Chapter 7

"Oh, damn, damn, what happened?" Philip Matthews tried to raise himself up on his arms, failed, tried again and succeeded in hoisting himself into something resembling a sitting position. There was an ache in the back of his head which was nearly blinding him with pain, and the room seemed to be spinning wildly around on some particularly unpleasant axis of its own. Where was he? What had happened?

"You'll be okay," he heard a woman's voice reassuring him sympathetically. "You were so brave! How on earth did you ever find me?"

It was an effort of heroic proportions, but Matthews managed to get his eyes open and watched the room gradually drift to a halt as he tried to get the sequence of events straight in his head. Kathy Barton was sitting next to him, now fully dressed, holding his hand affectionately and offering him a half-filled bottle of whiskey.

"Here, drink this, Phil," she suggested calmly. "It might help the pain. They left it behind when they ran."

It seemed like a good idea, and the English teacher took the bottle, noticing that his hands were shaking and hoping that the girl would not make the same observation. The whiskey was raw and cheap, but it did help considerably. He smelled the faint scent of liquor on her breath and guessed that she had already sampled some of her own remedy.

"What happened to them? Where did they go?" he demanded, grateful at least that they were gone. He did not feel particularly courageous at this moment, and the thought of confronting Bud Swift in his present weakened condition did not appeal to him in the slightest.

'They ran away," Kathleen Barton answered simply. "After you came in with the pistol, they all seemed to get frightened and ran away. But they took the pistol with them. Maybe they thought the police were coming."

"But what happened to me?" he demanded, still impatient with the situation. "I had just walked in and was trying to decide what to do and somebody turned all the lights out!"

"Chubs. I never thought anybody so fat could move so fast, but he seemed to come out of a dead sleep in an instant, and the first thing I saw when I looked up was his hand coming down on the back of your head. Does it still hurt?"

"Don't worry about me," he replied, suddenly remembering that he was the brave rescuer and not the victim. "Are you all right? What did they do to you?"

"Well, about what you'd expect, I guess," she responded slowly, looking away in acute embarrassment. "I don't think your plan to salvage Bud Swift is working very well."

"The bastards!" he swore, this being the strongest curse word Matthews had in his vocabulary. "Well, I don't have any plans for Swift anymore, except seeing that he goes to jail as fast as possible. But how in heck did he think he was going to get away with it? The only way he could hope to evade punishment would be by killing both of us, and he had the chance to do it. Why did he bother running away? He must know that the cops will get him sooner or later?"

"I.. . I don't understand, but I don't think he ever had any intention of killing me," she stammered uneasily. "He told me the police would never believe me if I made a complaint, and the others said they'd get me if I went to the law. Philip, I'm so frightened. I just want to get out of here. Can you walk?"

Philip Matthews found that he could, even if just barely, and the two of them staggered down the dark flights of stairs, looking nervously at every flickering shadow. His wrist watch told him that he had been unconscious for nearly a half hour, and he thought of the young woman's bravery, sitting alone by his side in that abandoned building, waiting for him to regain consciousness, knowing that the gang could get its nerve together and return at any moment to kill and silence them both forever.

"It sounds to me as if he's got a fast one up his sleeve," decided Matthews as he reached his car, miraculously still parked in the same spot. "But we'll let the police play detective. The station house isn't far from here."

"Phil, before we go, I want to . . . I mean, you know what happened to me and I'm still a little upset. I want to rest for a few minutes someplace where I feel safe and use a bathroom . . . could you drive me home first, and then we'll call the police on the telephone? Maybe we can go down in the morning to do the paperwork?"

"Okay, but. . . look, are you sure you're all right? You must have gone through hell up there. Maybe I should take you to a hospital?"

"No, I'm going to be okay . . . they were pretty rough but I'm a strong girl.. . oh, I wish it hadn't happened!" She was speaking the truth. Bud Swift had clearly put himself outside the law by kidnapping her, and she knew she could not avoid making a complaint against him, but she had weakened her own moral position by surrendering so completely and becoming such an obvious slave to her own lewd passions. How could she testify against him in a court when they both knew how she had behaved while she was being "raped"? She wished she could explain everything honestly to someone sympathetic like Phil Matthews, but she understood quickly that a full confession was out of the question. This man had risked his life to try to save her from the humiliation and sexual degradation the gang had brutally subjected her to; she could hardly explain at this point that her last vicious assailant had given her the most powerful sexual experience of her life!

