the unhatched egghead

OPERATION SCRAMBLE

If you think Steve “The Man from O.R.G.Y." Victor

gets into wildly improbable adventures and

weirdly complicated espionage plots-you haven't

seen anything yet.. ..

ls Archie a hero or an anti-hero? Being in his

teens, and with plenty of square edges that

haven’t quite rubbed off yet, he isn’t quite sure

himself. But he has an IQ so high it can hardly

be measured, and he has a talent even greater

than Steve Victor's for getting into trouble!

The furious and funny escapades start when

he falls into a brew of science and alchemy that

only a mad magician could have dreamed up...

and they get more far-out as they go along.

And, of course, there are girls...Ted Mark—type

girls, but with several new twists!

This may be Ted Mark's fastest and funniest book

yet. Don’t just stand there-read it!

THE UNHATCHED

EGGHEAD

TED MARK

1967

CHAPTER ONE

THIS STORY begins with a bang . . .

The blonde removed her bra and panties, stretched out on the bed, and wriggled her hips invitingly. The nervous youth got his legs all tangled up in his pants trying to pull them off over his shoes. Finally he stopped trying, stumbled to the bed, sat down on the edge, and took his shoes off first. He stood up, allowed the trousers to drop to the floor, and tripped out of them. He trembled under the blonde’s compelling stare as he removed his jockey shorts.

“Ooh! Hurry up, lover!” Her voice was husky as she held up her arms to receive him.

The youth fell on top of her, and —

BANG!

It was a pistol shot. It came from the next room. It brought both the youth and the blonde to their feet, startled, passion forgotten, trepidation at the unmistakable sound of the gunshot freezing them for a moment.

The blonde, in keeping with her nature, unfroze first.

“That was a gun being fired,” she said positively. “You’d better go see what happened, Archie.”

Archie? Oh, yeah, meet Archimedes Jones. He’s the hero. He’s a lot of other things, too. Like seventeen years old and six feet tall and a would-be folk singer with a haircut to match. Like also, a genius with a 185 I.Q. and an athlete who came up star quarterback on his prep school team and a very, very wealthy lad to boot. Like a lot of other things besides being a bastard.

A bastard?

Yeah. But an extremely well-adjusted bastard—-in most areas, that is. Oh, Archie has his problems, but his bastardy isn’t one of them. Maybe because he’s a smart bastard, a rich bastard, a young bastard. Anyway, he’s unbugged by being born on the wrong side of the blanket.

That blanket, some eighteen years ago, had been shared by as unlikely a copulating couple as ever conceived in vain disregard of the most elementary principles advocated by Margaret Sanger. The one on top there -- yeah, the one with the spindly shanks and the oversized, balding cranium -- is none other than Albert Stynestein. That's right, one of the three Alberts—Einstein, Schweitzer and Stynestein — one of the three greatest brains of ours or any generation. Yep, Albert Stynestein —- scientist and savant, philosopher and-—might as well face it -- fornicator.

Don’t be scandalized. Man cannot live by E equals mc squared alone. Even a genius needs a little libido release. Even a genius can feel the tug of desire, and Albert Stynestein had felt it as an irresistible yank that night eighteen years ago.

The magnetic pull emanated from Carlotta O’Toole-— that’s right, the one on the bottom. Carlotta and Albert had met at a reception earlier that evening, and, one thing leading to another, here they were. Albert could hardly be blamed for his fall from savant-hood. Carlotta was not the kind of girl even a genius is apt to resist.

She was in her mid-twenties at the time, and already an international sensation as a dancer. Following in the footsteps of Pavlova, Isadora Duncan and—-yes—Mata Hari, Carlotta gave private recitals at fantastic fees for the wealthy and the great. Her performance had been the stellar attraction at the reception in honor of Albert Stynestein. It had charmed him, and meeting her in person after her dance was over had enraptured him even more.

Carlotta’s particular style of beauty often had that effect on men. The sultriness of her Spanish mother and the quick humor and appetite for life of her Irish father had combined in her to form a personality that was truly compelling. She was a tall girl with long black hair and a figure that was both slender and voluptuous. Her body seemed always to move with the fluid grace of a dancer, and her poise was the effortless poise of a woman who has come to accept being stared at with admiration. Of course her I.Q. wasn’t in a league with Stynestein’s, but she was smart enough to remain alluringly quiet when she had nothing to say and to speak sensibly when she did.

Some three months after their casual romp in the erotic hay, Carlotta did find herself with something to say. She placed a long-distance call to Albert Stynestein in Warsaw so that she might say it. Stynestein was called away from an international conference of scientists to hear Carlotta’s words.

“I'm pregnant,” she told him simply.

Stynestein didn’t even ask if she was sure that he was the father. From his one evening with Carlotta, he judged her to be the kind of girl who would not have called him if there was the slightest doubt. And he was right in his judgment. Carlotta wanted nothing from him; she simply felt that it was his right to know about his impending fatherhood.

There had been no lies between them. Carlotta knew that Stynestein was married. She knew that a divorce was out of the question. She also knew that he would feel as she did—that this was a problem that should be discussed between them.

The discussion took place a week later in Genoa. Carlotta was there to give a performance for some very important industrialists who were entertaining a Persian shah with the hope of being granted certain oil leases by him. Stynestein flew down from West Berlin to talk with her

“I don’t want an abortion,” she told him. “I want to have this child. However, I’m not out to flaunt society. I want to have it quietly-—some place in Switzerland, I should think.”

“I will, of course, pay all expenses,” Stynestein insisted.

“And I will gladly let you. I’ve never been able to hold onto the money I’ve earned. I don’t have any now. So I’ll be glad to have you pay the costs.”

“Good. Also, I will contribute to the child’s support after it is born.”

“I’ll appreciate that.” Carlotta was being practical.

“But tell me,” Stynestein wanted to know, “why are you so anxious to have this baby?”

“A child with your intellect and my beauty,” Carlotta said without false modesty. “What woman wouldn’t want to have such a child?”

“Thank you.” Stynestein smiled wryly. “But suppose it has your intellect and my looks?”

“ Plagiarizing epigrams from George Bernard Shaw isn’t worthy of you,” Carlotta told him. “Our child will be a very superior child. It will be a gift to the world. It would be wrong to deprive the world of such a human being."

The world had not been deprived. Some six months later Archimedes was born. The birth took place in Colorado, a setting Carlotta had decided was superior to Switzerland because her child would then have no problems of citizenship.

Shortly after Archimedes’ first birthday, Carlotta met Jasper Philip Jones. For Jones it had immediately been a case of wanting her—-not just for a night, but for forever. And what Jasper Philip Jones wanted, he was used to getting.

J .P. Jones, as he was known in the world of high finance, had started out in life wanting a bicycle. A poor boy in a Milwaukee slum, he had earned the money for the bicycle by collecting old newspapers and selling them to trash dealers by the bale. Soon he was collecting and selling other forms of trash. By the time the bike was his, he had two other kids running around and collecting the trash for him, and was turning it over at a profit. He’d learned the first rule of business: the way to make money is to capitalize on someone else’s labor.

The rule stayed with him. By his twenty-first birthday, J. P. Jones owned his own junkyard and employed eight people. But that was only the beginning. By the time he was twenty-five, he was gaining nationwide attention as the Junk King of Minnesota. Then, when he was twenty-seven, he picked his time carefully and sold out all his junkyard holdings for a cool million dollars.

The million went into the stock of a large but somewhat shaky company. Jones fomented rumors that the management of the company was milking it. Perhaps it was true. Whether it was or not, Jones showed up at the next stockholders’ meeting with enough proxy votes so that when they were added to his own shares, he was able to force out the management group and take over as chairman of the new board himself. He, himself, did not milk the company. Instead, he spent two years building it up, and then, when its business was at its peak, he began selling his stock off slowly to keep the price up. His biographers estimate that he came out with close to ten million dollars.

Other deals followed. Jones bought and sold a transit company and ignored the public outcry when it was realized that the profit he’d extracted from the municipality which bought it from him was coming out of the taxpayers’ pockets. Then he got into the market in earnest, and soon had a new title: The Wolf of Wall Street.

Some looked at Jones as Horatio Alger come to life. Others saw him as a modern-day robber baron. But nobody could gainsay his wealth and power. And nobody could deny that he always got what he set out to get.

It took him less than a year to get Carlotta O’Toole to agree to marry him. He was a vigorous man in his early forties, and she was still in her twenties, but it wasn't a case of his buying her in any sense. He wouldn’t have wanted her that way, and he didn’t get her that way. He got her because he made the effort to ensure her falling in love with him. And if part of what she fell in love with was his aura of power and wealth, that was all right, because that was a part of the man Jasper Philip Jones was. But there were many other facets to his character, and Carlotta found much to love in them as well.

Shortly after they were married, Jones legally adopted Archimedes as his son and gave him his name. He knew all the details of the boy’s birth, and none of them in any way lessened his regard for Carlotta. Through the years, never, by word or deed, did J. P. Jones act toward Archimedes in any fashion but that of a loving father toward an adored son. Perhaps the fact that he was unable to sire Carlotta’s children himself had something to do with it. Whether that was the reason or not, Archimedes adored J. P. as much as he did Carlotta.

She’d told Archie of his real parentage when he was very small. With J. P.’s approval, it had been made possible for Archie to spend time with his real father, Albert Stynestein, during his growing-up years. Here too the boy established a warm relationship. Never had he felt that there was anything wrong with having two fathers. He knew only love, from them and from his mother as well.

Along with this love, Archie was given all the advantages that wealth could provide. These included emotional advantages. He began a full-time psychoanalysis just before entering puberty. And he continued with it throughout his adolescence. Also, he was sent to an extremely expensive and extremely progressive school of the Summerhill type, where his brilliant mind and his childhood aggressions and digressions were allowed the widest latitude. When he reached high-school age, he left this establishment to attend one of the finest and most exclusive boys’ prep schools in the country.

However, Archie’s education wasn’t limited to its formal aspects. Possibly the most important part of it was the people with whom he came in contact. They included the greats of three worlds. Through his mother he became acquainted with some of the most creative minds in the theatre, art and literature. Carlotta had persuaded J. P. to live in New York throughout most of the year, and her Park Avenue salon was a Sunday afternoon and evening gathering place for celebrities from Greenwich Village to Harlem. Writers, painters, actors, directors, concert musicians, composers, conductors, choreographers, sculptors —all flocked to the Jones mansion, and Archie met them all. They adored him. His keen mind and flights of creative fancy enchanted them. Few of them treated him as a child. Most thought nothing of spending an entire evening engaging him in serious conversation. They delighted in how quickly his child’s mind could grasp the most abstract concepts of modern art, existentialisrn, and theatre-of-the-absurd. Indeed, he became a prime attraction of Carlotta’s salon.

Adaptable as a chameleon, Archie was equally at home with the contemporaries of J. P. Jones. Quieter and more serious with them, he listened to their talks of mergers and stock transfers and debentures and blue chips with a genuine air of absorption. He absorbed it all and retained it. He never ventured an opinion unless he was asked for one, and then only if he was sure of his ground. But when he did say something it was usually succinct and to the point, and he gained the respect of J. P.’s associates while still in his teens. They predicted he would become a giant in the world of high finance when he reached maturity. Archie, however, wasn’t so sure he wanted to be a financier, and J. P. never pressed him. Like Archie’s mother and his real father, J. P. felt that it was the boy’s life to do with as he wished.

Often it looked as if he might wish to follow in the footsteps of Albert Stynestein. Through his father, Archie met the leading scientists and mathematicians of the world. His natural curiosity was heightened by such contacts. On his own, he began a wide program of scientific reading. It ranged from biology to nuclear physics. Abstract mathematics fascinated him, and he startled a small group of Stynestein’s friends one evening by announcing that he was trying to write a paper on the obscure field of nuclear biology for the Scientific American. They questioned him with the tolerance of the very wise toward the very young, but with the sharpness of his answers their tolerance changed to respect and his age was soon forgotten in the ensuing discussion of the greater implications of the theories he was projecting. His brilliance so struck some of these men that they later wrote to him to expound ideas of their own on the subject. Archie answered these letters, and thus sprung up a correspondence with renowned scientists which was continuing and fruitful.

If Archie was an early-hatching egghead-—and he was -- he wasn’t the type who was looking for an ivory tower in which to seclude himself. A natural athlete, he loved sports and enjoyed the feelings of using his body to its full potential. Here, again, J. P.’s wealth played its part. Archie was taught golf and tennis by the finest pros in the country. A former channel swimmer gave him swimming lessons. A trainer of champions taught him to box. A master was imported from Japan to instruct him in the arts of Valli Tudo and Karate and Jiu Jitsu.

By the time he was fourteen, he rode like he’d been born in the saddle, handled a sailboat with the confidence of an old Yankee schooner captain, and drove a sports car over the roads of the Jones estate in Texas with the aplomb of an Indianapolis Speedway racing driver. Nor were the more usual sports of adolescence neglected. As quarterback of his prep school football team, he led his eleven to a regional championship at the age of fifteen. The following spring he batted .320 for the second highest average on the baseball team. Also, he ran the mile, played on the ice hockey team, and made the second team in basketball.

Having both superior athletic ability and a brilliant mind, Archie was obviously far from an average kid. Yet such is the nature of adolescence that he was careful to create and maintain a facade in keeping with the non-conformist ultra-conformity of his fellows. Part of this was an expression of the natural rebellion of the teen greats. He grew his hair long, mastered the guitar, wrote his own protest lyrics, and sang his own protest songs loud and long. And when J. P. and Carlotta responded with bemused tolerance, he gritted his teeth and sang louder and longer and denounced finance and art as equally phony. He almost gave up when they imported a guru to instruct him in mysticism as a sixteenth birthday present, but his rebelliousness was too strong, and so he arranged to have himself arrested in an anti-Vietnam rally instead. J. P. bailed him out and congratulated him on having the courage of his convictions, and Archie gritted his teeth some more — and sought still other methods of rebellion.

However, rebellion wasn’t the only reason for his stereotyped facade of exploding adolescence. One of the worlds he moved in was the teenage world, and Archie wished to be accepted there as he was in the worlds of his elders. Thus, although he could speak perfect English— the result of an Oxford tutor—he chose instead to speak the slangy, nasal patois of the would-be hipsters in his age-group. He deliberately traveled down the economic scale to include young people in his friendships who were not attending fancy prep or finishing schools. Existentially, the further toward true poverty he went, the more aliveness he felt he was embracing. He continued to exercise his mind—his brilliance made it unavoidable—but he also began increasingly to appreciate the knack of experiencing without pondering, of living without calculation, of letting things happen as opposed to planning them.

This was the state of flux, this vacillation between intellect and feeling, in which Archie found himself when he graduated prep school—with honors, naturally — shortly after his seventeenth birthday. He informed his parents that he had decided not to go on to college immediately. He wanted a year or so to open himself to the world. Since thy felt that he might be younger than other freshmen if he enrolled immediately, and that this might be a problem to him, they raised no objection. They gave him his year with the usual carte blanche supplied by J.P.

Actually, Archie wasn’t being strictly honest with his parents or with himself. During this year, what he really hoped to do was to solve the one problem which loomed large in his mind. This was the problem of his unwanted chastity. Yes, Archie was a virgin, and that fact did indeed bug him.

In one sense, it was the penalty of the full life he led. It had been an all-boys’ prep school, and Archie had been scrupulous about observing the training restrictions which went along with his athletic activities. The time in which he was away from school had been filled with so many interesting activities that he just hadn’t been able to make room for sex. But he recognized that it was an essential part of life, and he decided to experience it as soon as he could create the opportunity. His psychoanalyst agreed with this decision, and he agreed that it would be problem-producing to have J. P., or any of the other adult males Archie knew, help in this endeavor. It was something Archie had to do all on his own -- or, at least, with just the one other necessary person involved.

But it hadn’t worked out that way. The libido is like a rubber band, and Archie’s was no exception. Stretch it far enough, and it’ll snap at the first opportunity. The first opportunity for Archie came with the arrival in New York of Professor André Beaumarchais.

Yeah, you've probably seen the name in the papers. Just how you‘ve seen it depends on whether you read page four of the Daily News or the science section of The New York Times. If the former, you’ll remember him as the eminent Parisian roué who fought a duel with a deposed Hapsburg count over an Italian opera singer to whom the count happened to be married. Or perhaps you’ll remember him as the gentleman who out-stripped the nudies at the Folies Bergères in a scandal that almost toppled the French cabinet—-some of whom were present and visible in the pictures taken of the event. Then again, maybe it’s the artists’ model who immolated herself in his laboratory with whom you identify him.

On the other hand, if the Times science reports are your meat, you’ll know Professor Beaumarchais as the physicist who developed a technique by which the atomic structure of steel could be strengthened to withstand the stresses of outer space. Or, maybe, as the theoretician behind the development of an electromagnetic field capable of diverting missiles from their targets. Possibly, also, you might remember him as one of the scientists responsible for giving France its very own H-bomb to join in the game of “here-today-gone-tomorrow” with the other atomic powers of the world.

Anyway, Professor André Beaumarchais came to New York and called Archie, with whom he’d been corresponding on scientific matters for a number of years. They’d gone out to dinner together, and then they’d gone back up to the Central Park West apartment provided by a friend who was abroad for Beaumarchais’ use during his New York visit. Here, over some after-dinner cognac, the professor drifted away from the technical topics they’d been discussing and got onto the subject of sex.

“When I walk down Fifth Avenue in New York on a summer day, my friend,” he told Archie, “that is when I most envy you your youth. Such bosoms heaving in the sunlight! Such shapely legs revealed by those skimpy summer dresses! Such hungry hips swinging in the breezes off Rockefeller Center! Ahh, how these things whet my appetite! But at my age one must learn moderation — not as a philosophy, but as a necessity. My eyes are truly bigger than my— Well, you take my meaning, I’m sure. Age prevents my taking advantage of the ripe opportunities which abound. But you, my friend! How lucky you are! Such delectable outlets for the limitless energy of your youth! Ahh, how I envy you that youth an that energy!”

“Fat lot of good it does me,” Archie sighed. “The truth is, Professor, that with all my energy, I still haven’t managed to dig the bedroom scene.”

“Surely you don’t mean—?” Professor Beaumarchais’ eyebrows shot up.

“Yep. That’s the way the sex urge crumbles. I'm as pure as the Arctic snow, as virginal as a barren planetoid, as unlaid as a square egg.”

“But that’s uncanny!"

“Like a hotel without bathrooms. Yeah, I know.”

“I don’t understand. A good-looking young man like you; personable; witty; intelligent; sophisticated. What can be holding you back?"

“I'm not sure. Basic insecurity, I guess.”

“Well, we shall have to do something about that right away,” Professor Beaumarchais said firmly. He took out a little black book and began thumbing through it. “I have some phone numbers here of ladies who would be delighted to relieve you of your distress.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Archie told him. “I can't let you set it up for me.”

“But why not?”

“I have to do it myself.”

“Oh? Very laudable.” Beaumarchais stroked the ends of his carefully waxed mustache. “But not very practical. You need experience to strike out on your own. And I would be happy to help you get such experience.”

“My shrink would never approve.”

“You mean your analyst? What has he to do with it?”

“He thinks it would be unhealthy for me to make it with a chick provided by a father figure.”

“A father figure!” Professor Beaumarchais was indignant. “I have been accused of many things in a long and dissolute life, but never that! “

“I’m sorry, Professor. But you are older than I am, and So —“

“Only a few years. And besides, sex is a matter of how old you feel, not of chronological age.”

“Just a few minutes ago, you were envying me my chronological youth,” Archie pointed out.

“Don’t be impertinent, young man! Whatever my shortcomings, my years entitle me to a certain amount of respect from one as young as yourself! ”

“And to a certain lack of consistency,” Archie observed.

“That is absolutely true." Professor Beaumarchais smiled sweetly with appreciation at Archie's perception. “But let us get back to your problem. I am not your father. Regardless of my age, I admit to having justly been accused of immaturity. Therefore, your analyst’s objections needn’t apply to me. Look on me as a contemporary. Believe me, where sex is concerned, I give my all to justify such a picture. And so, allow me to call some young ladies for the pleasure of us both.”

