Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (73 page)

Her eyes were accustoming themselves to the dark. But his weren’t. She had a very slight advantage. She heard him groping his way to the bed. Heard his hard breathing. Knew, at once, his intention. So then, it
was
the pig, the sadist. She was slated for death, but before that this animal was determined to use her body.

She stopped shivering. Now she knew that she wanted to kill. She wasn’t afraid any longer; she was filled with hate. She would do it.

Standing there, scarcely breathing, she waited. And heard him go down on the bed. Hard, vicious, brutal … only a disgusting animal.

In less than five seconds he knew she wasn’t there. She heard his oath.

Now, she thought. It had to be now.

She reached up, freed the picture from the wall. It was heavy … that was good, but her hands had started trembling again. She had to do this. She
had
to.

His curses rang out. He was no longer quiet. A vicious barrage of Spanish was unleashed, and he stumbled about; in the dim light she saw his flailing arms. She felt when he neared her; smelled it, too. The disgusting breath was on her cheek. And then fingers touched her. Her flesh crawled and suddenly she was totally calm, totally prepared. He grasped her arm, gloating and with a loud cry of triumph. The sweaty hand slid up her arm, to the shoulder, and then she raised the heavy picture and brought it down on his head.

The metal frame hit against bone.

The sound was horrendous, bringing water into her mouth.

There was a thick cry of agony, and then a ghastly groan. The hand on her arm slid away, like soft bananas, rotten and decayed. It was so hard for her not to scream, not to give way to frayed nerves. But she was silent. The heavy body hit the floor. And the place where the picture frame had smashed down on him was wet … slimy, hot, slippery. Her hands touched the wet place; she smelled the hot, new letting of blood, retched, turned away, circled the inert body and placed, with utmost precision and caution, the picture on top of the bed. Then she moved slowly and silently to the door.

It was open.

Scarcely believing it, pausing fearfully for one paralyzed moment, she stepped out into the hall.

There was utter quiet.

It couldn’t be this easy, she thought. Someone would come and hit her again.

It couldn’t possibly be this simple.

But it was.

The house was dark. She maneuvered the stairs and got to the bottom. In the pale light from outdoors she saw the door, went to it, saw a bolt, prayed, and slid it back.

It made scarcely a sound.

And then she was outside.

She didn’t have time to think. She simply walked, her muscles taut and controlled, through the courtyard to the open road beyond. She walked quietly and purposefully for about a quarter of a mile. And then started running. A shoe came off; she found it and slipped into it again. And ran on. It was a main highway, but there were no cars. It was the middle of the night. There was nothing, only the empty road and the dark night. She was glad for the darkness, praying only that there would be no blinding headlights suddenly, no big, black car zooming up behind her.

Blisters formed on her heels. But she scarcely felt them.

It was impossible to know how long she had been walking. There was still no sign of light in the sky. Her watch had stopped: she hadn’t thought to wind it. It could be midnight, or it could be, four in the morning.

She had no idea where she was headed.

She sat down finally. She was out of breath and she had the feeling that she was all alone on planet earth. She was the last living person in the world. Loneliness was a killing thing.

There must, sooner or later, be a house somewhere.

She got up again and trudged on, her feet sore and swollen. The road turned, a low-lying branch brushed against her cheek, moist with dew and cobwebbed.

Ugh. And then, rounding the bend, she saw the lighted towers in the distance, thought first that it was a mirage, and then knew what lay ahead, just over the hill.

An airport.

The conning towers, winking their lights, rise high.

The Sevilla Airoporto.

It was, it was!

The airport.

She was home.

“For you,” the night desk clerk said to Steve, who was sitting in the lobby, waiting for morning.

He sprang up.

“Yes?” He spoke into the phone.

“Mr. Connaught?”

“Yes, yes. This is he.”

“Someone to speak to you. Please hold on.”

An interminably long silence and then a golden voice, a beautiful, beloved voice.

“Steve? It’s Kelly.”

“Jesus Christ, it’s about time,” he said, putting a hand to his mouth. “Where the hell are you?”