The car started, another miracle, and silently they drove out of the Ken Central slum towards the girl's apartment as Matthews followed the girl's whispered instructions. He chatted nervously as he maneuvered the automobile through darkened streets, explaining how his father had given him the pistol before he died and mentioning that he had never had occasion to use it before. It was not registered with the police, and he wondered if he would get into trouble for having carried it, even in an emergency. And having a loaded pistol in the hands of Bud and his goons did not make for a relaxing situation.

Besides, none of it really made sense! What had made Swift think he could possibly get away with it? An ordinary punk from the streets might have embarked upon an adventure of this kind without much thought for future consequences, but Swift was the possessor of a massive I.Q., and the act of putting himself in a position where he was destined to go back to jail seemed untypically stupid of him. Well, Matthews decided, they would know soon enough. Perhaps Swift had decided to return to a life of crime, disappearing for good, and this was his last hurrah before sinking into the morass of the Ken Central slum.

'This is the place here," commented Kathy

Barton, disturbing her friend's meditations and indicating a respectable brown-stone apartment building, 'it'll scandalize my landlady, but I wish you'd come up with me."

"Oh, I just thought of another thing we'd better do before we call the police," recalled the English teacher as they climbed the stairs to the young woman's apartment. 'There's a Kensington Central School regulation which says that before a criminal complaint can be made by a teacher against a student, the principal must be notified. They invented it a couple of years ago to keep some of our Nervous Nellies on the faculty from frivolously calling the police over some minor matter, but it's a rule, and I suppose we'd better play the game."

"Could you do it?" pleaded the young woman wearily. "I don't think I want to talk to Mr. Parsons right now."

"Who? Oh Matthews it's you! Yeah, yeah, I know all about it. Mark Hanson just called and he and the boys are on their way down here now. I think I can talk 'em out of preferring charges against you for carrying a deadly weapon, but it was a damn stupid thing for a man in your position to have done, I'll say that much!"

For a moment, the school teacher was too shocked to respond. Then his anger boiled over and he snarled into the telephone at his superior.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he shouted. "We're filing charges against those monsters for kidnapping and rape, and if I have anything to say about it, they're going to jail for the rest of their lives, all of them!"

"Rape? What happened? Has our little girl friend decided it was rape?" laughed the principal harshly. "I think that's a little story she made up to save tace in front of you, Phil. She went there willingly, and there's no question about that in my mind."

"She was kidnapped, I'm telling you!" Matthews screamed, virtually beside himself with anger. "I'm going to have them all thrown in jail!"

"Look, why don't you and Miss Barton come down and meet me in my office," suggested the principal. "Hanson and his boys are coming down, and I'm sure all of this can be straightened out quickly enough. I'm sure I'll be able to get you out of difficulty; although I think we may have to discharge Miss Barton. Can't have our faculty members behaving like that, can we?".

There was a click on the phone and Matthews realized that the conversation was over, whether he liked it or not. Something was very strange here and nothing made the slightest bit of sense. Parsons was probably a corrupt man, and he liked the idea of having a winning football team every year, but he would hardly join a conspiracy with a group of students to protect them after they had raped an innocent female teacher. Or would he?

"I know," Kathy nodded soberly as he turned to relate what Mr. Parsons had said. "They're claiming I went along for the ride."

"Kathy . . . what can I say? You . . . you didn't go with . . . I can't bring myself to suggest it."

"You don't have to," she snapped bitterly. "No, I agreed to meet him in the tea room to talk about Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle. It was stupid, I suppose, but the tea room seemed safe, and he was so.. . so interested. I couldn't believe it was all an act. Then, they must of drugged me, because I don't remember anything until I woke up in that place."

"Okay, let's go," Matthews decided abruptly. "Let's get this little confrontation scene over With, and then we go to the police. If Swift gets away with this, then we might as well close down the school because no teacher will ever be able to feel safe again in a classroom. Damn! I should have shot the . . . the bastard when I had the chance.

"Phil, you could never shoot anyone, except in self-defense," she consoled him, stepping up beside him and taking his arm affectionately. "You . . . you were so brave tonight, and I'm sorry about that time when I questioned your courage. Come on, let's get this over with."

Mark Hanson smiled broadly at Phil Matthews as the English teacher led the blushing young woman into the principal's office. Kathy looked at the floor, trying to avoid everyone's eyes while the three members of Swift's gang sprawled carelessly on a couch. Only Swift himself seemed to be nervous and ill at ease.

"Well, this is one heck of a mess," announced Parsons, making himself comfortable behind his desk and lighting up his usual fat cigar. "We have female teachers consorting with groups of students consorting sexually, I should say-and we have a man with a Master's degree running around in the middle of the night waving a pistol and threatening to kill half of our football team. Do you want to explain yourselves, you two?"

