Jonathan Everest - The tortured tourists

And when she visualized the gendarmerie pouring into the house and seeing the scene on the sofa-bed, she had another reason to play the longshot.

Carefully, she turned toward her right, pivoting slowly onto her right shoulder, while raising her left hand with the glass triangle over and across the legs which lay on top of her. She had to got the glass over the right spot, or it would fall on the floor, or else somewhere out of reach of hercaptive right hand.

Just as she thought she was poised over exactly the right spot, Guiyesse stirred, and the glass crashed onto the nearby lamp-table.

There was a loud noise, like a plank cracking in two, and then Guiyesse was once more a dead weight on top of the two. There were heavy footsteps, moving swiftly away from them, and then the sound of the French windows opening and slamming.

"What happened?" asked Ann, too frightened to move, although she knew somehow that Guiyesse was not conscious.

"It was Le Boeuf," Darla said in a hushed voice. "He came in the hall doorway just as the glass fell. He hit our crazy friend on the back of the neck with his fist, just as his head was coming up. The way it fell back down, I think his neck's broken."

"Let's see if we can get out of here," said Ann.

They managed to roll Guiyesse off onto the floor. Then Ann cut another triangle of glass and popped it out onto the bed. She cut her ankles loose, then the other wrist. It didn't take long for her to free Darla.

"Get dressed, and hurry!" Ann said. She was worrying about Tommy, and wondered what might have happened if the prisoners had all escaped.

Darla was even more worried about her father. She hadn't told her mother that the Moroccan had scooped up the gun from the lamp table. If he ran into anyone on his way out, he might have to shoot to kill. And C. Eldon Fleming could arrive at anytime.

Ann fished in Guiyesse's pockets until she found the key for the shackles. By the time she'd located it, she was sure he was dead. She felt sorry for him. Somewhere he'd been twisted, probably as a small boy with a less than capable mother. And he'd used his twisted mind to plot against the Fleming.

If what he'd said had meant anything, this man must have bed behind the whole thing.

She took the key and the Beretta she spotted on the floor near the stairs where Le Boeuf had missed seeing it in his haste. Tommy was white faced and shaking when she got to him. He'd been worried sick about what might have happened to them upstairs.

He took the gun from her, and the key, and rushed back upstairs to look things over. As soon as she saw that Gerault was still there – holding his leg and moaning through whitened lips – and that Yvette was sleeping peacefully on her mattress, Ann went up to join her children.

She could hear Tommy moving about in the living room, so she started to go to him. Then she halted at the bathroom doorway. Darla was just getting the bleeding stopped at the several places where Guiyesse had bitten her natal lips.

"My God, honey! That maniac must have bitten damned near through you! Is it stopped bleeding? We'd better get you to a doctor right away. A bite can be dangerous."

"It's not as bad as it looks, Mother. It's several bites – bleeding a little – not one bleeding a lot. Until I douched and started it bleeding again, I'd forgotten it. I know this towel looks like I'm mortally wounded, but get that deathbed look off your face. I guess his head lying on me there made it coagulate, and then the water got it going again. But it's stopped."

Tommy appeared in the doorway, and both he and Darla blushed darkly before he excused himself and moved down the hall. Ann shook her head sadly at the brief scene. These two wouldn't be comfortable around each other for a long while, if ever again. Neither would any of the family, probably. It had been a hell of a ghastly experience for them all.

When the Citroen rolled up out front Ann panicked. "My God, kids! We forgot all about the pictures! We've got to find them and burn them before anyone but your father gets in here! Tommy, run out and tell him that. Darla, help me look."

"I think they're right over there in that drawer, Mother," the girl said. "I saw Yvette putting some in there once."

She raced over to the table in question and pulled out the single, large drawer so fast that all the curved photos spilled onto the rug. They gathered them up, hastily and ran with them into the bathroom. They closed and locked the door, and started tearing them into little pieces. Frequently, they'd flush an accumulation down the drain.

Just as they watched the last ones disappear in a swirl of water, someone pounded on the bathroom door.

Ann opened it, as she stepped out, Fleming jumped inside and closed the door, yelling "Emergency!"

It was several minutes later that she recalled the fact that Darla still must have been in there.

Fleming was unlimbering and aiming as he ran to the commode. It wasn't until the final relieving feeling that he realized his daughter was standing at the lavatory with her dress up, daubing at her tender parts with a bloody towel. Her eyes were wide with wonder at the sight of the once coveted member of her father, streaming like a fire hose in front of her eyes.

Their glances met, and both darkened and averted their gazes.

"I'm sorry, baby doll I didn't know you were in here, too." He'd started to get an erection, as he looked at his daughter's pinkly spread blossom, and it was difficult to shake off the last drops, now. He did it quickly, and swore as a last drop ran down his leg after he tucked himself away.

Darla had rushed to the door, and when she heard the sound of the flushing water, she bolted outside. Fleming took a deep breath and followed her out. Ann was standing there with a strange look on her face. "What's the matter with Darla, Charles?"

"I'm sorry, honey. I guess I shocked her. I didn't know she was in there until it was too late. She wasn't where I could see her when I went in. I'd been holding that back all the way into Marseilles and back here. Didn't take time for it at the hotel, because I didn't want to leave you here any longer than necessary. I was about to jet spray my jockeys."

"This family is sure fouled up sexwise," Ann replied, looking at him as if trying to read something on his face.

"Some of this family got sex-wise under pretty foul conditions," Fleming retorted. "I hope we can get readjusted pretty damned soon."

"I don't think it's going to be very easy or very quick," she told him. She didn't add that she was still trying to shake out of her own mind the way that Tommy has stirred her with his amazing virility. Chuck hadn't stirred her up so, himself for several months.

She damned herself for a pervert and forced herself to take a walk in the weedy, ragged garden outside the living room. It was a good fifteen minutes before she felt the fresh air clear her mind. Then she watched several busy members of the Surete leading Yvette to one of their cars. Shortly afterward, a stretcher was carried out to the waiting ambulance. Two gendarmes flanked Gerault as he started his bloody ride to the hospital.

Tommy showed up in the frame of the open French windows. He ran to meet her as she came toward the house.

"I hope you got rid of the photos. I couldn't get to Dad to tell him in private, and then he went on inside. I showed the law where the dungeon was, and I guess that kept them off you for a while."

"We destroyed them all right. But don't mention it to your father. When he finally remembers those photos, I want to see the look on his face." Tommy grinned and shook his head. "That might require a transfusion."

"The shock might just be what he needs," she said, mysteriously. And she wondered what kind of shock it would take to straighten her out. Tommy, she observed, as he headed blithely back into the house on his own, seemed to be the least affected of any of them by the incestuous entanglements they'd been trapped into.