Chapter 17
The Baroness, Carotti and Istvan lingered on after dinner, chatting idly to Von Wildersee. The others had retired.
Von Wildersee was tailing about the skiing at Garmisch.
"It's the sport I love most-and the place I love most to enjoy it," be was saying, when the baroness interrupted.
"Istvan?" she called. "Madame?" "You tired?" "Not very. May I ask why?"
"I mean, could you wait up an hour or two? Dino and I have something to arrange. After that, he'll want to go down to the town-also for an hour or two."
"But certainly," said Istvan, with a smile. "Dino wants me to drive him, then?"
"What cooks now, Lillian?" asked Von Wildersee, puzzled by this exchange.
"Plans, Hermann. Don't worry-you'll see-when you see," she said.
Von Wildersee wagged an admonishing finger at her. "One day," he warned, "you arc going to wind up behind an eight-ball so big that not even you'll be able to get out of it."
"Till then," cooed the baroness, roguishly, "I'll get bythe way I'm going. I like it fine."
"When you get in the shit-don't come to me for help."
"If I get in it," she corrected, "I'll remember that warning, Hermann." Von Wildersee went to bed.
Carotti and the baroness finished their drinks. They left Istvan and went out, an air of conspiracy between them.
Istvan shrugged his shoulders. Something was happening. Whatever it was, was no concern of his. So, since he had an hour or two to wait, he took up a bottle of Scotch whisky, a syphon of ice-cold soda, and moved into the adjoining library.
The library at Chateau Cloisy was celebrated throughout France-the repository for a greater collection of erotica than perhaps any other library of its kind. The walls of the study were lined with shelves from floor to ceiling. And there, amid the writings, the artwork, and the infinite variety of material devoted to the cults and practices of the vast half-world peopled by sexual deviates, Istvan browsed, fascinated by the wealth of Hermann von Wildersee's collection.
It was past eleven o'clock when he heard someone enter the adjoining lounge. Dino's voice called out:
"Istvan! Where arc you?"
"Here," sang out Istvan, "in the library! You ready, now r
He replaced seven or eight massive volumes of lewd, obscene medieval woodcuts as Dino came into the room.
"What a collection! Know what I'm going to do, Dino, one day when I get a vacation again? I'm going to ask Herr von Wildersee to let me spend the whole of that holiday right here in this very library. I want to read every goddam book on every shelf in the place!"
"Alone? Or with Althea?"
Istvan grinned.
"Because," said Dino, impishly, "if you bring Althea with you, it's my bet you're not even going to find the lime to finish the books on one shelf. This lot is rated the finest collection in the whole world4-did you know that?"
"I didn't," said Istvan, impressed. "But I'm ready to believe it. So? You ready?" "Yes. Sorry for this. But I'll let you into it as we go."
They were speeding through the night in one of the prince's station-wagons.
"I don't want you to let on to anybody yet, Istvan," be^an Dino, "but the set-up's like this. You remember that night at my villa, in Rome-the night we showed the movie? Well, I don't know if you heard anything strange about the projector, that evening-did you?" Istvan looked blank.
"Negative," he said. But he had a idea of what was coming, "Weil," said Carotti. "It was all Lillian's idea-but it seemed a good one. You know this new film-faster even than infra-red-that they've developed in Japan. Well, a friend has sent me a few hundred feet of it and I've been-well, I suppose you could call it experimenting...
"You mean-you've been shooting shots of us-"
"Just that," said Dino, blandly.
He drew back the lapel of his jacket. There, in a tiny sling beneath his armpit, hung a small movie camera. It was nevertheless, even to Istvan's unschooled eye, a highly expensive piece of equipment, precision-engineered in each of its turret of three lenses.
"On that thing you've been filming?" he asked.
"On this thing. Look. It takes a second, only, to focus. I shoot-so!" Dino half-turned to Istvan, so that the battery of lenses pointed directly at the driver.
"Or else 1 wear that gaily-patterned shirt of mine. And when I want to shoot, I poke the correct lens through a hole in the fabric-and voila. Not one in a hundred people would know what 1 was up to!"
Istvan smiled, in his smile admiration for Dino's daring.
"So now," continued Carotti, "we go to develop and print what I have just shot. Tomorrow I edit it, splice it, cut it, and join it all up into whatever seems a natural sequence."
"I see," said Istvan. "So long as you have fun, old man...
They pulled up at a shop in the village. A light burned in an upstairs room.
