"I went to school in England," said Marlene. "It was there that I first played with sadism and flagellation."
Erika glanced at her watch. "I'm dying to see what he looks like."
It was exactly ten minutes to three when his knock came on the door of the suite. Erika went to open the door.
PART THREE
Per Petersen sat reading the evening newspaper in the study of his house in Kiel. He sat upright in his chair, quite motionless, and the hand that held his cigarette had been arrested in mid-air as he was raising it to his mouth.
"Great God!" he murmured.
He was reading the front-page story of the hold-up, robbery and flogging of the Baron Franz-Ruller of Koburg-See. He came to the end of the report and read it all over again. "Great God!" he said again. He sat still for several moments and then rose from his chair. He went to the fireplace and pressed a bell-button beside it.
A manservant entered the room almost immediately.
"Is Miss Hansen upstairs?"
"Yes, sir. She is with the children."
"Ask her to be good enough to come here for moment."
He lit a cigarette while he waited, and looked again at the report.
There was a light tap on the door and his children's governess came into the room. "You wanted me, sir?"
"Good evening, Miss Hansen. Do come and sit down. Will you have a glass of sherry with me?" He had been educated at Oxford and had acquired a number of English tastes.
Margarete Hansen sat down in the armchair facing his. She crossed her shapely legs. "Thank you very much. I'd love one." She wondered what her employer wanted this time. He frequently asked her to come to his study and he always offered her a sherry, but his reasons for asking her to come were vague. She suspected that he did so because he wanted to flirt with her. He had not, however, done so yet. His manner to her was always courteous and above reproach.
He picked up the newspaper. "Do you remember Willie Franz-Ruller?"
"Yes," she said, after a moment's thought. "Baron Franz- Ruller. He dined with you last week. I had coffee with you after dinner and met him then.
"Read this," he said, and gave her the paper, folded back to show the story. "He seems to have been in the wars."
He went to a side-table in which stood the sherry decanter. He poured the wine slowly, watching her closely out of the corner of his eyes. He particularly watched her eyes, hoping to see some flicker in them that was more than an expression of ordinary interest and surprise. But there was no flicker. She read intently, with a slight frown on her face.
He sighed. He was a masochist, and for six months had been trying to convince himself that this girl a sadist. From time to time he had been sure that she must be, and had been on the point of saying something which would compel her either to admit it-or deny it, and leave his employment at once. It was this thought that always stopped him. She was a very good governess, and she would be very hard to replace.
He thought now of the day he interviewed her, six months ago. After his wife's death he had advertised for a governess for his children, two girls aged nine and eleven, and a boy aged thirteen who was now at day-school and would soon be going away to boarding-school. He really wanted a Frenchwoman, so that the children could perfect their French. He had many applicants, for he was rich and well-known, and his household was luxurious and well-staffed with servants. Among the applicants was a fellow Swede, a very lovely girl of about twenty-eight, who attracted him, physically, at once. He forced himself to think of his children, however, and interviewed her with the same objectivity as he gave to all the other applicants. It was when she began to speak of punishment that he lost his objectivity.
"I should want a completely free hand," she said. "I have rather old-fashioned ideas."
"What do you mean?" he asked, his heart giving a little leap.
"The cane and the birch," she said, crisply. "A good thrashing whenever necessary."
"But my boy is thirteen."
"What has that to do with it? If he needs it, a good thrashing will do him a power of good. Toughen him up. And with his trousers down, too. I d want a completely free hand."
He stared at her without speaking, his heart racing.
"Don't you believe in corporal punishment for children?" she asked.
"I do indeed," he said quickly. "It's just that it's a little- er-unusual for a girl of your age to thrash a boy of thirteen. One usually associates that with governesses of over fifty."
She laughed. "Yes, but I don't know why. I'm probably stronger."
"You probably are," he said, feeling his penis begin to rise in his trousers. "Have you done it very often?"
"Thrashed a boy of thirteen?"
"Yes."
"Well, not of thirteen. But in my last household there was a boy of sixteen, and I had to thrash him now and again."
"With his trousers down?"
"Oh yes, of course."
He opened his mouth to ask "Why of course?" and then shut it quickly. There would be time enough to ask that, and other questions, when she was in his employment. He engaged her there and then. He asked her only one other relevant question. "Do you want me to provide the cane and the birch?"
"Oh no," she said, with a sweet smile that made him tremble, "I have everything that's necessary."
She moved in the next day and, he later learned, gave all three children an immediate thrashing with a cane "just to establish matters of discipline". It was probably not a very hard thrashing because they fell in love with her at once. On her second day he had come home early from his factory and had heard the sound of the second thrashing through the open windows of his study. He had stood listening, quivering with frustrated longing, and imaging himself in the place of whichever child was be ing thrashed. He wondered how she would do it to him. Would she bend him over? Or make him lie over the arms of an armchair? Or-and he caught his breath-would she make him lie face-downwards on a bed? When the sounds stopped he sent for her on some flimsy pretext, offered her a sherry, and talked to her for as long as he could, his hand in his trouser pocket squeezing his erection as often as it was decently possible to do so. And every subsequent day he returned from the factory earlier, to stand at his window and listen to the sounds of her evening thrashings. She gave them at exactly the same time each evening. She counted up the children's misdemeanours during the day, and gave a number of strokes-ranging between six and twenty-at the end of the day. He had learned to distinguish between the sound of the cane and the sound of the birch. But he had not yet seen either.
He gazed at her now, as she sat reading the story about Franz-Ruller. If she was a sadist she would surely show something. The man had been flogged terribly. The report would surely have some effect on her…
He carried the two glasses back to the armchairs.
She looked up at him, wondering whether he had called her down especially to show her this report, and, if so, why. The baron was not a friend of hers. She had met him only once, and then only, as it were, in the line of duty. "Poor Baron Franz-Ruller," she said.
"Yes," he said, giving her her glass, and sitting down again in his chair. "They seem to have given him a terrible thrashing."
"I wonder why."
"They were probably sadists."
"Would you think so? They probably had some grudge against him."
"Grudge? But they were robbers."
"They didn't steal his car. And it's a Rolls-Royce, it says here.
Oh dear, he thought, we're not getting anywhere. "I imagine," he said slowly, "that they were both robbers and sadists. They took what they could-and were wise enough not to take a car like that-and then gave themselves some sexual satisfaction with a whip."