Still, that wasn't what was really bothering her.
Not even her New England background could make her forget for a moment that Mark was in the hands of the opposition.
If anything happened to that dear fool, she'd never forgive herself.
Suddenly she also realized with a start that she hadn't had a thing to eat all day. Not since breakfast. Her stomach was beginning to rebel.
She called the commissary, hoping to sneak in a sandwich and a cup of hot tea before the conference with Enforcement.
She also remembered to jot a memo down on a scrap pad. A reminder to herself to take care of the unwilling Samaritan of a cab driver.
Number seven-one-three-five-nine.
Around-the-Clock-Terror
The whipsaw wore a long green velvet dress. The click-click of the jade pendant he could not see had forced Mark Slate to open his weary eyes. The long, enforced strain of remaining perfectly still on the table that faced the .30 caliber Browning machine gun had taken its toll on his mind. He hadn't been able to afford the healing luxury of sleep or rest. He might wake up with a start and trip the wire that connected to the trigger of the gun. So he had remained in a state of rigid, controlled watchfulness. Because of it, he was utterly weary in mind and muscle.
Now, he could see Arnolda Van Atta's tigerish green hips. The velvet dress glittered as she brushed against his face. He did not miss the cruel riding crop, the hard, twisted, interlaced leather of the object. He smiled tightly.
"Ah, Miss Whipsaw," he murmured almost dreamily.
The green velvet dress paused, the riding crop stiffened. Arnolda Van Atta's subtle voice spoke coolly from somewhere above him.
"Whipsaw, Mr. Slate? I don't understand—isn't that a saw in a frame of some kind?"
"Oh, very," he agreed mildly. "But it is also a person who somehow always gets the better of another person. I should say that description fit you very well, Miss Van Atta."
A low, silvery laugh came.
"It is good that you recognize superior intellect when you meet it."
"I didn't say that, old girl. The Nazis were whipsaws for the Jews and you know what happened to the Nazis."
The riding crop came down hard on the table, inches from Slate's face. It made a dull, heavy thudding sound.
"I'm glad you are what you are, Mr. Slate," the redhead said in even, icy tones. "You are the perfect subject for torture. A strong will who will resist until every last shred of flesh is ripped from your body." He heard the riding crop slash experimentally through the atmosphere in the room. It made swishing, vicious noises. Slate hung onto his nerve.
"Pity, old girl."
"What's a pity?"
"That you can't find better uses for such a splendid physical specimen such as myself. I've made many women happy in my time, you know. Don't want to boast and all that but it is a waste of manpower. I imagine you look quite smashing in that fine green dress. Hair all up in a splendid coiffure, I suppose? Slim white throat, that imperial look of yours. Do you know the poem 'Richard Cory' by Robinson? That line where it says '...and he glittered when he walked....' I fancy you must look like that right now. Why not be a sport and untie me from this infernal table so I can get a look at you?"
There was a long moment of silence in which she didn't answer him. Slate stiffened, waiting. Knowing that the next moment must bring one or two things. Either the first downward slash of the riding crop across his defenseless back. Or a withering scorn for the suggestion that a woman like Arnolda Van Atta was interested in anything so commonplace and vulgar as sex. Or both.
She surprised him.
She chuckled, in that low voice, the one that told him volumes regarding the amount of weird pleasure she was reaping from the entire situation.
"Really, Mr. Slate. Do you think to delude me?"
"Fat chance of that, isn't there?"
"Yes, you are a superb physical specimen—" She cooed now. He shuddered as he felt her long cool fingers roll up the Basque shirt. She did that slowly, gingerly, knotting the tail of the shirt under his armpits. His midriff was bared now. He felt his mouth go dry. He could take a whipping all right. That part was all right. He wouldn't even mind the scars. It wasn't that. He remembered all too clearly a man whom he had known in London. The fellow had been an RAF flier in War Two, shot down over Germany and been interned in one of their bloody camps where some pig of a Nazi had whipped him like a dog. The fellow, Jenkins was his name, had smashed kidneys and a spinal column with several misplaced discs for life. That would not be pleasant. All from one ten-minute session with the lash in the hands of a brutal bastard who knew how to use it.
"Your skin is so smooth and soft," Arnolda Van Atta purred. "A man's back. Strong, well-muscled and admirable. It is too bad for you that sex holds no appeal for me. We could have spent this hour otherwise."
No appeal. That was a horselaugh. She was a pervert. A sadist. For whom cruelty and pain were pleasure. The Krafft-Ebing boys would have loved this redheaded bitch. Mark Slate could only fight for time.
"I see you've lost all interest in any usefulness I might have as an informant, is that it?"
She paused, her cool fingers freezing on his back.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I would speak up now to save my skin. You think me a bloody fool? Get me off this table and I'll tell you all you want to know."
"You fool," she laughed. "I'll learn what I must my way. You'll talk even more freely under the lash. I wouldn't for a moment consider untieing you."
"I scream rather loudly," he pointed out.
"Go ahead. No one will hear you. This is a soundproofed room. Why do you think we brought you here in the first place?"
"You think of everything, don't you?"
"Of course."
"Then you'd better unhook that machine gun contraption of yours unless you want to redesign the walls of this room in bullet holes. I tend to jump high in the air when I am struck across the back with a whip."
Now, she truly laughed. A good-humored laugh. Her silvery tones rose and pealed like bells.
"My compliments," she trailed off, still chuckling. "You are quite a man, Mark Slate. Always the cool head even in the most extreme circumstances."
He closed his eyes and set his teeth together.
"Get on with it and be damned," he said. He opened his eyes again.
He heard the jade pendant again. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the green velvet dress move. Twitching, as though she had to bend over. He was instantly on the alert, ready. He could sense her breathing close; she had had to bend down to unhook the long wire that ran like a lanyard to the trigger of the Browning gun. When he was sure she had disconnected the wire, saw it dangle to the floor loosely, like a discarded piece of string, so that now the Browning had been rendered a harmless ornament of the room's furnishings, he took his last desperate gamble.
He heaved violently on the table. As shackled as he was, ankles and wrists, his body dominated the entire top of the table. He weighed one hundred and seventy-five pounds and every one of those pounds was the finely conditioned, coordinated pound of an athlete. The table canted sharply, left the floor on one side and swung over. Mark rolled his body as far to the right as he could overbalancing the whole. Arnolda Van Atta cried out angrily. The riding crop sang in the air of the room. It bit into Slate's back, sending a long trail of fiery agony across his flesh. But the table crashed to the floor, taking Slate with it.