of his intended righteousness.
He tried to move his thoughts away to banking affairs, to the Supranational loan, to the directorship which G. G. Quartermain had promised. But thoughts of Avril returned, stronger than ever, impossible to eclipse. He remembered her legs, her thighs, her lips, her soft smile, her warmth and perfume. .. her availability.
He got up and began pacing, seeking to redirect his energy elsewhere. It would not be redirected.
Stopping at the window) he observed that a bright three-quarter moon had risen. It bathed the garden, beaches, and the sea in white ethereal light. Watching, a longf-orgotten phrase returned to him: The night was made for loving… by the moon.
He paced again, then returned to the window, standing there, erect.
Twice he made a move toward the bedside table with its intercom. Twice, resolve and sternness turned him back.
The third time he did not turn back. Grasping the instrument in his hand, he groaned a mixture of anguish, self-reproach, heady excitement, heavenly anticipation. Decisively and firmly, he pressed button number seven.
9
Nothing in Miles Eastin's experience or imagination, before entering Drummonburg Penitentiary, had prepared him for the merciless, degrading hell of prison.
It was now six months since his exposure as an embezzler, and four months since his trial and sentencing.
In rare moments, when his objectivity prevailed over physical misery and mental anguish, Miles Eastin reasoned that if society had sought to impose savage, barbaric vengeance on someone like himself, it had succeeded far beyond the knowing of any who had not endured, themselves, the brutish purgatory of prison. And if the object of such punishment, he further reasoned, was to push a human being out of his humanity, and make of him an animal of lowest Instincts, then the prison system was the way to do it.
What prison did not do, and never would Miles Eastin told himself was make a man a better member of society than when he entered it. Given any time at all, prison could only degrade and worsen him; could only increase his hatred of 'the system' which had sent him there; could only reduce the possibility of his becoming, ever, a useful, law-abiding citizen. And the longer his sentence, the less likelihood there was of any moral salvage.
Thus, most of all, it was time which eroded and eventually destroyed any potential for reform which a prisoner might have when he arrived.
Even if an individual hung on to some shards of moral values, like a drowning swimmer to a life presenter, it was because of forces within himself, and not because of prison but despite it.
Miles was striving to hang on, straining to retain some semblance of the best of what he had been before, trying not to become totally brutalized, entirely unfeeling, utterly despairing, savagely embittered. It was so easy to slip into a garment of all four, a hair shirt which a man would wear forever. Most prisoners did. They were those either brutalized before they came here and made worse since, or others whom time in prison had worn down; time and the cold-hearted inhumanity of a citizenry outside, indifferent to what horrors were perpetrated or decencies neglected all in society's name behind these walls.
In Miles's favor, and in his mind while he clung on, was one dominant possibility. He had been sentenced to
