“Very well, then. We don't have much time, so just do exactly as I say.” A hand reached around in front of me and held a small, opened box of chocolates under my nose. “Open your mouth!” the voice ordered.
I opened my mouth. A large chocolate was popped into it. Coconut! I hate coconut! I managed to chew and swallow it anyway. '“I don’t understa-” I started to say. Another large chocolate popped into my mouth shut me up. Maraschino cherry. Better! I have a sweet tooth for chocolate-covered cherries.
I felt the hand shoving the wrapper from the candy into the breast pocket, of my jacket. Whatever message I was going to receive from Castor Oil, whatever instructions, must be on the wrappers, I guessed. I munched on chocolatey pineapple now, my thighs clutching frantically at the head between them.
All in all, about eight chocolates slid down my gullet and eight wrappers were deposited in my pocket. Then the box of chocolates, the hand holding it, and the faceless voice vanished back into the darkness as mysteriously as they'd come. The timing was fortunate. My brain had skidded very far away from espionage by now. It was centered on the onrushing reaction to the tongue and lips driving my manhood berserk.
My eyes darted wildly with the reaction. They saw without really absorbing what they were seeing. They focussed on the blonde on the screen as she massaged her calves with a hand-vibrator which continued upward to the juncture of her legs. They spotted the old man, who seemed to be having a stroke in motion. They lit on the two girls thrashing like a lineman and a tackle with the ball on the one-yard line. They fell on the teenagers just as they slid to the floor with the boy on top and moving so hard and fast that the girl slid out from under him and they continued moving up the aisle in this fashion. I lost them-—all of them—as my own reaction ended with a long, drawn-out explosion that had the poor housewife choking and sputtering and trying in vain to pull free from the grip of my thighs.
Finally I let her go. She swallowed hard a few times, smiled, and returned to her seat. A moment later she turned to me. “I have to be going now," she said, her voice a little too formal under the circumstances. “It certainly has been a pleasure making your acquaintance.”
“Likewise,” I assured her.
“The show changes tomorrow,” she told me. “I'll be catching it. Do you think you'll be here?”
“I'm afraid not. Business . . .” I didn’t explain any further.
“Too bad. Just a case of ships that bash in the night.” She giggled.
“Sorry. I hope you won't be too lonely.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I find it very easy to make friends. It’s important to a person’s development to make contact with others, and I think I’ve really developed the knack.”
“I’ll say," I murmured.
“Well, so long now.”
“So long.”
I waited a few minutes after she'd left, and then I left also. I stopped at the exit to let my eyes get used to the sunlight. There was a ticket-taker standing there.
“Enjoy the show?” he asked conversationally.
“Yes,” I answered, “and so did the rest of the audience. So much so that I have the feeling some of them may never leave.”
He was still grinning at my back as I strode to the curb and hailed a cab to take me back to my hotel. I wanted to be alone in my room to look at the candy wrappers and see if I could decipher the message on them. I waited until I'd locked the door behind me before I fished them out of my breast pocket.
But they weren’t candy wrappers! They were tinfoil wrappers from Ex-Lax packages! What the hell?
What did it mean? There was no message of any sort that I could detect. W'hy Ex-Lax wrappers? It was Castor Oil who was supposed to have contacted me. It couldn't have been Ex-Lax, could it?
Oh, yes it could! I knew that a few seconds later as the first spasm hit my gut. I dived for the bathroom. It had been Ex-Lax who slipped me the candy. The candy had been doctored!
And Ex-Lax was proving as good as his name!
CHAPTER SIX
FIENDISH! Diabolical! Horrendous!
Only a sadistic Communist devil like Ex-Lax could have contrived a means whereby his victim might die that way. It was horribly clever. Death by laxative would most certainly have appeared accidental. There would be no trace of poison and it would appear that I had inadvertently taken an overdose. It would seem too outlandish to think that I might have been murdered by a Red agent in this manner.
It would have worked had it not been for two things about the Beverly Topless which made me forgive all its flubs, past, present and future. The first of these was the telephone in the john. The second was the fact that the hotel still had a doctor and stomach pump on twenty-four-hour call.
This particular service was a holdover from the halcyon days when the Beverly Topless had been the Casa Elite. In those Hollywood heydays, it had been common practice for celebrities to check in for the express purpose of swallowing an overdose of sleeping pills. It was well known that the hotel press agent would leak the story to key columnists. It was also well known that the hotel could truthfully boast that it had never lost a guest by suicide. In those days, the hostelry maintained six pumps and six doctors to run them-—and there were times when all six were in use. Now they only had one. Fortunately, one was all I needed.
A prisoner on the rack in the john at the moment, I needed it in a hurry. I picked up the phone, and my knuckles were white around it. I started to speak through agonizingly clenched teeth. “Get me the -” I started to say to the operator.
“Well, hello, Mr. Victor,” she interrupted. “Enjoying your stay with us, I hope.”
“I need--”
“Have you taken our special Disneyland tour yet?"
“This is an emer-”
“And we’re having a special croquet tourna—"
“LISTEN!” I shouted, interrupting her for a change. “I NEED A STOMACH PUMP AND A DOCTOR UP HERE FAST!"
“There’s no need to shout, Mr. Victor! I have feelings too, you know." Her voice was injured, then haughtily formal. “I'll see that Room Service fills your order immediately.” The phone clicked in my ear.
To my surprise, she was as good as her word. Stomach pump and doctor arrived within a few minutes. It was typical of the Beverly Topless that you could get this kind of service with a figurative snap of your fingers, while a request for clean towels might result in such frustration as borders on madness.
When the doctor knocked at the door, I was in no condition to get up and admit him. So I called out to him to let himself in. I heard a rumble through the closed bathroom door as the stomach pump was wheeled into the bed-sitting room.
“Mr. Victor?” the doctor called.
“In here," I answered weakly.
“Well, you’ll have to come out, please,” he called in a professional tone.
“I can’t. Can’t you come in here?"
“No. You have to lie down. Come out here.”
“All right." I was too weak to argue. I reached for the toilet paper. The roller was bare. I cursed the Beverly Topless in spades. “Have you got any toilet paper?” I called out to the doctor.
“Certainly not!” He sounded offended. “Why would I be carrying toilet paper around with me?”
“Just an outside hope,” I said feebly. “There's none in here.”
“That’s not my department. Why don’t you try calling Room Service?”
I didn’t feel up to coping with that, and anyway, another spasm told me that the time it might take just could be the difference between life and death—my life and death. Instead, I fished my wallet out of my pants pocket. I studied the contents a moment and then called out to the doctor again. “Do you have five singles for a five?” I asked plaintively.