CHAPTER TWO

Saturday, August 6th

Nadine Whiteley drifted into that half-land between sleep and waking. It was early morning, she was aware, and already the heat of the coming day was warmly comfortable.

She didn’t want to awaken and enter the world of reality. She was conscious of the fact that the bed in which she lay was a strange one. Where was she? She didn’t want to emerge completely from sleep, but she did wonder where she was. And when. What had happened yesterday?

She entered a sort of game which she had played with herself since early childhood when she emerged from sleep into this half-dream state. She started at the first memory that came immediately to her and worked forward in time from that point.

Even in her semi-sleep a pang struck her. Her father’s death. Now she was alone. Her mother had died twenty-seven years ago when Nadine had been born. And now Dad was gone and Nadine was sole owner of the furniture factory, and, for all practical purposes, of the little semi-feudalistic town which housed it. For three generations the Whiteleys had owned Samara—the factory, the land, the houses, even the stores. It was a type of factory town rapidly disappearing in the United States, but still to be found occasionally in New England and more often in the South.

But she could remember more recently than that. Ah, yes. The party at the artist’s house in Woodstock and meeting Gerald Silletoe. She stirred uncomfortably in her half-sleep. Jerry Silletoe—big, squarely handsome, unusually well groomed and with a sophistication far beyond that of Nadine, who, except for school, had seen little beyond the Catskills.

She had never really found out anything about Silletoe, but his background struck her as vaguely sinister from the beginning—an impression increased by the fact that he never talked about it. He once let slip the fact that his childhood had been spent on the tougher streets of Brooklyn, but later denied even this. He never referred to his occupation or source of income, and she never met any of his friends. That day in Woodstock she heard hints from other guests that Silletoe had underworld connections, but she dismissed the rumors because one just didn’t meet gangsters at artists’ cocktail parties.

Still there was something brutal about the way he carried his big body and a glint of cruelty lurked in his dark, probing eyes. Once during the party, when the conversation veered to a certain notorious mobster who was currently having income tax trouble, she caught an expression of cynical amusement and cunning flicker across Silletoe’s heavy face. It occurred to Nadine for a crazy instant that if there was any role this man seemed custom-built for, it was that of a crime syndicate hood—smooth, secretive and ruthless.

Yet she had found him fascinating, and dismissed her misgivings as girlish fantasy. She was probably just romanticizing the man’s aura of potent sensuality, the sense of violence which actually excited her.

However, his behavior at their final scene together tended to confirm her dark suspicions. There was definitely something lawless and dangerous about Jerry Silletoe.

She stirred now, uncomfortably, as that scene came back to her. She hadn’t discouraged him. How could she have been expected to? She was twenty-seven years of age. Twenty-seven and fully normal, with a woman’s body and a woman’s instincts and capacity for love, lacking only in experience.

It had taken place in the living room of the big house in Samara after Martha and William had gone to bed. In the big house atop the hill and overlooking the town. For a time caught up in the excitement and the passion, caught up in the engulfing needs of her body and in the compelling forcefulness of Jerry’s demanding arms and lips and his caressing hands. For a time wanting him, needing him, waiting for him.

Then the stark terror at the actual moment of reception. The startled surprise in Jerry’s face. Then, as the fear swept her and rose higher and higher and she beat at his naked chest with her clenched fists, beat at him and cried her refusal. How then his expression of surprise had turned to impatience and then dull anger, and he had tried to force her.

She screamed in hysteria, terrified at the threat of penetration. “No! Please, God, no!”

“Stop it!” he growled. His voice was savage. “It’s too late, now!” He held her down.

“No!” Her voice broke and the words became incoherent, but her screams climbed in a crescendo of fright.

William and Martha, incongruously dressed in the night-clothes of half a century ago, were at the door and suddenly the room was bright with light.

“Sir!” William had shouted, his aged voice high with alarm and anger. He hurried forward, his feet shuffling in ancient slippers. “Miss Nadine…are you all right?”

Jerry Silletoe had come to his feet, his clothes still disarranged, his face dark with anger. “Get out of here,” he said heavily, dangerously, to William.

“Sir,” the old man said tremulously but defiantly, “I must order you to leave immediately or I shall summon the authorities.”

Martha was comforting Nadine, trying to rearrange her clothing. It must have looked like sheer rape to the elderly servants. Her brassiere was stripped from her body, her skirts up about bare white thighs.

Jerry’s eyes had gone from Nadine to the servants, and savagely back. He muttered some obscenity and strode rapidly toward the door.