Archie demurred, but the discussion continued. The question was analyzed from a variety of viewpoints. The discussion ranged over definitions of existential age, the Descartean view of the reality of the situation, Freudian conviction and Jungian counter-convictions, Pavlovian interpretations of the possible results on Archie’s nervous system, Einsteinian abstractions as they might apply to the meeting of groins under the Beaumarchais aegis, extrapolations of the Kinsey figures as they might apply to the situation, the bio-chemical implications, and a consideration of the emancipating factor provided by the work of Dr. Ehrlich. Finally, by resorting to Darwin and inverting Nietzsche, Professor Beaumarchais convinced Archie his view was the correct one. A third glass of cognac didn’t hurt; indeed, it may have clinched the argument. Professor Beaumarchais called the girls.

They continued chatting idly while they waited for them to arrive. “You still haven’t told me what brings you to New York, Professor,” Archie remarked casually at one point.

“I’m really only passing through on my way to Washington."

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” The professor mimicked him.

“So it’s top secret, hush-hush.” Archie shrugged.

“I suppose that is the way your government and mine regard it.”

“Then you’ve really come up with the answer,” Archie guessed.

“The answer to what?” The professor’s voice remained calm, but his eyes narrowed slightly.

“Why, to old W. J. Bryan, of course.”

“Who?” Professor Beaumarchais was genuinely confused.

“William Jennings Bryan. The cat who said ‘Thou shalt not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,’ or grunts to that effect.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The professor’s puzzlement was less convincing now.

“I’m talking about how Zn65.37 in combination with 017.000 or 018.000 just might be made to add up to Aul97.0,” Archie told him.

“How did you—-?” The professor was visibly shaken now.

“Relax. I haven’t been reading your private mail. I retain things. And sometimes I put them together. Some five years ago you published a paper in Paris which was denounced as frivolous by the scientific establishment. The paper was on medieval alchemy. It pointed out that if they’d been hip to heavy oxygen back in those days, they might really have succeeded in transmuting base metals into gold. The real problem, you suggested, was in determining two factors. The first was the base metal most suitable. The second was the amount of nuclear bombardment needed. You were put down on the grounds that the process would be more expensive than any amount of gold which might be produced could justify. That was the end of it — publicly.”

“That was the end of it. Period,” Professor Beaumarchais told him.

“Sorry. It won’t wash. Two years ago Von Kleister in Brussels came up with a forty-five page analysis of the qualities of zinc. It went further than any research on zinc has ever gone before. You wouldn’t have been likely to miss such a paper. And you’re too hip to have missed its implications. Then, a month or two ago, Haliburton published some findings on the results of splitting the atoms of base metals. You wouldn’t have missed that, either. Add the fact that Haliburton, according to the papers, arrived at Princeton for a seminar last week. And here you are in New York. I’d bet my collection of Woody Guthrie seventy-eights that Von Kleister is on his way to Washington right now. You've put it together, haven’t you, Professor? You’ve developed a formula for turning zinc into gold cheaply enough to make it practical ”

“Good Lord!” Professor Beaumarchais looked crushed. “Do you suppose anyone else has connected up the facts as you have? The Russians --”

“Are nobody’s fools.” Archie finished the sentence for him. “And neither are the Chinese. I just don’t understand why there aren’t fifty secret service men guarding you right now.”

“We didn't want to attract any attention,” Beaumarchais admitted. “I was to slip into the country without fanfare. You understand the implications, Archie? No country in the world is on the gold standard today. Indeed, the chief value of gold in the world today lies in the fact that the United States will redeem its currency abroad by paying in gold brick to the central banks of any foreign country. But if my process were to fall into the wrong hands, manufactured gold might flood the markets of the world. It would deflate the U. S. dollar, which is the basis for every form of European currency. Even the German mark relies on it for stability. And it is the gold behind it which makes it so. That’s why the government of France sent me here. Despite all of De Gaulle’s differences with your government, he knows that the financial structure of France-—indeed of all of Western Europe—would crumple if the gold value of the American dollar were to be undermined.”

“And you seriously believe that the Communists aren't hip to what you’ve been working on?”

“We thought not. I still think not. Not many minds in the world today would be capable of piecing it together as you have, Archie. In the Communist worl -—well, perhaps Klavinov, or I suppose Ko Shi Wahn.”

“Are you carrying your research with you?"

“It’s in the safe in the bedroom.”

“Don’t you think—” Archie was interrupted by the ringing of the intercom from the lobby. It was the doorman to announce that the two young ladies had arrived. Archie dropped the subject as Professor Beaumarchais went to the door to greet them.

A moment later he reappeared to introduce a blonde and a redhead to Archie. The blonde’s name was Helen. The redhead called herself Dixie. Last names weren’t mentioned.

They had a drink and talked about current events. Both girls seemed sedate, ladylike, and not unintelligent. Then Professor Beaumarchais rose and escorted Dixie into one of the bedrooms. A moment later, the blonde suggested that she and Archie go into the other one.

Helen took off her clothes. Archie stumblingly followed her example. She held out her arms to him. “Ooh! Hurry up, lover! " Archie sprawled over her, and —

BANG!

CHAPTER TWO

“SWEETIE, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Trying to put my pants on.”

“Sweetie, this is no time for modesty. That was a gunshot. If you want to stick around to die with your bootlets on, that’s your business. But as for me, I’d rather be naked in Macy’s window and alive. I’m getting out of here.” Helen grabbed up her clothes and started for the bedroom door.

“Wait a minute! You can’t just leave. That shot came from the other bedroom. We have to see what happened.”

“You see. It can only be trouble. That’s something of which I don’t need any more. Drop me a line and let me know how you come out.” She paused in the doorway. “And, sweetie, you’re just not going to get both of your legs into one leg of those trousers. Face it. Start over again. ’Bye, sweetie.” And then she was gone.

Archie took her advice. He stopped hopping around the room like a one-legged kangaroo, sat down on the edge of the bed, and managed to put on his pants. Then he went into the other bedroom to investigate.

The door was open. The first thing Archie saw from the doorway was Professor André Beaumarchais. The professor was stretched out on the bed, naked, face up, his hands clasped behind his neck. He looked completely relaxed. There was a small hole at his left temple from which only a tiny trickle of blood was still oozing. His eyes were open. There was a smile, which even under the tragic circumstances could only be described as lecherous, on his face. He was dead.

Archie stood in the doorway and stared at the corpse for a long time, waiting for his emotions to settle. First came shock, then grief. Archie had been truly fond of Professor Beaumarchais. Then came a peculiar sort of sense of the rightness of the circumstances surrounding the professor’s death.

“Everybody has to die,” he had remarked to Archie earlier. “Could I choose the manner of my own death, I would elect to be shot by a jealous husband who caught me en flagrante with his wife on my ninety-fourth birth-day. ”

Well, it wasn’t the professor’s ninety-fourth birthday, but Archie was reasonably sure that his last moments had been filled with the variety of activity the professor enjoyed most. Rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet, but the telltale rigidity of one portion of the professor’s anatomy seemed to attest to his having died a happy man. How he would have chuckled over the idea, Archie couldn’t help thinking.

But why had he been killed? The Welter of emotions had Archie in a daze, and now he slowly came out of it. Why, indeed, had Professor Beaumarchais been murdered? As he raised his eyes from his friend's corpse, the answer was staring him right in the face. A picture hanging on the wall at the head of the bed had been pushed sideways. Behind where it had been hanging, a safe was now visible. The door to the safe was wide open. It was a small safe, and even from where he was standing Archie could see that it was empty.

The sight clicked in his mind. He remembered the conversation he’d had with Beaumarchais before, while they had been waiting for the girls to arrive. His calculations for the formula to turn zinc into gold had been in that safe --that’s what Professor Beaumarchais had said. They were gone now, and that had to be the motive behind the killing.

But who had killed him? Had it been Dixie, the redhead who’d shared his last moments in bed? She was certainly the most likely suspect. And she had run away. Why? Was it simply that like Helen she hadn’t wanted to get involved? Or was it because she was already involved to the tune of one murder? And if she hadn’t killed the professor, who had? Was it possible that someone else had gotten into the apartment?

There were other questions, too. In whose interests had the killer been acting? The Russians? The Chinese? The Cubans, perhaps? Or maybe some other power with interests more subtly opposed to the United States and France? Or perhaps not a power at all, but some party or parties who recognized the immense value of the professor’s calculations. Whoever it was, how had they managed to open the safe so quickly after killing the professor?

Archie’s eyes roved over the room, and he soon found the answer to the last question. The professor had thrown his clothes in a none-too-neat pile on a chair standing to one side of the bed. Now Archie saw that the pockets of his pants and jacket had been turned inside-out. Going over to the chair, he saw that the contents had been strewn atop the clothing. There were the professor’s address book, a keychain, a pair of eyeglasses in a case, a checkbook, a pocket comb, and a wallet. The money and papers which had been in the wallet were scattered on the floor in front of the chair. Archie bent down to look at them. After a moment, he came across one of the professor’s calling cards. On the back of it was the address and number of the apartment in which he’d been killed, written in the professor’s own small, meticulous, typically scientific handwriting. Under the address was a series of three three-digit numbers. Archie realized they couldn’t be anything but the combination to the safe. Evidently the murderer must have realized it too.

Archie picked up the address book and got to his feet. He rifled through it for a moment. On the left-hand corner of the inside front cover the professor had lettered “NEW YORK CITY” in capitals. Knowing the professor, Archie guessed he must have had similar books containing the addresses of willing females for other cities. Leafing through the book, he saw that all the addresses were indeed located in mid-Manhattan.

Archie put the address book down again and tried to think. The thing to do, he knew, was to call the police immediately. But the larger implications of the data stolen from the professor intruded on this idea and kept him from implementing it. Archie was remembering a talk, a conversation which seemed extremely pertinent to the situation in which he now found himself. The talk had been with a man he’d met at a half-social, half-business gathering which his stepfather, J. P. Jones, had held for some of his associates. It had been with a man named Strom Huntley.

Strom Huntley was a behind-the-scenes executive in the CIA. J. P. had introduced him as such to Archie and to the others present. He was there, at this particular meeting, for a dual purpose. Firstly, he wanted to reassure Jones and the other financiers present of the stability of a certain Central American government. There had been Communist rumblings in the country. These men had heavy investments there, and because of the rumblings were considering pulling out. Huntley was there to promise them—unofficially, of course -- that the American government stood ready to protect their investments. His second purpose was to elicit their cooperation in taking certain steps which would ease our own government’s relations with the rank-and-file of the area. He wanted them to raise wages in certain of the mines and factories they controlled, and he wanted them to take steps to improve working conditions. This would take the sting out of the local Reds’ charges of “Yankee imperialism."

When the business part of the evening was over, Archie had engaged Strom Huntley in conversation. “I’m curious,” he told Huntley frankly, “about your openness in admitting your connection with the CIA. I’d always thought CIA agents took all sorts of precautions to avoid being identified.”

“The thing is that I’m not a CIA agent,” Huntley explained. “I'm not a spy or an undercover man in any sense of the terminology. My job doesn’t require secrecy. Indeed, in liaisons of this sort, the men to whom I’m speaking must be sure of my CIA connections. How else could they have any faith in what I tell them?”

They’d gone on to discuss other aspects of the CIA. “What about this business of Communist infiltration of various spheres of American life?” Archie had asked at one point. “Is it really as much of a threat as J. Edgar and the neo-McCarthyites would have us believe?”

“That’s a leading question. And it’s getting into two areas I never discuss. One is politics. The other is the FBI. You see, in a sense, they’re a rival agency. We try to be circumspect in not stepping on their toes.”

“There have been hints that sometimes you’re too circumspect. Some even go so far as to say that you’re stingy in passing along information: that it could get to be a case of the left and right hands each not knowing what the other is doing.”

“That is a danger,” Huntley admitted. “But we have to be careful. The FBI sometimes acts--ahh—-precipitately.

“Like how?” Archie was relaxing with Huntley and lapsing from the polite and cultured English he’d turned on for J. P.’s associates into the patois he preferred. “For instance, do you mean that if you were hip to a Commie cat making the spy bit in this country, you wouldn't ring in the Hoovers?”

“We might not. Let me explain it this way. I’ll give you a hypothetical case. Say we traced a Russian agent from Iran to New York. Say we knew he was a spy, but part of a much larger ring we were trying to uncover and smash. Now, if we told the FBI he was in New York, they’d pick him up immediately and score one more big case for the Hoover record. But, if we don’t tell them, then we may accomplish much more important results. Suppose this spy has wangled his way into the Brookhaven Laboratories and that he’s smuggling microfilmed data out to the Russians. Knowing this, he can be much more valuable to us if he’s let alone than if the FBI nails him. For one thing, we can screen the information he gets. The Russians only learn what we want them to learn. Also, we're building them up for the kind of phony data which might detour certain of their research projects for years. More important, we’ve got a lead into their larger espionage operations. If this man was picked up, he’d only be replaced. And it might be some time before we were able to get a line on his replacement.”

“Is that really a hypothetical case?” Archie had asked.

“That’s for you to guess about.” Strom Huntley had laughed and gone to refill his martini then.

Now, sitting across the room from the corpse of Professor Beaumarchais and thinking about calling the police, the conversation with Strom Huntley flashed through Archie’s mind. If he called the police, Archie projected, one of the first things they would undoubtedly do would be to send out an all-points alarm for the two girls, Helen and Dixie. Archie's guess was that this would drive the girls into a mighty deep hole, and that they’d probably pull the hole in after them. He was the only one who could identify the duo by sight. But if the cops scared them off, it was unlikely that he’d ever get the chance.

Also, if Communists were behind the crime, the cops -- or even the FBI if they called them in, which they surely would once they discovered Beaumarchais’ importance—might just grab off the killer and in so doing let the Beaumarchais papers slip through their fingers and snap the connection with the larger espionage operation by apprehending the small fry. This was no simple homicide. There were vast international complications.

Having thought it through, Archie picked up the phone. He didn’t call the police. Instead, he called J. P. Jones and asked him for Strom Huntley's phone number.

“What do you want it for? ” Jones asked curiously.

“It’s a long story. I’ll explain when I see you, J. P.”

“All right.” J. P. was used to his stepson’s often zany behavior. He gave him the number.

Huntley’s voice was sleepy when he answered the phone. It unfogged quickly as he listened to what Archie had to say. “Damn it!” he exclaimed when Archie was finished. “I kept telling them they should let us put a couple of men on Beaumarchais, that what he had was too important to take any chances. But no! They didn’t want him to be conspicuous. They just wanted him to slide in and out of the country with nobody being the wiser. Damn!”

“Then you knew he was here and why,” Archie surmised.

“Yes. It’s my business to know. But now we’ve got a helluva situation on our hands. You see, it isn’t just the French and U. S. governments who knew about Beaumarchais’ work. The French government consulted with certain of their own top industrialists as to its importance economically before they decided to get together with the U. S. Actually, it was these men who persuaded the De Gaulle government that the U. S. had to be brought into it because of our redeeming our currency abroad with gold. But now, if these same men find out there’s a chance that other powers have gotten the data, they may panic. It could bring on a worldwide stock market crash. We have to take precautions to see that Beaumarchais’ death is made to look as far removed from his work as possible.”

“What do you want me to do?" Archie asked.

“First, close the safe. Second, steal his wallet, his money, his papers, and anything else you can carry. It won't throw the cops off for long, but we may gain a day or two if they start out thinking it’s a simple case of theft and murder. Third, try to get out of the building without being seen.”

“The doorman already saw me when I came in with the professor,” Archie pointed out.

“I know. But there’s no point in supplying him with any firmer identification. If you just vanish, that will give the cops some other false theories to consider. They’ll have to weigh the idea that Beaumarchais may have been queer, that he picked up some young fruit who robbed and murdered him. So use the stairs, not the elevator, and go all the way to the basement. There must be an exit there. Try to use it without being spotted.”

"Should I come to see you then?” Archie asked.

“No. Any foreign agent worth his salt knows I’m CIA. Just go home and sit tight until morning. I’ll contact you and arrange a meeting. We’ll want your help in locating those two girls.”

“All right.” Archie agreed and hung up. He went back into the other bedroom and finished getting dressed. Then he made the bed and tried to remove all traces of the room’s having been used. He flushed the blonde’s lip-sticked cigarette butts down the toilet. He opened the window for a few minutes to get rid of the aroma of her perfume. He knew that the two girls must have been spotted coming into the building, but there was always the chance that it would take the cops a while to get around to eliciting this information from the doorman.

After he closed the window, Archie went back into the bedroom where the corpse was. He pocketed the money and other effects as Strom Huntley had suggested. He also took the professor’s watch and stickpin and a gold cigarette box he found in the living room. Then he surveyed the hall through the peephole in the front door, edged the door open a crack, stuck his head out, determined that it was empty, and dashed across to the stairwell.

A few moments later, Archie emerged from the basement entrance. He timed his exit by the traffic light and darted straight across the street and into the shadowy cover of Central Park. He followed a path through the park to the Fifth Avenue side. Then he found a bench in the shadows and sat down to think.

He was only a few blocks from the Jones’ Park Avenue residence. The simplest thing would be to follow Huntley’s instructions and go home and to bed. But Archie was caught up by the sudden adventure in which he found himself involved. The deductive mind which had so impressed people throughout his childhood was now embarked on the thrill of playing the dangerous game of espionage, or counter-espionage, or whatever what he’d become involved in was rightly called.

His mind kept going back to the two girls, Helen and Dixie. They were the only lead to what had befallen the professor. Dixie in particular was a key suspect in the murder. And only he, Archimedes Jones, could identify her; only he, Archimedes Jones, held the one clue which might lead to her whereabouts.

The clue was the little black address book Archie had taken from the bedroom. Now he took it out and went over it page by page. Squinting in the dim light, he jotted down some notes on the back of one of the professor’s blank checks. When he’d finished, he had a list of five names and addresses with phone numbers. The names were as follows:

Dixie Kupp

Helen Dawes

Helen Steinberg

Helen Riley

Helen Giammori

Four Helens and a Dixie; that's what the professor’s address book revealed. Archie nodded to himself, rose from the bench, and strode back into the recesses of the park. He stopped in front of a large, gnarled tree, one that would be easily identifiable. He knelt before it and dug a shallow hole with his hands. He put all the things he’d stolen, including the money, into the hole, and covered it over again. Then he scuffed at it with his foot until he was satisfied that the spot was indistinguishable from the surrounding sod.

Archie left the park. He walked over to Madison Avenue and went into a bar. He walked straight back to the men's room. Here he washed his hands, scrubbing until he was sure that all traces of his digging activities had been removed. He combed his hair and then took a second look at the back of the blank check upon which he’d been scribbling. It was the only item among the professor’s belongings which he’d retained. The address beside the name Helen Riley was the closest to where he was. It was only two blocks away. Should he call first? Archie thought about it and decided not to phone. If she was the blonde he was seeking, it might only serve to make her panic and run again. So Archie stuck the check back in his pocket, left the bar, and walked the two blocks to the address beside Helen Riley’s name.

It was a reconditioned brownstone which had been split up into six or eight apartments. There was a row of bell-pushes with names beside them. He easily found the one next to Helen Riley, 3rd fl. front. He didn’t push it. Instead, he pushed the button next to 6th fl. rear. After a moment there was an answering ring. Archie opened the foyer door and waited in the inside hallway. He could hear voices from far above, but he couldn’t make out the words. He guessed that 6th fl. rear must be puzzling over where the visitors were. Archie waited a long time after the voices stopped before going up the stairs. Finally he did, and found himself standing in front of a door on the third floor with the name Helen Riley on a plate just beneath the peephole. Archie knocked.

“Door’s open. Come on in," a female voice called.

Archie turned the knob and went inside. He found himself in an area that was too small to be called a living room; it was more of a sitting room, actually. A large mahogany bar rook up about a quarter of the area. It stood against the opposite wall, and with the small sofa and two armchairs in the room, it left very little room for moving around. To the left of the bar was another doorway . From somewhere behind it, the female voice sounded, again.

