The Flesh of The Orchid (24 page)

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.”

But Eddie had other ideas.

“Not yet,” he said firmly, and touched her wrist with his brown fingers and then moved them along her arm to her shoulders and behind her neck. “By six the water will be perfect. We’ll wait until six.”

She relaxed to the touch of his fingers. No one she had ever met had such an exciting touch as Eddie. His fingers seemed to emit sparks of electricity that flowed down her skin.

“Then come inside and have tea,” she said, linking her arm through his. “Would you like that?”

Eddie thought it was as good an excuse as any to get her into the house, and together they wandered into the cool, sun-screened lounge, which looked on to the garden through folding glass doors.

Linda took off her sunglasses and dropped on to the white, suede-covered divan with a little exclamation of pleasure. She raised her shapely brown arms above her head and regarded Eddie with a cool smile. She looked a little older than the photograph that had been left in the old plantation house; her eyes were harder and her lips not quite so ready to smile, although they smiled for Eddie; but then Eddie was favoured and he knew it.

“Ring the bell, darling,” she said, closing her eyes. “And they’ll bring tea. I’ve asked them to cut you some of those tricky little sandwiches you like so much—remember?”

But at the moment tricky little sandwiches were not of the slightest interest to Eddie. He stood over this voluptuous creature and experienced a sudden difficulty in breathing. Blood pounded in his ears and his heart raced uncomfortably.

“I think we’ll skip tea,” he said, and bending over her, caught her up in his arms and began to walk swiftly across the big room to the door.

Linda was worldly enough to realize that, unless she took immediate evasive action, she would miss her tea, so she began to kick and struggle, but Eddie had not developed his muscles for nothing, and he continued on his way without any considerable inconvenience, climbed the stairs, kicked open the door of Linda’s luxurious if over-ornate bedroom, and laid her, still struggling, on the bed.

“Really, Eddie,” she gasped as soon as she could get her breath, “you are the most disgusting man I have ever met. No! Don’t you dare touch me! You’re not always going to have your own way. I mean it this time! We’re going right back to the lounge, and we’re going to have tea, and then we’re going to have a bathe . . . .”

Eddie drew the blue and white curtains across the windows without paying the slightest attention to this diatribe. Having satisfied himself that the room was now cloaked in a dimness that created a more intimate atmosphere, he returned in time to prevent Linda from getting off the bed.

“Everything in its proper order,” he said firmly. “Tea and a bathe later,” and he took Linda in his arms with the intention of smothering her resistance with kisses, which, from experience, he was confident would quickly bring her to unconditional surrender.

But this afternoon Linda felt perverse, and had no inclination to submit to Eddie’s rough, violent wooing. She was getting a little tired of being taken for granted. Cave-men were all very well once in a while, but too much of that kind of thing was too great a strain on a girl’s nerves; so when Eddie, a confident gleam in his eyes, grabbed hold of her, she gave him a resounding box on his ears.

“I said no!” she told him angrily.

For a second or so Eddie sat staring at her, his big hands still gripping her back, his face still close to hers, but his eyes were no longer confident: they were angry and a little spiteful, and the desire in them was by no means checked.

“So you want a fight, do you?” he said. “Well, you’ve certainly come to the right guy if that’s what you want.”

Linda scrambled hastily off the bed and made a dart for the door. She had had one fight with Eddie in the early days of their tempestuous wooing, and the following morning found her not only covered with unsightly bruises but also feeling that she had been fed through a wringer. She had no desire to repeat the experience.

Eddie’s long arm shot out, grabbed her, jerked her across the bed.

“Now, please, darling,” Linda begged as she found herself helpless in his grip. “Please, darling, let me go. Don’t you dare hit me . . . you know how I bruise. Eddie! You’re not to. . . .

Oh! You beast! Oh! Oh! Eddie, stop it! The servants will hear you!”

A few moments later, bruised, smarting and breathless, she surrendered.

“You are a devil, Eddie,” she panted, digging her fingers into his hard, smooth shoulders. “You’ve hurt me . . . you’ve bruised me . . . but, damn you, I love you.”

He grinned down at her, ran his fingers through her thick hair, his finger-tips exploring the shape of her hard little skull.

Her arms strained him to her, and she crushed her mouth against his.

There was a long stillness in the room while they were caught up in the vortex of their passion. The hands of the little clock by the bedside moved forward, its blank face seeing nothing of what went on in the dim-lighted room. The evening sun slowly crept round the house and reflected on the blue and white curtains.