Now, Nadine squirmed in her semi-sleep, wanting even less to emerge into full wakefulness. The horror of it, the disgrace of it. William and Martha had been aghast.

And the following day Nadine had gone to old Dr. Levine, who had brought her into the world and her mother before her.

She had told him her story from the beginning. From the very beginning. Of Uncle Nathaniel and the time he was more than ordinarily drunk and Nadine no more than twelve years of age. Her mind tried to refuse the memory, but she knew it had happened in all its disgusting detail.

She’d been alone in the house with Uncle Nat, and, as usual by this time of evening, he had been well into a quart of the locally produced applejack. She had come into the living room wearing nothing but her bathrobe, the summer heat being such that everyone slept nude. She should have seen sooner that something was wrong.

She had sat on his lap, artlessly, and didn’t particularly mind when he had, seemingly unconsciously, stroked her legs and caressed her even then rounded bottom, as he talked to her.

Then he had pretended to make it a game.

“Do you ever let the boys touch you there?”

“Uncle Nat! Don’t do that.”

“Or kiss you like this?”

At first there had been a timid curiosity, and then she had let him go beyond the turning point. She could still remember scraps of the conversation—if it could be called conversation.

“Oh, no, Uncle Nat. Oh, please don’t. I’ll tell father. Don’t hurt me. No…oh, no. It’s so big. No, no, please…”

Afterward, there was the pain and the fright, and the blood on her legs and clothing. Still later, Uncle Nat, had gone stumbling off to drive his car full tilt into the Ashokan Reservoir. On purpose? She’d never know. Before that night of horror, he’d been her favorite relative.

Dr. Levine had listened to the full recital. Of how she had progressed through the usual high school and college romances, but never going further than light petting. Of her underlying fear of ever going further than perhaps a secretly fondled breast. Then Roger Stuart and their engagement, which had lasted a full six months and had terminated only days before the wedding when they had decided to consummate it with a premarital experiment.

It was then, on the lawn of the Stuart family, that Nadine had discovered that sex was not for her. Until the moment of attempted penetration, she was seemingly normal, as desirous of fulfillment as the most passionate. But then it became so utterly impossible, and the hysteria struck. Instead of gentle, easygoing, goodlooking Roger, her fiancé, it suddenly seemed to become Uncle Nat, and the pain, and the fear, and the blood, and then, next morning, the news of his accident—or suicide.

Dr. Levine had listened to it. Old, tired Dr. Levine, who had seen all of life in his nearly seventy years—had seen it all and been saddened by it.

He had told her gently that she was a beautiful, sensitive woman, needful of love and needful of satisfying the normal sexual appetites of her body. He recommended she see a psychiatrist in New York. Before that, however, he pointed out to her that although he could hardly recommend she have an affair out of wedlock, it would not be fair for her ever to marry under existing conditions. Her husband-to-be couldn’t become aware of her neurosis, of her fear of the act of love, except on the night of their wedding. This must be conquered before marriage.…

Nadine was beginning to emerge from her half-sleep now, beginning to remember where she was. She hadn’t taken the doctor’s advice about the psychiatrist. She couldn’t face revealing her experiences to an outsider.

Instead, she had coolly planned a campaign to settle her difficulties. She must leave Samara for it. She could hardly risk the possibility of more scandal. It had been bad enough that William and Martha had seen her with Jerry.

So she had conceived the trip to the French Riviera. She was to be here a week. During that time she would find a stranger, an attractive man without strings. One who would welcome a short holiday affair with an American girl. One who knew nothing of her background, would make no demands upon her and expect her to make none on him.

Now she was suddenly wide-awake.

She was here at last. The jet flight across the Atlantic was behind her, and the two days in London where she had picked up her Far Away Holidays reservation for the package luxury vacation. The trip down on the Viscount. Their being met at the airport by that pleasant-looking tourist representative who had given them the amusing little talk about enjoying themselves on the Riviera. And then the drive here to her room at the Pavilion Budapest. It had been a beautiful drive from Nice, the Mediterranean, impossibly clear, on the one side, the mountains of Provence on the other.

Nadine Whiteley looked up at the ceiling high above her. This villa, the Pavilion Budapest, she decided must have once been a very wealthy person’s joy. It had the antique beauty of yesteryear, the furnishings and paintings, the drapes and rugs of an era more ostentatious perhaps than our own, but with a comfortable beauty that our present generation has lost.