Dino and Istvan entered a surprisingly well-equipped darkroom. A battery of enlargers flanked one wall. The other was devoted to a succession of developing and printing solutions, all in gleaming white-enamelled trays. Equipment of every kind seemed to be there.
The shop-owner withdrew, silently, and Dino Carotti swung into action. His every movement swift and purposeful, he seemed as much at home among his surroundings as a surgeon in his operating theatre.
He stacked a pile of exposed film to one side of a series of little plastic developing tanks. Then, when he had located the position of everything in space, he snapped the room into total darkness, darkness so black, you could almost feel it.
It seemed to Istvan that they must have been standing there, wordlessly, in total oblivion, for hours before Dino snapped on an orange light that flickered and then caught, to flood the room, once more, with a dim, reddish glow. But it had been only a matter of fifteen minutes.
In that time, Dino had loaded each one of his developing tanks with exposed film. There were about twenty reels in all. He lit a cigarette, offered one to Istvan, then waited with the patience of long darkroom experience for the chemicals to work upon the coating of the film. From time to time he took up each tank, to agitate the solution inside.
"Not much longer to wait," he said. "Here-take a ample of these. Now we drain them-so."
He and Istvan emptied the solution into a tank, and filled the plastic containers with fixer. They set in this for some time longer-then the lot were plunged into a washing tank.
"So," said Dino, when the last of the tanks was under running water. "Now we go. This fellow can carry on, tomorrow. He'll get them ready for me, so that when I come back, I can make the final reel ready for screening. Ah, Istvan-but this will be something-I promise you. I'm burning to see the damn results myself."
"I bet a few of the folks are going to get a surprise or two," grinned Istvan.
"You can take poison on that," said Dino. "Felicityfor a start!"
It was late next afternoon by the time Dino returned to Cloisy, flushed and exultant.
The prince's library had been discovered by the other guests. Most of the party were there.
It was a strangely silent gathering. Everybody was sitting or lolling around on the carpets, deeply immersed in some volume or another, and totally oblivious to anybody else, or to whatever gauche postures they had assumed. An air of communal rut pervaded the entire room as each read, avidly, on and on. through volume after volume.
Dino leaned against the open doorway of the library, an amused smile playing over his features as he took in the effect of that mass of erotica upon those immersed in it.
Finally he ought the eye of the baroness and Istvan. He beckoned to them. Silently they left the room.
"Hell!" said Istvan. "What a formidable collection! Am I glad you showed up! Another couple of minutes of that, and everybody's going to be at each other's crotches inside there!" He applied a handkerchief delicately to his temples.
"How was the result?" asked the baroness, eagerly.
"Brilliant!'' Dino beamed. "A hundred-a thousand times better than I ever expected. This new film is out of this world! It's captured everything-the lot! Misses nothing!"
"That's going to be fun," said the baroness. She was still quivering from the sexual excitement provoked in her by the prince's collection.
"Fun!" exclaimed Dino. "Wait till you see it. Wait till you see what you were up to, for one!"
"Dino! You tramp! Not shots of me-you wouldn't dare!"
"Ah, but I would, you know-and I did, you know," said Dino, impudently.
"When do we see it? Tonight?"
"Hell, no-not tonight! This is too good to rush, Lillian. I'll have to spend a bit of time on this onesay, Monday?"
It was Thursday. Istvan thought quickly. The tour was to have ended by the week-end. His orders were to be back at base, in Switzerland, by Monday. Now here was Dino, casually talking of a screening on Monday night. Ah well, he reflected-let the idyll last as long as the baroness pleased. She, after all, was paying for it-and he was getting the pleasure, wasn't he?
"Monday?" Lillian echoed. "I'd planned to get moving by then. We can't impose on Hermann for ever, you know."
"Nonsense. Hermann's loving it. He and Felicity and those two Van Grondwijks'll set up a little whipping party on their own in a day or two-you mark my words -and they're gonna need a day or two more, after that, just to get over their wounds!"
"Can't you make it on Sunday, then?"
"Sunday-111 try."
"Do, Dino. It'll make a wonderful finale. And I do like my parties to end at top pitch-sort of crescendo, you know."
"O.K., Lillian. I'll do my best. But this is one film I'm not going to spoil."
"Good. Now let's get back inside. 1 don't want them to suspect us of being up to anything."
The baroness need not have worried. Nobody had noticed them leave the room. Nobody even noticed their return. Every pair of eyes remained glued to whatever book it was that they happened to be perusing, with spittle-drooling avidity. Hands shook, holding pages, betraying their nervous excitement.
