Header: Detail from the film ‘Lisa and the Evil,’ Philly Ed’s site.

Footer: Detail from an Italian pulp novel, in Bondage Life #29, 1987, p. 64.

‘Is anything missing?’ Brod asked as he watched Melody kneeling on the floor sorting through her things. Black silk billowed in waves around her thighs, her russet-gold hair glowing in the soft light of the bedside reading lamp. She looked vulnerable kneeling there on the floor amid the wreck of her suitcase. They quickly assured themselves that the apartment was empty.

‘No, there doesn’t seem to be,’ Melody replied with a puzzled frown, ‘Nothing’s been damaged either, and … doesn’t it seem strange to you that only my suitcase has been touched?’

Brod strode to the wardrobe and jerked open the door. ‘These coat hangers are on the floor. Did you do that when you were unpacking?’

‘No. I left them hanging.’ Melody came to his side. ‘It looks as if someone swept them off in anger doesn’t it?’

With a little shiver she slipped her fingers beneath the lapel of Brod’s jacket and rubbed his chest gently through the heavy material.

At length Melody spoke again. ‘I think this was done by a woman. Do you catch that trace of cheap perfume? And I think I know who that woman is.’ Neither of them needed to name her. ‘That girl’s more devious than I suspected. She must have had skeleton keys or something, and enough skill to force the lock.’

‘A passably clever amateur,’ said Brod grimly.

‘I can’t understand it. Why my clothes? I mean, if I had the diamond it could have been hidden in any number of places, a vase, a jar of cold cream - I saw that in a movie once - a sugar bowl, a trinket case. There’s one of each around here. But instead she went straight to my clothes.’

‘She waited till you had gone, then came back to look for the diamond.’

Melody nodded. ‘She must have been watching from somewhere when you picked me up, probably from the park.’

With a sudden thought Melody walked to the window and looked out through the curtain. The light in the living room had not yet been switched on and she had a clear view of a section of the park opposite her flat. A half moon was doing its best to light the world through intermittent clouds.

‘Yes,’ she whispered to Brod who had moved noiselessly to her shoulder. ‘See that small stand of shrubs? They’re the most obvious place for someone to hide. Brod, look!’

Melody’s hand closed convulsively on Brod’s arm. A faint glow of light was visible from deep within the bushes.

‘A cigarette,’ murmured Brod.

Melody turned to him. ‘The man Karl had nicotine stains on his fingers and his voice was hoarse.’

‘Pretty circumstantial from this distance,’ said Brod with a grim chuckle. ‘But someone is down there, and we know the gang has your address.’

He crossed to Melody’s phone. Melody remained at the window, staring abstractedly down at the park, her arms wrapped tightly about herself.

‘Oscar old chap, I’m at Melody’s flat. We’ve seen what looks like someone smoking a cigarette from the shrubbery in the park opposite. It might be an innocent smoker taking the night air, but it could just as easily be a member of one of our two gangs.’ He paused while Oscar said something. `Uh huh. Yeah. Just send a couple of heavy coppers around. Get them to tread lightly from the back. And phone the all clear to us. No, I’ll keep Melody company.` He rang off.

They sat quietly in the warm glow of the heater and were halfway through their coffee when the phone rang.

‘All in place,’ Brod reported. ‘Let’s watch the fun.’

Melody followed him to the window and from the darkened room they stood side by side looking out upon the park. At first Melody could identify the stand of low bushes as a darker smudge only against the slightly lighter expanse of grass between it and the road. Then the wan glow of the moon filtered through as a heavy layer of cloud passed out of its path and the grass sward took on a faint luminescence.

‘Look,’ she said under her breath. ‘There’s that pinpoint of light again. See how it moves and goes out of sight from time to time.

‘It won’t be long now,’ whispered Brod. ‘See, there!’ A darkened car appeared on the road to their right. It drew up to the curb. ‘They should be on the other side of the park for that element of surprise. I hope they don’t blow it.’

Melody noted that the cigarette glow had disappeared and guessed that whoever was in the bushes had seen the darkened police car and stubbed out the butt. Then a stab of torch light cut across the park from the far right at some point behind the bushes and was just as quickly extinguished. It was hard to get any perspective in the night and she strained to see more clearly. Dark figures were running towards the bushes from the direction where the torch had been, and she saw similar movements to the left. They converged on the bushes and muffled shouts came to their ears. There was a flash of orange flame and a second later Melody heard the dull cough of a heavy firearm.

‘Damn!’ said Brod between his teeth. ‘I hope the police remembered one of those men had a shotgun.’