For a brief moment, she allowed herself to doubt. The scheme was all so fantastic. Imagine flying three thousand miles with no purpose in mind other than deliberately allowing oneself to be seduced. Why, it was ridiculous!

No, it wasn’t. She steeled herself. She was twenty-seven years of age and had all the normal instincts in regards to love and offspring. She had every reason to believe that she would make a desirable wife, a devoted mother. She owed it to herself, to her eventual husband, and to the children to come. She must, somehow, break this barrier. She was convinced that if she could bring herself to the act, just once, only once, then forever after her fears of sex would be gone.

Nadine sat upright, swung her legs about and to the floor and came to her feet, stretching. She wore a short nightgown and for a wicked moment wondered how her sought-for lover would feel if he could see her now.

Had she known it, he would have been moved indeed. Nadine Whiteley, at twenty-seven, was the epitome of American womanhood. Her breasts were high and full, her waist captivatingly narrow, her hips blooming out, to flow, in turn, into legs that would have shamed any Venus ever laved by the waters of the Mediterranean.

She hustled to the bath and began her preparations for her campaign.

* * * *

Steve Cogswell reflected with satisfaction that Carla’s little stretch of beach was one of the best this side of Cannes. Actually, contrary to popular belief, Riviera beaches are strictly second-rate compared to those of Florida, California or Hawaii. Nice, so famous as a resort, has such a narrow one, and so pebbly, that it is all but impossible, in season, to find a spot to recline and all but unbearable on the feet to walk down to the water. The small Monte Carlo beach is man-made and has continually to have more sand dumped upon it.

But the contessa’s property was one of the most favorably located for miles around. Guests swam in a cove, a half-acre of sand so shielded by rocky cliffs on both sides that prying eyes were forever barred. Not that nude bathing was practical, usually, since there were twenty or so paying guests at the Pavilion Budapest at any given time and the waters of the Mediterranean were attractive to them all.

As a matter of fact, one of them was approaching now. A bikini-clad girl whom Steve vaguely placed as one of his Far Away Holidays tourists who had arrived the day before. What was her name, now? He couldn’t remember, in spite of the fact that he had driven her over from the airport himself. An American girl, as he recalled, but, confound it, what was her name? The tourists liked you to have their names on the tip of your tongue.

He emerged from the water and took up his towel as she approached.

“Morning,” he called. “Beautiful day for a swim.”

She smiled back. “Are you leaving? I’m not driving you away, am I? Let me see, you’re Mr. Cogswell.”

“Steve Cogswell,” he said, taking in her figure, and telling himself that here was a girl who was really stacked. Whoever had invented the bikini had surely had this sort of thing in mind. Her figure was that of Elizabeth Taylor, her face that of Ingrid Bergman back when that star had been in her twenties. He toweled himself quickly. “I have to get into the office in Monte Carlo, Miss…”

“Nadine Whiteley,” she replied. Less obviously than he, she had taken in his own masculine figure. In spite of the hedonistic life of the past few years, Steve Cogswell in his early thirties still cut a pleasing figure in his Hawaiian-style bathing shorts. He made a point of daily swims, occasional tennis at the Sports Club in Monaco, and fifteen minutes each morning with weights. It countered his admittedly too heavy drinking.

He stopped for a moment to converse with her. Already he could feel stirring within him the prerogatives of manhood. Confound it, he was going to have to watch himself with clients. He couldn’t afford to do his compulsive catting around with Far Away Holidays customers. In the long run that would prove to be job suicide.

He said, “How do you find the Pavilion Budapest?”

“Wonderful,” she told him, sinking to the sand and looking up. “I met the contessa at breakfast. Is she really a countess?”

“That she is,” Steve said. “In fact, she carries some sort of Hungarian title, too. She became a refugee when the Soviets overran Hungary in 1944 and met the count, Giuseppe Rossi, in Switzerland. From what they say, the count was quite an old boy but he’s been dead now for seven or eight years.”

“She seems very clever.”

“That she is,” Steve said again. “Look, Miss Whiteley, I’ll have to get along. Were you interested in taking any of the special tours? I have to make up my lists.”

“I think I’d like to make that trip down to Nîmes for the bullfight, but none of the others. When it comes to night-clubbing and sight-seeing, I’d rather be on my own.” For what she had in mind, Nadine had decided, that sounded like much the better plan.

The Nîmes trip it is,” Steve said. “Anything else I can do to make your holiday a success?”

She frowned thoughtfully, the slight wrinkles giving her a charming expression which Steve knew couldn’t be artful. She had a piquant face, expressive and openly honest. He couldn’t take his eyes from the manner in which her lips tucked in at the corners.