“Make yourself a drink,” it trilled. “I'll be out as soon as I get myself zipped in.”

Archie contemplated the bar. The alcoholic selection was wide. In a little ice chest behind it he found a cold can of beer. He opened it, sat down on the sofa, and sipped from the can. After a moment there was the sound of the outside doorknob turning. The doorway filled with the bulk of a very tall, very muscular man of about thirty. He wore the uniform of a New York City policeman. He stared at Archie for a moment, a slightly puzzled expression on his face. Then he held out his hand.

“Since Helen isn’t here to make the introductions,” he said, “I guess we’d best introduce ourselves. I’m Angelo Valenti.”

“Archie Jones.” The boy took the cop's hand and matched the firm grip.

“Friend of Helen’s?” the cop asked.

“Not exactly." Archie didn’t elaborate.

“Oh.” The cop poured himself three fingers of Scotch and plunked some ice into it. “Well, have you known her long? ”

“Not exactly.”

Valenti was obviously waiting for Archie to say more. When he didn’t, the policeman cleared his throat and spoke again. “We—Helen and I, that is-—had a late date for tonight,” he said delicately.

“Yes.” Archie glanced at his wristwatch pointedly. “W ell, it is too late for it to be an early date, isn't it?” he said conversationally.

“That's true.” Valenti nodded. “You see, I worked a four-to-midnight shift today. Just got off duty. And Helen was on a late shift at the reservations desk at Kennedy. But I guess you know she works for the airlines.”

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t,” Archie admitted.

“Oh? Well—umm—-just how are you and Helen acquainted? . . . If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Yes! Just how are we acquainted?” Helen Riley had entered from the bedroom, and now she was staring at Archie. “And just who are you, anyway?”

Archie got to his feet and smiled as he considered how to answer. He held the smile a long moment as his eyes studied Helen Riley approvingly. The slight smile with which she returned his gaze said that she was used to being looked at in that fashion.

Helen Riley was a petite girl in her early twenties. She had long black hair which was piled up on top of her head. Its sparkle was reflected by silver-and-jade earrings which passed it along to a dressy, deep green gown interwoven with metallic thread. The gown was off-the-shoulder and the plumpness of high, round breasts rippled with her breathing to lend still more glitter to the decolletage. It hugged the deliciously suggestive curve of her hips, and the skirt was cut quite short in the current style. Her legs, not long, but shapely, were visible to mid-thigh as she stood in the doorway. Archie’s eyes traveled up from them to a face with the pixie-ish appeal and flashing eyes of a Parisian coquette. Helen Riley looked more Latin than Irish, and while her personality was bouncy, there was a smoldering sensuality beneath the surface which was almost immediately felt by every man with whom she came in contact.

Archie felt it as he finally found the words to answer her. “You don't know me-—” he began.

“I know I don’t know you,” she interrupted. “And since I don’t, just what are you doing in my apartment?”

“Well, I knocked, and you said to come on in, so I did.”

“I thought you were Angelo. I was expecting him. I didn’t expect to find some overgrown Boy Scout beatnik sitting here drinking my beer.”

“She’s got a point there, sonny,” Valenti added. “Why aren’t you home in bed where you belong? Or, better still, out getting a haircut? You could sure use one!”

“I’m trying to explain.” Archie flushed at the references to his youth and long hair. He was tempted to put Helen and Valenti on by lapsing into his usual slang, but decided against it. This wasn’t the Helen he was seeking, and the best thing to do was give them some sort of excuse, apologize, and get out of there. “A mutual friend of ours suggested I look you up,” he told Helen Riley. “Professor André Beaumarchais.”

“Is my father -” Helen Riley exclaimed and then stopped herself.

“Your father?” It was Archie’s turn to be surprised. “I didn’t even know the professor was married.”

“You told me your father was dead,” Valenti was saying at the same moment. “And how could he be your father if your name is Riley?”

Helen Riley sat down in one of the chairs and looked from Archie to Valenti helplessly. “Well, I guess I let the kitty out of the sack,” she sighed. “Riley is my mother’s name,” she explained to Valenti. “Andre Beaumarchais is my father. He never married her.”

“Why, the dirty—!” Valenti’s face was turning an angry red.

“No, Angelo! Wait! It isn’t like that. It never has been. He’s always been very good to us. He’s always seen that we had enough money. He used to come to see us whenever he was in New York. He always brought presents for me. He still writes to me regularly. And last year when he came he took me out to dinner. He’s really a kind and generous man. Only he’s not the marrying sort.”

“No. Just the seducing sort!" Valenti was still outraged. “The bastard!”

“He’s not!” Helen Riley protested. “But I am. I’ve been trying to get up the courage to tell you that, Angelo. I am a bastard.”

“So am I," Archie interjected. “But don’t feel bad about it. I don’t. It’s no disgrace. Some of the greatest men the world has produced were illegitimate. There’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

“The shame is his,” Valenti agreed. “Only —”

“Only?” Helen Riley looked at him suspiciously.

“Only you know how Mama is.”

“Yes,” Helen Riley said grimly. “I know how your Mama is.”

“Maybe we could keep it a secret from her,” Valenti mused.

“No!” Helen Riley was firm. “I’m damned if I’ll lie! Either you love me enough to face up to your mother, or you don’t!”

“But Helen—! Why not be discreet? It may not be anything to be ashamed of, but it’s nothing to be proud of, either. Why not keep it quiet so Mama --”

“Angelo!” Helen Riley was angry. “You know what you are? At the age of thirty, you’re a Mama’s boy! That’s what you are! You’re just a great big over-protected cop!”

“Be reasonable, Helen! You know Mama has this stomach condition and —”

“That did it!” Helen Riley exploded. “I’ve had it with your mother’s tum-tum! You hear me, Angelo? I’ve had it! Your Mama’s stomach cramps are no longer of any concern to me. Take this--” She was tugging an engagement ring off her finger. “— and hock it and buy your Mumsy a great big tank of milk of magnesia.” She flung the ring at him. “And I hope the two of you will be very happy!”

“But our engagement-—” Angelo sputtered.

“Is off !” Helen Riley told him.

“And our date tonight?” Angelo was dazed.

“That’s off, too.”

“But this is the big night of the year.”

“I don’t care, I’m not going.

“But —“

“But me no buts! Just leave. Please. Just get out of here!”

Angelo’s chin was down around-his chest as he turned to the door. His eyes lit on Archie as he reached for the knob. “Would you like to buy two tickets for tonight to the Policeman’s Ball?” he asked in a chagrined tone of voice.

“Sorry,” Archie told him.

“I’m sorrier," Angelo Valenti told him sincerely as he closed the door behind himself.

“I’ve made trouble for you,” Archie said to Helen Riley when they were alone. “I’m sorry about that, too.”

“It’s all right!” Helen was bitter. “When I think of the years I’ve wasted on that big lug. Since my sixteenth birthday! That’s how long we’ve been going together. Some romance! Some courtship! All he ever 'd was talk about Mama and her gallstones and her kidney condition and how brave she was. Oh, yeah, and how fragile, too. Whoever said that men who are good to their mothers are good marriage material?” Quite suddenly, Helen Riley burst into tears.

“Hey, don’t do that.” Archie Walked over and patted her on the shoulder to comfort her.

“You d-don’t understand,” Helen Riley sniflied. “I’ve b-been saving myself for him for s-s-seven y-years. His M-Mama convinced him he had to ma-marry a good g-girL So I’ve b-been keeping myself good for him all these years. And l-look! Just look at all the fu-fu-fun I've missed!”

“I know, I know," Archie sympathized. “It’s not so far off from my own hangup. No sins are regretted like the ones we don’t commit.”

“I m-mean, all because of him and his damn M-Mama, I’m twenty-three years old, and I’m still a vir-v-virgin.”

“Who isn't?” Archie asked sadly. “That's my problem in a slangy, erotic nutshell.”

“B—But you’re still young."

“Well, you’re not exactly a candidate for geriatrics yourself.”

“I’m old compared to you. Aren’t I?”

“Are you?” Archie was cradling her head in his arms —a posture he’d originally assumed to comfort her — and now as she leaned back to look up at him he returned her gaze steadily. “You are—if you’ll pardon the triteness—only as old as you feel.”

“I feel like a flaming sixteen,” Helen Riley said in a small voice.

“And I feel like a fiery seventeen—-which I am,” Archie replied.

“I feel like a Lolita about to explode.”

“I feel like I am about to embark on an erotic bender.”

“I feel very drawn to you.”

“And I feel very attracted to you.”

“I wonder what it would be like to kiss someone besides Angelo?”

“I wonder.” Archie bent and kissed her.

“I guess it’s all right,” she murmured when the kiss was over. “After all, you’re just a boy.”

“A mere stripling,” Archie admitted agreeably.

“Hardly a threat to a full-grown woman.”

“Careful. You’ll rip my dress.”

“Sorry. Maybe you’d better do it.”

“All right.” Helen Riley's fingers flew over the buttons down the front of the gown, and it fell away from her bosom. She wriggled so that her strapless bra worked its way down so that it was merely supporting her breasts and no longer covering them. Then she guided Archie’s hands so that the burning tips nestled in his palms.

Archie kissed her again. He slid his hand up her thigh until his fingers were stroking the flesh above the top of her stockings. It was warm flesh and quivered under his touch.

“Ooh!” she moaned. Her own hand moved to push her short skirt out of the way.

Archie’s fingers moved higher, and she slid down a little in the chair to meet them. They were investigating the elastic of her panties circling one of her legs now. Helen Riley began breathing very quickly. “Don t bite,” she cautioned as Archie buried his face in her bosom.

He didn’t. But as his lips fastened over the enlarged and quivering crest of one breast, a shiver ran through her body that left it arched like a drawn bowstring. She pushed him away for a moment then and pulled off her clothes. Archie barely had time to push his pants down around his ankles before she was pulling him back on top of her again. For the second time that evening he tripped into action.

“You know,” she said, holding him off for a moment, “I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Archimedes Jones.” The arrow of Archie’s passion was drawn back, quivering, ready to strike.

“That’s an interesting name. I have this thing about names, you know? I mean, I think you can tell a lot about a person from a person’s name. Your name, for instance. It tells me that you’re—”

“Later, do you mind?” Archie suggested.

“— impatient.” She finished the sentence. “That’s what your name tells me. Now my own name—-”

“Now look,” Archie interrupted again. “What's it going to be? Nomenclature, or deflowering? If you want to discuss names, I’ll pull up my pants and-—-”

“Deflowering,” Helen Riley murmured. “Definitely deflowering. Prune away!" Her nails dug deep into his neck.

Archie started to take the initial plunge, and-—

BANG!

Not a gunshot this time. But not the obvious, either. What it was was the sound of the front door of the apartment being slammed. And what followed it was the sound of one damned mad policeman sputtering fury.

“I’m going to kill you!” he snarled as his eyes took in Archie's naked body poised atop the all-naked torso of his now ex-fiancee. “I’m going to kill you!” He pulled his pistol out of his holster and clicked off the safety. “I’m going to kill you!” He pointed the gun at Archie’s heart. “You lousy snotnose beatnik! I’m going to kill you!”

The redundancy had its effect on Archie. All 185 points of his I.Q. informed him that it indicated danger. Rigidity turned quickly to flaccidity as his brain cells telegraphed the fear to each part of his body. Terror carried the message that he might be about to die still chaste, still pure, still virginal—and with his pants down around his ankles still tripping him up. The smart young bastard was very unhappy at the prospect. And then the old refrain was heard once more:

“I’m going to kill you!”

CHAPTER THREE

“I’m going to kill you!”

“Wait, Angelo!” Helen Riley spoke very quickly, and her words were darts aimed at Valenti’s one vulnerable spot. “What about Mama? Remember Mama! What will it do to her if you, a policeman, become a murderer?”

The darts hit right on target and stayed Valenti’s trigger-finger.

“Mama,” he said. “That’s right,” he said. “It would kill her,” he said. Slowly, he lowered the gun.

Archie was so relieved that he made the mistake of letting out his breath in a loud whoosh.

The whoosh rekindled Angelo Valenti’s rage. “I’m not going to kill you,” he announced. “But,” he added quickly, “I am going to grind you down to hamburger meat. When I get through with you, punk, those faggy curls of yours are going to top one all-out disaster area!” Valenti turned the gun around and held it by the barrel in the classic pistol-whipping position as he advanced on Archie.

“Don’t!” Helen Riley moaned.

Archie backed cautiously away. His pants, still down around his ankles, tripped him. He fell backwards and landed hard in a sitting position. Valenti’s arm swung from the shoulder in a slashing motion aimed at Archie’s cheekbone.

Archie rolled away from the blow. The handle of the pistol whished past his ear. Still groping for his pants with his left hand, his right shot out in a short vicious karate chop that connected with Valenti’s shinbone so hard that he went down on one knee.

Valenti emitted a half-groan, half-growl of mingled rage and pain. He swung the pistol at Archie again and it glanced off the boy’s hipbone. Archie had managed to pull his pants up now. Clutching them around his waist with one hand, he kicked out with his foot and got Valenti in the gut. The breath went out of the policeman as he clutched at his stomach. Archie gave him no chance to suck it in again. He shot to his knees and chopped at Valenti’s wrist. The pistol spun across the room.

The older man loosed a roundhouse right. Archie blocked it, but the force of the blow left one arm numb. He let go of his pants with his other hand and grabbed Valenti by the nose. It must have seemed to Valenti as if he’d twist it right off his face. The cop howled and began pummeling Archie’s chest and stomach with both fists. At such close quarters the boy was no match for him. Archie crumpled to the floor and released his grip. Instantly, Valenti was on his feet, all set to stomp Archie’s face.

“Stop right there, Angelo!” Helen Riley had picked up the pistol, and now she was pointing it at him. “The fight’s over. Call it a draw.”

Valenti, his face still like thunder, backed off. His nose was a bright purple and visibly throbbing. He touched it with the fingers of one hand, a delicate gesture that seemed out of character for him, and winced. He glowered at Archie.

The youth picked himself up and finally fastened his pants. “I’d better be going now,” he said when he’d gotten his breath back. “You two must have things you want to discuss.”

“The night is young,” Helen Riley pointed out. “And you’re not the one should be going. It’s Angelo who’s the intruder. What are you doing back here, anyway?” she asked Valenti.

“I forgot my cap,” the policeman muttered. “It’s right there.” He pointed to the table where the cap was lying. “That’s why I came back.”

“It’s ’way past my bedtime,” Archie pointed out.

“This is my home,” Helen Riley insisted firmly. “I want you to stay. I want him to go. He has no right here.”

“I do so have a right here,” Valenti insisted with equal firmness. “I’m a police officer. I was preventing a crime."

“What crime? ” Archie asked.

“Rape!” Valenti’s tone was triumphant, but still gloomy.

“Rape?” Archie looked at him with disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding. Why, if ever there was mutual consent-—-”

“From where I was standing, it looked like rape,” Valenti persisted.

“Yeah? Well, who was raping whom? The lady, for your information, came on like gangbusters.”

“That’s not a very gentlemanly thing to say,” Helen Riley pointed out.

“I’m sorry," Archie told her. “But it’s true. If your copish friend here is going to start throwing around rape charges, let’s just keep the facts straight. Technically speaking, you raped me. I’m a minor. And that makes you guilty of statutory rape. So if you’re going to arrest anybody,” he told Valenti, “it had better be her.”

“Gee, I don’t know.” Valenti scratched his head. “I just don’t know.”

“Well, I do,” Helen Riley snarled. “All this talk about arresting anybody is ridiculous. You said you were going, so go,” she told Archie. “And you go, too,” she added to Valenti.

“Don’t worry, I’m going.” He picked up his cap. “Give me back my gun.”

“Uh, why don’t you give me a head start before you do that,” Archie suggested.

“All right,” Helen Riley agreed. “Now get out of here.”

Archie backed out. He had one last look at Valenti sulking and Helen Riley wrapped in a blanket she’d grabbed up, and then he bolted for the stairs. He didn’t stop running until he’d reached the fringe of the park again.

He sat down on a bench under a streetlight. He studied the list of names he’d jotted down on the back of one of Professor Beaumarchais’ blank checks. He took out a pencil and crossed out the name Helen Riley. He checked over the addresses and decided to try Helen Dawes next. He hailed a cab and gave the driver a Greenwich Village address.

Quaint was the only word to describe the building in front of which the taxi dropped Archie. Its style was a cross between a Gothic castle and a Chinese palace. Green figurines, some abstract, some not, dripped from the eaves of a gingerbread-brown roof topping a stucco facade which had been painted a shocking pink. It was only three stories high, and the overall effect was of the edifice crossing its legs, cringing and blushing with embarrassment at the moon spotlighting the shoddiness of its finery.

Archie entered a narrow foyer. The white paint peeling from the walls didn’t make it seem any wider. He spotted six mailboxes huddling in the shadows behind the opened door. The grime-smeared card underneath one of them informed him that Dawes-Leander resided in Apartment 3B.

The stairs played an off-key accordion accompaniment as Archie climbed to the third floor. The squeaks still echoed behind him as he knocked on the door of 3B. The door opened immediately, and Archie found himself caught up in a hurricane of myopically squinting blue eyes, swirling organdy, and a torrential outpouring of maple-syruped words.

“Well, Ah declare, ah thawt you-all would jus’ nevah arrive an’ heah you are at long last. Well, do come in. Come in! Don't you-all have a bag or somethin’? Ah mean to carry yoah tools?" Blonde curls grazed Archie’s nose as the blue eyes zoomed in for a closer squint. “Yoah young, aren't you? Ah mean, Ah thawt an older man. You know. It’s such a terrible embarrassment. Ah’d surely feel easier if you-all were jus’ a mite older. But never mind. Youth will be served, Ah always say.” She tugged at Archie’s arm. “The johnny‘s right this way,” she told him.

“But I don’t-—” Archie started to protest.

“Well, of cawse you don't. My land, Ah wasn’t implyin’ you should use it, or anythin’ like that. Oh, why is it so difficult to communicate with folks up nawth? Ah sweah, since comin’ to New Yawk, Ah feel like Ah jus’ cain’t get across to anybody. It’s like bein’ in a foreign land. Anyway, all I meant was that you’ll have to come in theah to fix it. But of cawse you know that. Wheah else would it be, if not in the johnny? Ah mean, that’s what a johnny is, isn’t it? If it wasn’t theah, it would just be a tub room, or a sink room, or somethin’ like that. Oh, wait! Do you suppose that’s why they call it a bathroom? Ah never did think on that. Still, that’s not very accurate, is it? I mean, it’s a johnny room too. And a medicine-chest room and—- Oh, well, you see what Ah mean.”

“I’m afraid not," Archie said truthfully.

“Well, there it is." They were standing in the bathroom now, and the young blonde was pointing at the toilet. “Now do you see?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“The doggone thing won’t flush.” She jiggled the toilet handle. “See? But of cawse, it's all mah fault. Ah mean, embarrassin’ as it is, Ah’m not denyin' it. Ah jus’ did such a terribly foolish thing. You can fix it, can't you?"

“I’m afraid not.”

“Oh, of cawse you can. Don’t despaih. Ah’m sorry foah what I said before about you bein’ young an’ all. You look very competent to me, an’ that's the ever-livin’ truth. Now don’t hold grudges. Weah’re friends now, aren’t we?” She stuck out her hand.