“At the airport. San Pablo. Could you come and get me?”

“Are you all right, Kelly?”

She might have been playing bridge with friends. Her voice was as cool as glass.

“Sure. I’m fine. But will you come?”

“I don’t know how long it takes to get there,” he said. “But if you budge I’ll break every bone in your body. Just sit. I’ll be there.”

“I won’t move,” she said, and laughed.

“Good-bye,” he said. “And I love you.”

• • •

It was daylight when they started back to the Hotel Madrid. The sky was pink and violet and the sun was beginning to shine through clouds.

“Gee, I’m sorry, Steve,” Kelly apologized once or twice, as she fell over, dozing, against his shoulder. “Am I interfering with your driving?”

“You’re interfering with my breathing,” he said. “But then you did from the beginning. You smell like a rose, and I always did go for roses.”

“I sweat like a pig,” she said. “It was so hot in that house. I’m sure I’m rancid. How can you stand it?”

“Put your little feet up,” he said tenderly. “Just be comfortable. You’re sure they didn’t hurt you?”

“No. But I may have killed someone.”

“I hope you did,” he said harshly. “I hope he suffered, the way I … and you …”

But he was talking to the air. She was fast asleep. He gunned the motor. This sweet kid has to get to bed, he thought.

Madrid, June fourteenth,
1970.

Richard wrote the date on Hotel Ritz stationery. He and his mother were staying there, instead of at Uncle Constant’s, before returning to the States.

He nibbled the top of the pen and then addressed his letter.

“Dear Aunt Elizabeth.”

He put the pen down. What a wonderful time they’d had, he and Steve and Kelly. What a glorious time.

Why couldn’t things always be like that?

He took the pen again and started writing.

“Incredible things have happened in the last week or so. I’m sure you’ve had some word sent to you, about everything. Of course I suspected Uncle Constant, but it was Dolores and the chauffeur. You see, Dolores thought that, with Mummy out of the way, she and Uncle Constant could have me, since I seem to be worth a great deal of money, through Grandma’s trust fund. Kelly, my friend, was kidnaped, and almost lost her life, but in the end justice triumphed.

“I feel sorry for Mummy, but she has problems I don’t understand. I wish, you know, that I could live with you. I don’t know whether you would like that, but — ”

He read over what he had written, and then tore the paper into little pieces and sat there, despondent.

It will never be like that, he thought. I have a mother, and I have to live with her.

• • •

Constant Comstock was in his library. He had just returned from a two hour session with the American Counsul in Madrid. He had cleared himself of a heinous charge, but it was, nevertheless, a black mark against him. In all his years as a career diplomat there had never been the slightest suggestion of wrong-doing.

Now, at this late date, there was.

His own wife had negotiated with a shady South American couple — not even Spanish — for a kidnaping and death. The very name was an insult … Nascimento, meaning “birth.”

Death-dealers … with a name like that.

And Dolores, in the most devious way, had rifled his files, found the information on the subject pair and used it to her advantage.

Truly, women were vile creatures.

Vile and filthy.

Three persons were now under surveillance. Lucia and Jorge Nascimento. And Jose Chavez. They would be caught in the net, all three of them.

These facts were all neatly arranged in a manila folder labeled COMSTOCK, CONSTANT.

They had dirtied his name. His good name.

My brother was lucky, he thought. My brother died.

He was alone to handle this … this ugly, dirty thing.

So this was what his life had come to. A life once so filled with promise.

In the end, everyone was a loser. What had been was taken away. The road led downhill, irrevocably, and the final victor was death. Life was a cheat, a fraud. It was a losing proposition.

• • •

“What do you want?” Dolores asked uneasily, when her husband said he had some business with her. He had cornered her in her bedroom.

“You did it for me, you’ll tell me,” he said. “Oh yes, you’re beautiful. You look like a Madonna.”

She screamed. The whip lashed out, catching the gold of the sun. It hissed, but it didn’t touch her. Curling, smoking, it burned on the tiled floor.

“No,” Dolores cried, the blood rushing to her head. She had never before known fear like this fear.