“How difficult is it to rent a car?” she queried.

“Not at all. A little expensive though.”

“Oh, that’s not important.”

“Well, there’s a place in Monaco—the Sporting Garage on Boulevard de France where you might rent a Simca. I’ll take you in if you want.”

“Wonderful, but I haven’t had my dip yet and you’re all ready to go.”

“I haven’t had breakfast,” Steve said. “If you’re ready by the time I am, it’s a deal. Otherwise I’m afraid I’ll have to push along. This is my busiest morning.”

She dashed for the water, saying over her shoulder, “Expect me!”

By the time Steve was ready to go, Nadine was sitting in the front seat of the Citroën, much to his approval. He wasn’t particularly fond of tourists who made him toady to their lack of punctuality, not when you considered that he had almost seventy of them on hand at any given time.

Their conversation was animated on the short trip into Monte Carlo. When she mentioned that she came from the Catskills, he told her of the job he’d once held in Kingston. It turned out that they had mutual friends in the nearby art colony of Woodstock.

She was somewhat taken aback by the fact that he had once held down a job as an efficiency engineer with a major firm but was now simply a tourist representative on the Riviera.

He grinned at her ruefully. “Miss Whiteley—”

“Nadine.”

“Nadine,” he said, “you must never ask an expatriate why he has become a modernized version of a beachcomber on the Côte d’Azur. It’s something like the Foreign Legion. It’s bad manners to ask about a person’s past.”

They laughed together and swept into Monaco at a pleasant clip. Traffic this early in the morning was light and speed possible. Steve gave her a brief rundown on the sights in the tiny country. He pointed out The Rock, upon which was Monaco-Ville, the oldest part of the town, and the palace of the former Grace Kelly and her prince.

Beyond lay La Condamine, which faced the port so filled with yachts from all over the world. Riding at anchor was Aristotle Onassis’ converted destroyer escort, one of the most elaborate pleasure ships afloat. Beyond the yacht basin was Monte Carlo, most famed of all Riviera resort towns.

The Boulevard de France, Nadine’s destination, was but a few blocks beyond the Far Away Holidays office and Steve drove her down to the Place de La Cremaillère, onto the boulevard and to the office of the Sporting Garage.

“They speak English here,” he said. “Ask for Pierre Jacquin. He’ll take care of you. See you later, Nadine.”

She waved her thanks and good-by and he was off.

At the office, Elaine Marimbert was looking a bit on the harried side as she murmured, “yes, yes, indeed, sir, oh, yes, I’ll take care of it immediately,” into the phone. When she saw Steve she cast her eyes upward in mock despair but continued her soothing efforts into the mouthpiece.

When she’d hung up, Steve said, while going rapidly through the mail on his desk. “What’s the crisis?”

“One of the tourists at the Hôtel de Paris complaining about his room.”

Steve grunted his disgust. “It’s the best hotel in Monaco.”

“He says he was promised a different view when he made his reservations in London.”

“Well, give René a ring and see what he can do. I know the type. Next he’ll complain about the food and probably the wine. There’s at least one in every planeload.”

Elaine said cautiously, “Mr. Lindos called and left a message.”

“Nick Lindos, Conny’s secretary? What did he want?”

Elaine cleared her throat unhappily. “He said Mr. Kamiros had given you one week. Then he’ll have to foreclose.”

Steve winced.

He looked at his watch. There was nothing he could do about Conny now. He had to see his clients. If you didn’t catch them at mealtime, at their hotels, you didn’t catch them period. They scattered around to the beaches, to the cafés, to the shops—and to each other’s beds—to the point where it was absolutely impossible to round them up. And this was the day he sold them the special tours.

“Well, take over, Elaine,” he told her. I’m off to Menton. I’ll cover the hotel there as quickly as possible and perhaps return here in time for the Hôtel de Paris. I’ve already seen the clients at the Pavilion Budapest.”

“How is it going so far?” Elaine said, picking up the ringing phone.

“Average. Looks like we’ll have quite a few for the Nîmes bullfight. Probably have to rent a bus. Is that anything important?”

She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Somebody with a British accent asking for you. He sounds indignant about something.”

“Tell him I just left,” Steve flung over his shoulder as he hustled out the door.

* * * *

Menton was no more than six kilometers—about three and a half miles—to the east. Flush on the Italian border, it was the last town on the French Riviera and one of the most attractive. Steve had fourteen of the Far Away Holidays tourists quartered here this planeload.

