Chapter 11 of Lay Me Odds - Book #2 of the Lady from L.U.S.T.

Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Lady Spies / Sexpionage

ASSIGNMENT: LOVE THE ENEMY TO DEATH

LAY ME ODDS — if you have the guts. My name is Eve Drum. I'm THE LADY FROM L.U.S.T. — the wildest, nuttiest secret agent who ever drove the Kremlin out of its vodka-guzzling skull. They aren't kidding when they call me the sexiest spy in the world. As Agent Double Oh Sex I take on the kind of assignments Jimmy Bond can't handle. All hell breaks loose when I go into action against the sinister forces of H.A.T.E. Don't tangle with me because I'll love you to death. I have a license to kill and I don't care whether I use my body — or a bullet. Sex is my deadliest weapon, but I'm just as good with a knife. Don't tell me about Judo or fast cars or brainwashing because I know it all. I'm good and you know it. Watch me use exotic Eastern sex techniques to turn H.A.T.E.'s villainous spy-masters into helpless blobs of desire. Swing along with me as I bump and grind through London strip clubs in pursuit of missing microfilm. Join the fun as I mix business with pleasure, martinis with molotov cocktails. With a Beretta in my bra I'm an updated Fanny Hill, a tastier brand of Candy, a lethal Lolita. My crazy life is just filled with bloodshed, bedrooms and belly laughs.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

David Anderjanian knew more about antique pistols than I did, so he was the one who primed the Perkins 1806 flintlock, pouring in the powder, ramming home the wadding, checking the flint. He was intent on the task he had set himself, I was intent on what he was doing.

Neither of us heard any sound. We were standing in the study of Eric Downes' manor house. Outside the sun was shining, the grass was a brilliant green, we were in Merry Old England. We had been granted permission to make a search for the microfilm by the Ministry of War, that was working hand in glove with L.U.S.T. on this case.

The precious microfilm was on its way to General Moffitt who commanded the L.U.S.T. organization, via an Air Force bomber. David was curious about the hiding place

Eric Downes had selected, and about the manner of his death.

We both knew an antique pistol had killed him. What puzzled David was the manner of its firing. The hammer had not fallen, the iron had not scratched the flint to create a spark with which to ignite the powder. And nobody had been in the room with him.

David placed the pistol on the edge of the table. Its muzzle pointed at where a non-existent Eric Downes was bending before it, apparently to pick up something that had fallen. The stage was set.

“If we can go outside the house and fire the pistol, we can show how it was done," my case officer muttered.

He sat down on the chair where Eric had been sitting when he leaned down. David bent as Eric Downes might have bent. The muzzle pointed right at his skull.

"Is this the way he was positioned?” David asked. I could not answer. There was a dark shadow across David, which he could not see, since he was leaning forward and down, reaching for an imaginary object on the study carpet. My heart stopped.

Instinctively my foot went up. I caught David and shoved with my high-heeled shoe. He toppled sideways, turning his face in surprise.

The pistol blasted. A red flame ran from its muzzle past my nyloned calf. I felt the wind of its passage along my leg, even as I was whirling to stare at the figure crouched outside the study window.

I threw myself sideways just as faint light flashed from the weapon Willi Vogel carried. I did not need to see that odd weapon to realize it was some sort of heat beam developed by H.A.T.E. scientists. This heat beam had ignited the gunpowder in the flash pan of the Perkins pistol, firing it. I landed hard and bounced.

David was on his back, his Colt Special in a hand. He shot three times through the window but Willi Vogel was not staying to be aerated in any such way. He was off and running.

I flipped over, got to my feet and sprinted for the door. My gun-bracelet was in my hand. Willi Vogel had a club foot. He could not run too fast. Somehow, we would corner him out there on the grounds and finish the job that had begun those weeks ago, in this same study.

David Anderjanian pounded along in my wake. I found myself marveling at the sheer gall of this Willi Vogel. Unable to run fast, armed only with a heat beam, he was attempting to write finis to the careers of two L.U.S.T. agents all by himself—when more than a dozen H.A.T.E. agents had already fallen to my gun-bracelet. Then I realized that the odds might not be so great, after all. The heat gun was silent. The beam it threw was invisible. All he had to do was aim it like a flashlight and that damn beam (I assumed it was an offshoot of the laser beam or an adaptation of that remarkable discovery) would burn a hole right through a person, at full power.

I veered away from the front door.

