“Then you don’t care for men, my fancy miss? You’ll just have to get used to them, you see. For you’re going to earn your own ransom, as Marie will have to earn hers!” said the mysterious woman, appraising both the girls with an enigmatic smile.
“Earn our ransom?” echoed Marcia.
The face of the woman hardened, she contemplated Marcia coldly and said, “Yes, dear; that’s the long and short of it. This is a call house, where gentlemen with full purses and itching feeling’s get rid of both!” and she chuckled mirthlessly.
“Mon Diets,” gasped the lovely blonde soubrette, turning to her mistress, “c’est un bordel-it’s a brothel, Miss Marcia!”
And now it was Marcia’s turn to gasp in horrified terror.
She looked at the termagant as if she could not force herself to believe the ruthless fact.
The woman nodded, satisfied with the effect of her words and pursued: “That’s it. The blonde seems to have more sense about things; maybe she’ll earn her way out a lot sooner than you, Miss Fancy-Gown!”
“Do-do-you mean-that-that-you’re going to make us-entertain-men?” faltered Marcia; her arrogance and composure waning.
“Of course, you little fool! So, to get ready for your first customer, you’re going to let Marie fix you up. Marie, do you comprehend me?”
“Y-yes… Madame,” stammered the blonde, turning a;piteous regard on her interlocutor.
“Leave your mistress wear the same duds she’s got on. That’ll please the gentlemen who like high-toned furnishings and maybe raise the price,” said the shrew, with an evil smile wreathed on her rouged ups, “and as for you, Marie, you’re soft and blond-the boys’ll like to see somethin’ of your figure. When you’ve done your mistress nicely, take off your dress, hear me?”
Marie sank to her knees and, clasping her hands before the stony-faced termagant, pleaded brokenly, “Oh, Madame… such shame I-I-cannot do it! Let my mistress and me go we’ll pay you well… please… don’t make us! It… it … is too horrible!”
The woman regarded her for a long moment; then, turning, she opened the door and called harshly, “Joe!”
At once the older guard entered the room, his face a mask of lecherous anticipation.
Pointing to the kneeling Marie, still in her attitude of supplication, the woman said, “This blond doesn’t want to go through with it! Give her a little lesson and take her dress off!”
“Sure, Lil,” said the man, licking his lips and slowly advancing toward the trembling Marie.
Marcia, regaining her courage, moved forward to hold off the torturer, when the woman, drawing a pearl-handled revolver from the bodice of her gown, pointed it at her and said, “I’d sure as hell hate to spoil your looks, honey, but if you interfere you’ll get a slug between your eyes!”
Marcia, utterly aghast, stifled a cry of terror and stood rooted in her steps.
Joe advanced, caught Marie’s wrists in his left hand and dragged her to her feet.
The golden-haired soubrette had donned a pretty green silk dress, with half sleeves that revealed the lower forearms and her beautifully chiseled wrists; her dainty feet were shod in open toed sandals and her splendidly molded, firm rounded calves and thighs were sheathed in gossamer flesh-toned silk stockings, a present from Mrs. Thomaston. With her golden hair framing her heart-shaped, demure face and drawn at the back into a lustrous, thick chignon, she was enchantingly lovely; her sweet blue eyes, dainty retroussй nose and petulant red lips giving her a countenance of ravishing, meek beauty, the type which stirs the blood of a virile male.
In horrified petrifaction, Marcia watched the guard callously slap Marie’s carnation-smooth cheeks, alternating left and right, viciously bearing his teeth and bringing his evil face close to the blond girl’s piteous countenance.
“Oh… ooooh! Monsieur! No-oh, you hurt me! Aaaa! Stop!”
And the lovely soubrette cringed and writhed, maintained in the rigorous grasp of her tormentor, cowering, bending, turning, trying to evade the rain of deliberately applied slaps, till her cheeks were fiery and tears streamed down those palpitating contours from her dilating blue eyes.
“Will you give in, you little bitch?” growled the brutal jailer, holding his hand high, ready to resume the correction.
“Yes… oh… oh… let me go! Je vous en prie! Que je souffte!” moaned the anguished Marie, trembling, her golden head tranquilly drooping.
Meanwhile, the gowned harpy, standing calmly before the closed door, kept the muzzle of her tiny revolver pointed at Marcia’s face; the latter was pale, her lips trembled, her eyes dilated at the scene of cruelty which she was powerless to avert.
Joe released Marie’s wrists, then growled, “Off with your dress, now, unless you want another good dose… only, this time I’ll use a whip Madame Lil keeps just for uncooperative little sluts!”