Twelve of them showed up for breakfast while he was there and he was able to check on their satisfaction with their accommodations and to get them lined up for the various side trips and night club tours which he offered.

This was the main source of Steve Cogswell’s income. Far Away Holidays paid him only a nominal salary to be their Riviera representative. The side tours were his own enterprise and to the extent that he was able to sell them he compiled enough money to allow him to live comfortably through the season and then to take off for almost six months during the winter.

He had tours to Italy, tours to Grasse, the world perfume center, tours to the mountains, trips to the various islands off the coast, fishing trips and skin-diving outings. This particular week he had the bullfight at Nîmes, which was to take place in the well-preserved ruins of what had once been a Roman arena.

By the time he had finished in Menton, it was getting on into the day and he hurried back to Monte Carlo to contact as many as possible of the twenty-odd clients who were staying there. Some he was able to locate before lunch, which speeded things up.

Time was running out on him by the time he was finished. He hopped into the Citroën and headed for Nice, taking the fast Middle Corniche road, which was much quicker than the older route that bordered the sea. As usual, in passing through the town of Eze, he was taken aback, all over again, with the view from this eagle’s nest of a town perched more than thirteen hundred feet above the sea.

In Nice, most of his clients were either still at their leisurely lunches or were sitting on the Ruhl terrace finishing things off with coffee and a brandy. Steve took just long enough to have a quick brandy himself, exchange a couple of fond words with Joseph, possibly the most popular bartender on the Riviera, and then went into his sales pitch again.

It was late afternoon before he pulled up before the office of Far Away Holidays in Monaco.

Elaine was getting her things together, preparatory to calling it a day. She gave him the messages which had accumulated since he’d left that morning, took a few notes, and then looked at him pertly. “Well, this is the day you make your donation to the Casino, isn’t it? Should I get you the usual one hundred new francs from the cashbox?”

Steve Cogswell grinned sourly. Roulette was his weakness. He was self-disciplined enough, however, to realize he just wasn’t in the category where he could throw money around. Consequently, he allowed himself to play every Saturday evening, when the stiffest part of his work week had ended.

He allowed himself a hundred new francs—roughly twenty dollars. If he lost that, it meant he didn’t gamble again until next Saturday. If he won, and that was seldom enough, he allowed himself to play again, whenever he had free time during the week, until he had lost all his gains. Of course, he didn’t always lose. In fact, he’d hit it good one time nearly two years ago and had wound up the evening with almost ten thousand francs. Happily, on that occasion he’d had the good sense to invest it the next day in the Citroën station wagon he now drove. It was just as well he did. His luck changed again that very night.

Elaine was opening the cashbox.

Steve said suddenly, “How much is in there?”

She looked up at him, “About a thousand new francs, Monsieur Cogswell.”

“A couple of hundred dollars. Let me have it all.”

She shrugged in typical Gallic fashion, but said nothing. He was the boss. It was his money. Luckily, Elaine Marimbert reflected, citizens of Monaco were not allowed to enter the Casino. That was one foolish dissipation that Prince Rainier didn’t allow his people.

* * * *

Somebody waved to him from another automobile as he was parking in the Place du Casino. He frowned at first, not recognizing the vehicle, but then he realized it was Nadine Whiteley. She pulled up next to him and called, “How do you like the car?”

It was a practically new Simca convertible, and she seemed pleased with it. “I feel unpatriotic,” Nadine said. “I’ve never driven anything smaller than my Pontiac before.”

Steve leaned on the car door, on her side, and said, “Well, you don’t have to be. This car is the product of an American manufacturer with a plant in France, so somebody in Detroit is making a profit. What’re you doing?”

“Just driving about and enjoying the sights.”

“Good. Come on into the Casino and bring me luck.”

She looked up at the heavy, ornate building. “Is this the famous Monte Carlo Casino? I though it was a government building.”

“Looks more like it at that, doesn’t it?” he said, opening the door for her. “Actually, it’s the oldest casino on the Riviera, first started back in 1856. By now it’s on the ancient side, compared to the ones in Cannes and Nice, but it’s become an institution.”

He led her up the stone steps and into the elaborate, Victorian period lobby where he bought their admission, saying something jokingly over his shoulder about the incongruity of having to pay for the privilege of losing your money.

He changed his thousand francs into fifty-franc chips and led the way into the gaming room. “Don’t forget,” he told her. “Keep your fingers crossed for me. I’ve got to win five thousand dollars tonight.”