The clubfoot man was probably out there waiting for me to come tear-assing through the front entrance. He would really burn me up with that queer weapon he had. It was a cool spring day outside, but I could think of better Ways to stay warm.

I slid into a room off the main hall and ran for the window. I peered out. I saw green grass and in the distance, about fifty yards away, a stand of trees. Those trees would make good cover for an assassin.

The gun-bracelet was steady in my right hand as my left pushed up a window. It was one thing to go up against someone with a revolver. I would see the flash of the gun and maybe hear the bullet miss. Facing that heat gun with the invisible beam of light, was quite another matter.

I had to find Willi Vogel before I slid one of my shapely nyloned legs over that window-still. David was standing slightly behind me by this time. We didn't have to talk, he knew who it was that faced us.

"Go upstairs,” I told him. "You'll have a better view from a bedroom window."

"Don't you go doing anything stupid,” he growled, "like setting yourself up as a target to draw his fire."

"Unh—unh! I have a better idea. Wait." I slipped my gun-bracelet on. I bent and caught the hem of my Ceil Chapman original and yanked the gorgeous thing upward. I shivered a little, I had on stockings, black nylon bikinis that were pretty scanty even for bikinis, and a sort of half-bra. In between and up above those, just my girl flesh was showing.

David was standing by my side, staring. "Don't you have anything to do?" I asked. "Like maybe going upstairs?"

"Better I should stay here,” he grinned, "Two guns are better than one. Besides, if one of us gets hit, the other can get our man.”

I explained what I had in mind. David grinned and gave my buttock nearest him an approving pat. Then he whirled and ran for the broom closet.

I had selected a couple of cushions from a sofa and a footstool, stuffing them inside my dress. The Ceil Chapman had cost me five hundred iron men. I told myself to put it down on my expense account, because I don't exactly float around in Ceil Chapman originals.

David brought a broomstick which I wedged into the back of the dress so that, with the cushions inside it, and a cushion to take the place of a head, it looked a little like a dummy.

David volunteered to work it. "I'll play puppeteer. You concentrate on your shooting."

From my window I could see the front door. I watched it open, I saw a shoulder of my dress move into view. Good show, David. He was revealing just enough to tempt Willi Vogel into taking a shot. Then the dummy disappeared. For a moment I could not understand what David was up to. Then it dawned on me. If this were the real Eve Drum, she would do exactly that—offer a part of herself to tempt a shot, then duck for cover to draw a deep breath and make a dash for it.

My hand tightened on the gun-bracelet. The door opened. The dummy came out. Up this close, I felt a sense of failure. That thing wouldn't fool a child, let alone a smart cookie like Willi Vogel. Then I saw a burning spot and a wisp of smoke on the bodice of my beautiful ruined Ceil Chapman original.

I calculated the angle of fire. My gun bracelet took aim on a patch of bushes to one side of the stand of trees. I began pumping bullets into the thicket as fast as I could. In echo came the deeper boom of his Colt Special.

Something moved, there in the bushes. Willi Vogel got to his knees, his body jerking spasmodically to the pain of his bullet wounds. David and I fired as one. Willi Vogel went over backwards. He never moved again.

I sagged against the window, catching my breath. Then I slid my leg out and followed David who was racing for the dead man. Willi Vogel had two slugs in his chest, another two in his forehead, and one in his shoulder.

David said, "One of your bullets must have gone in his shoulder as he lay prone. The pain drove him up onto his knees. As he was coming up, another of your shots drilled his chest. When we both fired, one bullet lodged in his forehead, a second in his chest.”

"Some vacation," I mumbled, feeling sick. David glanced at me sharply. "Go on inside the house. I'll phone the police, I'll handle everything. You just relax." He added with a grin, "Better go put your dress on too, honey. We don't want you arrested for impairing the morals of a police officer.”

I stuck my tongue out at him, but my queasiness left me. I scampered for the house. I grabbed up my ruined dress and stepping inside the hall, slithered it over my shoulders and down my body.

I huddled myself up in a red leather lounger in the study and tried to think of something that would help me forget the way the man with the clubfoot had looked. All I could See was the

No, no, Eve Think of something else. The microfilm. Yes, Eric Downes had hidden the microfilm in this room. It was somewhere, it had to be, H.A.T.E. did not have it, neither did L.U.S.T.

