Tanner’s Virgin

“It does restore a girl’s confidence,” she said. We were having lunch at a Lyon ’s Corner House a few blocks away from Penzance Export. “One regards oneself as utterly dependent upon the stray pence one ekes out playing chambermaids in bedroom farces, along with the meager income from a legacy and the generosity of one’s brother. At nights I often comfort myself with the thought that I could always turn brass if times went bad, but who would have me?”

“I would.”

“Oh?” She arched her eyebrows prettily. “You’ll be my first professional client, I promise you.” Her voice turned at once Cockney and sluttish. “Spare a couple of nicker for a short time, guv?” She laughed. “But I digress, don’t I? Mr. Wyndham-Jones has hired me. He seems partial to hyphenated surnames. A low type, I’m afraid. Speaks straight Mayfair, but Whitechapel shines through in spite of all his hard work.”

“And he hired you.”

“He certainly did.” She gri

“The Middle East. Phaedra’s card was from Baghdad.”

“Yes. The mission’s a lovely one. Shall I tell you about it? Mr. Wyndham Hyphen Jones will be posing as the leader of an archaeological expedition to Turkey and Iraq. An archaeological tour, really. But in actual point of fact, the six or seven girls accompanying him on this trek will not be his passengers but his employees. Or, more precisely, the employees of a we-ca

“More divine than plausible.”

“Quite. I don’t suppose you’ve any idea what his real game is? He knows I’ve no money at all. I read thrillers, so all ma

“Six or seven pretty but pe

“Just a fiend, I think. I can generally tell when a man responds to me that way. For example, you do, don’t you?”

“Uh…”

“Why, you’ve gone tongue-tied! If it’s a comfort, I react the same way to you. But Mr. Hyphen – I watched him study me and decide I was attractive without taking the slightest personal interest in the fact. He might enjoy slitting my throat, but I’m afraid that’s the only way I could give him any pleasure.” She shivered, then gri

“I can’t wait.”

“Will tonight do? I’ve a date to meet him at his flat.”

“What!”

“Color me resourceful. I’d already told him I was pe

“You have the address?”

“ Old Compton Street in Soho.”

“You’re not going, of course.”

She rose. “Let’s go back to the flat, Evan. I’m going to Old Compton Street tonight, but my damned brother’s going to voice the same objections as you, and I’d as soon save time by arguing with both of you at once.”

The argument wasn’t much of a contest. She had logic on her side, and when Nigel turned out to be easily won over I couldn’t put up much of a fight. I’d pla

With Julia ru

Julia said, “But suppose he won’t talk?”

We looked at her.

“He might not, you know. It would be rather like going to his office and waving pictures under his nose, wouldn’t it?”

“Evan will have a gun, dear.” He turned to me. “I can pick you up one from the property department. It won’t shoot, but I don’t suppose you want to shoot anyone. I’ll guarantee that it looks menacing.”

“But if he refuses to talk, then what?”

“Then Evan will make him talk, love.”

“Oh, come now. That’s a line out of the movies. I could believe that of Mr. Hyphen, but Evan’s not a brutal sort.” She put her hand on my arm. “Are you?”

I remembered a man named Kotacek, a Slovak Nazi, a doddering invalid who had not wanted to tell me where he kept his lists of the worldwide membership of the Neo-Nazi movement. It took a while, but he told me. I never behaved more inhumanly before or since, but then I’d never been faced with a more inhuman man.

“Brutal?” I said. “Everybody’s brutal.”

“Oh, Evan, for God’s sake! Everybody’s brutal and each man kills the thing he loves and life is real and life is earnest. But you know what I mean.”

Nigel touched her shoulder. His guards’ moustache fairly bristled. “You go too much by ma

Chapter 3

Old Compton Street is no place to stand around waiting for something. It’s in that part of Soho that’s a cross between Greenwich Village and Tijuana – narrow streets jammed with Italian restaurants and strip clubs and pornography shops and prostitutes. I stood in front of a grim pub just across the street from the building where our hyphenated friend lived. I’d already determined that his apartment was in the front of the building on either the third or fourth floor, depending upon whether you looked at it from an English or American point of view. You had to climb three flights of stairs to get to it, anyway.

An urgent little man in a houndstooth jacket buttonholed me and at once provided me with a good reason for standing on the sidewalk. I stood waiting for Julia’s taxi while he ran through his catalog of vice. “Looking for a girl, are you now, mate? Soho ’s full of girls, but you got to find the right sort, you know. Nice clean girl, young, white, just started in the business not two months ago. It’s no good if you get one what ain’t clean, but this is a choice bit of brass, very young and pretty-”

I put my hands in my pockets. I had a gun in each pocket and neither one could do much damage. The smaller one fired blanks, while the other, somewhat more realistic in appearance, was a single piece of cast iron. Nigel had offered me my choice and I’d taken both of them.

“Care to see a blue film, mate? Just five nicker for a full show. A Yank, aren’t you? That’s twelve of your dollars. Used to be fourteen, but you get a break with the devaluation. Bargain day, isn’t it? There’s a full hour of films, new ones, some in color. A man and a woman, two men and a woman, a man and two women, two women together, a woman and a dog, a woman and-”