“I am at present a mite short of coin, but I have this watch….”
The chamber was at the end of the hall on the top floor. As he passed the intervening rooms, Malone listened for the sounds of commerce. There were none to be heard. Did Madam Terry reserve this entire floor for one employee because she was special? he wondered. Or could it be that her fellow courtesans were fearful of working in the stranger’s vicinity? Did they perhaps shun her because she was Chinese? He already suspected that there were things at work here that transcended love and sex, and that was saying something.
To any other inhabitant of Carson City, the smells that emerged from beneath the solid wooden door would have reeked of exoticism. Malone, however, was familiar with them, being as he was rather more widely traveled than anyone save his horse suspected. Inhaling their familiarity, he identified one fragrance after another. Shanghai and Hong Kong, Kuching and Singapore, Calcutta and even Lhasa. No wonder this woman had so thoroughly enchanted the man called John Barrel. She had taste. She had reach.
It was time to find out what else she had.
He knocked. Softly at first and then, when ignored, harder. A voice from the other side mewed, “Come in—it is not locked.” Turning the knob, he pushed against the wood and entered Paradise.
Or so it would have seemed to the unsophisticated, uninitiated miners and drovers and businessmen likely to frequent such an establishment. Heavy carpets on the floor were cartographies of interwoven patterns: lanterns and birds, dragons and Chinese characters, all rendered in finely wrought wool. Tables sculpted from dark wood supported oil-filled lamps and incense burners. In one corner, a pair of ceramic Ming lions glared ferociously. A rainbow waterfall of glass beads separated one room from another. Densely arrayed on the walls were paintings rendered in pale watercolor, in fine ink, in bird feathers and butterfly wings. The room was aswirl with luxury.
There was movement behind the beaded curtain. The shape of a woman eased into the room, the smoke parting around her like a diaphanous veil. Malone had seen much in his time, but the sight made him draw in his breath.
This was not going to be easy.
Glistening black hair was drawn tightly back into a single braid. Her face was as blemish-free and pure as a bowl of cream, save for the double crimson slash of her lips, which were as red as the wound from a cavalryman’s saber. Packed into the glittering sequined cheongsam she wore were breasts more substantial than might have been anticipated, a narrow waist, and hips whose curves would have troubled Newton. When she smiled, the whole room seemed to sigh.
“What have we here?” She approached him. He held his ground as one hand reached out to stroke his arm. “I sense need bottled as tight as hundred-year-old brandy, and just as hot. Relax to me and I will release it.”
He swallowed. Safer to be facing a troll in the Arctic or a shark in the sea, he thought. Monk was right to be worried about his friend.
At that moment, a moan came from a back room. It was weak, yet not an expression of pain. Back there, out of sight, a man was dying slowly. But not painfully. Malone nodded in its direction.
“You are entertainin’, if thet’s the right word, a guest name o’ John Barrel. He has been here a long time. Too long. You speak o’ need. Well, his friend needs him… now and right quick.”
A second hand reached out to slip between the mountain man’s right arm and his waist. Fingers dug in hard, clutching, trying to penetrate the thick buckskin. The lacquered nails did not break.
“But I need him, too. I need him more.”
Malone frowned. “His friend needs him to ride shotgun. What d’you need him to ride?”
The irresistible lips parted, eyelids fluttered, and there came a whisper that was part pure physicality and entirely feral. “He is a fine young man, healthy and strong. Being Occidental, you will not understand, but I need what moves him. Call it a life-force. Say it is an Oriental obsession.”
Malone shook his head to clear it. The room, the incense, the nearness of his hostess were making him dizzy. Hips were moving against him with a strength that would have impressed the Krupps. Resistance was not futile, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. He struggled to keep his senses about him.
“I thought you only worked fer money. Life-force is a demonic obsession that spans all continents. ’Tis something far from exclusively Asian.”
A growl escaped her throat as she stepped back from him. He was quite certain it was a growl—low but not heavy. “Who are you, to speak of such things, far less to know of them?”
“A traveler. One with needs less immorally acquisitive than your own.”
“Do not judge me, master of stinks!” Regaining her poise, she replayed her smile. “You want to free the youth? Very well. I will trade you.”
The mountain man hesitated. “What could I possibly have that you would want?”
When she smiled this time, sharp points seemed to flash briefly from the tips of her teeth. “You. I will trade John Barrel’s life-force for yours. Come and lie with me and I will take what I need. You will feel no pain.” As she turned to walk away from him, the oceanic roll of her backside caused his eyes to water as if they had been doused with pepper. She looked back over her shoulder, her inviting smile at once coquettish and carnivorous. “Come, big handsome devil. Are you afraid?”
“Let Barrel go first.”
She shrugged. “Will you then run out on me? I think not.” Obsidian eyes flashed. “You are intrigued. Of course you are. Having set eyes on me, you have no choice.”
It took Hank Monk plus one of Bigfoot Terry’s men to get John Barrel out of the building. Monk was shocked when he saw his friend. Normally stout and muscular, the shotgun rider had been reduced to a shrunken shell of himself. It was as if someone had stuck a straw into his body and sucked out half the juice.
“A steak.” Monk spoke worriedly as the madam’s man helped load Barrel into the back of the buckboard. “Two steaks. With potatoes, and bread, and ale. We’ll have you fixed up right quick, John. Be back on your feet in a day or two.” Climbing up onto the front of the buckboard, Monk took up the reins and set it in motion. Lying in the open bed behind him, his companion moaned, his voice barely audible.
“Holy… jingle…”
“No need to worry about money now, John. Don’t let such things worry you. We’ll soon have you right.”
As they passed the far end of the building, Monk glanced upward. The light from a window on the top floor was flickering oddly. He chucked the reins a little harder, urging the team to a faster pace.
If the greeting room was overflowing with objets d’art and seductive smells, the bedroom into which Malone found himself escorted redefined opulence. A beveled mirror on the ceiling reflected a rumpled bed that had been made up with sheets of French silk trimmed with Irish lace. Embroidered pillows rode the plush mattress like manatees on a rippled silver sea. Lamps glimmered while cherubs sculpted of wood and gilt parasitized the walls. Everywhere was crystal and smoke.
Then his hostess dropped her cheongsam, and everything else vanished from view.
“Too late now,” she murmured. In her perfect nakedness, she turned and waved a hand, whispering something in Chinese so ancient only a few of the most eminent scholars of the Forbidden City would have understood.