“Gaposis?” I suggested.
“I’m sorry.” The Count dismissed our explanations. “I must kill you both.”
“André!”
“Look, fella, aren’t you being sort of overly judgmental about this? I mean, hell, you’re losing your perspective. You’re blowing your cool,” I babbled, somehow hoping that by continuing to talk I might increase my life expectancy.
“You must die!” He was firm now. He aimed the pistol carefully until it was lined up with a spot just below the plumpness of Simone’s left breast.
I watched carefully as his finger started to squeeze the trigger. Then I made my move. I shoved Simone out of the way and dived for his feet as the gun went off. As he went down, I delivered a karate chop to the wrist of the hand holding the gun. There was a crash of glass as it flew out the window.
We rolled around for a few moments. The Count was a lot stronger than he looked. It was the wiry kind of strength that moves fast and hits hard. I don’t know how long we would have gone on wrestling and slugging if Simone hadn’t picked up a lamp and conked him over the head with it.
He was out like a light, but still breathing. We didn’t waste any time. I yanked the dress loose from the zipper and scrambled into my pants. Denise grabbed a dress from the closet and pulled it over her head. The Count was beginning to moan his way back to consciousness as we left, on the run, down the hall and out of the hotel. The piece of voile still hanging from my half-open fly whipped out between my legs and flared behind me like an ostrich’s tailfeather riding the wind.
It took a few moments for me to locate a cab outside the hotel. By the time Simone and I were inside it, the Count had appeared, wild-eyed and breathless, at the entrance to the hotel. From somewhere, he’d come up with another gun.
“Go! Go!” I pounded the driver on the shoulder.
“Where to, m’sieur?”
“The airfield. And hurry.”
A shot pinged off the hood of the car and the driver didn’t ask any further questions. We shot down the driveway and out onto the main road. A few moments later as we sped down the highway, the driver informed us that we were being followed.
Simone craned her head. “It’s him,” she told me. “I recognize his Ferrari.”
A moment later another gunshot confirmed her statement.
“Can’t you step on it?” I urged the driver.
“My foot is on the floorboard, m’sieur.”
“We’ll never outrun the Ferrari in this,” Simone moaned.
The driver was shaking like a neurotic leaf. He reached in the glove compartment and came up with a bottle. He took a deep swig from it.
“This is a hell of a time to get plastered," I observed.
“All this excitement makes me very nervous, m’sieur. Would you believe that I haven’t had a drink in six years? You see, I used to be an alcoholic. I only keep the bottle with me as a matter of will power.”
“Then allow me to save you from yourself.” I took the bottle from him and took a deep swig.
“He’s gaining!” Simone was twisted on the seat and looking out the back window.
Two more shots sounded.
I took a last pull from the bottle and then wrapped it in a rag I’d spotted on the seat beside the driver. Holding it carefully that way, I smashed it against the back of the front seat.
“What are you doing?” Simone asked.
“It’s an outside chance, but it’s worth trying. Watch.” I opened the side window and selected a nice-sized fragment of the broken bottle. Carefully, I dropped it as close to our right wheels as I could. I repeated the action until I’d disposed of all the pieces of the bottle.
It worked! Just when I’d given up on the ploy, there was a loud sound from behind us that we at first mistook for another gunshot. Then the Count’s car swerved back and forth on the road and skidded to a halt. I’d succeeded in causing a blowout to one of his front tires..
We were in luck when we reached the airport. There was space on a plane leaving for Paris immediately. Once we were in the air, I was able to devote myself to consoling Simone. .
She had two concerns. First, she was afraid that the Count would find her and kill her. Second, she had no idea how she would get along without him. She had no other family; she’d never worked for a living; she didn’t dare go to friends for help because they might inform on her to the Count.
I had the solution to her problems. The Count would never find her in Ali Khat’s harem. She would be looked after, and she would receive five thousand dollars to start a new life after she left the harem.
Simone wasn’t too hard to convince. After all, what choice did she have? By the time we set down in Paris, she had agreed fully. My second assignment was successfully completed.
What next?
CHAPTER EIGHT
What next?
Would you believe:
An African Pygmy princess with a Ph.D. in psychology from Oxford?
A tie-line between Miami Operator Nineteen of Bell Telephone and an African jungle tom-tom?
A fee-splitting arrangement involving a cannibal witch doctor and my mother?
Me, Steve Victor, the man from O.R.G.Y., tied naked to a stake while the question of my Blue Cross coverage was settled?
A discussion about the medical techniques of lancing a boil and boiling a lance?
A tribe of savages so humanitarian (or sanitary) that they treated the macka on my behind before consigning me to the casserole?
Hard to swallow? I agree. I could only hope, spitefully, that sautéed Victor would prove as hard on the gullet as my plight on your gullibility. It had all happened so suddenly that -- like you—I felt like I’d fallen head-first into the credibility gap.
Just a few short weeks before, I’d been sitting in a swanky hotel in Paris having cocktails with Leila, my luscious liaison with Sheikh Ali Khat. Leila was about to leave with Simone for the Skeikh’s harem. Before going, she was giving me my next assignment and filling me in on the standings in the contest.
What Leila told me wasn’t exactly reassuring. I was in a tie for last place with the Russians. The other competitors had all completed the third assignment and started on the fourth. The third assignment, my next, was as follows:
“A bona fide Pygmy princess under four feet eight inches tall.”
That was all. It was enough. Pygmies are rare in the world. Pygmies of royal blood are even more rare. I asked Leila how the competition had attained their successes.
“Your Australian counterpart, Archibald Snoopleigh, delivered the third lady only three days after the second,” Leila told me. “She was a Pygmy princess from New Guinea.”
“Sure,” I grumbled, remembering that I owed Snoopleigh revenge. “It figures. That fink did a sex survey in New Guinea just a year ago. He must have known just where to look.”
“It’s within the rules,” Leila reminded me with a shrug. “I don’t know whether I should tell you this,” she added, “but Mr. Snoopleigh’s employer, John Rank Privy, is so sure of success that he has already submitted plumbing blueprints to the Sheikh. So, too, has Mr. Rustwater.”
I made a mental note to send a telegram to Austin advising him to do the same. “So that ham actor of Rustwater’s delivered on the Pygmy princess too,” I mused.
“Yes. Cass Nova was most ingenious,” Leila commented. “He obtained a genuine African Pygmy princess from Central Casting in Hollywood.”
“Foul!” I snarled.
“Not at all. It’s permissible. The Brazilians, after all, delivered a Pygmy princess from a tribe on the Amazon riverbank in their homeland.”
“And I suppose the Japanese came up with a Japanese Pygmy,” I muttered.
“No. They obtained an Aëtas princess from the Philippine Islands. She’s the smallest so far. Only four feet tall.”