Monsieur Henri, spray me just one more time!' Her face was alight, her eyes shining brilliantly.
'The experiment is over,' Henri said. 'Go away and dress yourself' He took her firmly by the shoulders and pushed her back into the other room. Then he locked the door.
Half an hour later, Henri and I sat celebrating our success in a small cafŽ down the street. We were drinking coffee and brandy. 'How long did it go on?' I asked.
'Six minutes and thirty-two seconds,' Henri said.
I sipped my brandy and watched the people strolling by on the sidewalk. 'What's the next move?'
'First, I must write up my notes,' Henri said. 'Then we shall talk about the future.'
'Does anyone else know the formula?'
'Nobody.'
'What about Simone?'
'She doesn't know it.'
'Have you written it down?'
'Not so anyone else could understand it. I shall do that tomorrow.'
'Do it first thing,' I said. 'I'll want a copy. What shall we call the stuff? We need a name.'
'What do you suggest?'
'Bitch,' I said. 'Let's call it Bitch.' Henri smiled and nodded his head slowly. I ordered more brandy. 'It would be great stuff for stopping a riot,' I said. 'Much better than tear-gas. Imagine the scene if you sprayed it on an angry mob.'
'Nice,' Henri said. 'Very nice.'
'Another thing we could do, we could sell it to very fat, very rich women at fantastic prices.'
'We could do that,' Henri answered.
'Do you think it would cure loss of virility in men?' I asked him.
'Of course,' Henri said. 'Impotence would go out the window.'
'What about octogenarians?'
'Them, too,' he said, 'though it would kill them at the same time.'
'And marriages on the rocks?'
'My dear fellow,' Henri said. 'The possibilities are legion.'
At that precise moment, the seed of an idea came sneaking slowly into my mind. As you know, I have a passion for politics. And my strongest passion, although I am English, is for the politics of the United States of America. I have always thought it is over there, in that mighty and mixed-up nation, that the destinies of mankind must surely lie. And right now, there was a President in office whom I could not stand. He was an evil man who pursued evil policies. Worse than that, he was a humourless and unattractive creature. So why didn't I, Oswald Cornelius, remove him from office?
The idea appealed to me.
'How much Bitch have you got in the lab at the moment?' I asked.
'Exactly ten cubic centimetres,' Henri said.
'And how much is one dose?'
'We used one cc for our test.'
'That's all I want,' I said. 'One cc. I'll take it home with me today. And a set of noseplugs.'
'No,' Henri said. 'Let's not play around with it at this stage. It's too dangerous.'
'It is my property,' I said. 'Half of it is mine. Don't forget our agreement.'
In the end, he had to give in. But he hated doing it. We went back to the lab, inserted our noseplugs, and Henri measured out precisely one cc of Bitch into a small scent-bottle. He sealed the stopper with wax and gave me the bottle. 'I implore you to be discreet,' he said. 'This is probably the most important scientific discovery of the century, and it must not be treated as a joke.'
From Henri's place, I drove directly to the workshop of an old friend, Marcel Brossollet. Marcel was an inventor and manufacturer of tiny precise scientific gadgets. He did a lot of work for surgeons, devising new types of heart-valves and pacemakers and those little oneway valves that reduce intracranial pressure in hydrocephalics.
'I want you to make me,' I said to Marcel, 'a capsule that will hold exactly one cc of liquid. To this little capsule, there must be attached a timing device that will split the capsule and release the liquid at a predetermined moment. The entire thing must not be. more than half an inch long and half an inch thick. The smaller the better. Can you manage that?'
'Very easily,' Marcel said. 'A thin plastic capsule, a tiny section of razor-blade to split the capsule, a spring to flip the razor-blade, and the usual pre-set alarm system on a very small ladies' watch. Should the capsule be fillable?'
'Yes. Make t so I myself can fill it and seal it up. Can I have it in a week?'
'Why not?' Marcel said. 'It is very simple.'
The next morning brought dismal news. That lecherous little slut Simone had apparently sprayed herself with the entire remaining stock of Bitch over nine cubic centimetres of it, the moment she arrived at the lab! She had then sneaked up behind Henri, who was just settling himself at his desk to write up his notes.
I don't have to tell you what happened next. And worst of all, the silly girl had forgotten that Henri had a serious heart condition. Damn it, he wasn't even allowed to climb a flight of stairs. So when the molecules hit him the poor fellow didn't stand a chance. He was dead within a minute, killed in action as they say, and that was that.
The infernal woman might at least have waited until he had written down the formula. As it was, Henri left not a single note. I searched the lab after they had taken away his body, but I found nothing. So now more than ever, I was determined to make good use of the only remaining cubic centimetre of Bitch in the world.
A week later, I collected from Marcel Brossollet a beautiful little gadget. The timing device consisted of the smallest watch I had ever seen, and this, together with the capsule and all the other parts, had been secured to a tiny aluminium plate three eighths of an inch square. Marcel showed me how to fill and seal the capsule and set the timer. I thanked him and paid the bill.
As soon as possible, I travelled to New York. In Manhattan, I put up at the Plaza Hotel. I arrived there at about three in the afternoon. I took a bath, had a shave, and asked room service to send me up a bottle of Glenlivet and some ice. Feeling clean and comfortable in my dressinggown, I poured myself a good strong drink of the delicious malt whisky, then settled down in a deep chair with the morning's New York Times. My suite overlooked Central Park, and through the open window I could hear the hum of traffic and the blaring of cabdrivers' horns on Central Park South. Suddenly, one of the smaller headlines on the front page of the paper caught my eye. It said, PRESIDENT ON TV TONIGHT. I read on.
The President is expected to make an important foreign policy statement when he speaks tonight at the dinner to be given in his honour by the Daughters of the American Revolution in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria.
My God, what a piece of luck!
I had been prepared to wait in New York for many weeks before I got a chance like this. The President of the United States does not often appear with a bunch of women on television. And that was exactly how I had to have him. He was an extraordinarily slippery customer. He had fallen into many a sewer and had always come out smelling of shit. Yet he managed every time to convince the nation that the smell was coming from someone else, not him. So the way I figured it was this. A man who rapes a woman in full sight of twenty million viewers across the country would have a pretty hard time denying he ever did it.
I read on.
The President will speak for approximately twenty minutes, commencing at nine p. m. and all major TV networks will carry the speech. He will be introduced by Mrs Elvira Ponsonby, the incumbent President of the Daughters of the American Revolution. When interviewed in her suite at the Waldorf Towers, Nits Ponsonby said.
It was perfect! Mrs Ponsonby would be seated on the President's right. At ten past nine precisely, with the President well into his speech and half the population of the United States watching, a little capsule nestling secretly in the region of Mrs Ponsonby's bosom would be punctured and half a centimetre of Bitch would come oozing out on to her gilt lamŽ ball-gown. The President's head would come up, and he would sniff and sniff