An arm was raised again.

She gasped, put her hands up.

“Constant! For God’s sake! Yes, I did it for you.”

This time the whip didn’t hit the floor. It curled across the woman’s tanned, splendid shoulders, wound itself in a terrible caress, laid open an arc of tender flesh.

The scream came again. Foam bubbled at the corners of the woman’s mouth. The blood surged to the surface across her collar bones.

The next scream was cut off in mid-air as the whip swung once more. This time she fell to the floor. She smelled her own blood, was blinded with pain and desperation. With the third blow she was speechless, able only to mew like a cat, her almost blind eyes watching the swing of the whip.

And then that was about all. The fourth lash swept across her face, her beautiful face. Sinking, soaked in blood and drowning in white agony, she knew that her beauty was gone forever. Even the physical punishment couldn’t equal that hideous knowledge. But it was all soon forgotten. Her eyes closed, her senses failed, and Constant Comstock, watching her pitilessly, threw away the whip and went down and got into the car.

He drove steadily, in control of himself, and thought, I have loved this city, and remembered its topography, its history, its legends. It kept him company, the lore and splendor of his adopted Madrid, as he drove to the pine-clad mountains of the Guadarrama, climbing steadily, and the breezes were fragrant with the scent of pine and broom.

Near the top he turned the car, idled the motor as he looked down at the valleys below. Just before he put the car in motion again he looked up at those clear, blue Velazquez skies.

Then he took a deep breath, gunned the motor, and let her go. The turns were serpentine. For a few minutes his hands guided the wheel, then he sat on them. The car, on its own power, zoomed down, gaining speed. There was an overwhelming impulse to put his hands back on the wheel, but Constant Comstock closed his eyes and, perhaps praying, kept his palms down, letting the vehicle go where it would. It has to be, he reasoned with himself. There was no other way.

He heard the rending crash as the car hit an impediment in the road. His eyes flew open and his hands came up from the seat. But they didn’t go to the wheel. He saw the precipice below, felt the car careening toward it, and his hands went to his face, blotting out what was going to happen next.

He was Daedelus, winged, flying into the blue …

The impetus, as the car hurtled the cliff, smashed him against the roof of the tonneau: as the impact knocked him senseless there was one last thought.

And yet I did love her …

After a dozen overspins the car came to rest on a lower plateau. It caught fire almost at once. Plumes of red soared into the sky. And after a while there was only the smoldering. There were several annual accidents in the dangerous Guadarrama mountains. This time it was no accident, but would be lumped with the rest of the fatal disasters that, yearly, took place in the mountain passages where once a girl named Carmen had taken refuge with her lover, Don Jose.

Lisbon.

The hotel was the Tivoli, on the Avenida da Liberdade, a broad, gorgeous thoroughfare rising from the sea in a steep incline and culminating at its top in the Praco de Marques de Pombal, where a gigantic statue of the grandee towered at its center, its gaze fixed on the River Tagus down below.

They spent most of the day at the Estoril. It was easier to hire a car and driver, so they did that. They sat and drank and then rented bathing suits and swam in the blue water, lay on the white sand and slept, holding hands.

The day passed all too soon. Later, back at the hotel, they had an early dinner and then went to bed.

Kelly packed, soberly, was ready the following morning. From time and training she was in Ops at the airport at the proper time. “There’s a California film star in first class,” she was told. “Confidentially,” the briefing instructor added, “he’s a notorious drunk.”

The passengers came on board.

“Good morning, may I have your seat number?” the welcoming stewardess said in honeyed tones.

And then Kelly saw Steve climb on board.

“This is my future,” she said to the girl at the gate. “Give this guy the red carpet treatment.”

There was a double take and then a giggle. “Got it,” the girl said. “Oh, my, he’s terribly attractive, Kelly.”

The 747, the Monster, cut across the sky above the Atlantic Ocean. In a short lull, Kelly sat with Steve. “Can I get you anything?” she asked.

“Not at the moment.”

“Well, then,” she said. “I have a little time to myself. And during that time, there are a few questions I’d like to have answers to.”