When the suspense was just too much for her, she took the deepest breath she could manage with fear clutching at her middle, and opened the door, peering out hastily into the hall. Again, it was deserted, but this time the elevator door was open.
That decided her. She made a mad sprint for the car, got inside, and pulled the sliding doors shut. The controls puzzled her for a moment or two. There were only three buttons, marked with digits for a first floor, second floor, and third floor.
She didn't know what floor she was on!
Now, she wished she had stayed in the room which she ran into when the elevator car arrived, or else risked the return to her own room. She had no plan, no knowledge of the building, and all the odds were stacked against her.
But she couldn't wait in the car all day. Time was on her side up until now – every second counted up to the moment they discovered she was not in her room or that the elevator had mysteriously closed its door.
Quickly she tried to clear her mind. Let's see: she had no windows in her room, so the simplest guess would be that this was the basement. If that were so, the button for this floor would be the bottom one. She pressed he button marked "2" and held her breath as the car started upward.
When it jarred to a halt, she just stood there, looking at the blank metal doors. Then she screwed up her courage and pulled at the handle. The doors swung back, and she was in another hall.
She stepped out and looked in both directions to see another completely deserted corridor. She charged toward the end of the hall nearest her, where she thought she saw a window. Maybe this one would be real.
It was.
She looked out onto the greenery of the outside world and a wild thrill ran over her. It was the first genuine daylight and reassuring glimpse of normality she had seen for so long that it made a huge lump creep into her throat.
But the height made her take a sidelong glance through the glass pane, and she saw the ell of a wall nearby. There were windows on the same level as where she stood, another row on a still higher floor, and another row on a floor below her. She was on the second floor!
She knew she couldn't jump from here, so she turned and ran back to the elevator. Luckily it was still waiting there. She closed the doors, pressed the bottom button, and felt the car descend.
When it stopped, she was again afraid to open the doors. But it was also too frightening to wait inside the elevator car, not knowing what was happening outside.
She slid the doors open.
She was facing a richly furnished suite which had the atmosphere of both office and residence. No one was in sight, and she padded carefully along the richly carpeted floor, peering through archways into high beam-ceilinged rooms. One was a huge library; one a lounge-like sitting room.
Then she found herself standing in what seemed to be a lobby. The doors before her opened onto a porch, and she could see several concrete steps leading out to a driveway. The green lawn beyond beckoned to her, and she stepped out with a little joyous catch in her throat, determined to dash back into the real world, naked or not. That was the least of her worries. She was visualizing the moments ahead of her. The fast ride in the police car, with some chivalrous officer's coat thrown over her nudity. The shocked looks on the faces of the desk sergeant, the other policemen, the reporters…
Then someone stepped from behind the desk off to her left and blocked her way. It was the very unorthodox Dr. Stillwell!
"Certainly you're not going out like that, are you, my dear?" he asked. The smile was sympathetic and concerned, but in his oddly burning eyes was an evil mirth.
As her hopes melted into nothing, Pal felt herself falling. She didn't care if she broke anything or not. It was just too much to cope with. Just before the darkness closed in on her, she thought she felt hands slipping under her arms.
CHAPTER TWELVE
"This is Heidi," said Paul Harshman, holding an eight-by-ten glossy photo for Pal to see.
They had her back in her room, she saw, and apparently she had just been awakened from whatever coma or fainting spell she had suffered when she was on the verge of escaping from this madhouse.
She tried to focus her eyes on the photo. Paul was sitting on the edge of her bed beside her, one arm around her shoulders, supporting her unsteady body.
His hand – the one holding the picture – was steady, and when she could clear the fuzziness from her eyes, she saw that Heidi was a rather attractive blonde with a luscious body that would elicit wolf-calls from any red-blooded male. The shot was not what might be wished for by a professional photographer, but it was sharply in focus and the lighting was adequate.
Heidi's skin was clear and lovely, and her stance was provocative, although Pal sensed it was simply a natural attribute, like the glowing complexion. The facial expression told Pal that Heidi was posing against her will.
"At least, that was Heidi when she first came here," Paul corrected himself. "But Heidi had a certain amount of Germanic hard-headedness. She didn't want to give up the idea of escaping."
Paul let the photo fall on the floor and placed the hand that had held it on Pal's thigh, giving her creamy golden flesh a gentle pat. Then he put the hand on his own knee.
"As punishment, Heidi became test-case number one for Dr. Stillwell's last experimental formula. It was a compound having properties of several preparations, including caffeine, cantharidin, and phenmetrazine hydrochloride."
"Cantharidin?" asked Pal. "Isn't that what they call Spanish Fly?"
"Yes," said Paul. "He's trying to find an ideal balance of several types of oral medication which will provide sexual excitement, mental stimulation, and a general sense of pleasant well-being. Sadly enough, the compound caused a skin problem, a slight weakening of the sphincter nerves, and what seems to be a protracted if not permanent nymphomania. I'd show you. Come along."
He helped her to her feet, then led her out the open door of her room and down the hall to the second door from hers. It was one of the two she had listened by earlier, when she sneaked from her own room.
Paul opened the door, and as he led Pal inside, she saw the form of the tall blonde Aryan girl on a bed like her own. But this girl differed in appearance from the one in the photo. There was the same blonde hair, done in the same loose coronet-braid pigtails, and the frame was substantially the same. But there the similarity ended.
Heidi's entire body was pocked with large scars and open sores. Even as they watched, she scratched at her belly as best she could with her arms held by restraining straps, tearing a piece of scab loose. A yellowish-white pus oozed from several other sores.
Pal was sickened by this horrible destruction of a once-beautiful and healthy body. She noted the rubberized sheeting under Heidi, and was about to ask if the skin eruptions emitted that much fluid. But then she saw why it was necessary.
As the girl lay there, either half asleep or in some sort of traumatic shock, her thighs widely abducted to reveal the blonde and pink attributes of her pubic mound, an amber fountain erupted from her slit, wetting her thighs and the sheet below.
Pal recalled Paul's mention of the weakened sphincter nerves, and realized that the girl probably didn't know she had urinated. It was a heartbreaking thing to see, even for Pal, whose nursing background should have toughened her to such sights.
But it was the waste that appalled her – the use of such a healthy young body for these illegal experiments. That, and the fact that a doctor would even perform such a terrible act.
Just then, the girl's eyes opened, and when she saw Paul, she began to get excited. Her English was uttered with a strong Teutonic accent, and half the words were German.
"Doktor Paul! Ist good you komm! Bitte – please! You reizen my pussy, yes?" The girl's hips thrust upward lewdly at Paul, and swiveled to make a vertical orbit above the bed.