Eddie was the first to awake. He moved his head, stretched his thick arms luxuriously, sighed, opened his eyes. Then suddenly his stomach turned a somersault and his heart stopped beating for a split second and then began to race. A man was sitting on the foot of the bed, watching him.

For a full minute Eddie stared at this intruder, believing he was still asleep and dreaming. The man was a nightmare figure, dressed in black, whose white, lean, granite-hard face hung over Eddie like an apparition from a horror play.

Eddie clutched Linda, who woke with a start. Terror struck her speechless, for she instantly recognized the figure in black. She was so paralysed with fear that she could make no move to cover her nakedness, and lay still as a statue, her heart scarcely beating.

“Tell your gigolo to get out of here,” Max said softly. “I want to talk to you.”

The sound of Max’s voice broke the hypnotic spell that had gripped both Linda and Eddie.

Linda gave a horrified scream and snatched up a big cushion with which to cover herself. Eddie sat up with an oath, his eyes blazing with embarrassed fury, his great hands closed into fists; but that was as far as he got.

There was a flash of steel as a knife jumped into Max’s hand. He leaned forward and with incredible swiftness traced the point of the knife lightly down Eddie’s face, down his neck and chest to his stomach. It was as if a feather had touched Eddie, but instantly a thin line of blood appeared where the knife-point had touched him.

At the sight of the knife and the line of blood Eddie’s fury and courage oozed out of him like oil from a leaky can.

He was tough enough when it came to handling elderly rich women, and even to fighting with Linda, but cold steel made him sick to his stomach.

“Don’t touch me!” he gasped, his fine brown complexion turning to a muddy white. “I’m going . . . don’t touch me with that knife.”

“Get out!” Max said, his dead eyes fixed on Eddie’s terrified face.

“Sure,” Eddie spluttered, scrambled off the bed, huddled into his clothes. He had no thought for Linda and he didn’t even look her way. His one burning desire was to get away from this dangerous thug, and he couldn’t get away fast enough. “I’m going . . . just take it easy.”

Max leaned forward and wiped the blood from the knife off on to Linda’s thigh; as he did so he looked at her and his thin hps curled in contempt.

She shuddered, but made no move. The knife terrified her.

“Don’t leave me, Eddie,” she whimpered, but Eddie was already on his way; the door slammed behind him.

Max rose to his feet, put away his knife and picked up a silk wrap that was lying across a chair. He flung it at Linda.

“Put it on, you whore,” he said.

Utterly demoralized, Linda put on the wrap with trembling hands. This awful man was certain to tell Frank. Then what would Frank do? Kick her out? Would she have to go back to being a show-girl again? Lose all this luxury, her freedom, her car and her beautiful clothes ? She felt so bad that when she had put on the wrap she slumped back on to the bed.

Max leaned against the wall. He had tilted his hat over his nose, and now he lit a cigarette, looking at her from over the flame of the match.

“So you couldn’t take his money without cheating,” he said contemptuously. “I warned him, but he’s a sucker for a bitch like you. Well, from now on it’s going to be different. From now on you’re going to earn your money.”

Linda flinched.

“Don’t tell him,” she implored, holding her wrap close to her. “It won’t ever happen again. I promise. Frank loves me. Why spoil his life?”

Max blew a long stream of tobacco smoke down his pinched nostrils.

“You’re damn right it won’t happen again,” he said. “And I’m not spoiling his life and I’m not telling him.”

Linda stared at him, began to control her trembling limbs.

“I don’t trust you,” she said. “I know meanness when I see it. You couldn’t keep quiet “

“Shut up!” he returned. “He’s come home now for good. And you’re going to stay with him, do what he tells you, sleep with him when he feels that way, take him around, shave him, keep his clothes in order, read to him. You’re going to be always at his side to help him. You’re going to be his eyes.”

Linda thought he had gone crazy.

“What do you mean—be his eyes? He has his own eyes, hasn’t he?”

Max smiled thinly. He crossed over to her, caught a handful of her hair in his fingers, dragged her head back. She made no effort to break his hold, but stared back at him, her eyes dark with terror.

“And if you try any tricks I’ll fix you,” he said. “I warn once, never twice. If you run away, if you’re unfaithful to him, I’ll find you wherever you are and I’ll burn his name across your face with acid.” He released her and raising his hand he hit her heavily across her mouth, knocking her flat across the bed. “What he can see in a tramp like you I don’t know, but he was always a sucker. Well, he wants you, and he’s going to have you: there’s nothing else left for him.”