She said, taking up his light mood, “I’d root for you, but I don’t know anything about roulette except that the little ball goes round and round and finally sinks into one of those holes. Then the croupier rakes in everybody’s money. This knowledgeability I gained from Hollywood movies.”

“Mmmmm,” Steve said glumly. “Well, that about sums it up.”

They took their places at one of the wheels and he explained roulette. “That wheel has eighteen red holes, eighteen black, and one white, into which the ball can drop. On this green table, here, you place your bets. If you put your money on any single number and it comes up, you win thirty-five to one. If you place it on either red or black, odd or even, or above eighteen or below eighteen, it’s called a chance simple and you win one for one. There’s various others ways you can bet, such as a cheval—putting a chip between two numbers, then if either of them comes up you win seventeen to one.”

“Very good,” Nadine nodded. “There’s just one more thing I’d like to know. How do you break the bank?”

Steve pretended to wince. “That I’ve never found out,” he admitted.

“You mean you have no system?” she said chidingly.

“Oh, I’ve got a system all right. I’ve got several of them.” He placed a bet on red. “This is called the escargot system.”

“That means snail, doesn’t it?”

“That’s right. And that’s because it goes so slow. However, it’s comparatively safe. You bet one chip and continue betting one as long as you win. As soon as you lose, you write the number 1 on a piece of paper, like this, then stake two and continue as long as you lose. The moment you win again, you cross off your first number on the paper and you play three chips until you win again.”

She was frowning in concentration at his explanation.

Steve said, “The advantage of this system is that even if you lose five bets and win five you’ll still be five chips ahead. It’s based on progression. Your luck has to be pretty bad to lose much.”

Steve didn’t lose. He won.

After about a half-hour of play, he looked into her face and chuckled. “By golly, I think you are bringing me luck. I’m going to switch to the Tiers de Tout.”

She’d had one set of fingers crossed and openly displayed for him thus far. Now she grinned back and crossed a pair on her other hand. “Let’s go,” she said. “What’s the Tiers de Tout?”

Steve had divided his pile of chips into three equal stacks. Now he placed one of them on a chance simple.

“I’ll show you how it works,” he said. There was a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. “It means the third of everything and you win fast—if you win. You play one third of your chips on a single bet. If you lose, you follow up with the two remaining thirds.”

She blinked. “Then if you lose twice in a row, you’re broke.”

“That’s right,” he said. “If you win either bet, you divide your money again into three stacks and bet one of them. If your luck is with you—and here you are standing right next to me—you pile it up quickly.”

The croupier grinned at Steve and said, “Bonne chance, Monsieur Cogswell!” Then to the rest of the players, “Faites vos jeux. Rien ne va plus.”

Nadine frowned skeptically. “Why should he wish you good luck? Whose side is he on?”

Steve was concentrating on the spinning ivory ball as it hopped from one slot to another. He said, “Henri works for a salary. If I have good luck, I’ll tip him. Obviously, he hopes I’ll have good luck.” Steve won and sighed satisfaction.

An hour later, his shirt was soaked with perspiration. Steve looked at her, the side of his mouth twitching slightly. “Look,” he said, “let’s go into the Salle Privée.”

She raised her eyebrows and he explained. “That’s the inner room where the stakes are higher. You have to pay another admission—keeps the riffraff out. Usually, that means me, but tonight I’m out for blood.”

He stuffed his chips into his pockets and they went down the long length of the public rooms to an ornate guarded door which led to smaller, more luxurious rooms beyond. Before resuming his play, he took her into the small bar that led off to the right. There were but six stools, and for a moment Steve hesitated when he saw one of them was occupied.

Then he said, “Hello, Conny,” to the other. He was a dark-complected, heavy-set man. Now his thick eyebrows went up.

“Hello, Steve,” he said. “How is your luck running?”

“Fine,” Steve said evenly. “Nadine, may I introduce Mr. Constantine Kamiros? Conny is possibly my oldest friend here on the Riviera. Miss Whiteley.”

The Greek tycoon got down from his stool and bent over her hand formally. “I must try and take you away from Mr. Cogswell,” he said softly. “It is a game we play against each other.”

Steve attempted a chuckle. “Not tonight, please, Conny. Miss Whiteley is my luck and I need her badly. I’ve decided to win five thousand dollars this evening.”

“Indeed,” the other said, his shaggy eyebrows high again. “You have picked a difficult method of acquiring such a round sum of money, Steve.”

