“I insist!” Regina insisted.
“Very well then.” Dr. Enright reached into a cabinet drawer and produced a stethoscope.
Of course Regina neither believed his explanation, nor trusted him. Under other circumstances, she might simply have flounced out. In all her experiences as a prostitute—even including “dogstyle” with the Beast —she had never met a man who made her feel as skin-crawly as Dr. Enright did. It wasn’t his lust so much; it was his sneakiness and his conceit. He reminded her of a frog croaking braggadocio while masturbating surreptitiously on a lily pad.
Still, there were all those questions she wanted to ask him. “W here were you on the night Faith Venable was murdered?” Once again she framed a query in her mind. Once again he forestalled its utterance by his actions.
The stethoscope was inside Regina’s blouse now. So was the hand that was holding it. It had neatly captured the nipple of her left breast in the crease of the palm and was squeezing it rhythmically. The headset of the stethoscope had slipped down around Dr. Enright’s neck and he was staring vacantly into space while his other hand fiddled out of sight below his waist.
“I thought you were checking my heartbeatl” Regina’s harsh tone interrupted his reverie.
“I am.”
“The heart is lower down,” she reminded him acidly.
“I’m checking your respiration too.”
“And do you have to fondle me that way to do it?”
“Breast lumps,” he muttered, removing his hand with a sigh. “As long as I was examining you anyway, it’s just as well to check for cancer.”
“I’ll give you cancer!” Regina gritted her teeth and started to button her blouse again.
“Might as well leave it open, my dear,” he told her, still not discouraged. “I’m going to give you a whiff of gas so we can get at that tooth, and I may have to check your heart again.”
“Gas? Now wait just a mi—-” Regina started to protest.
Too late! Dr. Enright had slid around behind her with the practised movements of a dentist used to nailing down reluctant patients. Even as she had started to speak he was inserting a nitrous oxide canister and adjusting dials. He cut oil her sentence by firmly pressing the anaesthetic mask over her face.
When he removed it, Regina started laughing. She’d never felt like this before in her life—-tranquil and excited at the same time, sharply perceptive and yet dizzy, weak and giddy, but the giddiness was erupting in strong bellows of laughter.
She was numb all over, which is why she probably didn’t notice when Dr. Enright plunged both his hands inside her blouse and began to knead her large, firm breasts with the fervor of a prospector raking gold nuggets. When he withdrew one hand and slid it under her bikini panties, she merely guffawed louder. “Wrong end!” she chortled as he investigated the cleft of her derriere.
“You’re hallucinating, my dear,” he told her smoothly, continuing to probe.
“If I am, then you’d better look out. I’ll bite your hand off!” Regina roared out another spasm of uncontrollable laughter.
This must be what an LSD trip is like. The thought flitted hilariously through her mind. It wasn’t far off the mark. Nitrous oxide-—laughing gas—is a hallucinogenic derived from chemical components very similar to those from which LSD is derived.
The difference is that the effect usually wears oft much more quickly. Dr. Enright hadn’t dared to give Regina more than the merest whiff of the gas. Although she was still guffawing uncontrollably, her mind was slowing down enough for her to recover a modicum of judgment.
She comprehended that Dr. Enright had taken off his pants. She could see through her tears of laughter that her own bikini panties were lying on the floor. Slowly, her brain absorbed and weighed the import of these perceptions.
“To tell the tooth,” she mispronounced without being aware of it, “I’m not sure I can afford the price you’re asking for your services.” She giggled.
“I’m really very reasonable,” Dr. Enright panted, strumming her erect clitoris.
“You’re wanton too much.” Regina gasped with glee.
“Not really. The tooth shall set the fee.” He punned back deliberately.
Regina howled with hilarity. “You’re quite a wit,” she told him. “Will you charge me half-price?”
“Why should I?”
“Because then you’ll be a half-wit!” Regina chortled merrily.
“Open wide please.” Dr. Enright pried Regina’s thighs apart and started to climb up on top of her in the dental chair. “Wider!” he panted, probing with his penis.
“Oh no!” Thrashing about, Regina’s arm hailed out behind her and inadvertently pushed the button that sprang the chair into an upright position.
Dr. Enright was propelled backwards towards one corner of the office. Still laughing wildly, Regina leaped from the chair and ran towards the door set in the wall near the opposite corner. And that’s when it happened!
The office door had a metal lock on it which was manipulated by an oval-shaped knob about the size of Regina’s index finger. When the knob was in a vertical position, the door was locked. There was a small key-hole set into the knob. It could be locked by turning it, but a key was required to open it.
By the time Regina got her hand on the knob, it was in a horizontal position and the door was locked. But it hadn’t been that way when she started towards it. Then it had been vertical-—the door unlocked. The slow-motion camera of Regina’s gassed mind had recorded the images clearly.
Now, with laughter still babbling out of her, it recorded two more images. The first was the tail-end of a length of something that looked like fuzzy string retreating snakelike across the office floor. The second was of Dr. Enright, his erect penis exposed and pointing brazenly in her direction, leering at her as he reeled in the white string.
“What’s that?” Regina asked through her giggles.
“Uncut dental floss.”
“It was tied to the lock-handle,” Regina realized, chortling.
“That’s right, my dear.”
“But why?”
“A trick of the trade,” Dr. Enright explained. “You'd be amazed how many dental patients panic and try to bolt. So I simply tie the dental floss to the knob of the lock with a slipknot, and when they try to escape I yank the floss and it turns the knob and locks the door.”
“Why a slipknot?” Regina cackled.
“Dental floss isn’t cheap, my dear. This way I can use the same piece over and over again.”
“I can’t believe it’s that expensive,” Regina whooped.
“Do you have any idea what it cost to put me through dental school?” Dr. Enright whined, momentarily forgetting his lust. “And all you patients do is complain about my fees and keep me waiting months before you pay me. And now you’re even making a fuss because I want to save a few cents on dental floss!”
‘Tm sorry,” Regina laughed. “But why don’t you just lock the door when the patient comes in and let it go at that?” she asked.
“Bad psychology, my dear. Most patients are so nervous it’s all they can do to come through the door in the first place. If I locked it behind them, I’d be dealing with hysteria all the time the patient was here, instead of just when he pushes the panic button.”
“But don’t they ever get wise to the gimmick?” Regina hee-hawed.
“Oh, sure. But they keep coming back. What choice do they have? I’ve got them by the bicuspids! Old Man Cabot for instance-—I must have pulled that floss trick on him half-a-dozen times before I yanked out the last of his teeth. But enough about that.” Dr. Enright moved towards her, his erection stabbing the air threateningly. “We haven’t finished our examination,” he said insinuatingly.