Outside of the curtained windows a macabre fog eddied and drifted, at times dimming the street lights with its wispy, ghostly vapors. Within was snug comfort, warmth, life and color.
Had curious eyes been permitted to peek inside the glass and curtain-shielded tonneau, a scene of revelry, profanely at variance with the dismal exterior of the night, would have been revealed.
Outside, the interminable procession of half suffocated lights vainly trying to pierce the gray shroud which drew ever closer and closer about them; inside, the ribald levity of alcohol-inspired abandon, the sheen of silken hose on diaphanous garments fluttered in careless disarray above silk-clad knees.
There were four occupants in the seclusion of the cozy, glassed-in, and softly lighted tonneau. Two of them were gentlemen, modishly attired in the habiliments dictated by the fashions of the times for evening wear, and two of them were young girls, whose apparel, if not exactly that which would have been considered in the best of taste by social arbiters, was at least beautiful and colorful. The gentlemen, regardless of their half inebriated condition, were patently at home in the atmosphere of luxury which both the car and their apparel suggested. The girls, had the imaginary observer surveyed them with a critical eye and taken note of the extreme shortness of their dresses, the rouge upon their cheeks, the exaggerated scarlet of their lips and their indifference to the indiscreet disarray of their clothing, would have been catalogued instantly as ladies of that vast assembly politely described as “not nice!”
One of the gentlemen was Monty and one of the girls myself. The second gentleman was another scion of aristocracy known only to me by the nickname Zippy, and his companion was a young Spanish girl of saturnine but piquantly beautiful features named Carlota.
This was not the first nocturnal outing I had participated in. Yielding to the influence of the magic wand of gold which Monty had waved before her eyes, Madame Lafronde had consented to this departure from the accustomed routine.
“I don't want to stand in the way of your doing the best you can for yourself, but watch your step, girl, watch your step!” were her final words on the subject.
Tonight we were, to be present at the clandestine showing of some naughty moving pictures which Zippy had arranged for with an exhibitor at some obscure point far over on the East Side of London. After the show we would dine in the seclusion of a private room in a popular resort.
Zippy was a genial chap of very likable personality. He was possessed of a humorous and witty disposition. His droll witticisms and antics kept one constantly laughing, and when he was half under the influence of liquor, he kept these around him fairly convulsed.
Carlota, whom I had met a few hours before, constituted something of an enigma. Her attitude toward me was perplexing; I had always been able to make friends easily, but my overtures to her left her unresponsive and I sensed some coldness, the reason for which I could not imagine. At times I found her looking at me covertly and imagined there was something baleful in the glint of her dark eyes.
Thinking that maybe she regarded my acquaintance with Zippy as a possible menace to the security of her domains in his affection, I was scrupulously careful not to presume upon the bonhomme spirit of the four-cornered friendship, and still this explanation did not seem to fit the circumstances exactly, for she seemed peculiarly tepid in her demonstrations of affection for the good-looking young aristocrat.
Tonight, however, she had apparently cast off her moody lack of animation and had entered into the festive spirit of the occasion. A silver-covered flask was being passed from hand to hand as the smoothly humming motor carried us onward toward our destination. Esconced in one corner of the luxuriously upholstered seat, Monty leaned back with me on his lap. At the other end of the seat, Zippy held Carlota in a similar fashion. A supple, beautiful arm was curved lightly about his neck, and a small, piquant face was snuggled against his.
In the pleasant spell of a mild alcoholic languour, I watched them dreamily. I felt happy, contented, and was looking forward to a night of joyous abandon with no premonition or presentiment of evil to mar my lightheartedness.
Carlota's skirts were up over her knees, revealing a brief extension of flesh which glinted ivorylike in the soft light and was accentuated by the black sheen of her silk-clad legs. The metallic clasps which engaged the tops of her hose, holding them smooth and tight about her legs by means of elastic garters which ascended upward and disappeared under filmy garments sparkled like jewels as the movement of the car caused the light to vibrate against them.
An inquisitive hand, lured on, no doubt, by the seductive disarray of garments, fell upon her knee and began an insidious exploration upward, its movements contributing further to the disorder of her clothing and the revealment of more ivory thigh. Of the hand itself soon nothing was visible but portions of a white cuff, the rest of it being lost to sight among the filmy undergarments.
Carlota giggled nervously and pressed her legs together, by virtue of which maneuver the invading hand was firmly imprisoned between walls of warm, living flesh.
With my head resting on Monty's shoulder, I watched this lascivious play with half-closed eyes. What a pity, I thought, that Carlota was not always jolly and happy. When she was like this, she was really beautiful. What pretty legs she had, too, so slim and graceful and softly curved. When girls had legs like hers no wonder men admired them. Mine had been like that when I was younger, but during the last year or two they had filled out, become more solid, more suggestive of maturity.
I straightened my own legs out and contemplated them pensively.
“What are you doing, baby? Admiring your legs?” murmured Monty.
“No; I was admiring Carlota's, and comparing mine with them.”
“Oh, envy! Thy name is Woman! Do you think Carlota's legs are prettier than yours?”
“Yes,” I said, candidly. “I do. Mine are getting too matronly.”
“Bosh,” answered Monty, and he plunged his face between my breasts and set me to giggling by blowing hot, whiskey-scented breath through the cloth over my bubbles. “You're just fishing for compliments, and out of pure obstinacy, I refuse to bite.”
“The only time to properly judge a lady's legs,” expounded Zippy solemnly from his corner, “is when they're around your neck. I maintain that Carlota has the nicest legs in the world.
Monty and I burst out laughing and Carlota jerked upright in pretended indignation.
“Oh! What an insolent inference! I never had my legs around his neck in my life.”
“In my dreams, my dear, in dreams! A man has a right to dream anything he wants to, hasn't he?”
“No! Not such defamatory dreams as that! If you want to dream about me, dream something decent! And… o-o-oh!.. take your hand away from there! Stop!.. stop!.. you're going to make me wet my panties!”
The sudden slowing of the car, followed by two long and two short blasts of the siren warned us that we had reached our destination and Carlota, escaping from the fervid embrace, straightened out her clothing preparatory to leaving the car.
As it rolled to a stop, apparently in accordance with prearranged plans and in answer to the signals of the siren, the figure of a man materialized from the fog-enshrouded night to guide us to the rendezvous where the entertainment was to take place,
We were conducted to a room improvised to represent a theater in a crude way; a few chairs, a small platform elevated two or three feet above the floor, and back of this a white curtain. The projection machine and operator were hidden from our view in an adjacent room whence the pictures would be flashed through a small round hole cut in the intervening wall. There were no other spectators present as Zippy had arranged for an entirely private showing.