There seemed to be confusion. Another torch glow silhouetted for an instant a small group of figures bending over something. In the distance Melody heard the roar of a car’s motor. It was too indistinct, too far for her to tell whether it had any relation to the indeterminate fracas they had witnessed. The figures melted away in the night. The police car below them switched on its headlights and with its blue warning light flashing disappeared swiftly up the road.

‘Nothing more to see,’ Brod declared quietly. ‘Oscar will phone back soon.’

They returned to their chairs, Melody poured second coffees for them both. Within a minute the phone rang. Brod listened intently, thanked Oscar curtly, and replaced the receiver.

‘One of the cops was hit. Not seriously. Winged in an arm. Whoever fired the shot got away in the confusion. It’s likely our friend Karl. Somehow the police missed the getaway car parked up a side street. Oscar said it was a pretty sloppy operation all round. A really professional criminal wouldn’t have indulged his smoking habit like that. It’s one of the first things taught in the military for instance, not to let a light show, not even the luminous dial on a watch. And the police moved too openly.’

‘I’m glad no one was hurt.’

‘Yes. Easy enough to be critical from our vantage point here. It was probably a confusing business walking about down there in the darkness.’

‘So there’s little doubt one of the gang members was watching this place,’ Melody stated.

‘No doubt at all. He dropped a bag in his hurry to get away. There’s no question what they intended for you. Oscar suggests the quicker you’re in another part of the city in hiding, the better.’

*

‘I’m wearing travelling clothes,’ Melody observed when Brod phoned her at eight in the morning as they had arranged. ‘You and Oscar are very efficient,’ she continued, ‘and soon the case will be closed, as they say in the movies, and I’ll be able to get about in public again without the fear of being bundled into a big getaway car.’ She took a bite of toast and jam and added, ‘Anyway I’ll be home until I hear from Tilly. She’s letting me use her other house in a suburb. I’ve already written down the address and phone number for you. But I’ll be sorry to leave this nice little apartment. I seem to be living out of suitcases these days.’

‘You’re getting your money’s worth of excitement,’ Brod responded.

‘I’d be happier to let it go and have real time for sitting back and catching up on my reading.’

‘I’ll miss you while you’re in hiding,’ Brod answered gently. ‘But it may not be for long. I could be on your doorstep sooner than you think.’

‘I hope so, Brod. I’d like that.’

*

‘How did you know we were here, and why do you think you can help us?’

In a rundown motel room on the outskirts of the city Johnny Montague faced Brentford who, with his inseparable companion Orly, had just received admittance from Karl. Karl now stood behind them to one side, Hudson on the other side. The two strangers appeared fairly harmless but Montague was glad his employees were present. Brentford was aware of them also but betrayed no flicker of alarm. Instead he smiled at them superciliously over his shoulder a moment before turning back to Montague, adjusting the monocle he affected over one eye.

‘My dear fellow, we knew you were here because we followed you. That was an unfortunate incident with the constabulary wasn’t it? We almost ran afoul of a squad car ourselves while we were trying to keep up with you.’

‘So get to the point.’

‘Righty ho, yes. But I would feel happier, Mr Montague, if the rest of our conversation could be conducted in privacy, a tete-a-tete as it were. For your ears only.’ He cast a meaningful glance towards Karl and Hudson.

‘Karl, you and Hudson accompany this other guy …’

‘My compatriot Orly.’

‘ … to the motel bar. Give him a drink and see that he gets up to no funny business.’

‘I assure you everything’s quite above board,’ interposed Orly, ‘Top notch in fact.’

When the unlikely minions had left the room Brentford gestured to the armchairs and with a proprietorial air invited Montague to sit.

‘We have much to discuss, dear fellow,’ he said, ‘that I think you will find highly interesting as well as profitable.’

‘What are you getting at?’ said Montague guardedly.

‘Perhaps it will be clearer to you if I told a little about ourselves,’ Brentford continued. ‘Orly and I have a mutual stake in that Duck’s Egg diamond and we have been keeping a close watch on events with not inconsiderable interest. Now it seems to us that you and your, ahh, employees, have certain expertise that we lack. And we possess certain knowledge without which your efforts will now come to a standstill. So what I am suggesting is an exchange of skills for information to our mutual benefit.’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘All shall become clear, dear fellow. As we see it, your problem is to locate the two women you think know something about the diamond’s whereabouts. After your unsuccessful shadowing exercise last night at least one of them has gone to ground, under police protection in the case of the Hazard beauty, and under her own, ahh, steam, in the case of the Morris girl. Am I not correct?’

‘Yeah,’ answered Montague uncertainly.