Steve shrugged. “Can’t be as difficult as all that. Isn’t gambling the manner in which you got started, Conny? And now you reputedly own half the Riviera.”

The heavy-set Greek grunted deprecation. “I learned early, Steve, that to win at roulette you must stand on the opposite side of the table.”

“Touché,” Nadine laughed. “Heavens, are those One-Armed Bandits, over there? Excuse me, gentlemen.”

Kamiros said, smiling thickly, “Miss Whiteley, your choice of game chills an old gambler’s heart. There is no gambling action ever devised by man that gives the player so poor a percentage.”

But she had gone to the long rows of slot machines that lined one wall of the bar.

The Greek turned back to Steve Cogswell. “Well, Steve?”

“It’s a dirty trick, Conny.”

“Indeed? My friend, look at yourself, and then look at me. How old are you? Thirty-three or so? Look at your physique and your lean, perhaps handsome, American face. Then look at me, Conny Kamiros. I am fifty-one and not too well preserved a fifty-one at that. Perhaps I spent too many of my earlier years sitting at the card tables, to get proper exercise. So today, when we are rivals for a beautiful woman, you present a considerably better, ah, front, than does Conny Kamiros.”

“What’s that got to do with collecting that loan on a week’s notice? Besides, the girl is back in London now.”

The Greek looked at him strangely. “We all have our egos, friend Steve. You strike a man’s ego hard when you take his woman. Very well, you have your comparative youth, I have what everybody knows Constantine Kamiros has—money. In the conflict between two males for beautiful women, we must use what weapons we possess.”

Steve said stiffly, “I’m sorry I upset you so much, Conny. I, too, in my time, have had my woman taken away from me by a supposed friend.”

The Greek began to say something, but Steve spoke quickly. “I wasn’t about to beg. Your point is well taken. I don’t hold it against you, Conny, and I’ll either dig up the five thousand or my property is yours. And now I had better round up my good luck charm, before she loses all her coins.”

He turned to go.

Conny Kamiros began, “Steve…”

But Steve Cogswell walked away toward where Nadine was energetically pouring coins into two machines at onces. “Broke yet?” he asked her.

Her face was nearly as flushed as his became in the excitement of roulette. “Broke?” she said happily. “I’ve never seen machines with such a good percentage. You should see the terrible ones we have in the Country Club back home. I must be fifteen dollars ahead!”

Steve said, “You really are hot tonight. Let’s not waste it on slot machines. Come on into the gaming rooms and you can place my bets for me. The Tiers de Tout system is going to get the workout of its history.”

It did. It was fully an hour later that Steve Cogswell, feeling physically limp, emotionally drained from the fast play, totaled up the stacks of chips and plaques before him.

He said hoarsely to Nadine, “Nearly thirty-five thousand new francs.”

She whistled softly. “What’s that in coin of the realm of Uncle Sam?”

“About seven thousand dollars.”

“Heavens to Betsy,” she said, awe-stricken. “When you came in here you were kidding about winning five thousand dollars. But you did it!”

He eyed the green-topped table, listening a moment to the croupier’s chanted Faites vos jeux, and moistening his lips. “I’m hot. I suppose I should continue the play.”

She looked at him from the side of her eyes. “Why did you want to win five thousand, Steve?”

He grimaced. “I owe it to Conny, in there.”

She said, “I don’t want to be a dominating female, old chap, but gambling being what it is, I suggest we march into the bar and throw Mr. Kamiros his filthy lucre.”

But Constantine Kamiros was no longer in the bar, nor evidently elsewhere in the Casino. By the time Steve and Nadine had discovered that, Steve’s playing ardor had left him. He cashed in his chips at the offices in front and was paid in five-hundred-franc notes, which he stuffed into his pocket.

“I can look Conny up tomorrow,” he said. “Meanwhile, we’re going to throw the biggest celebration the Côte d’Azur has seen for yea many years!”

“Mister,” she said, matching his exuberance, “you talk me into it!”

They ate at La Bonne Auberge, on the main Nice-Cannes road, and Monsieur and Madame Baudoin themselves supervised their selection of traditional dishes of the cuisine of Provence and the Riviera, and the wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux.

Over their table passed bouillabaise, then rouget grilled with fennel, artichokes à la barigoule and Bohémienne de Provence, and finally the goat cheese of Banon with its wild thyme flavor.

At last, reeling with food, they took off for a tour of the Riviera’s offerings in the way of night life.

