Dennis Wheatley - The Rape Of Venice

'Dear Roger. But wait one moment!' She threw up a hand as he bent his head to kiss her. 'There remains a point on which I wonder the Corsican did not call you to account. He stipulated that he'd have nought to do with the Princess should it mean that he could be accused afterwards of stealing her from her husband. Yet that is what happened. Malderini denounced him as a seducer before both his fellow Venetians and Junot's soldiers; I'd not have thought Boneparte a man to let that pass.' 'Nor did he; and that last fence could have queered my pitch when I as good as had the whole game in my hands. When I asked him to give me Malderini, he refused. Mark you; it was not that he has scruples about married women. His stipulation was only a precaution against being accused of misusing his power for such an end should anything have got out; and I had already convinced him that the production of the effigy would dispose of the rumours that he had left the mainland. But he snapped at me that, as it was I who had led him unwittingly to wrong Malderini, 1 should not benefit by his capture, and the he should suffer no worse punishment than his co-​conspirators.' 'How, then, did you get over that?'

'I reminded him that when I had offered to arrange for him to sup tete-​a-​tete with the Princess, I had guaranteed that her doing so should give her husband no grounds for complaint.' 'But it had, and he did complain, most bitterly.' 'True'; Roger smiled. 'But he had no grounds for doing so. Can you not guess the answer to this riddle? I began to suspect it in India; Sirisha confirmed my suspicions when I got into the Malderini Palace as an Arab perfume seller. My reply to Boneparte was to step up to Malderini. Keeping my eyes lowered, 1 seized his coat and shirt, close up to the neck with both hands, and tore them apart with all my strength. He struggled wildly but the two soldiers who had brought him forward held his arms. Wrenching and tearing, in less than a minute I had him near naked to the waist, revealing two great ugly sagging witch's breasts. Of the two Malderini twins who had gone to India ten years before, it was the sister who had murderer her brother and taken his identity. The evil creature who had forced upon me this nightmare vendetta was a woman!'