Kathy and Phil had previously agreed that Phil would do the talking, and the English teacher controlled his temper with a visible effort still convinced that some profound misunderstanding was taking place which would be corrected as soon as the facts could be clarified. Without looking at the football players he was supposed to have threatened, he launched into a long and detailed description of the situation as he understood it, reasoning and arguing like the lawyer for the prosecution. Hanson smiled broadly throughout the entire lecture, occasionally glancing encouragingly at his prot'g's on the football team and making a great show of the fact that none of this was worrying him excessively.

"And those are the facts as I know them, Mr. Parsons," Phil Matthews concluded sincerely after a five minute oration, "Miss Barton was tricked into drinking tea with Swift who had arranged for the tea to be drugged by Chubs, who works as a waiter in the tea room for a couple of hours after school each day. Then she was taken to the abandoned building to be sexually assaulted, and I intend to see that a criminal complaint is made to the police!"

"Mr. Parsons, I would like to say one thing here," asserted Mark Hanson, getting to his feet easily and stepping towards the principal's desk. The whole scene was getting to look more and more like a trial by jury with Mr. Parsons acting as the judge. "It's pretty well known around the school that Phil Matthews and I have never seen eye to eye on much of anything, but I think we've always respected one another as honest teachers and gentlemen. To me it is perfectly obvious that he is the innocent victim in this whole ugly affair, and I propose to use whatever influence I have with these students to see that no criminal charges are placed against him for use of a deadly weapon. It's clear to me that he has been completely taken in by this woman's lying attempt to protect her shattered reputation and, of course, he has not had the advantage of hearing all the facts."

Matthews boiled inside as he heard this unctuous and deliberately deceitful talk. To listen to Hanson pretend to be defending him was the most infuriating thing which had ever happened at Ken Central as far as he was concerned, and for a moment, he desperately wished for fifty pounds of muscle and a foot of height to be added to his slender stature, so that he could deal with the gym teacher man to man.

"What other facts?" he snapped angrily. "Let's hear all these so-called facts of yours."

"Calm down, Phil," advised the gym teacher pleasantly. "This isn't the first time in history a girl decided it was rape when someone she knew walked in and surprised her. But the fact is, my friend, that Kathleen Barton has had the hots for Bud Swift since the first day she laid eyes on him. Why it was only the other day that she asked me for his home telephone number . . . "

"That's a lie!" gasped the young woman, speaking up on her own defense for the first time. "I've never done any such thing."

"Well, naturally, we would have to expect her to deny it, but then we have the undeniable fact that she did call Swift to set up their appointment in the tea room, something she could not have done if she didn't have the number I gave her to begin with."

"I never . . . " Kathy began again, but Parsons interrupted her, cross-examining Hanson like a district attorney.

"What reason did she give for asking for the number?" the principal demanded.

"Well, she said she wanted to counsel him on doing his homework more promptly," alleged Hanson, "But I could tell from the way she was blushing and avoiding my eyes that it was something more serious than homework she was after."

"These are lies . . . " Kathy tried to inject. "Well, Swift, did she call you?" Parsons insisted.

"Yes, Sir," mumbled the student, looking at the floor as he answered, obviously ashamed of his behavior in front of Kathy and Matthews but unable to do anything about it at this stage of the game. "She called and said we should meet after school and then go out and have some fun."

"That's a lie!" Kathy was groaning over and over again as if she were speaking to herself. "Everything they're saying is a lie."

"Perhaps a judge will have to decide that," commented Parsons severely, leaving no doubt as to whom he chose to believe. "Are you two still determined to create a terrible scandal and call the police?"

"You are damn right we are," affirmed Matthews, but his voice was weak, and a trickle of wonder was starting to infiltrate his brain. Could he have been wrong? Could it be that she had gone willingly with Swift and had only claimed she had been kidnapped to save face when he came barging in, a foolish would-be hero? No! He could not face the thought! She had to be innocent.

"Well, I guess that leaves us no choice," Hanson remarked philosophically, as if he were speaking to himself. "About the pictures, I mean. Sure hate to see those photographs get into circulation . . . "

"What photographs?" questioned Matthews levelly, wondering what new spoiled meat was being tossed into an already rancid stew. Kathy looked up suddenly, her memory reaching back to her first moments of consciousness after she had awakened alone in the deserted building and had heard the gang talking in the next room. "Look at this one," someone had said as she was emerging from the fogs of the drug. "That'd convince any judge in the world. "

Hanson nodded at Ash as if he were expected to respond to the question.