“Sure we are.” Archie shook hands with her. “But-—”

“Will you listen to me? How scatterbrained can a body get? Heah Ah’m standin’ heah runnin’ off at the mouth, an’ Ah haven't even told you-all how it happened yet. Y'all see, Ah was jus’ gettin’ ready to put up mah haih when one of the curlers fell right off the edge of the sink an’ into the Johnny-bowl. It sorta slipped back a little wheah Ah couldn’t see it. Well, truth is Ah couldn’t of seen it anyhow ’cause Ah didn’t have mah specs on an’ Ah’m as blind as a petrified bat in a mole hole ’thout ’em. So Ah went an got ’em an’ come back in heah to find that doggone curler. Well, truth now, even with mah bifocs, Ah don’t see as well as Ah should. So Ah bent ovah the johnny-bowl to try to spot the curler. An’ what do you think happened? That’s right! Mah specs slid right down mah nose an’ into the johnny-bowl. Ah got so startled when evah’thin’ went blurry so sudden like that, that Ah grabbed onto the johnny foah suppawt. Ah mean, Ah thought Ah was havin’ an attack o the vapoahs or somethin’. Like Ah was goin’ to faint right theah. It was very frightenin’. Very frightenin’ indeed. All Ah could think was heah Ah am ’thout a stitch on -- Ah’d jus’ gotten out of the shower; Ah guess Ah didn’t mention that —an’ like to faint right heah on the johnny-room floah. Su pose mah roommate brawt a gentleman caller home? Ah ask you? How would that look? If he were to come into the johnny room an’ find me layin’ naked in a dead faint on the floah? All that flashed through mah mind, you see, while Ah was seein’ evah’thin’ so blurry an’ all. So, like Ah was sayin’, Ah grabbed onto the johnny foah suppawt. Only, by mistake, Ah grabbed the johnny-flushah an’ Ah flushed the curler an’ mah eye-glasses right down the johnny. An’ now the johnny won’t work ’cause Ah grabbed it so hard, an’ Ah can’t see ’thout mah specs, an Ah’m jus’ nevah goin’ to be able to set mah haih if you don’t fix it.”

“Why don’t you call a plumber?” Archie suggested.

“Now that’s exactly what Ah said to mahself. Don't you go panickin’ now, Ah told mahself. You jus’ go to the yellow pages an’ look up a plumber an’ tell him to come right on down an’ fix things. Ah wanted it all straightened out ’fore mah roommate comes home. She gets so upset ovah things like this. Anyway, that's what Ah did. An’ heah you are.”

“I hate to disillusion you,” Archie told her, “but I'm not a plumber.”

“Yoah not the plumber?"

“No, I’m not."

“Yoah funnin’ me.”

“No. I’m really not the plumber.”

“Aw, come on. Yoah puttin’ me on."

“No, I’m not,” Archie assured her. “I’m really not a plumber. As a matter of fact, plumbing is one of the few things I know absolutely nothing about."

“If you’re not the plumber, then who are you?"

“I’m Archimedes Jones.”

“Now Ah jus’ know you-all are puttin’ me on."

“No. That’s really my name.”

“Oh.” The blonde considered it a moment. “Well, Ah’m very pleased to meet you, Ah’m suah, Mr. Jones. Now what is it brawt you heah, if youah not the man come to fix the johnny?”

“I came to see Helen Dawes. Are you her?”

“No, Ah’m not. Helen’s mah roomie. Ah’m Melanie Leander.”

“And will you look who's turning up her nose at Archimedes!”

“Ah beg youah pahdon?”

“Sorry. Nothing. It’s not important. Do you think Helen will be home soon?"

“Another quarter-houah she’ll be off work. She should be home aftah then. You can wait if you like.”

“I like.” Archie led the way back into the living room and plunked himself down on the sofa. “What sort of work does Helen do?" he asked after a moment’s silence.

“You mean y'all don’t know? Ah thought you were a friend of hers.”

“Well, it’s been a long time since I've seen her. I guess we haven't stayed in touch.”

“Ah surely do wonder wheah that man is come to fix the johnny,” Melanie mused. “Ah’d like to get it done ’fore Helen gets home. That way she’ll nevah know ‘bout it. Oh! But you’ll tell her. Won’t you?”

“No, I won’t,” Archie promised. “What kind of work did you say Helen does?" he added.

“Ah didn’t say. But what she is, she’s a suds-‘n’-dudser.”

“A what?"

“A suds-’n’-dudser, sho ’nuf.”

“What’s a suds-‘n’-dudser?" Archie wanted to know.

“Y‘all certainly are cute an’ innocent. Ah do wish Ah had mah specs so Ah could see you close up. All right, Ah’ll tell you what a suds-‘n’-dudser is. It's a girl who takes off her clothes-—her duds, y'all catch?—-an’ slides into this bathtub full of soapsuds an’ then sorta twists aroun’ an’ stands up so’s the suds play hide-an’-seek with her privates. Men seem to find it very sexy, but then y'all know how men are, bein’ one--almost, anyways—you’self. Anyways, the men who go to the Hot Tomato—- that’s the place Helen works -- suah do get palpitations over her act.”

“Then she’s an ecdysiast," Archie said.

“A who?”

“An ecdysiast.”

"Gee, Ah hope not, roomin’ with her an’ all. Is it catchin’?”

“It just means she’s a stripteaser."

“Oh. Well, why didn’t you say? That’s what Ah mean. People talk so funny up heah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, that’s all right. It’s not youah fault. lt’s me,- Ah know that. Ah’m always bein’ confused by things. It suah does sound important, bein’ a ecwhatchamacallit. Ah guess Ah’m jus’ a teensy bit jealous of Helen. See, she got me a job takin’ off mah clothes at the Hot Tomato, but Ah got fired.”

“Oh? Why?”

“Ah kept doin’ things wrong. Like the first night Ah come on right aftah Helen, an’ Ah’m doin’ this little dance Ah learned in Sunday School back home when Ah slipped on Helen’s soap suds an’ slid right off the stage into some man’s lap.”

“I’ll bet he didn’t complain.” Archie eyed the lush figure wrippling under the organdy negligee Melanie was wearing.

“Y’all would lose youah bet. Ah come down awful hard right on this poor man's you-know-what, an’ he screamed an’ carried on somethin’ fierce. Later he allowed as how he was going to sue, but the management made some sort of arrangement with him.”

“And they fired you because of that?”

“No. They was right faiah. They give me anothah chance. They let me go on again the next night. Ah had one of these all-silvah dresses that zips down the front, you know? An’ Ah pull the zippah down real slow so they got a look at one bazoom, an’ then the othah, an’ then mah belly-button, an’ then-- Well, then’s wheah Ah got in trouble.”

“What happened?”

“Ah caught mah G-string in the zippah. Oh, it was jus’ awful. Ah got so tangled up. Ah was so ’barrassed Ah broke out in goose pimples all ovah mah bazooms. An’ strugglin’ to get loose an’ all, the manager said latah as how I looked very lewd up theah. Well, Ah didn't mean to, but Ah got so mad at that darn zippah that Ah yanked hard as Ah could an’ everythin’ come off-—dress, G-string, everythin’! An’ theah Ah was, mothah-naked on the stage with evahbody laughin’ an’ oglin’ me.”

“Sounds to me like you should have been the hit of the show.”

“Well, Ah sort of thought along those lines. But the thing is the manager was mad ’cause they got this law in N’Yawk says you have to keep youah G-string on, an’ he was afraid they’d close his place if the cops found out.”

“So he fired you.”

“No. That man was a very faiah man. He gave me one more chance. He let me go on a third night.”

“And?”

“That was the night that did it. Ah grabbed the wrong straw an’ it broke that camel’s back."

“The wrong straw?”

“Foah real. Y’all see, the manager, he decided it might be safah if Ah didn't go on alone any moah. So he put me in this big production numbah with a bunch o’ othah girls. The ideah was we were all grouped like a soda-fountain display. You know, ice cream sodas, an’ sundaes an’ frappes an’ banana splits an’ all like that. Ah was in the centah with a little red cap on mah head. Ah was supposed to be the maraschino cherry on top of this giant ice cream soda. Mah bazooms was floatin’ on top of the whipped cream. Two scoops of ice cream was the bottoms of two of the other girls. An’ the whole thing was hooked up to the other goodies, which were also shaped from the bazooms an’ bellies an’ bottoms of the other girls. Anyways, one of the girls was standin’ on her head with her legs stickin’ up out of the soda an’ her legs was supposed to be the straws. That phoney whipped cream was makin’ me itchy, an’ Ah jus’ had to scratch undah mah left bazoom. Mah elbow hit the straw, an’ she sort of lost her balance. Ah tried to grab her to suppawt her, but that was a mistake. I threw her all off balance, an’ she grabbed foah one of the scoops of ice cream. That girl had a very sensitive bottom. She whooped an’ knocked into the other scoop of ice cream, an’ the whole soda sort of fell apart. It was like one of them houses you build out of toothpicks. The sundaes an’ frappes all sort of melted into each other. The phony whipped cream an’ fudge an’ other stuff like that was runnin’ all ovah the stage. An’ all us mothah-naked girls collapsed in a big pile with nothin’ to covah us. Oh, it was chaos. An’ then the girl what had been the straws, she got mad an’ said it was my fault, an’ pulled my haih. So Ah pulled back, only Ah grabbed one of the bananas in the banana split by mistake, an’ pretty soon all the girls was screamin’ an’ clawin’ an’ scratchin’ an’ yellin’ at each othah. Somebody called the police, an’ we all got taken to jail, an’ they closed down the Hot Tomato foah most a month. When it re-opened, the manager allowed as how he jus’ couldn’t take a chance on givin’ me mah job back.”

“That’s a shame,” Archie yawned.

“It’s the way Ah am,” Melanie sighed. “It jus’ drives Helen wild. Ah’m always doin’ things that jus’ aren’t smart. Like with the johnny tonight. Ah’m always doin’ things like that. Ah guess Ah’m lucky Helen puts up with me at all.”

The expression on her face was so woebegone that Archie found himself feeling sorry for her. “You shouldn’t put yourself down like that,” he told Melanie. “Even if Helen does come on so strong, you shouldn’t let it make you feel inferior.”

“Oh, it isn’t that Helen comes on tall. She’s really a wonderful person. So sure of herself an’ all. Ah’d like to be like her, but Ah jus’ haven’t got it. Ah jus’ envy her to beat all. Hard as Ah try, Ah always goof it, though. An’ it comes so easy to her. When Ah foul up, she jus’ gets exasperated, an’ Ah can’t blame her. No matter how hard Ah try, it’s the way Ah am.” A large tear rolled down Melanie’s cheek.

“Hey, you’re not going to turn on the waterworks, are you?" Archie asked uncomfortably.

“Ah’m sorry. That’s one of mah faults, too. Ah cry at the drop of a bonnet.”

“Come on now. There’s no reason to open up the tear ducts. Like cool it. Dry it, baby.” Archie had walked over to where Melanie was sitting, and now he patted her shoulder.

“Ah can’t help it.” She buried her face against his chest. “Ah’m such a goof-up all the time.” Her tears were soaking through his shirt, and their warm wetness tickled his chest.

“All right, then, sob it up.” Archie sat down beside her and put his arms around her to comfort her. “Let it go on all spigots. I guess it’s good for what’s bugging you.” Her body felt soft as butter under the organdy negligee, and her breasts, heaving with her sobs, burned insistently against his chest. “Sob it up,” Archie repeated.

“Mah land,” Melanie sniffled, “but it feels so good an’ comfawtin’ to be held by a strong boy Like you-all.” She snuggled closer. “Ah sure do thank you foah youah consideration." She took one of Archie’s hands and pressed it against her breast.

“My pleasure,” Archie told her, opening the hand and then closing it again so that the organdy-covered nipple of her breast nestled in the palm. It burned and quivered there as if with a life of its own. Soon he had to open his hand slightly to allow for its swelling length.

Melanie angled herself so that she was lying across his lap now. The negligee had parted and slipped away to reveal her legs. They were showgirl legs, smooth and velvety, long and slightly curved. The thighs quivered slightly as she rotated her hips in response to the pressure of Archie’s straining manhood against one cheek of her derriere. “Ah think right about now, Ah’ve forgotten whatevah it is Ah was cryin’ ’bout,” she cooed. “Y’all sure are a powerful comfawtah foah a boy.”

“I dig compassion," Archie told her. “I really dig it like crazy.” He slid his hand inside the negligee and strummed the peak of one of her breasts.

Melanie pulled the negligee aside so that both her naked breasts were revealed. Even lying on her back, they rose up like pink mounds of strawberry ice cream. The tips were bright scarlet, long and glistening in the lamplight. Melanie pulled his face to one of them and moaned contentedly as his lips fastened over it and his tongue flicked at its length.

Archie shifted position and pushed the negligee away from her lush body altogether. The muscles of her flat belly oscillated momentarily, and the triangle of blonde curls beneath her navel seemed to move like an arrow in flight, an arrow pointing the way to the palpitatinig entrance of Melanie’s eager furnace. Her thighs parted , and the straight red polyp of her passion stood out from the blonde curls like a beckoning finger.

It drew one of Archie’s hands to it. It was slippery and kept sliding out of the grasp of his fingertips, but his quest took on a rhythm that soon had Melanie wildly churning her hips. She groped beneath her until she found the belt to Archie’s pants and opened it. She fumbled open the button at the waistband and pulled down the zipper. Her hand pushed his underwear aside and then turned into a fist to encircle its prey. “Ooh!” she exclaimed. She stood up abruptly, bent over Archie and pushed his pants and shorts down around his ankles. Then, still retaining her grip, she stared at what she was holding. “Ah surely do wish Ah had mah glasses,” she said, squinting. “Y’all are certainly somethin’, boy, an’ Ah’d like to see it a mite clearer.” She was bendin so low now that her nose grazed the tip as she studied it. “Y’all sure ’nuf ready to nest this now,” she observed. “What you think, eight, ten inches?"

“Would you believe six?” Archie asked modestly.

“Only one way to measuah it for sure.”

“I dig.” Archie moved aside and then pulled her down on the couch so that she was stretched across it in all her impressive nudity. The negligee was crumpled up behind her shoulder blades now and covered nothing. Archie scrambled on top of her and dueled for a moment with the aroused guard at the entry to her passion-passage. Then he let the guard straddle his manhood as he plunged to fill the passage itself.

“Hold on theah, boy! You takin’ a wrong turn!” Melanie’s legs closed as she pulled slightly away from him. Holding them pressed tightly together, she bent at the waist so that her toes pointed straight toward the ceiling and her legs were straight up. One of her hands covered the blonde curls, and a finger extended to caress the little polyp of flesh. The maneuver made her plump derriere prominent, and her other hand reached to guide Archie’s manhood to the alternate route it provided.

“But why-—?” Archie protested.

“Ah get a puff ’cause of this. Helen like to throw a fit. She don’ like me foolin’ with any man. It’s safer this way.” Melanie wriggled her bottom urgently.

“A puff? What’s that?" Archie took time out to ask.

“Ah mean we don’t want to s’prise ourselves with no offspring. Ah’d nevah be able to ’splain that to Helen.”

“Oh.”

“Come on, boy! You teasin’ me! Get to it!”

Archie pushed the question of the technicalities of whether he still would or wouldn’t be a virgin after this experience out of his mind and lunged for the target. But he missed it. He missed it because Melanie suddenly squealed and rolled off the couch. “Helen!” she exclaimed.

Archie looked up to see a tall brunette with a face like thunder standing in the doorway. She was wearing a black silk cocktail dress, and her breasts were rising and falling angrily, straining the confinement of the low-cut bodice. Her eyes were dark and cold as she stared at the scene before her.

“What’s going on here?" she asked in a voice that drip ed icicles.

“Ah didn’t ’spect you ‘til later,” Melanie stammered.

Helen ignored her. “Who are you?” she demanded of Archie.

“My name is Archimedes Jones, and-—"

“Well, Archimedes Jones, I think you’d just better pull your pants up! ”

Archie pulled his pants up.

“Now, what are you doing here?”

“We were just--” Melanie started to interject by way of explanation.

“Never mind you were just. I know what you were just.” Helen Dawes spoke as if Melanie was a very naughty child and she herself was a very angry parent. Then she turned her attention to Archie once again, and her voice was even nastier. “What do you want?” she asked him. “Why did you come here?”

“I’m a friend of Professor Beaumarchais, and--”

“André Beaumarchais? Is that lecherous frog back in town?”

“Well, yes, and--”

“Why didn’t he come to see me himself? Why did he send you? Why send a boy to do a man’s job?”

“Now just a minute! ” Archie was insulted.

“There’s no call to talk to him like that, Helen. Archie heah is really a very nice boy.”

“So nice that you were all ready to give him your Dixie all!” Helen said sarcastically.

“No Ah wasn’t, Helen,” Melanie improvised desperately. “Ah was just showin’ him mah birthmark.”

“And what was he doing? Probing for a mole? Don’t you hand me that nonsense, you little southern slut. I ought to throw you right out of here! You’re nothing but a brazen hussy, you cheat!"

“Ahh, Helen, don't y’all be mad with me. Come on, let's make it up.” Melanie rolled over on her side and wriggled her butt provocatively.

“Oh, you really are too much.” Helen’s tone had softened and her eyes glittered as she stared at Melanie’s offering.

“Now, honey, y’all know Ah love you an’ nobody else. Ah was only bein’ hospitable to Archie heah. Come on ovah heah now, an’ Ah’ll prove it."

Helen crossed to Melanie. The blonde tugged at her hand until Helen fell to her knees beside her. Then Melanie pulled Helen’s head to her breast, at the same time sliding her hand up Helen’s nylon-clad leg. The brunette seemed to crumple. The skirt of the black dress rode up over her hips. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. Melanie grasped at her clean-shaven crotch and squeezed. Helen moaned ecstatically, and then caught herself.

“You’d better get out of here, sonny,” she told Archie.

“But I want to talk to you,” he said.

“Let him stay,” Melanie purred. “He won’t bother us.”

“You mean let him stay and watch?“ Helen was doubtful

“Sure ’nuf. It’ll be a kick, honey-lamb. Ah like the way his eyes pop. It sorta turns me on.”

“I thought I turned you on,” Helen said throatily.

“Oh, you do, sugah! You really do!” Melanie bent low and her lips traveled up Helen’s thigh, skipping over the inner surface until she came to the juncture she sought.

Immediately Helen swung around so that the caress was mutual. The girls groaned and rolled over the floor as their mouths worked eagerly. Then they stopped moving at all, and their bodies grew taut. They he the tension for an unbelievably long moment. Archie, curious and aroused, knelt beside them to witness the explosion of their passion. That was the position when the loud knocking from just inside the doorway to the apartment made all three of their heads pop up.

Helen was the first to recover her wits. “Who the hell are you?” she asked the man in overalls who was standing there.

“I’m the plumber,” he told her. “You called me, didn't you? To fix the john?”

“The plumber! ” Helen exploded.

“Ah meant to tell you, Helen, but theah wasn’t time,” Melanie whined.

“First this kid, and now the plumber!” Helen raged. “Why the hell don’t we just sell tickets?”

“If you want to do that," the plumber offered, “I’ll call the union office. I’m sure the boys would—”

“Just go fix the toilet,” Helen told him wearily. “The show’s over for tonight.”

But the plumber didn’t move until she’d tugged her dress back down over her thighs and Melanie had covered herself with her negligee. Then he moved off to the bathroom. A moment later there was a loud sound of water flushing.

“The plumber!” Helen snarled to herself. “The goddamn plumber! ”

CHAPTER FOUR

“FLUSHING is very important. Lots of people don’t realize that. You try to flush things like hair curlers and eyeglasses down the toilet, and you really jam up those pipes. They back up, and then you know what you got?” The plumber paused dramatically.

“What?” Archie, Melanie and Helen Dawes played straight man in chorus.

“A very sick toilet. That’s what you got. A very sick toilet indeed. See, a toilet is a very delicate mechanism. You have to treat it with respect. You have to baby it, the way you would a finely tuned sports car. You know what I mean? You don't treat a toilet right, then you got trouble. That’s when you only get out of it what you put into it. You know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Helen Dawes interrupted. “We know what you mean. You’ve made it very graphic for us.” She shuddered. “Perhaps a little too graphic.”

“No offense, lady. Toilets are my business. I just don’t like to see them misused. It hurts me to see a toilet treated badly.”

“From here on in,” Helen Dawes promised, “you can rest assured that we will treat our toilet with the tender loving care a mother bestows on her first—born infant. Isn’t that right, Melanie?”

“Ah’ll be jus’ as good an’ careful to that johnny as Ah know how,” Melanie vowed.

“Then if there’s nothing else, I’ll be going now,” the plumber said.

“There’s nothing else,” Helen Dawes assured him.

“Oh.” The plumber looked from Melanie to Helen with disappointment. “Then I’ll be going. I’ll send you my bill.”

