"That had occurred to me," I said, "although it's possible that it's an experimental school where they believe in living and letting live."
"Oh right, with Miss Parsons as the bold visionary," she snorted.
"Wait a minute, don't jump on me. I was just wondering, maybe the kidnappers have no connection with the school. Perhaps those girls threw themselves at us because they're sex-starved, or it's an in thing to do to fuck strangers. Who knows what goes through the minds of girls? Maree might have wanted me for herself, you know, the way a dog carries off a bone to stop the other dogs from gnawing at it."
"And how do you explain Linda?"
"She just hates men," I shrugged.
"And the phone cabs?" she pushed.
"Oh yes… of course it could be that the girls were discussing club matters. I keep hearing of some kind of secret society…" At this point confusion set in and I ended the conversation with a brisk: "Well, it's just a matter of looking at all the possibilities. Now let's see what we can dig up in the school."
There were still a few lights on in the buildings and we checked them out one by one. Girls were reading late or taking showers, others were just sitting around and talking. I checked on those conversations and found that they dealt with all the subjects I wasn't interested in. Fashion, boys, and grades. We checked the gym, walked around the square and the lawns behind the buildings, but found nothing. The last place we checked was Miss Parsons' home. And that's where we hit the jackpot!
At first it seemed like a futile gesture. Her house was in darkness, and none of us thought of Miss Parsons as the kind to stay up late anyway. But Vinnie's sharp eyes spotted a crack of light in one of the windows, escaping through heavy drapes. The window was on the second floor but that didn't deter us. A tree nearby was easily climbed, and then we edged along the broad ledge running around the house. Peggy stayed on the ground to keep a lookout, and Vinnie and I squatted down at the window and tried to peer through that small split in the drapes. No luck. Now and then we saw a dark shape flash by, and it was obvious that something interesting was happening, but there were no conclusions to be drawn.
I pressed the listening device to the window and now I heard a babble of voices and giggles, which told me nothing but that there were a lot of girls in Miss Parsons' house at that time of night. Vinnie had by this time figured out a way to get a better look. With his knife he had prised the window open an inch, and then used the long blade to push the drapes further apart. What a vista opened up before us! We almost fell off the ledge with shock when we saw the other half of Miss Parsons' double life.
The tall, angular, stereotypical school mistress had undergone a drastic transformation. Gone were the fuddy-duddy clothes, the gold-rimmed spectacles, and her air of academic stuffiness. In their place were tight leather clothes, a whip, high boots, and sexual tyranny! Vinnie started photographing right away. At times like these the expert in him overcame the compulsive jerk-off, and I had no doubt that the shots of Dominatrix Parsons would be clear and sharp. I looked around at her visitors and recognized a few of them. They were all nude but for leather slings that ran from the left shoulder over the left breast and then down under then: asses, with one strap curving about their hips to hold the main strap in place.
Just as we thought we'd been surprised beyond ever being surprised again, Miss Parsons moved to the side of the room and left us with a clear view of what she and a few of her followers had been busy with. There was Linda, totally naked, looking drunk and disheveled, lying in a bed of green pieces of paper… one hundred dollar bills! Vinnie's camera clicked over and over. So they were the ones, the Sapphite's, they had the money. But where was Laurel? I checked the women out again and there wasn't a trace of her. They probably had her hidden away in the house somewhere.
"Hey bitch!" Miss Parsons' voice was like a crack of her whip. "I have to piss! Come over here!" Linda struggled up from the bed of lettuce and walked on all fours to her mistress. Parsons sat in a big easy chair, her legs wide apart, the leather encasing her body gleaming and tight, studded all over. The Sapphite's were lolling about, watching lazily, fondling each other, and Linda crawled along the floor until she was between the headmistress legs. She undid a centerpiece in the woman's pants and I marveled at the engineering that had gone into that leather suit. The center piece was snapped to the trouser legs, which in turn were connected to a belt. Even with the crotch missing she could wear the pants in the household. And when the leather section had been laid aside the headmistress moved forward in her chair so that her cunt pushed into Linda's wide open mouth. I couldn't believe my eyes. Was she actually drinking her piss? Surely not. But as we watched we noticed the girl's neck muscles laboring, and we heard her cough and saw the piss splashing up against her face for a second until she got her mouth back into place.
"Wow!" Vinnie exclaimed, smitten with admiration. "I underestimated that woman, Joe. She's terrific!"
"Why don't you marry her?" I said sarcastically. Linda wiped her mistress' pussy with her tongue and returned to the bed of money. Parsons invited everyone to have one last drink with which to celebrate then- coup, and then she told them it was high time for bed. Obediently, the little girls downed then: scotches and retired. Only Parsons and Linda were in the room now. Vinnie and I hugged against the wall to conceal ourselves in the darkness of night and Peggy hid in the bushes till the girls were back in their dormitories. Then we tuned in to the conversation taking place in the room.
"I want you to put the money back into neat five-thousand-dollar piles," Parsons ordered her charge, "and then put it back into the safe. I don't trust your friends very much. All that money could turn their heads and then we'd be in trouble again."
"Yes Ma'am," said the girl. While she counted and straightened out the crumpled bibs, Parsons relaxed in her chair and idly flicked her whip at the girl's bare ass. Every now and then the tip flicked her flesh and Linda winced and smiled at the same time.
"Soon I'll be able to pay off the school's bibs," Parsons mused. "Won't that be wonderful? Solvent again. I couldn't have stood it if they'd taken this place into receivership. It's mine, I built it, and it will always be the best school for young ladies in the country!"
"Ah, go fuck yourself," said Linda. "This school is a goddamned brothel and you know it." I gaped at her in awe. Was she crazy to be talking to the cruel mistress that way when the whip was whizzing through the ah? As expected, the headmistress gave her a couple of lashes that brought red weals up in the flesh of her buttocks. Linda seemed to like it a great deal, but she apologized humbly and kissed Parsons' boots.
"Yes, the best," said Parsons. "It was so easy, and all we lost was that nasty Van de Kut girl. Quite a bargain."
"Good riddance to her," Linda agreed. The dominatrix seemed to get bored suddenly. She got up and took off her leather suit to reveal a body that had stood the ravages of time web. Her flesh was firm, hard almost, and she had no tits at all, no ass to speak of. She bent over a low drawer and extricated a long double dildo.
"Leave that shit and come to bed. I want to fuck you now." Linda dropped the bundle of money she'd been putting together and followed the woman out of the room. The light went off in that room, on in another. But our job was done.
"Let's take the money now!" Vinnie whispered. "If we don't they'll put it back into the safe and we'll never get it back!"
"No, no, if they find the money gone Laurel could be hurt."
"It sounded to me like she's already dead," said Vinnie.