"Well, when we all got up to the pad, Kathy excuse me, I mean Miss Barton, but she told us to call 'er Kathy Miss Barton saw this camera I had and said it would be fun if we took some pictures . . . you know, pictures of us while we were givin' it to her. We all took turns and shot a couple of rolls."

"Where are these pictures?" Parsons asked severely.

Ash removed a paper-covered packet from his pocket and laid it respectfully on the principal's desk. The cigar-smoker spilled the photos out on the blotter and began pawing through them, his eyes growing wide with shock and perhaps a sudden rush of lust as he saw what they revealed. Catching the look on the principal's face, Matthews sprang to his feet without waiting for an invitation and leaned over the desk to examine this so-called evidence.

They were the worst things he had ever seen, and the young English teacher's hands trembled as he gripped the edge of the desk to support himself. There, in front of him in photograph after photograph, was the lushly naked body of Kathleen Barton, stretched out on the same mattress where he had found her a few hours before. Her sex partners varied from picture to picture, but in every case she was committing some obscene act with one of the four football players, and the photography was sufficiently clear to leave no doubt about what she was doing.

Blushing with embarrassment, Matthews picked up one particularly pornographic shot and held it closer to the light. It was Kathy's face, cruelly distorted by a man's long rigid cock which had been thrust obscenely in her mouth half-way to the hilt. Immediately all his previous doubts came sweeping back to him. Was it possible that he was letting himself fall in love with a nymphomaniac? The evidence was mounting against her minute by minute, and

Matthews picked up a second photograph and studied it carefully, feeling his penis stir restlessly in his pants. The photograph he was now examining showed Kathy bent over in a humiliating position with Ash about to plant his lips on the tiny puckered ring of her anus. Another featured Miss Barton with a man's cock in each hand, lying face down on the mattress. But there was something strange about all of these pictures, and it took the English teacher to put his finger on the problem.

Her eyes were always closed! In every case, the camera had caught Kathy with her eyes closed, her face totally immobile and blank as if she were sleeping through this orgy of carnal pleasure. Of course, it finally hit him like a thunderbolt, she was still drugged! They must have stripped her defenseless body naked and taken these pictures as a guarantee against being denounced to the police. No wonder they were so cocky about not being arrested! If she called the police, they would present these horrible photographs as proof that she had cooperated in her own ravishment.

And the more he thought about it, the more it seemed that they were going to get away with it. With Hanson on their side, testifying that Kathy had hot pants for Swift, and these photographs to back up their case, the best they could expect would be a long and messy trial, probably ending in acquittal for lack of proof. And naturally, Kathy's reputation would be thoroughly destroyed in the process.

"I think you may win this round," he spat at Hanson, ignoring the others. "Mark, I honestly never believed you could sink this low."

"That's life, Phil old boy," rejoined the gym teacher affably, smiling at him as if they had just played a good round of chess and Matthews had lost.

"Well, we still have some unresolved issues here," protested the principal as he saw the head of the English Department take Miss Barton's arm and guide her gently out of the room. "There are some questions in my mind about this woman's moral suitability . . . "

"Oh drop dead!" snapped Matthews, now thoroughly depressed and not caring whether they fired him or not. There was a suppressed giggle from the three football players as the two teachers stalked off into the night.

"Hey, where'd Swifty go?" Chubs wanted to know, as the three gang members emerged from the school building. "Ah, he's got a hair up his ass," complained Ash, now enjoying his role as leader of the gang and anxious to keep Bud Swift out of the limelight until he could consolidate his leadership of the group. "Swifty's gettin' old, fellows! Ain't got the balls for our kinda fun and games anymore!"

"What we gonna do now?" wondered Jose as the three of them walked through the parking lot. "Really pisses me off the way Matthews tried to get us all sent to the clink. Who's that mother-fucker think he is, anyway?"

"Ah, the little prick!" retorted Ash venomously. "He just hates the football team and he hates the Coach. I'm gonna have to give some thought to the business of gettin' even with our little Mr. Matthews."

"Fuck Matthews, what I wanna know is who does that bitch think she is, complaining to Parsons? We told'er what we'd do if she opened her trap, and I think we bughta do it! Besides, I wasn't finished with her by a long shot!" Chubs put in, anxious to seem as vicious as anyone else.

"Yeah, you're starting me thinking, Chubs," mused Ash as the three of them stood in the shadows, watching Mr. Matthews and Miss Barton walk toward Matthews' car. "Maybe the night ain't over yet, and we kin kill us two birds with one stone."