“You do that.” Helen saw him out the door and closed it firmly behind him. Then she turned to Archie. “I think we can manage without your help, too,” she told him. “I’m sure it’s ‘way past your bedtime, so if you want to toddle along, why we’ll excuse you.”

“Here’s your hat; what’s your hurry?” Archie remarked. “I'm hip. But first I would like to ask what gives with you and Professor Beaumarchais."

“Nothing gives. Not any more. I haven’t seen him in two years. And the last time I did see him, he was plenty miffed because I gave him the go-by for a girlfriend. He took it as a personal insult that I could prefer a woman to him.”

“How did you meet him in the first place?”

“Oh, he came into a strip joint I was working about four years ago. He gave me a big play. He was throwing money around like so much grass~seed, so I let him throw some my way. When I gave him what he wanted, he threw some more. It was pretty hot and heavy for about eight weeks. Then he went back to Paris. He was over twice more before the last time. We bounced the bedsprings both times. But, like I said, the last time I had something going with this girl and he left steaming. I haven’t seen him since.”

“Did you know a blonde with the same name as yours, Helen, or a redhead named Dixie that he might have made a scene with?” Archie wanted to know.

“No. Say, listen, you ask a helluva lot of questions. What are you, some kind of junior G-man or something? I don’t have to stand here playing quiz games with you. Whatever it's all about, I don’t know anything. So why don’t you pick up your bag of questions and take off, sonny?”

“Okay. I’m splitting.” Archie started out the door.

“Y’all be suah to come see us soon again, heah?" Melanie’s voice called after him with true Southern hospitality.

“But don’t call us; we’ll call you.” Helen Dawes’ firm tones overrode Melanie.

“I might just do that,” Archie called back over his shoulder.

Downstairs, out in the street again, Archie peered at his list of names and addresses in the dim light from the doorway of a coffeehouse. The closest address to where he was was in Peter Cooper Village in the East 20s. He glanced at his watch. It was getting quite late. He decided to call first before going to the address.

The phone hung on the wall in the coffeehouse. Behind Archie as he dialed a bearded poet was declaiming his verses in angry, booming tones. His voice mingled with the buzzing in Archie’s ear as the circuits rang the number he'd dialed.

“Hello?” The female voice was wide awake and chirpy.

“Hello. Is this Dixie Kupp?"

“The bowels speak with the soul-voice of countless Nedicks hot dogs!” the poet rumbled.

“Yes. This is Dixie Kupp. Who’s speaking?"

“My name is Archimees Jones, and -”

“From groin to groin the crabs of love do scamper and proliferate . . .”

“I’m sorry. I can’t hear you. Are you calling from a party, or something? There's an awful lot of noise. It sounded like you said Archimedes something.”

“Jones!” Archie shouted. “I’m Archimedes Jones. I’m a friend of Professor Beaurnarchais. I'd like to come up and talk to you.”

“This dysentery of the mind, this thinning out of turds of thought . . .”

“Beaumarchais? You mean Andre Beaumarchais? Did, he tell you to call me?”

“Not exactly. I’m a friend of his, and I’d like to talk to you about him.”

“. . . like a faceless foetus turned to feces by the drowning, ever-running natal waters . . .”

“Then André didn’t tell you to call me?”

“Well, no, but —”

“. . . by mother, which is half a word . . .”

“Would it be all right if I came over now?” Archie shouted.

“I don’t know. I think it’s my husband you want to see. André has been dealing with him. But he isn’t home now. He works nights.”

“. . . held fast by the unbreakable umbilical, suckled poisonously by the nippled apron-string . . .

“No. I don't think I want to see your husband. It’s you I want to talk to. Alone. Can I come over?”

“Well . . . I guess it’ll be all right. But you’ll have to be quiet so you don’t wake the kids

“. . . cosmeticized with dollar signs, the painted harlotry of mumsy-dominated maledom on the crawl . . .

“I’ll be quiet,” Archie promised. “I’ll be right over. Ten or fifteen minutes.

“All right. I’ll be waiting.” Dixie Kupp hung up.

“. . . twin H-bombs descended from the rocket phallus, gonads laden with the spermatozoa of death, the monster-rnaker pointed toward the stars and spewing fallout seeds in its wake, seeds of barrenness to cloak the earth, this earth, our earth, the macrocosrn of our world reflected in the microcosm of the Zen-contemplated, Yogi-eyed navel already thick with the belly-button lint of carelessly strewn roentgens dropped on this, our world, our pad, to poison baby’s milk, mother’s milk with strontium ninety bearing universal cancer and . . .”

Archie closed the door of the coffeehouse behind him and shut off the poet’s voice. He walked to the curb and hailed a cab. Ten minutes later he alit on the outskirts of Peter Cooper Village.

It was like being dropped at the beginning of a brick maze. It was like finding oneself about to be swallowed up in an architectural nightmare. It was like walking into a yawning trap of solid geometry, a three-dimensional trap with cement quadrangles and oblong recreational areas and sterile squares offering entry to the fourteen-story hell-shells which a multitude of middle-class New Yorkers call home.

Archie contemplated it for a moment. If the suburbs were made up of boxes, little boxes, all made out of ticky-tacky, then metropolitan housing was a matter of bricked-in cubbyholes, all the same, prison cells with venetian blinds, tiers of cross-ventilated dungeons rising high but low and dank of spirit, the squared-off and sterile nests of a people without faces, a people who could afford dishwashers, but hadn’t the price -- and never would have— of a personality of their own. Maybe, Archie thought to himself, the far-out poet hadn’t been so obscure and wide of the mark at that. It was all part of the same thing. The blank towers around him were just one more sign of how the race of man was being outstripped and dehumanized by its technology.

He put it out of his mind and plunged into the maze in search of the particular coop housing Dixie Kupp. Five minutes of looking, and he was hopelessly lost. No explorer penetrating an untrammeled African jungle had ever been so lost. The red-brick sameness of the forest hovered over him in very direction. Each clearing in the cement jungle looked like every other clearing. The sounds of the wasteland wilderness were all around him, the sounds of chattering TV sets, the ominous hum of air conditioners -- dormant, yes, but was their attack imminent? and which way would they zoom when they struck? — the squeaks of a thousand bedsprings as a thousand uniform human seeds were planted during a thousand uniform TV commercials, the slam of refrigerator doors and the faint crunch of teeth on snacks—such were the sounds of the honeyed brick hives which comprised this jungle. And the wasteland had its odors, too—smells of stale deodorant and aromas of cellophane in which last night’s dinner had been packaged and the characterless sweat odors of the air-conditioned flesh of human robots from 1-A to 18-P. Yes, Archie was lost in the jungle — and its natural denizens, every creature which inhabited it, was as lost as he.

A two-legged native was approaching. Would he be friendly? Or would he attack the outlander?

The biped paused and looked at Archie. Archie paused and looked back. The night looked down on the age-old scene of primeval suspicion. Archie spoke first:

“I beg your pardon ? Can you tell me where six-twenty-one East Twenty-first would be?” he asked.

The native grunted and flapped his elbows as if getting up steam to flee this apparition dislodged by the night.

“You want Peter Cooper Village,” the native syllablized carefully. “This here is Stuyvesant Town. You have to go out and cross Twentieth Street. Peter Cooper’s on the other side.”

“Oh. How do I get out?"

“Just follow this path around the oval.”

“Thanks.” Archie started out on the path indicated by the native’s pointing finger.

Immediately the Stuyvesant native circled so that he was on the parallel path which formed the other side of the oval. Like two nervous animals backing off from a fight, he and Archie retreated from each other. The Neanderthal choreography continued until they were out of each other’s sight.

Again Archie wandered, this time seeking Twentieth Street, the Mecca of the trapped in Stuyvesant Town. But it eluded him. Each path he followed, each oval he circled, seemed only to lure him deeper into the crazy-quilt brick complex. Finally he spied another figure, a woman. Archie accosted her.

“I beg your pardon,” he started to say.

“AGGH! EE-EEK!” she screamed. “Help! Rape! Help!” She fled into the darkness, the gremlin of paranoia spawned by city living perched grinningly on her shoulder.

Archie trudged onward. Just when he was beginning to despair of ever finding his way back to civilization — relatively speaking, that is—he picked up the spoor of a Chevrolet’s exhaust fumes. Nose twitching, he mounted a bench and peered into the forest. On a trail off to the left he spied the GM behemoth and identified it by the tail fins over its blinking red eyes. Quick as a native runner, he dashed for the trail down which it was going and followed in its wake until it emerged on Twentieth Street.

With a sigh of relief, Archie crossed the street. A sign told him that now, at last, he stood on the fringes of Peter Cooper Village. It was something to know that at least he had found the right jungle. Cautiously, wishing he’d brought a machete, he hacked his way through the confusing landscaping toward one of the buildings. He read the number marking its entrance and deduced that the building he sought must lie somewhere to the Northwest of it. Having no compass, he peered skyward to take his bearings from two stars and resumed his trek.

A few moments later he was again lost. The malevolent red brick had blotted out the stars. The morass of Peter Cooper Village was no more distinguishable than Stuyvesant Town had been.

“Hold it right there!"

The voice came from the blackness of the bushes at Archie’s elbow. He froze in his sneakered tracks. An instant later the source of the voice confronted him.

He was a big man in the gray uniform of the private police who patrol Peter Cooper Village. His jacket was pushed back so that the holster attached to his belt was easily accessible. His forearm was forced to push against a rather large paunch so that his fingers could grip the butt of the gun in the holster. But his grip on it was firm as he again addressed Archie.

“What are you doing here?” the cop asked.

“Visiting a friend,” Archie replied.

“At this time of night?” The cop was openly skeptical.

“Yeah.” Archie didn’t know what else to say.

“You don’t live here,” the cop deduced with questionable brilliance. “I know every teenage punk in this section. You don't belong here. Now just what do you think you’re up to? ”

“I’m going to visit a friend. I told you.”

“What friend? What’s the address?”

Archie told him.

“Aha!” The cop crowed triumphantly. “Just as I thought. That’s on the other side of the project. You don’t belong here. People around here don’t get juvenile delinquents falling in on them in the middle of the night. Now you better be on your way. Go on! Get out of here before I run you in!”

“On what charge?” Archie asked.

“Trespassing. This is private property, you know. Also, loitering. Also suspicion of breaking and entering. And if you don’t move on, I'll think of a few more.”

“Okay. But which way do I move?”

“That way.” The cop pointed. “That’s Riley’s section that way. Let him handle you just so you stay off my beat. And spread the word to the other young punks. There ain’t gonna be no rumbles on my beat.”

“I’ll tell ’em it’s taboo turf,” Archie promised and set off in the direction the cop had indicated.

The theory used to be that if you had ten monkeys and chained them to ten typewriters for a thousand years, they would write every book in the British Museum. The idea was that sooner or later each book would be written by the chance striking of the typewriter keys. One author picked up this theory and wrote a variation on the theme. In his version, the very first day the ten monkeys turned out the opening chapters of The Canterbury Tales, Les Miserables, The Iliad, and seven other classics. It was by somewhat the same sort of defiance of the laws of chance that Archie now stumbled upon the building he was seeking.

He took the elevator up to the eighth floor and rang the doorbell of the Kupp apartment. The peephole in the door clicked open and Archie felt—rather than saw—the eye appraising him. A moment later the door itself swung open and Dixie Kupp greeted him.

She was a redhead, but not the red-headed Dixie he sought. Where the disappearing Dixie had been slender and chic, this one was more generously built -- voluptuous without being fat—and a bit disheveled. She was older than the original, perhaps thirty to the first one’s mid-twenties. Her face was lightly freckled in contrast to the peaches-and-cream complexion of the other Dixie. She was wearing a man’s bathrobe made of wool. There were no signs of anything underneath it.

“Come on in.” She stood aside so Archie could enter. When he had she closed the door and led the way into the living room. The furnishings were Macy’s rococo modern. The inevitable prints — two dancers by Degas and a Montmartre scene by Utrillo — hung over a pseudo-Swedish couch. “How come André gave you my number?” Dixe asked after they’d seated themselves.

“He thought you might be able to tell me where I might find a mutual friend,” Archie improvised. “A redhead like you, named Dixie like you. Sort of on the thin side -- fashion-model type.”

“I don’t know her." Dixie shrugged. “I can’t imagine why André thought I would.”

“How about a blonde named Helen—mid-twenties, very well built?”

“Not offhand. Why are you looking for them?”

“I have a message for them from Andre.”

“Oh.” Dixie looked at him suspiciously. “I’ll bet you don’t have a message for me, though, do you?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Don't be. André delivered m message to my husband himself—-and right on schedule.” She lapsed into a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smile.

“You’ve seen André recently?”

“No. But my husband has. Just yesterday.”

“Oh?”

“You sound surprised,” Dixie observed.

“It’s just that I didn’t think André was contacting too many people on this trip,” Archie said carefully.

“Oh, he wouldn’t come to New York without getting in touch with my husband.” Dixie chuckled. “He wouldn’t dare.” She said it fondly , but there was an undercurrent to the words that puzzled Archie.

“How did you and Andre meet?” Archie asked with planned casualness.

“At a party a few years back."

“Are you good friends?”

“You’re too young for me to say how good.” Dixie showed her dimples. “And you certainly do ask a lot of questions. What’s your game, young man? Why aren’t you home in bed where you belong? Or at least out stealing hubcaps with the rest of the kids? Just why did you come here, anyway? ”

“I wanted to see if you were really as good-looking a chick as André said you were.” Archie evaded the questions.

“Well! Will you listen to Young Lochinvar come out of the West! I don’t believe you for a minute. But am I?”

“Are you what?” Archie teased.

“Am I as attractive as André said?”

“The reality beats his description by a mile,” Archie assured her. “Your husband is a lucky man.”

“He isn’t the only one.” Dixie shot him a long, significant glance.

“Oh? Did you have an affair with André, then?”

“One he’ll never forget.” Dixie chuckled again.

“What about your husband? Aren’t you afraid he’ll find out you’ve been playing around? Weren’t you afraid he'd find out about Andre?”

“In the first place, he works nights, which is convenient. And in the second place—”

“Yes? In the second place?”

“In the second place, we understand each other. For quite a few years now we’ve understood each other. Let me tell you an incident that took place early in our marriage, and then you’ll see what I mean.”

“Shoot!” Archie told her.

“All right. We’d been married less than a year when Howard—-that’s my husband--was drafted. He was sent to Germany for a year and I stayed home and waited for him. Well, I knew Howard. I knew he wasn’t about to live up to any vows of chastity for a whole year. It figured that he’d hop in the sack with the first willing fraülein he could find. I’m a realist, and I accepted this. I also accepted the fact that I had desires of my own. And I didn’t see any reason why they should be frustrated, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Archie told her. “Go on.”

“Right. Well, finally the year was over and Howard came home. I really was glad to see him, and he was happy to see me, too. We were really burning for each other. As soon as we got inside the apartment, we began ripping each other’s clothes off. We didn’t even wait to get into the bedroom. He flung me down on the rug right here in the living room, and I pulled him down on top of me. I was so anxious he’s still got a scar where I raked his back with my nails. He was so eager my derriere was black and blue for a month from the way he pounded away at me.”

“Sounds like a real wrestling match,” Archie observed. He felt himself becoming excited by her frank description.

“It was. We hadn’t even bothered to turn on the lights. We were just rolling around the floor there, knocking over the furniture, so damned carried away that we weren’t aware of anything except the fusing of our bodies. Then we turned a triple somersault—-at least that’s what it seemed like—-and all the colored lights exploded like in those scenes by Tennessee Williams that you never see but the characters are always huffing about. Anyway, just as we come down off the cloud, we hear this noise outside the apartment door. You know, the walls are paper-thin in these places, and we hear the elevator stop and this sound of heavy footsteps like a man is coming.” Dixie paused for breath.

“Who was it?” Archie prompted her.

“We never did find out. It’s not important, either. The point is the way we reacted, my husband Howard and myself. He jumped up, and you know what he said?”

“What?”

“He said: ‘My God, it’s your husband!’ . . . And you know what I said?”

“What?”

“I said: ‘It can’t be! He’s overseas!’ ”

“A moment of truth, hey?” Archie grinned.

“You can say that again. Right then, at that moment, we both knew exactly where we stood. There was no point in trying to kid each other. And we’ve never tried since. I know Howard’s no saint. He knows I’m no angel. And we accept the situation. Believe me, it’s the only civilized way to be married.”

“I believe you,” Archie said. “Was that before or after you met Andre Beaumarchais?" he asked, trying to steer the conversation back to his reason for being there.

“Oh, before. Long before. But why do you keep wanting to talk about André? Did he send you here for some reason?”

“No. Why should he? What reason would he have?”

“I don’t know. I just thought he might have.”

“Well, he didn’t.” Archie stood up. “I’m really only trying to locate those two girls I mentioned,” he told Dixie Kupp. “I guess if you don’t know them, I should be going now. You probably want to get to bed.”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Dixie’s eyes glittered as she said it and her odd tone lent the words a decidedly erotic connotation. “But don’t run off. I’ve been feeling very lonely tonight and it’s good to have someone to talk to. Tell me, are you old enough for me to offer you a drink?”

“Don’t put me on,” Archie told her, annoyed. “I’m old enough for you to offer and I’m old enough for me to accept and we both know it.”

“Well, would you mix your own and one for me, too? The bar’s over there.” Dixie pointed to the postage-stamp kitchen. “I just want to look in at the kids.” She disappeared through the bedroom doorway.

Archie mixed the drinks. He was just putting the ice-cube tray back in the refrigerator when she returned. She was still wearing the same shapeless bathrobe, but a cloud of perfume—obviously recently applied—preceded her into the kitchen. She took her drink, sipped at it, and led the way back into the living room.

“You said over the phone before that your name was Archimedes Jones, didn’t you?” Dixie remarked as she sat down on the couch beside Archie.

“That’s right.”

“Well,” Dixie mused, “Jones is a common name. But the Archimedes part—haven’t I seen that in the columns? Aren't you some relation to J.P. Jones, that millionaire they call ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’?”

“I’m his stepson,” Archie admitted.

“No kidding! Well, so you’re a regular celebrity. It isn't often I have a regular celebrity in my very own living room in the middle of the night. How am I supposed to treat a celebrity, anyway?”

“With lots of tender loving care,” Archie told her.

“Oh, I would, believe me. But aren’t I maybe a little bit old for you?”

“Not so I've noticed,” Archie reassured her.

“Then you do notice things, do you?" Dixie crossed her legs, and the wool bathrobe parted to reveal smooth, slightly plump thighs. When Archie stared, she followed his glance an smiled. “Yes, you certainly do,” she added. “I'll bet those little teenage girls go wild for you,” she cooed.

“Absolutely ape.” Archie snorted. “But I really dig more mature types.”

“Is that so?” Dixie put down her glass carefully and turned toward him. The movement made the bathrobe gape at the top, and the upper roundnesses of her breasts were exposed with only the nipples still barely covered. They were very large breasts, heavy with womanliness. They were rising and falling very quickly with her rapid breathing. “With your looks and your personality and your stepfather’s money behind you,” she murmured, “I guess you wouldn’t want to be bothered with somebody like me.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I’m really too old for you. I don’t kid myself. I can’t compete with all those sweet young things.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Archie observed as he squinted down the front of the gaping bathrobe. “I think you compete like crazy.”

“It’s very nice of you to say so,” she sighed, resting her head on his shoulder. “I want you to know that you’ve made an old lady very happy.”

“You’re not an old lady. And given half a chance, I'll bet I could make both of us much happier.”

“Take half a chance,” she whispered. “Take a whole chance.” Her lips were very close to his now.

Archie wasn’t obtuse. He didn’t hesitate. He kissed her. All of a sudden it was as if he’d grabbed hold of a cement mixer in high gear, a cement mixer running on all eight cylinders, a cement mixer gone berserk.

Dixie held his face to hers by grabbing onto both his ears. Using them for leverage, she slid farther down on the couch and pulled Archie with her. Her tongue was a darting flame between his lips, and she was writhing against him like an impassioned snake caught up in an uncontrollable reflex to some primitive rhythm.