The Candy Club in the Palais de la Méditerranée, in Nice; the Trocadero in Cannes with its La Belle Epoque décor; the Summer Sporting Club in Monaco; and finally the little boîte of Gordon Payant in Juan-les-Pins.

They wound up holding hands here in the candelit bar as the American Negro folk singer strummed his guitar and in the hushed silence of the tiny place sang in French and English, Spanish and Italian, German and Russian. The songs of little people, of peasant and soldiers, of children and the old, of the lover and the loved.

After a song there was never applause. The jampacked room resounded intead to the snapping of fingers.

Nadine was puzzled until Steve explained. This little boîte was in a residential section of town. Neighbors had complained about the noise several years ago when Gordon Payant had first opened up. So the institution of snapping the fingers instead of applauding was inaugurated.

Payant spotted Steve and called over to him. “Any requests, Mr. Cogswell?”

Steve waved back. “How about Little Boy, How Old Are You?”

The singer’s deep voice rendered the strange song with moving effect.

Little boy, how old are you?

Little boy, how old are you?

Why, sir, I’m only six years old.…

They returned finally in the early hours, sleepily, satisfied, the two of them. Steve Cogswell pulled the car into garages of the Pavilion Budapest and turned to her.

He hesitated, momentarily, before saying, “How’d you like to drop down to the trailer and have a nightcap?”

“Oh, is that your trailer near the beach? I can see it from the window of my room.” She thought for a moment, only a moment, then said, “That sounds fine, Steve. Excuse the cliché, but I hate to see this night ever end.”

The half-moon gave some light but Steve took her by the hand to lead her across the lawn and to the path that wandered down the cliffside to where his trailer was parked.

He felt a thickness in his throat. And she too knew what was ahead and an excitement was growing within her. This time would be different. This time she was calm and collected and knew what she was doing.

In the small living room of the trailer, he didn’t even bother to switch on the lights. He turned to her and said huskily, “Nadine.”

His arms slid around her and his lips mashed against hers. Pent-up passion flooded out to meet him, a decade of frustrated desire. As though widely experienced, her mouth opened hungrily and her tongue darted forth to meet his and to kindle flames that roared through them both.

They sank to the couch, still glued together, and his hands ran over the contours of her body, quickly becoming impatient of her restrictive clothing.

His hands, ultra-experienced, quickly darted to button and zipper, to clasp and elastic. They were both breathing heavily, urgently. Her own hands began to help his, to fumble with his clothing. Their minds were blank except to their passion, their need for relief from this frantic burning.

She was murmuring, over and over again, “Yes, yes, Oh, so good. Oh, yes. Please, yes. Oh, darling!”

And his voice was thick as he whispered endearments and admiration of her femininity. The swell of her rich, naked breasts, the softness of her woman’s belly, the sweeping curve of waist and hips, the smoothness of her long thighs.

Deep within him he knew that all his worship of her tonight would sour by morning; and deep within him he hated himself for the fact. But there was no turning back. The urgency was all-conquering.

And then she suddenly squirmed, pressed her hands against his chest, her words of endearment and passion choked off. He was pressing down upon her.

“No,” she gasped.

“Darling…” he muttered, unconscious of her changing reactions.

“Oh, no!” she said tightly. There was horror in her voice. She pushed at him. “I…no…don’t…you can’t…”

He stared at her, shaken with the suddenness of the reversal of her passion “What is it, darling? What’s the matter? Aren’t you ready?” He began pressing against her again.

The girl was rapidly descending into hysteria. Her eyes were wide—staring wide. With alarm, with actual terror. She clasped her hands to her naked breasts, trying to cover herself, and from her mouth came meaningless, gibberish.

“Uncle Nat! Don’t do that… Oh, no, Uncle Nat… Oh, please don’t. I’ll tell father… Don’t hurt me… No… Oh, no—”

Steve came to his feet, stood back. “What’s the matter?” he all but snapped.

She rose from the couch. In a trice she had gathered her clothing. She scooted around him, like an animal fleeing a deadly foe.

He put out a hand to detain her—not aggressively.

But she avoided him, dodged and was through the trailer’s screen door and gone.

He stared after her retreating figure, running hard for the rock stairway that led to the Pavilion Budapest above.

Stumbling her way along, half-clothed, sobbing, desperation sweeping her, Nadine’s mind raced her despair.

Like always before. Like with Roger Stuart. Always the same. Uncle Nat’s drunken face before her. His passion-flushed, drunken face. The pain, the fear, the horror. Like with Roger Stuart. Like with Gerald Silletoe.