‘Well what if I told you that we know where one is to be found, and have a very good idea where the other may soon be located? Would that information be of value to you?’

Johnny Montague leaned forward in his chair and looked hard at Brentford. ‘How do you know that?’

‘We have our sources,’ smirked Brentford, ‘which shall remain unknown to you because they are not important to the main issue. What is important is the contribution you can make. You see, Orly and I are unfit for those duties requiring that the women be abducted. It’s not our caper, you might say. Indeed no. Whereas you and your helpers would have managed quite adequately if it had not been for police interference.’

‘So you’ll tell us where the women are hiding out. We grab them and make them tell us where the diamond is.’

‘Quite so. You got it right first time, dear chap.’

‘Okay. But what’s in it for you?’

‘Precisely the same return you expect to receive, dear fellow.’

Montague shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘I don’t get it. What if I decided to keep the diamond for myself?’

‘Oh you wouldn’t do that. It would be quite unwise, and you know it.’

‘And why not?’

‘It’s perfectly simple. You wouldn’t dare to double-cross your employer, particularly since he’s taken care to establish such a nice cross-checking arrangement. You see, Johnny Montague, you and I are, unfortunately if I may say so, colleagues. We have the same boss. We’re both working for Sir Herbert Murgatroyd!’

*

Melody paced the living room of her apartment, a cup of cocoa in her hand, in an unsuccessful attempt to still her thoughts. ‘If Jasmine is the key to the mystery then in some way so am I.’ But try as she might, Melody was unable to think of the connection there must be between herself and that greedy young woman.

The travelling clothes she wore comprised a black satin skirt and russet pullover with a flimsy green silk scarf worn in cowgirl style round her neck. She intended when making the trip to Tilly’s suburban retreat to wear a brown jacket with a fleecy collar to keep out the autumn wind. It hung on a rack by the door.

She was beginning to wonder whether Tilly would ever phone, when the door chimes sounded. ‘It can’t be Tilly,’ Melody thought. ‘She was going to phone me first to arrange whether she would come here or I would meet her somewhere in the city.’

Melody paused apprehensively, and had the good sense to look through the security peephole before opening the door. Her view tookin a huge bunch of flowers that almost completely engulfed the uniformed florist’s delivery man staggering beneath them.

Melody flung the door open. ‘Oh Brod, you shouldn’t have!’ she whispered.

‘Ma’am.’ From beneath the blooms the delivery man held out a clipboard, ‘Sign please.’

Melody took the sales sheet and caught up the pen that was attached to it by a string. She nodded towards the hall table. ‘Would you mind putting them there please?’ she asked.

The delivery man squeezed past her as she bent to sign the form.

Melody paused, a puzzled frown on her brow. ‘This doesn’t seem right,’ she started to say, ‘It’s a sales slip for the Tiffany Plus jewellers …’

She did not get any further. A strong arm wrapped around her body, pinning her arms to her sides at the elbows, and a hand holding a large cloth was clamped over her mouth and nose. A hospital smell assailed her and as she slipped into unconsciousness. As she went under, her last thoughts were, Caught by one of the oldest tricks in the book! She hated to think what she would be waking up to.

*

It seemed an eternity before Melody regained an awareness of her plight. Her head swam and she saw disjointed images in which Brod and a large bunch of flowers figured prominently. Then the memory returned of her arms pinned to her sides and the chloroform-soaked rag being held over her mouth and nose. She remembered her last thoughts before slipping into unconsciousness. ‘I’m chloroformed,’ she thought abstractedly, ‘Give it time. At least I think I’m still in one piece.’ She slipped back into a swimmingly drugged sleep.

When next she awoke her head seemed clearer until she tried to raise it. She promptly lost consciousness again.

Upon regaining consciousness for the third time, Melody was able to make better sense of her surroundings. She was lying face down on a dusty wooden floor. Light filtered into the room from windows of some sort. At first she did not attempt to move. She closed her eyes, opened them, blinked several times, and managed to focus on a knot in the floorboard close to her face. When it resolved itself into one knot hole instead of two, she lifted her head cautiously. The room swam in her sight disconcertingly and she allowed her head to roll back to the floor. But this time she did not lose consciousness. It was easier the next time she raised her head, and she was able to stay in that position awhile, taking in her surroundings.

She appeared to be in the room of an abandoned house, judging by the litter on the floor and the broken boards that were nailed over sections of the windows. She was probably in the living room because there was some kind of fireplace topped by shelving next to a door leading to another part of the house.