I let my eyes roam the room. The microfilm was so tiny, it could be anywhere. I remembered that the metal cylinder which had held the real microfilm had been only one-thirty-second of an inch in diameter. So small, so small. It could be just about anywhere.

H.A.T.E. had searched this room. So had II. It had to be somewhere other than the places I had looked. I settled back and crossed my ankles. My eyes would do the walking. I had little hope of discovering that false film, but it would be a nice way to round off my so-called vacation.

My eyes walked across the carpet, up the desk and along its top. I shivered, seeing the antique pistol in almost the same position on the desk that it had been in after it had killed Eric Downes. There was no secret compartment in the desk, I was almost positive. Nor would there be hiding places in the chairs or the bookcases.

The microfilm had to be elsewhere. But where hadn't I looked? Where had H.A.T.E. failed to search? There was a hiding spot here. There had to be

My eyes touched the door that once opened into the dining room. The other side of the door was boarded up now. It was never used, it could not be opened.

My attention wandered from the door to the books. Could one of them be hollowed out just enough to fit a small capsule inside it? Too obvious. H.A.T.E. would have removed every last one of those books. My eyes slid sideways to the door. Something about the door bothered me.

Of course. The hinges They were big and black and bold, those old-fashioned hinges. Nobody would ever open that door again. They were not needed. The hinges were excess baggage.

"David." I yelped. "David!” He came racing in, expecting another H.A.T.E. attack, because his Colt Special was in his hand. He gave me a hand with a chair when I told him what I suspected.

I stepped onto the chair. I ran my fingertips around the head on the hinge-bolt. It was loose. I pried it off. Less than a half-inch of rod remained. Someone had sawed it across. I fumbled around. I found a thin black sewing thread.

I pulled on the thread and the tiny cylinder that held the false microfilm came up from the hollow section where the hinge-rod should have been had it not been sawed off.

David let out a whoop of delight. The case was closed. We drove back to London three hours later, after the local constabulary had been to and gone from the manor house. They had taken the dead Willi Vogel off to the morgue. David and I were in the clear. It had not taken long when they saw the hole that had been burned in my dress.

David also cleared up the mystery of how Eric Downes had died, too. They took along the heat gun as evidence, but they promised to get it back to us as soon as it had been photographed and fingerprinted. The fingerprints on it matched with those of Willi Vogel, I learned later. So what else is new?

"What are we going to do tonight?" I asked David as he helped me out of our rented Bentley before the Grosvenor House.

"We're dining in your room,” he grinned. "On oysters and truffles, on mushrooms, eggs and seafood. It will be seasoned with pepper, with garlic and with cinnamon.”

"Why David Anderjanian," I giggled. "Don't you know what those foods do to people? They're well-known aphrodisiacs.”

"Yeah,” he breathed happily. The food was delicious as well as functional, I found, munching on hotly seasoned crab-meat. The wine—Romanee-Conti, 57—was the perfect complement to the seafood.

David was quite excited about me by the time the meal was over. Great stuff, those truffles! Of course, the fact that I was wearing only a black nylon shortie nightie (sans the panties) might have had something to do with his excitement. I like to think so, anyhow.

Because he grabbed me when I would have wheeled the serving table to one side. His hands were on my behind, his lips were nuzzling up my belly under the shortie nightie to find my nipples.

"Oh my goodness, David,” I squealed happily. "Goodness has nothing to do with it,” he grinned. His hands held me down while his lips went up my legs and down my legs and in between my legs until I was writhing and panting and twisting, oblivious and blind to everything but that mouth and tongue. My mouth was wide open and after a few moments I realized it was my vocal chords doing all that yelling.

"David darling," I panted. "Dear darling David—come on, you bastard! I'm dying and you—"

He slid away from me. I did not believe my eyes. He was walking across the room buck naked and was reaching into a bureau drawer.

"David Anderjanian, have you taken leave of your senses? Here I was floating along on cloud nine and you just up and—what the hell are you going to do with that?"

He was bringing a scissors out of the bureau drawer. He said with a grin, "I bought it the day you left for Hamburg, honey. I left it in your bureau drawer so it would be on hand when we needed it.”

"Oh," I said like a dumb bunny. “What do we need it for?”

David bent and cut the phone wire. It snipped easily. "The phone won't ring now, goddammit,” he laughed.

He threw the scissors away and came back onto the bed. His hands pushed my thighs wide open. Then he was crawling up and—

I rolled over onto cloud nine again.

END

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