“Wow!” Archie exclaimed when she finally released his lips. “No post-puberty chick ever kissed me like that!"

“A little bit of experience does come with age,” Dixie sighed. “And a little bit of experience can go a long way.” She slid her hand inside his shirt and trailed her fingers over his bare chest.

“That it does!" Archie agreed fervently. He returned the caress, slipping his hand under the rough wool of her bathrobe and stroking her breast.

Dixie pulled the bathrobe away so that one breast was completely bared. It shimmered, and the nipple tautened under Archie’s stare. The pink roseate around the purplish tip seemed to widen as if issuing an invitation. She dug her hands into the back of Archie’s neck and pulled his face toward her until his lips were fastened over the breast-tip. Then she moaned low in her throat and twisted from sidle to side as if this latest stimulation was all but unbearable.

After a moment, she pushed him away. “Take off your clothes,” she said breathlessly. “Hurry, darling! Hurry!” Archie hurried.

She'd shrugged out of the bathrobe now and was lying on top of it on the floor, her arms outstretched to Archie, her hips twitching eagerly. He looked down at her, took a deep breath, and sank to his knees. Trembling female limbs enveloped him, and he sprawled over her. That’s when he heard the sounds of footsteps from the bedroom.

“What’s that?” Archie’s head shot up.

“What’s what?”

“That noise.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“You sure it’s not your husband?"

“It can’t be.” Dixie giggled. “He’s overseas.”

“I thought you said he was only working.”

“He is.” She giggled again. “I just couldn’t resist the line. Sense memory, you know?”

“Oh.” Archie embraced her again.

This time the sound which interrupted them was unmistakable. It was the sound of a door being opened. Archie looked up in time to see two children in pajamas coming toward them. The little girl was about five years old, the boy about seven. They quickly took up a position beside them and stared. The boy stretched out an arm and pointed a finger straight at Archie’s naked groin. The girl blinked her eyes until two large tears started slowly rolling down her cheeks. They froze that way, as if they were part of some carefully rehearsed tableau.

Archie was just retrieving his jaw from the floor where it had fallen when the flashbulb went off. He was struggling to his feet when it happened a second time. The third shot caught him diving for his pants.

“Archie, I’d like for you to meet my husband, Howard.” Dixie spoke from the floor. She hadn’t moved a muscle except to turn her face so that her best profile was to the camera. “Howard, this is Archimedes Jones, stepson of J. P. Jones, ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’.”

“Glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Jones.” Howard held out his hand. The camera was secure in his other hand, carefully out of Archie’s reach. “These are our children, Seymour and Samantha. Say hello to Mr. Jones, children.”

“How do you do, Mr. Jones?” the children chorused in unison. Samantha curtsied politely and Seymour bowed from the waist.

“What the hell-—?” Archie found his voice and lost it again.

“No need to be concerned, Mr. Jones. Strictly business. A family business, you might say.” Howard chuckled “Portrait photography, that’s my line. Candid group portrait photography. Now, about the prints —

“He’ll take half a dozen wallet-size, and I’m sure his stepfather will want at least three eight-by-tens, Dixie interjected. “And perhaps his mother would like the same.”

“Well, let’s see now-—” Howard held a finger to his cheek thoughtfully. “At five thousand a piece, that’s thirty Gs for the wallet-size, and the eight-by-tens are ten apiece, so that makes a total of ninety thousand. Still, he is buying in bulk. Let’s give him a discount and call it a nice round seventy-five thou. How does that strike you, Mr. Jones?”

“Like blackmail! Like the oldest badger game in the world! Who the hell do you think you’re conning here?”

“Why, the stepson of J. P. Jones," Howard told him softly. “That’s who! Now, about the negatives-—”

“He didn’t say ‘cheese’,” the little girl piped up. “You took the picture, Daddy, and he didn’t say ‘cheese’. Now you’ll have to take it again.”

Howard raised the camera tentatively. Archie hastily pulled his pants up. But he didn’t say ‘cheese’. He didn’t smile at all.

He just didn’t feel like smiling!

CHAPTER FIVE

“. . . and so this gay-mother swishes his wrist and goes ‘POUF!’ and poor, downtrodden, exploited Saturnalia turns into a real chunk of ogle-bait. Like she can’t believe it; like she blinked her eyes on a goofball. I mean, she sprouts boobies out to here and her legs get all depilatorized and her frizz turns into a twenty-dollar perm you could hive a drove of bees in and she’s wearin’ the kind of rags say the War on Poverty is over and she’s won. Also, she’s got wheels. Caddy wheels with a rat-faced driver on account of he was a mouse before the fairy-Mums limp-wristed him into a chauffeur. Saturnalia slips into the wheels and the fruity witch hollers she should be sure to come back to the hovel by midnight ’cause if she don’t she’s gonna change back to a dog anyways and her bra ’ll be flappin’ in the breeze with nothin’ inside it and her nose ’ll beak like always and the Caddy ’ll turn back into a garbage truck and her little lace hanky ’ll be a smutty dust-rag like it was before. So the mother yells this after her even though he isn’t a Jewish mother, and Saturnalia tosses him a promise like yeah, man, she’ll hobble from hop to hovel by midnight for sure.”

Archie took a deep breath. Samantha and Seymour, curled up on the floor at his feet, looked up at him expectantly and waited for him to continue. But for the moment Archie was off the track. He was wondering about the conference going on between Howard and Dixie in the next room. Looking disappointed and injured, they’d excused themselves when Archie had refused to arrange for the payment of one red cent in exchange for the photos Howard had taken.

“So this is what you pulled on Professor Beaumarchais!” Archie had guessed. “That’s why you were so sure he’d contacted your husband,” he said accusingly to Dixie. “You were blackmailing him! That’s it, isn’t it?”

The way Dixie and Howard had looked at each other and shrugged told Archie he’d hit the nail on the head. That’s when he’d told them there would be no more extortion money from the professor because the professor was dead. That’s when he’d told them they could plaster the pictures they’d taken of him all over the subways for all he cared, but neither his stepfather, his mother, nor he himself would cough up one plugged nickel to suppress the photos. And that’s when they’d gone into a huddle in the bedroom, leaving Archie with their two offspring who'd immediately badgered him into telling them a story.

Now they wanted him to finish the story. “You talk so funny,” Samantha told him, “but I don’t care. What happened then?”

“I think I've heard this story before,” Seymour said. “But it was awful different. Doesn’t she meet a prince or something?”

“Or something,” Archie agreed. “What it is, actually, when Saturnalia gets to this bash, it turns out the cat that’s tossing it is an account exec for this WASP ad agency and he’s rolling in long green. Also, he’s like very Gregory Pecker-ish, you know, olive-oil suave and full of horn-rimmed egghead talk and dances like the whole Bolshoi wrapped up in one package delivered by Arthur Murray. So, innocent chick that she is, Saturnalia goes all vaginal fluttery over this cat. He reads her right, and first thing you know he’s got her on the second floor of his pad in the hay with her slippers off. Downstairs the combo is plagiarizing Tschaikovsky. Upstairs Saturnalia and the huckster are triple-timing a tango to the music with horizontal variations picked up from the Ellis brothers, Havelock and Albert. Well, the War of 1812 draws to a close and the combo retreats from Moscow tail-dragging the French horn and finally everybody plugs their ears with their fingers and the cannon goes off and so does the huckster and so does Saturnalia—all in one boffo orgiastic crescendo with choreography by Busby Berkeley and incidental climax written in by Norman Mailer.

“ ‘Phew!' hulls the huckster.

“ ‘Phew!’ echoes Saturnalia.

“And just as they’re ‘phewing’ in chorus, this Big Ben bongs out the first bong of midnight. The chick panics. She has this identity problem, see? She doesn’t want the still-huffing huckster—who really should cut down on his smoking—should see her as she really is before the faggot-mother turns her into a Playboy centerspread. So Saturnalia grabs her girdle on the fly and makes tracks. At that, she barely makes it and has to hitch the garbage truck home. Which is kind of a bumpy ride ’cause it's in first all the way since the Mickey Mouse can’t reach the stick-shift.

“Meanwhile, back at the palace-pad, Huckster-Huffer gloms onto a sneaker Saturnalia left behind when she split. Now, as it happenstances, this Mad. Ave. cat has a fetish for track shoes. Like he’s always skulking around locker rooms with his proboscis instep-high. So now he gets one whiff of Saturnalia’s foot-holder and it’s like love at first sniff. He’s got to have her, but he doesn’t even know her label. Still, he’s a cat who moves fast.

“He ting-a-lings a Sherlock right away and puts him on the scent. Well, this bloodhound, name of Ian Phlegming—not his real name, but he changed it to that legally so’s to pull in the literary trade—-gets right on the case. He takes the sneaker and tours the subways, trying to match it up. Gets his hand stepped on bloody for three days, but still doesn’t find the size seven, triple-A chick-foot.

“Finally Phlegming smartens up and puts an ad in the Times saying as how theire’s an oodle of boodle waiting for the chick with the matching foot. Immediately his orifice is filled with corns and calluses. The podiatric aroma becomes so bad he has to pay off the Board of Health inspector. All alone, he’s starting a city-wide epidemic of athlete's foot. And he has to bill the huckster an extra thou just for antiseptic toe-powder.

“Still they come. Chorines and concubines, chamber-maids and chippies, housewives and hustlers, secretaries and sizzling sirens, money-hungry femmes from all walks of life—you should pardon the pun—bare-sole and hobble-heel their way into his office hoping they'll be able to fill Saturnalia’s sneaker. But none of them can. Bootless cries of protest, but they’re footloose one and all.

“Finally, Saturnalia’s two stepsisters and stepmother step up for a fitting. So it shouldn’t be a total loss, they bring Saturnalia along to polish their footwear while they're playing footsie with the Sherlock. Well, needless to syllablize, the stepfolk are out of step. But Private Fuzz is right on the ball of the foot and latches onto Saturnalia’s ankle. Maybe if he looks up, he wouldn’t bother, but this case has his neck permanently bent floorward, so its all toes to him. Before anybody can squawk, he’s got Saturnalia’s dog in a half-nelson and he’s putting the sneaker on it. Needless to say, it’s a perfect fit. Well, it's like the Irish Sweeps for concave-chested; cross-eyed, hook-nosed, litttle Saturnalia. But—”

Archie broke off the story in acknowledgment of Howard and Dixie re-entering the room. “We've been talking over the situation, Mr. Jones, and--” Howard began.

“Finish the story! Finish the story!" the children interrupted. “Finish the story!” they clamored demandingly.

“Now, children, you mustn’t pester Mr. Jones,” Dixie admonished them.

“And besides, it’s time for you to go back to bed,” Howard added sternly.

“First he has to finish the story!" they wailed. “It’s not fair!” Seymour added as Samantha contrived to squeeze one large tear down her cheek.

Howard and Dixie looked at Archie helplessly.

“All right,” he sighed. “I’ll finish the story. I was almost to the end, anyway.”

“Goodie! Goodie!" The children clapped their hands.

“Okay.” Archie took a deep breath and continued. “So when Saturnalia takes the fit, her stepsisters and stepmother turn pool-table-colored with envy. So much so that they’re like a new minority group all by themselves. But all their yowling can’t change the legit. Phlegming’s solved the case, and he hauls Saturnalia off to the adman’s pad to collect his fee.

“Well, the huckster takes one look at the merchandise and allows as like the dick must have latched onto the wrong half of the commercial. ‘You got the before part,’ he tells Phlegming. ‘Take it back and bring me the after!’ Which remark makes Saturnalia rinse her tear ducts, a wail-washing causing her to look doubly doggy.

“ ‘Beauty,’ she sobs, ‘is in the orb of the beholder!’

“‘Ich nicht beholden to nein man!’ The exec shows his true ethnic.

“ ‘But you hay-made me,’ she cries, ‘robbed the pure from out my body!’

“ ‘I musta been crooked!’ comes the wrinkle—nosing reply.

“ ‘But you did it! And now you gotta marry me so we can bed-bounce happily ever after!’

“ ‘You don’t quit buggin’ me, baby, I’m gonna eat you all up!’ Huff-Huckster gnashed bicuspids menacingly.

“ ‘Stick to the script!’ the private retina admonishes. ‘That’s a different story. And besides, the censors ’d blue-pencil it out.’

“ ‘Would you wed an oink like that?’ ignoble noble adman asks.

“ ‘What diff? It ain’t like you’re picking a mattress-mistress. So it’s minimum mate, but a living washday detergent when it comes to housework. Like bred to the profession, you know? A whiz-broom, a dusting delight, a moppin’ pippin’, scrubs the eggs an’ scrambles the floors, bakes the bed and cleans under the bread, washes waffles and whips up windows-—all this, an’ she makes chicken soup besides. So be smart. Marry the mutt. You’ll pick up a side-dish for glamor while she does the heavy work.’

“Well, to make an interminable story chopped, the adman finally agrees. There’s a hitch or three when Saturnalia’s stepmother mother-suffers why couldn’t he be a doctor? and one of her stepsisters puts down his palace ’cause it isn’t a split-level and besides it’s on the west side of town, and the other stepsister pulls down her genealogical charts and trumps the catered affair with the fact that the groom is one-quarter Sephardic on his maternal grandmother’s side. But despite the spite, Saturnalia marries her chintz charming and—” Archie paused for dramatic effect.

“Yes? Yes?” The children chanted. “And——?”

“And they lived crappily ever after,” Archie concluded.

“What happened to Ian Phlegming?” Seymour wanted know.

“He went into the Bond business,” Archie told him seriously.

“I didn’t like that story,” Samantha complained. “It didn’t have enough violence in it.”

“After they were married, he beat her bloody every night,” Archie reassured her.

“With a chain and a whip?” Samantha looked pleased. “And she stomped all over him with her magic sneakers,” Archie declared.

“I think I’d like the sequel even better,” Samantha decided, and Seymour nodded agreement. “Tell it to us now!” they demanded in unison.

“No!” Dixie put her foot down. “It’s been very nice of Mr. Jones to tell you even one story. Don’t take advantage. You’re both to go to bed immediately. I mean it, now!”

“Oh, all right.” Seymour started reluctantly for the bedroom with Samantha trailing behind.

The little girl turned in the doorway, ran back to Archie, and planted a big kiss on his cheek. “I like you lots better than the last man we took pictures of,” she told him. “He was so mean! He tried to break Daddy’s camera. And he smacked Seymour on the tushy. And he called Mommy names. And when I asked him to tell me a story, he just turned redder and redder and couldn’t even think of one. You're much nicer.”

“Thank you, sweetie.” Archie returned her kiss and watched her toddle off to bed. “Nice kids,” he told Howard and Dixie. “What do you suppose they’ll be when they grow up?”

“Oh, that’s all settled,” Howard assured him. “Seymour’s going to be a professional ex-Communist. Pretty soon now, he’ll join the party. Then, when he grows up, he’ll recant and write a book about how he was duped into it. Then he'll start making appearances before Congressional committees. And maybe the movie industry or the publishing industry will hire him as an expert on how to keep their products from being infiltrated with propaganda. It’s really a very lucrative field. There's no limit to how far he can go. One really hot case with the H.U.A.C. and his future will be made.

“And it’s patriotic, too,” Dixie added. “A professional turncoat has real status in today‘s society.”

“What about Samantha?” Archie wondered.

“Well, she could do worse than following in her mother’s footsteps.” Dixie dimpled prettily. “Still, I do worry about her sometimes. She has this inclination toward modesty, and it could hamper her.”

“An unfortunate trait,” Howard agreed. “But I do feel that she’ll outgrow it.” He settled himself beside Dixie on the sofa and took a deep breath. “Your interest in our children is very heartwarming, Mr. Jones, but we really should get down to business now. This being a rather slow time of year for us, we’re prepared to offer you a special on the pictures taken of you. Fifty thousand dollars, negatives included. In cash, of course.”

“Not a ruble!” Archie had taken a stand, and he stuck to it. “Besides,” he added, “how do I know you won’t make duplicates of the negatives?”

“We’re an established firm, Mr. Jones,” Howard told him with an injured air. “We don’t do business that way. Our reputation speaks for itself.”

“So all I’ve got to do is look you up in Dunn & Bradstreet, huh? Sorry, but no sale! I suspect you've been bleeding the professor for quite a while. Somehow I just don’t buy that he got off with the initial payment. Wifey here gave that away before.”

“That was a different case. He was paying off in installments,” Howard pointed out. “He couldn’t draw upon assets such as yours and your family’s.”

“No sale!” Archie got to his feet. “Absolutely no sale!”

“Then I'm afraid we shall have to negotiate with your stepfather.”

“He’ll tell you what I tell you: Go to hell!”

“We shall see.”

“That you will.” Archie decided to try a bluff. “But if you take my advice, you’ll give me the negs right now. Because if you don’t, my next stop after I leave here will be the local police station where I’ll swear out a complaint against a pair of blackmailers.”

“I think not,” Howard said thoughtfully. “Somehow, I think not. If you were going to holler for the gendarmes, I suspect you would have done it before now.”

“Okay, take your chances.” Archie turned on his heel and headed for the door.

“Good night, Mr. Jones,” Howard called after him. “We’ll be seeing you.”

“Good night,” Archie called back mechanically.

He did a slow burn as he threaded his way out of the project-maze. But when he emerged on First Avenue, he managed to dismiss the Kupps from his mind for the time being. He didn’t think they’d had anything to do with killing Professor Beaumarchais. Why would they have slaughtered the goose that laid the golden greenbacks?

There were two names left on Archie’s list: Helen Steinberg and Helen Giammori. He weighed them. Somehow, he decided, the Helen he was seeking had looked more Jewish than Italian. A diffficult distinction, but that’s the way he called it.

It was almost dawn when the cab dropped him off in front of the Central Park West address. One look at the doorman and Archie knew he’d have trouble getting past him to the Steinberg apartment. His Beatle haircut was against him, among other things. So he scooted down the side street until he found the alleyway running past the rear of the building.

Luck was with Archie. The basement door was open. He entered. Gray darkness was only slightly relieved by a few bleak light bulbs plugged into the concrete cellar ceiling. They squinted down on him as he trudged through the chalkdust air toward a bank of elevators. When he reached them, he poked a button at random.

Smooth whirring sounds were followed by diamond-shaped light as the cage came purringly to rest in the basement. Almost, Archie goofed it right then. His hand was already reaching out for the doorknob when he spotted the uniformed operator reaching out to grab it from the inside.

Archie dived behind a boiler, a shower of smut descending over him as a result of the rapid movement. He flattened himself there, almost twisting his nose off to keep from sneezing, as the lift jockey peered blinkingly into the grayness or the source of the signal which had prompted his descent. After a moment, he shrugged, closed the door, and the car ascended.

So the elevator was out. “KERCHOO!” Ah! What blessed relief! Archie started for the staircase, wondering if he could slip up five flights to the Steinberg apartment without being detected. He’d almost reached it when he spotted something that made him change his plans.

A dumbwaiter! Archie pegged the sliding door set into the wall correctly. He pulled it open and craned his head to look up the shaft. Pitch black. He could barely make out the ropes grazing the tip of his nose.

He pulled on the ropes and they creaked. There was a feeling of something heavy slowly descending. A few moments later he pulled his head in to allow the dumbwaiter platform to settle at the basement level.

The cage had three open sides and one solid wall which faced the back wall of the shaft. The ropes ran through the upper and lower platforms, but there was plenty of space left over for garbage and/or grocery deliveries. It was empty now, and Archie managed to climb onto it, legs spread wide and bent at the knees to encircle the ropes, chin tucked into neck and torso bent to fit tightly into the space. He managed to get a grip on the ropes with each hand and started to pull himself upwards.

It was slow going, but just as he reached the first floor, there was a sudden brightening of the shaft as if someone had opened a door above and the dumbwaiter began rising faster. Someone was tugging at it from above, and Archie heard mutterings about how heavy the damn thing seemed to have gotten lately.

