For his money. She will rob him and leave him. In the name of friendship, I beg you to take the most ruthless measures to put an end to this tragi-comedy. At once and with no holding back! Otherwise I foresee the worst. He will strangle the girl Sian-about which I do not care. He will then marry the little whore Julie. I care about that more than I can express. Act quickly and with resolve, dear friend. You shall name your reward. M.
II. OMBRE
XIV. Augustus to Lady Maude
Chez Dr. Raspail, 8 July
My dearest Maude, I am the most tormented creature the world has ever known.
For the past two days I have lain under the ministrations of Dr.
Raspail and only now feel my nerves in a sufficient state of recovery to write these lines. Julie is gone. Sian is gone. I do not mean that they are dead. They have been spirited away before my very eyes.
I do not know what I shall do or how I shall survive in these next few days. I went to the usual rooms which I have rented in the house across the street, in order that I might observe what passed between the two girls. It was just at sunset and the lights soon came on in their uncurtained windows which showed me everything that passed.
Julie had returned home to find Sian waiting and they had retired together to the bedroom. Neither of them had yet undressed but stood looking at one another across the bed in their singlets and tight denim-pants. Yet they had not had time to do more than caress one another with their eyes when there came a knock at the street door. It was of a kind which permits no prevarication. Even before the girls could answer it the door was opened, for all the world as if one of the four intruders had a key to it. There were four of them, Maude, all well-built and dangerous-looking brutes, though they wore masks across their eyes as if it were carnival in Venice. I knew at once that some villainy was intended towards the one girl. Of course, I cared nothing about what might be done to Sian and, indeed, would have welcomed seeing her ravished first and then given the coup de grace. Yet I could not be indifferent to the peril in which Julie now stood. I went to the door of my room, intending to go down the stairs into the street and raise the alarm. To my astonishment, however, the door had been locked or otherwise secured by some person on the outside. It seemed that I was a prisoner, helpless to do more than watch the events which unfolded in the room opposite. I went to the window, of course, threw it open and shouted, “Help! Help! Ho, there! Murder!” and similar imprecations. The street remained dead. It seemed that all the other buildings were now empty, as if someone had arranged that it should be so. You might have sworn that the inhabitants, all of them Mr. Bowler's tenants I believe, had been well rewarded to spend the night drinking at his expense in a nearby tavern. One of the men chose Julie, threw her on the bed, tightened a strap round her wrists and fastened them to the metal rail. Perhaps it was only Sian whom they wished to deal with. At least, for the moment, they left Julie alone, squirming and mewling on the bed, a gag of some sort thrust in her mouth to subdue her shrillness. I would be a hypocrite, Maude, if I did not confess privately that I enjoyed seeing Sian get her desserts. The men were going to abduct her, of that there was little doubt. Sian was destined for sale to some harem-owner or connoisseur. It was not, of course, necessary for the men to do to her the things which they now inflicted. All the same, it would have been hard for them to resist the temptation. Anyone who has passed Mr. Bowler's premises and chanced to see this redheaded dollymop would have envied the men the fun they had with her. You have only to look at Sian, the short and straying plumes of her red hair over her forehead and on her collar, the sensual blue eyes, the slope of her cheekbones, the weak chin and the painted little mouth. If that does not reveal her character sufficiently, observe her dressed in white blouse and the tight fawn cotton of working-pants. She is not particularly tall and, though she must be twenty years old, her thighs are slim and the cheeks of her bottom trim and agile. When she is at her work, watch her bend to some task or other. How lewdly she does it, her legs astride a little, her rude little bottom rounded right out with its cheeks parted under the tight seat of her denim, for all the world as if she wished to display herself to the passing world like the most shameless and depraved young whore. Without more ado, three of the masked bravoes marched Sian into the other room where the man who was their leader sat in judgment on her. “Stand in front of me, Sian. Let me look at you. Are you truly such a warm-blooded young slut that no girl is safe in the same bed as you? In that case you must be taken somewhere where you can exercise your talents under supervision. Ah, I think you guess that you have had your last experience of being at liberty. Do you know what a price a girl of your trim figure and fair skin will fetch at auction-in the Arabian trade, where harem girls are bought and sold-” While he was talking to her, Sian's blue eyes with their darkened lashes growing wider in disbelief, one of the other men brought in a heavy step-ladder. “I do believe,” said the leader of the group, “you have one of the prettiest faces I have seen on a working-girl, Sian. I like the saucy way you keep your red hair short and curling over your collar. Turn round, Sian, and let me look at you from behind. A pair of round and firm young bottom-cheeks, Sian!
You're going to be whipped presently-those are the orders given us. It will help you to know that we have no power to spare you that punishment, even if we wished to. Go to the step-ladder and bend over it with your arms stretching down on the far side. The men will make you do it anyway, if you prefer to be forced.” The windows on both sides of the narrow lane were wide open in the warm midsummer night, so that I listened to him as if he spoke in the very room where I languished then. Two of the other men seized Sian and hauled the young redhead across to the heavy step-ladder. It was low enough for them to bend her forward tightly over its structure, so that the little platform at the top supported her young belly and her arms were drawn at full stretch down the far side. They pinioned her wrists to these supports and left her in this position. Sian was bending over the ladder much as one sees her when she stoops to some workaday chore. The short mop of her reddish hair fell in a disorder of lightly waved tresses. The beige denim of her working-jeans was tight on her slim thighs, hips and buttocks. How very trim and how very tightly rounded were the nubile cheeks of Sian's bottom! They undid the denim and pulled off her working-pants, while she mewed and squirmed vainly against the wooden steps of the ladder which held her. Sian's knickers were no more than the snug cotton briefs which one sees through the tight jeans-seat whenever Sian bends over to her shop-work. Being prudent though, they ran Sian's briefs under the tap, made a wad of them and packed her mouth with the dampened cotton to quell her shrillness. I could neither defend nor excuse the amusement they now had with her. And yet, Maude, words cannot describe the satisfaction I felt at seeing what they now did to her. She had designed an evening of pleasure with Julie at my expense-and now these fine fellows were going to make her pay the price! The first man stood behind Sian as she bent over the step-ladder, her wrists tied to prevent her straightening up, while the structure itself ensured that she could not twist or squirm out of range. He manualised her between the legs until, I swear, one could hear her slipperiness. You need have no pity for Sian. Even in her present predicament she lubricated as soon as a man's fingers stroked her! This hulking fellow unbuttoned himself with a contented sigh and eased a prodigious member between her slim legs from the rear. Sian needed no encouragement, despite the promise of the discipline which was later to be inflicted on her. To see the way she strained back with her hips, spread her thighs and rode up and down the shaft, you would have thought that the masked ruffian was Apollo and Casanova all in one. I promise you, Maude, that had you been able to see the way Sian bowed her mop of red hair, the manner in which she seemed almost to “do the splits” to accommodate her lover more deeply, you would see her for what she is.