"Christ! When this party busts out, I want to be there to see it," laughed Carotti, encompassing the picture of wanton devotion to debauchery that was there, evident on every hand.
The baroness laughed as well.
The sound of their laughter seemed to release something within that room.
It was Althea who first fell victim.
Weakly she stood up, straddling the huge volume of obscene drawings, through which she had been paging. Keeping her gaze upon the particular picture that had excited her into action, she gathered up her skirt and plunged the fingers of her other hand deep within her still-bleeding cunt. Strange animal noises were pouring from her throat-sobbing noises of a woman in rut, and she frotteured away for only one short minute before she spent her load, enormously and deliciously, into her masturbating fingers. She sank to the floor, collapsing atop her book with a sigh like that made by a deflating balloon.
Thespie Jones was next to go off. She rent her blouse from her naked, panting body, and ripped off her skirt. She lay, eyes glazed, heaving and thrashing her black woman-body in randiness.
"For Christ's sake," she swore, "this I can stand not a moment longer! Won't somebody, for the love of God, give me a fucking?"
Istvan darted a look at the baroness. It was a mute, unspoken request.
"Go right ahead," she smiled. "But-"
And she gestured meaningfully towards Rhoda Langiry, who was still deeply engrossed by what she was reading. She lay, nevertheless, with a fistful of fingers, questing business-like among the oiled bush of her cunt hair.
Istvan shucked off his clothes. His own cock was aching with the agony of the lust in which he had spent his last few hours. He caught the elegantly-built negress by her hips, and rolled her over. Thespie's legs thrashed high in the air as her body jerked spasmodically in an agony of desire.
Avoiding her legs, Istvan lunged with his tool deep into the demented woman's cunt, and he felt it drive home with his very first thrust. At the same time, heeding the baroness's command, he gently withdrew Rhoda's hand from its masturbatory mission deep within her crotch.
Surprised, she tore her eyes from her book, and looked about her for the source of this interference. Seeing, in a flash, what was going on, she scuttled her skirt up around her hips, and at the same time loosened her aching tits, their nipples angry and inflamed in their hardness, from her blouse. She came at the flickering tongue of the Swiss, just at the precise moment he extended his mouth to her cunt. In a splash of gooey spunk, warm and salty, Istvan's tongue darted into Rhoda's delicious cunt.
A sexual pandemonium ensued. Actuated simultaneously, each person fell upon whoever was nearest. Pricks plunged up hairy, receptive, superbly-oiled cunts. Mouths closed upon cunts. Mouths sought for, and absorbed, pricks. Hips thrashed. Lips writhed. Bodies jerked, ripe and ravenous for immediate orgasm. And suddenly, within mere seconds, it seemed, the entire massive group copulation ended then, as orgasm racked body after body in the final shudderings of unendurable pleasure.
Anaka-Lee alone remained unsatisfied after her first climax. The erotica had excited her more than it had the others. And when relief had come to all, it had not been Heine who had rammed the Polynesian, poking that foot-long penis of his deep up through her cervix and into her womb. No. Heine had found himself copulated into the arse of Reginaldo-the nearest haven he could find in which to plunge himself when the entire gathering had erupted into sudden, unpremeditated action. All that Anaka-Lee could find to ram into her was the prick of Dr. Shane McGarrity-and that was an engine to which she had so long ago grown so accustomed that she had become satiated, and finally insatiable, in turn, upon it McGarrity drenched off his load of semen into her maw, happily and with groaning, delighted satisfaction.
But Anaka-Lee wanted more-and she was now feverishly masturbating Jackson Willoughby into a second erection, praying wildly that it would be hard enough, soon, to plunge up her red-angry, aching quim. And when it was, and she had crammed it greedily, with voracious fingers, up her cunt it was not five or six plunges before she was off again, racked in the grip of her second coming.
Hue the pilot was not now to be denied. The vicarious pleasure he was getting out of the pleasure he was giving to the demented nymphomaniac set him grinning. Never ceasing for a moment his fucking of the Polynesian, in a moment or two he had her ripe again for yet a third discharge. When he had her at this point, he met her coming squarely in the twat with the might of his own outpouring. Together they heaved and clove to each other, backs arching as if they would split each other clean up the middle in the agony of their ejaculations. And, so mighty was the discbarge of the captain that Anaka-Lee sank back, temporarily satisfied, panting from the fatigue that comes after violent sexual exertion.