There was one last tug from above, and then Archie found himself level with the open door of an apartment on the second floor. A youngish man in a bathrobe, his eyes half-closed, was standing there. There was an odor of burning rubber and over-boiled milk. On the table beside him were a dozen or so baby bottles with smoldering nipples. The table and the stove behind him were spattered with milk. His half-shut eyes opened wide as he saw Archie.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

“What the hell are you doing?” Archie echoed.

“Making the baby’s formula. I think I goofed."

“I think you did.” Archie sniffed.

“Have to get rid of the evidence before the frau wakes up,” the young man confided. “Figured I’d ditch it down the old dumbwaiter. Didn’t figure it for a passenger ship. What’s the idea?”

“Bureau of Inspections,” Archie told him. “Testing for weight capacity.”

“At five-thirty in the morning?”

“Civil Service.” Archie shrugged. “Ours is not to question why. Ours is but to do and die.”

“Aren’t you a little young to be in Civil Service?” the bottle-burner asked suspiciously.

“Father-son union,” Archie confided with a wink. “I’m just an apprentice. Have to take the exam to qualify next week. Dad thought it might be good if I got some practical experience first. Figured nobody would be up yet, so he sent me out on this complaint."

“Oh.” The young man didn’t look like he believed Archie, but he didn’t look like he cared, either. “But there’s no room to ditch those damned bottles with you on there,” he complained. “And if I don’t get rid of them soon, the Earth Mother ’ll be up and on me.”

“Just dump ’em in my lap,’ Archie said, eager to continue his journey. “I’ll get rid of them for you.”

“Thanks.” The young man did just that. Just as he was dumping the last of them, there was a tug on the dumbwaiter rope from above. “Hold it,” he called. The rope slackened and he wedged the last of the smelly baby bottles under Archie’s knee. “Okay,” he called. “And,” he added to Archie as the dumbwaiter started upwards, “bon voyage.”

It stopped opposite the open door at the next floor. All Archie saw was the two huge bags of garbage as they were wedged against him. Then the door closed and he was in blackness again, his nostrils submerged in a top- ping of orange peels.

He struggled to get his hands freed from the baby bottles and the garbage so he could grab the ropes to pull himself upward again. The maneuver left him with stale olive oil dribbling down behind his left ear, a jagged Campbell's soup can wedged under one arm, a half-eaten cob of corn under the other, pizza crust crumbling down his shirt-front, and a beer bottle intimately caressing his groin. One of the baby bottles slipped between the dumbwaiter and the wall, crunched a bit, and then slipped through and fell to the bottom of the shaft with a resounding tinkle. Feeling like a pop art exhibit, Archie slowly began pulling himself upward again.

But his troubles weren’t over. Just as he reached the fourth floor, another door to the shaft was opened. This one was on his right side. A rather pretty brunette in an evening gown and makeup that looked stale around the edges took one look and then spoke:

“EEK!” she said.

“Howdy.” Archie returned her greeting.

“EEK!”

“You’re repeating yourself," he pointed out.

“EEK!”

“Now you’re growing positively redundant.”

“Wha—- Wha-— Wha—happened to you?” She finally found her voice.

“Just one of those nights.” Archie picked a banana peel off his left shoulder and dropped it delicately down the dumbwaiter shaft.

“Do-— Do-— Do-—you know what you look like?”

“A kind of tired tossed salad, I imagine,” Archie said with aplomb. “But then you look a little green around the gillworks yourself. Just what have you been up to?”

“Well, I got home from a party, and -”

“After dawn?” Archie was disapproving. “Now that’s no way for a lady to behave. What will people say?”

“What do I care what people say? And what business is it of yours, anyway? You’ve got a nerve telling me what time I should and shouldn’t come home! Who are you to be doing that, anyway? I don’t even know you! You’re just a garbage-covered kid with a lapful of baby bottles who came floating up my dumbwaiter at five-something in the morning!” She was getting hysterical. “You’re getting hysterical,” Archie to d her.

“I am not getting hysterical! I'm not! l’m not! I'm not!”

“You’re not getting hysterical?"

“No! No! No!”

“Oh.” Archie considered it. “Well, you could have fooled me,” he told her after a moment.

“You're a mirage!” the girl decided. “That’s what you are! You’re not really there at all! I just had a little too much champagne tonight and I’m fantasizing! If I close my eyes, you’ll go away!” She closed her eyes. “When I open them again, you'll be gone!” she said positively. She opened them again.

“Surprise!”

“Ooh! This is too much. If you don’t vanish right now, I’m going to call the super and he’ll throw you out!”

“How can he throw me out if I’m only a mirage?” Archie asked reasonably.

“I don’t care how!” Her voice cracked. “It’s after five o’clock in the morning! I haven’t had any sleep! It’s been an awful night! There’s a limit to how much a person can stand!” She grabbed the dumbwaiter rope with trembling hands and gave it a strong tug. The dumbwaiter shot upward, out of sight. “There! Now you’re gone!” she crowed. “Now it’s over!”

“Ships that pass in the night.” Archie’s voice echoed down the shaft. “But you must have a memento of our fleeting meeting.” He selected a cap from a beer bottle and dropped it to her. “Remembrance of things Pabst,” he sighed.

“Schlitz!” she corrected, catchin it.

“Such language!” Archie tutted as he continued pulling the dumbwaiter cart up. A few seconds later it was level with the fifth floor. He was faced with a choice of three doors to the dumbwaiter shaft. All three were closed. He tried each of them. All three were locked.

One of the doors, Archie knew, must lead to the kitchen of the apartment in which Helen Steinberg lived. Which one? Eeenie-meenie-minie-mo. Archie scratched tentatively at mo. Nothing happened. He scratched again. Still nothing. A third time.

Lo! There was a scratching back from the other side of the door. A pause. Archie scratched again. Another pause. The scratching from the other side again.

Not to be sneered at! What sage of our time hasn’t commented on the problems of communication plaguing modern man? Archie was a modern man--or boy, anyway. And Archie had scored a breakthrough. Scratch and scratchback. It was a beginning.

“Hello?” Archie progressed to the whispered linguistic. No answer. Another flurry of scratching.

“Can I see you a minute?” Archie tentatived.

Still only more scratchback.

“I just want a word or two.”

Scratch-scratch.

“This is ridiculous!” Archie decided.

Scratch. Pause. Scratch-scratch. Pause. Then a more significant sound, a deeper scratch, so to speak, a fumbling with the latch of the dumbwaiter door from the other side. A click as the latch was released, and finally the door swung open.

A French poodle with a newspaper in its mouth sat on a kitchen table directly in front of the dumbwaiter door and stared at Archie. Archie stared back. The poodle dropped the newspaper and its jaw hung open. Archie’s jaw also hung open.

One reason was that there were two more similar poodles perched on the table behind the first one. Archie blinked and looked again. Three additional poodles were lined up on the floor behind the table. The last one in the line also had a newspaper in its mouth. Archie blinked again and got hold of himself.

“Does Helen Steinberg live here?” he asked.

“Grrr! ” the first poodle growled.

“Well, if that’s the way you feel about it!” Archie cringed as far back on the dumbwaiter platform as he could.

“Arf arf!" the second poodle commented.

“Bow-wow!” the third added.

“WOOF-WOOF!” from the floor. All three below in chorus. “WOOF-WOOF! WOOF-WOOF! WOOF-WOOF!”

“Shh!” Archie held a finger to his lips. “Do you want to wake everybody up?”

The lead dog snarled by way of answer. The others simply barked louder. Archie decided that Helen Steinberg or no Helen Steinberg, this was an untenable situation. He reached for the door to close it. The first poodle snapped at his fingers, missing them by a scant half-inch. Archie hastily pulled back his hand and put it under his arm where it would be out of reach of the canine’s canines.

“That’s not very hospitable,” Archie told the dog plaintively.

“What are you doing there?” The dogs’ yelping had finally brought results. An elderly man with a military bearing, a natty gray beard, and a clipped mustache stood in the doorway to the kitchen and addressed Archie. “What do you want?”

“I’m looking for Helen Steinberg,” Archie said weakly.

“Well, she doesn’t live here. This isn’t the Steinberg apartment.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Archie reflected a minute. The dogs had subsided to a low-key chorus of snarls now. “Umm, do you have a kennel here or something?” Archie asked-

“Certainly not! These are The Performing Pups Of Paris, the most highly trained troupe of canines in vaudeville.”

“I thought vaudeville was dead.”

“It will come back. Have faith. In the end, it will come back. Those flat shadows they call movies can’t last. Only a fad. They can never permanently replace live entertainment.”

“Forty ears. That’s quite a fad.”

“Ah. You see? It’s drawing to a close. You’re quite right. It can’t last much longer. That’s why I have trained these superb pooches. When vaudeville returns, I will be ready. It won’t be long now. You’ll be the star attraction at the Palace,” he promised the first dog, scratching its ears. “Then we will laugh at them all.”

“Very interesting,” Archie said. “Well, I’m afraid I have to be going now.” He reached very tentatively for the dumbwaiter door, keeping a sharp eye on the closeset dog .

“Wait!” the old man barked imperiously, holding up his hand with a dramatic flourish. “Where do you think you’re going with that dumbwaiter?”

“Well, to the Steinberg apartment. I don t really want the dumbwaiter, but—-”

“Do you realize that‘ you’re throwing The Performing Pups of Paris off their schedule? Years of training and by hogging that dumbwaiter, you could spoil it all. You establish certain patterns with dogs. Break the pattern, and you confuse them. Before you know it, the whole fabric of their training begins to unravel. It may seem only a small thread that you’re pulling to you, but It could be disastrous!”

“Just what is this small thread you’re talking about?” Archie wanted to know.

“The dumbwaiter. Don’t you understand? Every morning at this time these delicate animals go to the dumbwaiter. Poopsie here”-—he patted the lead dog—“lays down the newspaper. Then each of them relieves himself in turn. Lastly comes Coco”—-he pointed at the dog standing at the back of the line on the floor-—“and when he is done, he covers it over with his newspaper. I have a deal with the janitor to remove the droppings at six o’clock promptly each morning.”

“They certainly are very neat,” Archie concluded. “But the problem is I’m stuck in here with all this stuff, as you can see, and I don’t think I’d want to add their contributions to it, even if it is wrapped in newspaper. I mean, look at it from my point of view.”

“Wait!” the old man snapped his fingers. “I think I can see a compromise solution. If you will lower the dumbwaiter so that the roof is at the level of this aperture, then the beasts can substitute that portion for the floor of the dumbwaiter and conclude their business.”

“If you think I’m going to sit here while a bunch of mutts--”

“Then I shall have to call the janitor!”

“—on top of my head, you’re out of your— What?”

“I shall have to call the janitor.”

“Oh.” Archie weighed it quickly. “All right,” he agreed reluctantly. “Have it your way.” He pulled the rope and slowly lowered the dumbwaiter.

“Far enough. Stop.” The old man called from above.

Archie stopped. There was the rustle of newspaper over his head. Then a delicate tinkling sound followed by a muted plop-plop, a scratching sound and the even more muted adding of paw-steps. This was repeated five more times and concluded with the rustling o a second newspaper being spread. When all was silent, Archie pulled the dumbwaiter up again.

“The performance is concluded,” the old man told him as he handed out dog yummies to the pooches. “I want you to know, sir, that you are the very first person to perceive The Performing Pups of Paris in action.”

“Well, I guess ‘perceive’ is the right word. I didn’t see them, but I heard them. And I believe I can still perceive the aroma of their performance. Now, I wonder if you can tell me Just which of these two doors might lead to the Steinberg apart --”

It was too late for Archie to get an answer. The old man, evidently miffed at what must have seemed to him unseemly levity toward his dogs, had closed the dumbwaiter door in Archie's face. Archie sighed, picked one of the two remaining doors at random and knocked loudly on it.

The door flew open immediately. A middle-aged woman in a maid’s uniform peered nearsightedly at Archie. She looked Scandinavian. “Ay don’t vant to buy nothin’,” she announced, her accent confirming her appearance. She started to close the door in Archie’s face.

“Wait a minute!” He leaned on it firmly, holding it open. “Is this the Steinberg apartment?”

“No. Iss ‘next door.” She started to close the door, then paused and looked at Archie shrewdly. “You bane a relative of theirs, I betcha,” she guessed.

“No I'm not. What makes you think that?”

“Yus that you don’t lookin’ Jewish,” she told him. “An’ you bane comin’ up the dumbwaiter, I figure sure you a relative from the Steinbergs.”

“But why should—?”

Once again Archie’s question was cut off by the door closing in face. He shrugged off this second rebuff, and his unfinished question with it, and pounded on the third door. It took a moment or two before his pounding drew a response and the door was opened.

The middle-aged woman standing there had her hair braided for sleep. She was wearing a long flannel nightgown with a wool robe thrown over it. She was still blinking her eyes, having just been awakened by Archie’s knocking. “So what’s the tsimmis?” she asked.

Archie didn’t answer immediately. He was still trying to reconcile her heavy Jewish accent with her appearance. She had the angular body of a farm woman and her face looked like the Spirit of New England as it might have been painted by Grant Wood. It was etched right out of Pilgrim’s Progress, gray-brown hairbraid and all.

“I’m looking for Helen Steinberg," Archie said finally.

“My daughter? This is a time to come calling? You’re too young for her, anyway!” she decided.

“Then you are Mrs. Steinberg?"

“Who else?”

Barbara Frietchie¹ , Archie thought to himself, but he didn’t voice the thought aloud.

“So why are you looking so surprised?”

“Steinberg. The name.” Archie was confused. “It sounded Jewish.”

“So?”

“Well, your accent — I mean, you have a Jewish intonation, but—-"

“But?”

“Well, you don’t look Jewish.”

“You don’t look so Jewish yourself!” she told Archie.

“I’m not.”

“So that settles it. Stay away from my daughter.” She started to close the door.

Archie blocked it with his elbow. “You don't understand,” he said.

“I understand you’re covered with garbage in my dumbwaiter in the middle of the night and you’re calling on my daughter and you don’t smell so good either and you’re not even Jewish. You’re a medical student, maybe?”

“No.”

“So go away. Enough bums we got in this family already, and they aren’t Jewish, either.”

“I just want to speak to your daughter a minute.”

Archie had to use all his weight to keep the door propped open against her determined pushing.

“Like this you’re forcing? All right, then. I’ll call my husband. Zeke!” she bellowed. “Zeke! Come quick!”

“So why are you yelling like a yenta?" a male voice answered. “The neighbors should hear you, or what, Charity?”

The voice was followed by the appearance of a man also wearing nightclothes. His balding skull was topped off by an old-fashioned nightcap. At first glance he was the reincarnation of Calvin Coolidge—-the spitting image. With his corncob pipe clutched in one hand, he gave the impression of one of Norman Rockwell’s more comic and more rural Saturday Evening Post covers. One almost expected to see a rooster crowing atop an old red barn in the background.

“A fella here for Helen, a goy,” Charity Steinberg explained. “A shagitz in the dumbwaiter, and he won't go away.”

“What do you talk? You’re still asleep! Why would—”

Zeke Steinberg entered the kitchen and broke off as he did indeed see Archie in the dumbwaiter. “You’re sure he’s not Jewish?” he asked his wife. “He's got the pair curls coming down.” He strokes his cheeks to indicate what he meant.

“That’s from being a beatnik,” Charity Steinberg assured him. “Jewish he’s definitely not.”

“And he won’t go away? So then I’m going for my shotgun!" He started out of the kitchen again.

“Wait a second!” Archie protested. “I don't want any trouble! I want to see your daugh—-”

“What’s the matter, Pa?” A new female voice sounded from outside the kitchen.

“What’s the matter? she asks! The matter is that one of those goys you get yourself mixed up with is sitting in the dumbwaiter and won’t go away. So I’m going for my gun and--”

“What goy? What are you talking about?” The girl entered the kitchen to see for herself.

“Are you Helen Steinberg?” Archie asked desperately.

“Who else?”

Like mother, like daughter, Archie thought to himself. And in looks as well. Helen Steinberg was young, and not ugly, but she had the sparse frame and prim features associated with the Puritan women of Colonial times. About her, as about her parents, there was the aura of people who never sweat. It was impossible to picture any of them biting into a knish, or savoring a blintz.

“So who are you?” she wanted to know now.

“I’m Archimedes Jones, and -”

“I know you? I don’t remember. A B’nai Brith dance maybe? Or that Zionist rally last month?”

“No. We’ve never met. But—”

“Aha! Masher!” Zeke Steinberg had re-entered the kitchen with a double-barrelled shotgun which he proceeded to point at Archie. “So you admit you don’t even know my daughter. And you’re covered with drek, and you don’t smell so good, and you’re not Jewish, and you come busting into my house in the middle of the night, and —“

“Wait!” Archie said desperately. “Just listen! I'm a friend of Professor André Beaumarchais and--”

“Three I’ll give you, and then I shoot. One! Two!--”

“Wait, Pa!" Helen Steinberg interceded. “Did you say you were a friend of Professor Beaumarchais?" she asked Archie.

“That’s right. I just wanted to see if you were a particular girl. But you’re not, and so I guess I'll be toddling along.”

“I shouldn’t shoot him?” Zeke Steinberg wanted to know.

“I don’t know, Pa.” His wife, Charity, was confused.

“Of course not!" Helen told her father. “He’s a friend of Professor André Beaumarchais.” She beamed a smile at Archie. “So what are you sitting outside for? Come in. Come in. Take off your potato peels and make yourself at home.” She held out her hand to help Archie out of the dumbwaiter.

He climbed to the kitchen floor in a shower of debris that sent Mama Steinberg scuttling for a broom and dustpan. “Do you know Professor Beaumarchais well?" he asked Helen.

“I should know him? I never even met the gentleman.”

“Beaumarchais?” Charity Steinberg mused. “That’s a Jewish name? ”

“Then if you don’t know him, how come-—?”

“Not only is he a goy," Zeke Steinberg hissed to his wife and pointed at Archie, “but also he’s deformed.”

“Not really,” Archie tried to explain to Helen. “It’s just that I’ve been cramped up in that dumbwaiter so long I can't straighten up.”

“You think he paints pictures, maybe?” Mama Steinberg responded to her husband.

“No,” Archie said. “And I'm not going to chop off my ear, either.” Slowly and creakingly, he managed to force his frame into an erect position.

“That’s better,” Helen granted. “So tell me, did Professor Beaumarchais send you to see me? Did he give you a message? Come in the living room, you'll sit down and tell me what it is.”

“You think it's safe to leave her alone with him?" Papa Steinberg whispered to his wife as Helen led Archie out of the kitchen.

“Try to watch her every minute, it’ll drive you mesbuginah," his wife sighed. “So come on back to bed, we’ll keep our fingers crossed.”

In the living room Archie was trying to straighten out the clutter in his mind. “Did you say you’d never met Professor Beaumarchais?” he asked Helen Steinberg.

“That’s right.”

“Then how—? I mean, why—-?”

“We’ve corresponded for a number of years. It started when I was a student and first became interested in atomic transmutation. I wrote to him in Paris, asking for a bissel information on his latest experiments. You see, from a scientific journal I’d been reading, I found out he was the foremost expert in the field. He answered, and I answered, and we’ve been corresponding ever since. Also, we sometimes play chess by mail. You play chess?”

“Yeah,” Archie replied. “But I’m probably not in a class with Andre.”

“It doesn’t matter. Chess exercises the muscles of the mind. I’m working out problems every morning as a sort of setting-up exercise for my brain. But it’s better to play. Much better.” As Helen was speaking, she was opening a drawer in a coffee table and removing a chess set. Now she started setting up the pieces.

“So what are they doing?" Mama Steinberg hissed to her husband from the bed.

“Playing chess,” he told her, peering around the frame of the bedroom door.

“No,” Archie was telling Helen as he made his opening move. “I don’t really have a message for you from Professor Beaumarchais. He sort of suggested I look you up,” he lied.

“Alone with Helen in her nightgown, and he plays chess,” Mama Steinberg mused. “You think maybe his mother could have been Jewish?”

“He promised to arrange a meeting between us the next time he was in New York,” Helen said as she quickly moved her king’s knight. She didn’t even seem to be looking at the board.

“Oh? Any particular reason?” Archie moved his queen’s pawn to set up a defense.

