Eddie made a reasonable income as a dancing partner to these elderly women, and supplemented this income from time to time by blackmailing them when they were foolish enough (as they often were) to furnish him with evidence which they would be reluctant for their husbands to see.
Making love to elderly women was not Eddie’s idea of a good time, but he was smart enough to realize his talents were only suited to such a career, and so, being a man of considerable vitality, he consoled himself with youthful beauty in his off-duty hours.
His present consolation was Linda Lee, the subject of the photograph that had been overlooked by the Sullivans when they had packed up and left the old plantation house for good.
Eddie had come upon Linda quite by chance. He had been lounging on the beach one afternoon keeping an eye open for any elderly woman who happened to look lonely when he observed Linda coming out of the sea for a sun bath. Now, Linda had the kind of figure that looked its best in a wet swim-suit: anyway, Eddie thought so, and he was, in his way, an expert on such matters. Elderly women were immediately banished from his mind as he gave his undivided attention to the sensational torso that was moving his way.
Eddie had seen nothing like it before, and in his long life of amorous experiences he had seen many pleasing sights. Without hesitation he decided it was imperative that he should become closer acquainted with this torso, and as soon as its dark-haired owner had settled down on a beach wrap and handed herself over to the hot rays of the sun, he crossed the strip of sand dividing them and sat down by her side.
Linda was quite pleased to have company. Maybe Eddie’s handsome face and sunburnt, manly chest had something to do with it, but whatever it was, she received his advances graciously, and in a minute or so they had become old friends: in under an hour they were lovers. -That was the way Eddie liked his women: smooth, polished, quick and willing.
Eddie, who was a cynic, fully expected that by the end of the week Linda’s charms would have palled; as the charms of so many other young women who had also been quick and willing had palled in the past. But, instead, he found himself thinking about Linda night and day; neglecting his work to be with her; and even passing up a golden opportunity to levy a little blackmail just to take her out to an expensive night club.
Their association had now lasted three weeks, and so far as Eddie was concerned he was eager and as amorous as the day the association first began. He was even willing to secure proprietary rights over Linda, a step he had avoided in the past as not only unnecessary, but as a direct menace to his freedom.
Linda, however, had no wish to lose her independence and freedom. Receiving Eddie every day and two or three nights a week as a lover was one thing; but Eddie as a complete lord and master, to say nothing of being a permanent lodger, was something else besides.
So Eddie was kept in check and was not allowed all the freedom he might wish. He was baffled by the luxurious standard by which Linda lived. She owned a charming little villa which boasted its own private beach and a small tropical garden which a negro gardener attended to with colourful and fertile results, and which was hidden away in a quiet secluded spot along the coastline.
The villa was furnished in style and comfort; the meals provided by the negro cook were excellent. The upkeep of such an establishment must have been considerable: where then did the money come from? Where did the money come from to keep Linda supplied with the smartest clothes, the smartest shoes and the smartest hats to be seen in Santo Rio? Where did the money come from that bought the glittering blue Road Master Buick in which Linda drove around town or out into the country when the spirit moved her?
Linda had explained away her wealth as a legacy received from an uncle who had made a fortune in oil. But Eddie was a little too smart to believe that, although he allowed her to think he accepted the story. Linda was just not the type to have an uncle in oil.
The obvious explanation never occurred to him. He was confident that Linda could be in love only with him. He decided that Linda had devised some new kind of racket to keep herself in luxury, and he was curious to discover what the racket was.
But the obvious explanation was the answer. Linda had a lover, who was so besotted by her that he had set her up in this magnificent luxury although he seldom saw her, as his business took him all over the country. But never for a moment did he forget her, nor, even when associating with other women, did he cease to imagine that it was Linda he held in his arms.
Linda was quite content to let this man supply her with money, to keep her in luxury and to demand so little of her. She thought him a bore and a ghastly little sensualist (as he was), but far too useful to break with. The fact that he so seldom visited the villa (he saw her only four or five times during the year) more than compensated her for what she had to put up with when lie did make his visit. He was generous and wealthy, and in her opinion harmless, but here she made a serious error of judgment. But then she had never heard of the Sullivan brothers, and if she had she wouldn’t have believed that this fat-faced man she called Frank was one of the dreaded brothers. She might have been a little less careless and a little more faithful to him had she known this fact.
She had met Max once or twice and had taken a dislike to him. He was the only man she had ever met who was not influenced by her beauty and who had not looked a second time at her sensual and sensational figure.
Max had scared her. His eyes had the same glittering stillness as a snake’s; and Linda was terrified of snakes.
It is doubtful too whether Eddie would have been quite so enchanted with Linda had he known that she was the mistress of one of the Sullivan brothers. Eddie had heard a lot about the Sullivans, although he had never seen either of them. But what he had heard of them would have been quite sufficient to have cooled his ardour for Linda if he had learned the truth at the beginning of his whirlwind courtship. Now, however, he was rather far gone, and even the threat of the Sullivans might not have deterred him.
This day, then, on a hot, sunny afternoon, Eddie drove along Ocean Boulevard in his cream and scarlet roadster (a parting gift of silence from one of his elderly women friends) and felt that all was well with the world.
He made a dashing, handsome figure in his close-fitting white singlet and immaculate white flannel trousers. His big muscular arms, the colour of mahogany, were bare, his large smooth brown hands rested on the cream-coloured steering-wheel and his carefully manicured nails glittered in the sun.
He drove with a wide smile on his face because he was exceedingly proud of his big white teeth and he saw no reason why he should not show them. Many a female heart fluttered as lie drove along and many a female head turned to look after him. Eddie was aware of the sensation he caused and was gratified.
He arrived at Linda’s villa a few minutes after 3.30 and found Linda pottering in the garden, in which flowers of every hue and shade put technicolour to shame. Linda was wearing white duck slacks, red and white open-toed sandals over bare feet and scarlet toenails, a scarlet halter that, accurately speaking, should have been a size larger to conceal what it attempted to conceal, although Eddie found no fault with it, and on her pretty nose she wore a pair of red horn sunglasses with the lenses the size of doughnuts.
As she moved her curves jinked before her, and her smooth hips flowed like molten metal under her close-fitting slacks.
Eddie sprang from the car, ran across the lawn and jumped a flower-bed with athletic ease as she turned to greet him.
‘I was wondering if you were coming,’ she said in her carefully cultivated deep-throated drawl. ‘I thought it would be fun to go for a swim this afternoon.’