Was this a nightmare? Marcia asked herself. How had this come about, this sudden reversal from her well-ordered life? How had her captors managed to know the itinerary of her parents and how had Marie fallen into the trap as well as she?
She was to learn, in due time.
Marie, cowering, her eyes filled with submissive and anguished tears, began with faltering fingers to comply; stooping, revealing the delicious arch, of her supple back and her delectably rounded posterior through the gossamer sheath of her silk dress, she grasped the hem of the dress with quivering fingers and slowly raised the green dress above her stockinged thighs… her hips… her waist… a sob, choked and piteous, emerged from her… she paused, her body trembling visibly from her emotion of deep shame.
“Get the whip, Joe,” said the woman known as Madame Lil, in a calm voice.
“Non, non, Madame! I… I am obeying do not have me whipped… oh, it would be too terrible!” groaned the anguished maid and quickly she doffed her dress, let it flutter to the velvet rug which thickly and lushly carpeted the floor and stood, her head bowed, her hands clasped on her heaving bosom, a most entrancing portrait of beauty in dishabille.
Marcia, for all her terror, could not but ad.. mire the glory of Marie’s body; a white chemise silhouetted the rounded, beautifully proportioned body of the young girl, its hem ending just above her knees. One divined a fragile brassiere beneath the chemise and the shadowed outline of brief panties was visible through the pure diaphanous sheath of the chemise. The touch of the open-toed sandals, which emphasized the daintiness of her feet and allowed the calves and ankles to take their alluring poise without artificed pedestaling, was ingenuous and appealing.
Lil nodded to Joe. “She’s learned her lesson, I guess. A nice piece, eh, Joe?”
And, as Marie shrank under the lecherous appraisal of the guard, he responded, chuckling, “Yeah, I’d pay for a piece of her myself, by God! If her mistress is half as nice as she is, we ought to get a fair piece of change out of both of these sluts!”
The vain Marcia, who had considered her beauty of an especial, divinely endowed type, flushed angrily, to hear the guard deprecate her charms in comparison with Marie’s; but, as the harpy still held the gun aimed at her and Joe glowered at her menacingly, she considered discretion the better part of valor.
There must be a way to escape; she would never submit to their loathsome proposal!
Perhaps Lil guessed what thoughts feverishly raced through Marcia’s brain; at any rate, pausing with her hand on the knob of the door, she said, “Marie, you’ve about half an hour to prepare your mistress before we can expect callers. As for you, Miss High and Mighty, just a word of warning! This place is guarded day and night; nobody gets in without permission-nobody gets out unless I say so. Try to make a break and you’ll wish to hell you hadn’t-that lesson Joe gave Marie just now was a mild sample of what you’d get for troubling us. Another thing-these gentlemen have money to spend, they want a good time and I’m here to see they get it, understand? Play the pure and innocent, beg off and they’ve got my O.K. to break you in the hard way; these fellows play for keeps and they don’t mind using a whip or their fists on a gal who won’t give when there’s money on the line. Be strait; and when you’ve earned enough, we might let you go home. Otherwise…
Ending abruptly, she swung open the door, followed by Joe and the evil pair disappeared. Marcia heard the sound of the key turning in the lock.
She and Marie were alone, in this apartment, prisoners of lust… to be sacrificed to men!
The lovely blond was regarding her with a piteous mien.
“Oh, mam’selle,” she faltered, sobbing, “we’d better do as they say. That woman … Lil she told me terrible things… about what they do to girls… who… who-” and sobs shook the beautiful young blond’s rounded, firm bosom, so delectably outlined by the diaphanous chemise.
“Oh, Marie, we must get out, we must!” exclaimed Marcia, pale with fear, no longer despising the domestic whom she had so shrewishly attacked that selfsame day, that fatal day.
“But how, mam’selle? The men have guns, she has one and she wouldn’t hesitate to use it and the men she said would… come here… can… force us… mam’selle oh… I… I… am afraid-I… can’t bear to be tortured…“
“You mean you would… give in… let them have… their way?” gasped Marcia.
Marie shrugged her rounded shoulders, bare, white and lovely in their delectable contours, whose purity was enhanced piquantly by the touch of the fragile shoulder straps of her chemise.
“It… is better than death… or pain, mam’sefle,” she responded fatalistically.
“I won’t let them touch me… I’d kill myself first,” exclaimed the now thoroughly frightened Marcia and in her apprehension, she began to pace back and forth, the molding snugness of her satin gown revealing the wonderfully sensual undulation of her long, svelte thighs and the salient rhythm of her luscious hips.
“Mam’selle… let me… do your toilette.