"Whatcha thinkin', man?" Chubs wondered eagerly, always ready for more trouble.

"I'm thinking about that beautiful little thirty-eight caliber pistol old Matthews was kind enough to give us which is still sittin' in my pocket jus' begging to be used for somethin'. And I'm also thinking about some of the nice things I was fixing to do to that lady teacher and never got the chance."

"Shit man, you ain't thinkin' of pickin' them up again, are ya? Shouldn't we ask Swifty?"

"Fuck Swifty!" exploded Ash with irritation. "Fer one thing, he ain't here, so we can't ask him nothing. And fer another thing, we don't need that guy anymore! If he wants to wander by tonight, we jus' might let him have a piece of ass, after we's finished, naturally."

"Let's go," urged Jose, his voice a low hoarse hiss in the darkness. "We gotta move now if we're gonna move and I got a hard-on jus' thinkin' about it!"

The owner of the second-hand book store did not appear to be overjoyed as Swift entered his shop because he had been robbed by young punks just like this one, and he knew he was destined to be robbed again before his commercial career was over. He actually ran a profitable but illegal bookie business out of a back room, and therefore was not terribly concerned with losing a few dollars to an occasional thief, but guns upset him, and the business of being robbed was beginning to become tiresome. On the other hand, there was just an outside chance that this particular punk wanted to buy a book or place a bet, so the store-keeper nodded affably as the young man scanned the volumes available for sale.

"Got some good skin mags under the counter, if you're in the market," he offered jovially, reaching beneath his desk for a sample of the pornographic magazines he occasionally managed to hustle.

"Nan, I'm looking for something to read," commented Swift morosely. In fact, he was merely killing time while he tried to figure out what to do with the rest of his life, and he had wandered into this particular bookstore on a whim. What now? Should he go back to Ken Central High School on Monday morning, his homework neatly done and sit in the front row of Miss Barton's class, volunteering to answer questions and maybe even clean the blackboard after the lecture? Somehow it seemed a bit late for that now. Or did he go to Phil Matthews and try somehow to explain how he had not wanted to do what he very clearly had done? It was a little late for that as well. Matthews was pretty obviously in love with Kathleen Barton, and it did not seem terribly-likely that he would be kind and forgiving with the man who had kidnapped and raped her. It was a little late for almost anything.

"Got a lot of novels here," volunteered the bookstore owner. "Half price if they're used, and they're all used."

"You got any school books?" asked Swift. "I'm . . . I'm going to college next year and I.. . I thought I'd study up."

"Hmmmmmm, don't get much of a call for school books," admitted the owner who was privately wondering about the fate of a certain horse in the third race at the local track. "Coupla things back in that corner there."

"Yeah, here's a book," Swift muttered to himself, spotting a title he had heard of and tossing it onto the shop owner's desk. "How much?"

"Thirty-five cents," replied the bookie, watching the punk carefully. Sometimes they offered to buy something before reaching for their guns so they could find out where the money was kept. A quarter and a dime bounced onto the counter, however, and he carefully picked up the change as the tattered paperback disappeared into the punk's back pocket, and the punk himself disappeared into the violent Ken Central night.

They did it clumsily, like two teenagers on their first date, but somehow as Matthews turned to help Kathy Barton into the front seat of his car, she blundered instead into his arms, burying her face in his neck as she sobbed passionately.

"It's all right, honey," he tried to console the grief-stricken young woman, as he felt her sensuously firm breasts pressing into his chest, exciting him sexually despite the tragedy of the situation. "Let's not even try to think anymore about it tonight. We have the whole weekend to relax and decide what to do."

"Oh, Phil," she mumbled through her tears. "You've been so good to me . . . and you've turned out to be such a real man, and I've caused you all this trouble."

Matthews felt his penis twitching impatiently, and the thought of taking her home to bed that very night passed quickly through his brain. The gang had apparently not seriously injured her, and it was obvious that the two of them were falling in love . . . if not tonight then certainly tomorrow.. . the terrible things which had happened had somehow pulled them together as if it were just them against the world. Phil Matthews realized that his cock was now as rigid as a board, and he wondered in a brief moment of embarrassment if she could feel his hardness pressing against her abused and battered loins. But if she could feel him urgently crushed against her, she did not seem to mind and lifted her face to his to be kissed.

But suddenly, there was the blunt end of a pistol pressing painfully into his back and vicious words coming into his ears.

"All right, you two love birds," Ash ordered bitingly. "Stop dry-fucking and get into the car."

"Oh no," Kathy groaned as Phil released her, instinctively raising his hands above his head.