“He said that something I’d written in one of my letters to him had inspired a particular bit of research He wanted to discuss it with me.” Helen castled. “I was very flattered.”

“I see. Then I don’t suppose you knew any of his other friends? Another girl named Helen? A blonde? Or a redhead named Dixie?” Archie followed her example and castled himself.

“No. Why should I? I told you, we never met in person.” She moved her queen swiftly across the board to threaten Archie’s queen side, where the men were still boxed in.

Archie’s mind was racing. If she was familiar with the professor’s research, then maybe there was some connection between Helen Steinberg and the professor’s death and the missing papers. There were very few people who might have comprehended the professor’s research, and she had admitted to being one of them. Also, the whole atmosphere of the Steinberg home didn’t ring true. The stress on jewishness seemed contrived. The whole family looked like stereotypes out of a Cotton Mather courtroom, but behaved more like stereotypes out of a highly ethnic episode in a Molly Goldberg serial. Preoccupied, Archie guarded against the queen threat by moving a pawn. “Have you been home all night?” he asked idly.

“Uh—huh. We’ve been sitting shiva for my brother.” Helen answered matter-of-factly, her mind too much on the game to wonder at the question. Her bishop closed in on Archie’s king corner.

“Oh. I'm sorry.” Archie moved his rook out, preparing for the bishop-queen onslaught.

“Sorry about what?” Helen asked absent-mindedly, knitting her brow as she studied the board.

“About your loss.”

“What loss?” She moved her knight so that it became a tempting sacrifice to the pawn guarding against her queen.

“I mean your brother’s death.” Archie didn’t take the bait. He held to his original plan and moved his free rook forward instead.

“My brother isn’t dead.” Her bishop swept down the board.

“But you said—”

“Oh, you mean about sitting shiva? That’s just a custom. You see, he refused to go to shule and Mama and Papa had a big fight with him about it and he left home and they said he was dead to them and they tore their clothes and called the rabbi and so we all had to sit shim. But he isn’t really dead, my brother.”

“Oh.” Archie moved his queen’s knight out to meet her bishop. “Your family certainly takes their religion seriously,” he observed.

“That’s because we’re converted. That’s always the way, you know? When you convert, you take it even more seriously than people who are born to it.” Helen moved her queen surely across the board. “Check!” she announced with a hint of triumph in her voice.

“Why did you convert?” Archie wondered, studying the situation on the board.

“I didn’t; Mama and Papa did. So naturally my brother and I were supposed to follow their lead. I was glad to, but he balked.”

“Why were you glad to?” Archie retrieved his rook and blocked the check.

“For the same reason Mama and Papa converted. To assimilate.” She angled her bishop in to the attack. “Check! " she announced again.

“To assimilate?” Archie was distracted from the board.

“Yes. You see, we were originally Puritans. I was brought uf in New England. On a farm, no less. But then the farm fizzled out and Papa was offered this very good job with a Jewish firm in New York and the company arranged for this apartment for us on Central Park West. Well, after a couple of weeks, Papa realized that all our neighbors were either Catholic or Jewish. Status-wise we were nowhere, if you see what I mean. So Papa investigated and found out there was maybe two thousand more years’ status in being Jewish than in being Catholic, and so we all had to take instructions from the rabbi and convert. It was really very wise of Papa. We all assimilated very well—-except for my brother, of course. But then he’s always had this bit of identifying with the overdog. Always rooting for the cavalry instead of the Indians during those Western movies on TV. I ask you? You give a boy like that a heritage, and what good is it? Every time Papa’s back was turned, he sneaks out to the Puritan Church. Won’t kiss the mazuzah when he comes in the house. Just a bum, that’s all. I don’t blame Papa for disowning him.” Helen sighed. “You’re still in check,” she reminded Archie.

“Yeah. So I am.” Archie studied the positions for a long, silent moment and then fended off her bishop attack with his own bishop. “Are you a physicist, too, like Professor Beaumarchais?" he asked Helen Steinberg.

“Only in an amateur way. Abstract mathematics is really my major interest. I’m going for my Ph.D. in it now. It has a lot of applications in atomic science, you know.” Helen shifted her queen and said “Check!” again.

Archie smiled inwardly. She'd fallen into the trap. “Queen-king check,” he announced.

“Well!” She stared at the board, obviously angry with herself. “You certainly do play a shrewd game of chess for a boy,” she decided. “You planned that, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. When I realized you were using the Czech attack, I knew you’d have to fall into the Morphy trap. It’s an old counter-gambit, but it hasn’t been used much by the masters in recent years.”

“It’s really schoen. I’ll have to remember it.” Helen looked at him respectfully. She moved her bishop to guard the queen.

Archie gladly swapped his bishop for her queen. Then he moved his own queen in for the kill. “Check!” he said. She was forced to move her king. He cornered her with his rook. “Check.” Again she had to move the king. His bishop delivered the coup de grace. “Check and mate!” Archie leaned back and grinned at his victory.

“He beat her!” Papa Steinberg hissed to Mama Steinberg from the bedroom doorway.

“And he’s not even Jewish?” Mama Steinberg was surprised. “I don’t believe it!”

“Another!” Helen demanded of Archie.

“I really don’t have time,” he protested. “I’ve been up all night, and--”

“That a young man should beat Helen at chess!” Papa Steinberg shook his head. “That’s really something!"

“All the fellas she’s driven away, their tails between their legs, all because of that chess,” Mama Steinberg agreed, “and now she has to pick a goy to let beat her. You think maybe she’s in love with him?”

“But you can’t just trounce me and leave!” Helen Steinberg was wailing. “You have to give me a chance to get even.”

“Another time, maybe,” Archie offered.

“He’s pretty young for her,” Papa Steinberg answered his wife. “But you never know.”

“So that could maybe work out good. There’s still time he should change his mind, go to pre-med, and become a doctor.”

“It’s not fair!” Helen was bitter.

“Honest, my eyes are closing!”

“You think maybe he'd convert?” Papa wondered.

“Why not? We did!”

“You’re just leaving in such a hurry because I’m Jewish!” Helen accused Archie.

“I’m tired. I told you.” He flung open the front door of the apartment. “It wouldn’t make any difference if you were Zoroastrian!”

“It would be an improvement!” The young man was standing in front of the apartment door with a key in his hand. Now he peered over Archie’s shoulder and waved. “Hi, Sis,” he called. “Introduce me to the new boyfriend.”

“This is my ex-brother, Ebenezer,” she told Archie. “His name is Archimedes Jones,” she added to her brother.

“Jones? That’s not a Jewish name. And you don’t look Jewish, either,” Ebenezer decided.

“Neither do you," Archie told him.

“Well, I'm not. I’m a Puritan. A born Puritan,” he added with a significant look at Helen. “But then I'm not courting my sister in her nightgown at six in the ayem, so I don’t have to be Jewish.”

“Enough! You bum!” Zeke Steinberg came running into the foyer and confronted his son. “You’re nobody to be talking that way about your sister, a nice Jewish girl! And besides, you’re dead! We sat shiva for you! So what are you dong here?"

“I left a book here. The Memoirs Of Cotton Mather. I came back for it.”

“The doorman saw you coming in?” Mama Steinberg asked anxiously, peering at her son over her husband’s shoulder.

“That he did!” the son admitted with relish.

“Oy!” she sighed. “What will the neighbors think?”

“No consideration! Look what you’re doing to the woman,” Papa Steinberg growled at his son.

“Your own mother!” Helen Steinberg added.

“Look,” Archie interrupted, feeling ill at ease in the middle of the family quarrel. “I’m going to split now, so I’ll just say goodbye.” He started edging around Ebenezer, who was still blocking the doorway.

“Zeke, stop him!” Mama Steinberg walled.

“So What’s the matter? He wants to leave, let him."

“The doorman,” Mama Steinberg reminded her husband. “It’s not bad enough he sees one goy coming up-—” She pointed dramatically at her son. “-—but now he’ll see another goy leaving. And besides, think of Helen’s reputation.”

“Ooh! That’s right,” Helen chimed in. “Do something, Pa! ”

“So all right! You there, Jones. Just wait a minute ’til I figure something out.”

Archie waited obligingly. “See how it is when you fool around with these Jewish girls,” Ebenezer told him sotto voce. “Before you turn around, the whole family’s telling you when you can go to the bathroom.”

“I got it.” Papa Steinberg snapped his fingers. “He’ll just have to leave the way he came.’

“Oh, no!” Archie exclaimed. “Not the dumbwaiter again!"

“It was good enough to come, it’s good enough to go!” Mama Steinberg insisted.

“I don't care if you're the best chess player in the whole world,” Papa Steinberg added. “Some consideration you have to have for Helen’s reputation, too.”

“It wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d become Irish Catholics,” Ebenezer confided. “But there’s nothing worse than a Puritan Jew when it comes to courtship traditions.”

“Oh, all right.” Archie gave up. “I’ll leave by the dumbwaiter.”

The whole family escorted him back into the kitchen. Papa Steinberg took his elbow and helped him back onto the dumbwaiter platform. Mama repacked the bags of garbage neatly so he could hold them more comfortably on his journey downward. Helen stacked the baby bottles in his lap. Ebenezer merely stood to one side and miffed.

“What’s that awful smell?” he wanted to know. “This thing never did come up roses, but I never remember it stinking this bad. It smells like--” He left the sentence unfinished out of a remnant of deference to his mother.

“That’s what it is,” Archie told him. He explained about the trained poodles.

“Come again, I'll make chicken soup,” Mama Steinberg told him.

“Maybe Friday night,” Papa suggested.

“We’ll play chess,” Helen promised.

“Goodbye,” Archie said as they all beamed at him and shut the door in his face.

It closed with a rather loud slam. Immediately the door to Archie’s left popped open. The Scandinavian maid’s face appeared, her watery blue eyes squinting myopically .

“Yust the same I sure you a relative for the Steinbergs," she told Archie. “Only Ebenezer and some cousins ain’t Jewish either come and leave this way.” She closed the door again without waiting for an answer.

Archie reached for the rope to pull himself downward. Just as his hand fastened on it, the door on the other side opened. “WOOF! WOOF!” The poodle which had appeared in the opening sprang for Archie’s throat. But Archie was too fast or him. He yanked the rope and descended before the dog could leap to the dumbwaiter platform. By way of revenge, there was a tinkling onto the roof over Archie’s head.

However, there were more troubles in store for Archie. Just as he reached the fourth floor on his way down, another door opened and the brunette in the evening gown stared out at him.

“RAPE!” she screamed. “HELP! RAPE!”

“And I’m happy to see you again, too,” Archie greeted her. “But I’m a little rushed right now and I can’t stop in, so it’s no good your pleading.” He yanked hard on the rope and continued down.

Just as he passed the next floor, the ropes were yanked in the opposite direction. The dumbwaiter moved up. Archie pulled it down again. A muttered curse from above and another yank. A brief tug of war which Archie lost. It ended with two more bags of garbage being dumped into his lap and the dumbwaiter door closing.

He had a hard time juggling them as he continued lowering himself. The result was that he inadvertently banged on the door at the first level. Immediately, it opened.

“Must be the diaper man, darling,” a female voice said. An arm appeared and a load of dirty diapers was deposited atop the pile of garbage Archie was already holding. The door was closed.

Finally Archie reached the basement. He managed to pry the dumbwaiter door open from the inside. Just as he was climbing out, a voice accosted him.

“Just where do you think you’re coming from?”

Archie turned around to face a man in the overalls and work shirt of a janitor. “The Steinberg apartment,” he told him, too tired to lie.

“Oh.” The janitor nodded knowingly. “You’re not Jewish.”

“That’s right. I’m not Jewish.”

“You look awful,” the janitor told him. “And you smell worse.”

“I know that.”

“There’s asparagus sticking out of your left ear. That's a pretty funny place to put asparagus. What do you put it there for?”

“I ran out of cauliflower,” Archie told him with as much dignity as he could summon. “That’s why.”

“Oh.” The janitor nodded as if that explained everything. “Well, I’ll be seeing you.” He turned away and started walking toward the other end of the cellar.

“So long.” Archie headed for the exit.

When he was outside, he paused for a minute and took stock. It had been a long hard night and he should probably head straight for home and bed. But the address next to the last name on his list, Helen Giammori, was only a few blocks away. Archie decided he might as well check it out first.

It turned out to be a seamy residential hotel on a side street in the Eighties between Columbus and Amsterdam. The clerk at the desk didn’t bother looking up from his racing form as Archie entered the lobby. His eyes stayed glued to it as he muttered a room number in answer to Archie's question about where he’d find Helen Giammori.

Archie took the self-service elevator up and then walked down to the end of a long hallway. He knocked at the door and idly picked at the peeling wallpaper as he waited for an answer. When none came, he knocked again and resumed his peeling.

“Just a minute,” a sleepy female voice called out this time.

Archie kept peeling. Finally the door was opened. At last! It was the Helen standing in the doorway.

“Well, hello there, sweetie,” she greeted him. “I see you finally managed to get your pants on!”

CHAPTER SIX

TEN MINUTES later Archie was on his knees in a clothes closet with his eye glued to the keyhole. He wasn’t alone in his interest in the scene at which he was staring. Across the room from the closet in which he was hiding, two men were even more caught up in the happenings than Archie was.

One of the two men was grinding away with a portable movie camera. The other had just finished setting up some sound equipment, and now he was positioning the actors and giving them some last-minute instructions. He finished, joined the cameraman, and signaled for the action to begin.

Helen lay in bed, her eyes closed, simulating sleep. The light on the nightstand was on, and the sheet was pulled up around her neck. As Archie watched, she began writhing under the sheet, as if caught up in some erotic dream. Soon the sheet was tossed off and she was revealed in a transparent black nightgown.

Still she tossed, her blonde hair fanning out over the pillow. Her hands began moving over her body, caressing her hips and her thighs, and then moving up again to squeeze her breasts. She bent one leg at the knee, and the nightgown fell back to reveal the creamy smoothness of her thighs. She turned on her side, the camera following for a close-up as the strap of the nightgown slipped off her shoulder and one of her firm, missile-shape breasts was revealed. She rolled on her back again, and the breast pointed straight up, the long red tip trembling. She strummed it delicately with one finger, and her tongue peeped out from between her lips. Then it retreated again, and a small, satisfied smile shaped her mouth.

Prompted by the man who seemed to be directing, the cameraman moved back for a long, sweeping shot of the length of Helen’s body. The director made signs to her that she should roll over, and she complied. The nightgown was up over her derriere, and it rotated rhythmically as she ground her lower body against the bed. Then she switched over to her back once more and stretched both her legs wide apart and high in the air. The camera swept in for a close-up of the area the legs framed.

Now the camera switched to the window to catch a man in the act of climbing over the sill. The man was carrying a burglar’s kit and wearing a mask. He stopped short as he caught sight of Helen writhing on the bed. Her thighs were glistening now with the juices of her dream of passion.

The burglar lit a cigarette and stood over her, watching. One of her hands fluttered to her mouth. The other returned to her breast to trace the outline of the widening pink roseate from which the long, scarlet nipple rose. The tunnel of her lust seemed to have a life of its own now.

The burglar bent over and inserted the cork tip of the cigarette. The end of the cigarette glowed, and a cloud of smoke was expelled. This was repeated a few times, and then the burglar withdrew the butt and tamped it out in an ashtray on the night table beside the bed.

He opened his kit and took out a pair of pliers. He held a match to the jaws of the pliers until the metal glowed. Then he waved them in the air to cool them. Finally, he inserted them. Helen moaned deep in her throat and the handles of the pliers opened and closed, opened and closed. . . .

The pliers were replaced with a screwdriver which was swallowed up, then a larger screwdriver and finally a still larger one. These were followed by a series of wrenches. The final one found Helen, presumably still asleep, stretched taut with both hands manipulating the wrench until it was a blur of motion like a fast-moving piston.

“Oh! Ah! Ooh! EEYOW!” she screamed and finally subsided.

The burglar retrieved the tool and watched as Helen slowly started moving again. Then he nodded to himself and took some twine from the kit. He tied strands of it to all four of the bedposts with slip-knot nooses attached to each. He gently placed two of the nooses around each of Helen’s ankles. From behind the headboard, he grabbed each of Helen’s wrists, jerked them sharply into position, and pulled the knots tight.

The sudden roughness evidently awakened her. Her blue eyes opened wide and her nymphette face filled with fear. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Who are you?” Then, as she realized her predicament, she screamed. “Help! Rape! Help!"

“It won’t do you any good to scream. There’s no one to hear you,” her assailant told her. Now he stripped off his mask and was revealed as a not bad-looking young man. His hair was black and so was the obviously phony mustache he was wearing. He stroked the long ends of it as he surveyed his struggling prize. “There’s only you and me,” he said softly. “You’re mine to do with as I wish. And you’d better please me,” he added menacingly.

“What do you want of me?” Helen sobbed, her struggles against her fetters making her body all the more sensual.

“Only to fulfill your dreams,” he told her.

“My dreams?” She stopped struggling. Her face brightened as if with the memory of her recent dreams. Then she contrived a maidenly blush “But what can you know about my dreams?” she asked with girlish naivete.

“More than you think!” He twirled the mustache with an evil leer worthy of the unscrupulous banker in an old-fashioned morality play. “Isn’t this what you’ve been dreaming about?” He unzipped his fly and manhood jumped out as if propelled by a power spring. Truly, it seemed an outsized weapon eager to do battle. Watching from the closet keyhole, Archie knew a moment of envy.

Helen’s blue eyes grew even wider with awe at the sight of it. She trembled with fear, but at the same time she managed to contrive to lick her lips in a manner conveying lust. “Are you determined to kill me, then?” she asked in a quavering voice. “If you attack my poor body with such a giant club, surely I’ll never survive!”

“We‘ll see about that!” Taking himself in hand, the still-clothed burglar mounted the foot of the bed between the two posts and knelt so that his weapon grazed Helen’s exposed and vulnerable funnel of love. “Yes,” he mused, bending low to make the comparison, “we’ll have to see about widening things a bit first.” He drew back and then bent over so that the ends of his mustache tickled the insides of Helen’s thighs.

She laughed uncontrollably and began thrashing about as his lips found their mark. The camera moved in for a close-up of his tongue dipping into her treasure trove. It caught the little droplets of passion his eager mouth missed as they glistened on the blonde down.

Finally Helen began slamming her trussed body up and down in a series of powerful, uncontrollable jerks. He reached under her and forced her derriere into camera range. Then he dug his hands between the creamy halves of it as he continued nibbling wildly at the raw fruit of her desire.

Helen screamed aloud. It was an incoherent scream, starting as a protest at the indignity of his fingers’ probing and ending as an ecstatic wail of fulfillment when his strongly sipping lips drew forth the final nectar of her erupting body. She continued to shudder as he raised his head.

“Nobody ever did that to me before!” she told him.

“Did you like it?"

“Yes!” she blurted out. “No!” she denied it quickly. “You forced me! ”

“Ha-ha! And how you like to be forced, eh? Well, now you look to be opened up enough to handle my troops.” He sprawled over her, turning a little sideways so the camera could catch the full length of his manhood as he inserted it. Helen’s fingers stretched her sheath wide so as not to be upstaged.

Briefly, as they began moving, the camera panned in on Helen’s face. It was suffused with ecstasy. It stayed that way even as the camera moved back to concentrate on the juncture of their bodies. Finally she cried out once again.

The burglar disengaged. The sound caused by the abrupt withdrawal was similar to that made by a cork being popped from a champagne bottle. It seemed impossible from Archie’s vantage point that the unbelievably large organ he still displayed had ever been buried in the seemingly small orifice framed by the blonde follicles.

He strode to the head of the bed and grabbed Helen's hair, yanking her face around until it was turned toward him. With his other hand he squeezed her cheeks until her eyes bulged and her mouth was finally forced into a large O. Then he thrust forward, filling the O until her cheeks bulged. Still twisting her hair, he forced her to move her head back and forth until a rhythm had been established. It went faster and faster, until he suddenly grabbed the back of her head with both hands, his thumbs clawing at her ears, and buried himself to the hilt while she gagged and sputtered and choked on the results of his lust. And still he held her tight until the last drop was drained.