The action of raising her head told Melody several other things all at once. Her wrists were bound together behind her back with what felt like thin cloth, and her ankles were tied together by some sort of cord. She was gagged with a wide, scratchy cloth of some kind. It felt like a strip of thin dishcloth. It was tied so firmly over her mouth that it pressed her lips painfully against her teeth. Perhaps it was the same sort of cloth that held her wrists.

There was no packing in her mouth for her to choke on. She was glad of that and wondered whether the gang member who bound her had thought about the danger of choking while recovering from the chloroform. She did feel sick and there was a taste of bile in her mouth.

There was another touch of thoughtfulness too, if abduction could ever have such an element of care in it. Her warm jacket with the fleecy lined collar had been put on her. The house felt cold and damp to her stockinged legs, and she realised that the short satin skirt she wore was not really appropriate for a kidnapping. It had already ridden up her thighs, and she had not yet begun to struggle.

That was Melody’s next consideration as her head cleared sufficiently to allow her to sit up, propping her body by placing her hands on the floor and pushing up with her arms.

It was daylight. She must have been unconscious the whole night. There was no sound from the street outside and Melody guessed that she was in an abandoned neighborhood. Perhaps that was another reason why she was not gagged more securely. There was no one to hear her cries. When she attempted to call for help as an experiment, she found that, as well as the cloth doing a serviceable job of muffling her, there was a dryness in her mouth caused by the chloroform that enabled her to produce only a faint croak.

‘Okay,’ Melody thought, ‘I can’t cry out loud enough to attract attention, even if there were people near. But it should be possible to find something to cut these bonds.’

She looked about the room more carefully. The morning sun streaming in through the wide cracks in the window openings was lighting up the room with every minute. At first glance, the place in which she was imprisoned looked like any other room of an abandoned house. The floorboards were dusty and pieces of timber and flakes of plaster lay everywhere. But the place might also have been a workshop or a storage room for tools at one time, judging by what looked like an old oil can on the mantel. A number of boards and sheets of plaster lay heaped at one end of the room, and from beneath one of the piles the handle of something protruded. It looked like a broom handle, or maybe it was an old shovel. If it was a shovel, she might be able to saw at her bonds on an edge of the flat iron.

Melody worked her way across the floor, supporting herself from behind with her hands and arms and scooting on her bound legs. It did not take long for her to reach the pile of refuse. She was sweating with the exertion and breathing deeply. The gag across her mouth made breathing difficult and the dustiness of the place did not help.

Turning her back to the wooden handle, Melody succeeded in grasping it. But it resisted her efforts to pull it out from under the heaped wood and plaster. She tugged harder. A feeling of panic began to clutch at her heart. She might only have a little more time left before her captors came for her. She redoubled her efforts and slowly, grudgingly, the shovel or whatever it was began to slip out. The angle of the handle felt funny as she pulled, as though the business end of the shovel was all the time snagging on the detritus that covered it. She tried to match the angle against the obstruction as she pulled, cooperating with the obstruction instead of working against it. And when the object finally began to shift more quickly, she found herself pulling sideways on the handle instead of straight out. It was certainly not a shovel.

When at last the implement slipped fully free, Melody gasped in astonishment. She was gripping the long wooden handle of a scythe, the sort that gardeners used sometimes to cut grass but which was also associated with the medieval figure of death. Disparate images from three movies flashed across her mind at the same time: the final scene of ‘The Seventh Seal,’ Woody Allen’s monologue with Death, and Monty Python’s ‘Meaning of Life,’ the last two films derived from the first.

She shivered at the thoughts, but experienced renewed confidence. The long blade of a scythe would be superior to that of a shovel where a heroine cutting herself free of her bonds was concerned. It was an amazingly lucky break. The blade was rusty but Melody saw that it would serve her purpose well, if only she had enough time.

Melody rolled onto her face and extended her legs so that the blade passed between her bound ankles. As she sawed at the cords by moving her legs back and forth, she was glad the steel edge was relatively blunt. A sudden slip could mean a lot of blood spilt. There was a delicate moment when the cords fell free, but Melody was able to push the blade to one side and slide a leg out from under it without injury. Now sweating profusely, Melody sat up and edged her back to the blade.

Cutting the strips of cloth from her wrists was slightly more risky than when freeing her ankles, because it was hard to see what she was doing with her hands tied behind her back. She knew she had succeeded when she felt the pieces of cloth fall away. There was a streak of blood down one wrist when she brought her hands in front to massage them, and she used a piece of the cloth gag to staunch what was only a light nick. He wrist bonds had been tied tight enough to impress the warp and weft of the fibers into the skin of her wrists, and her finger tips tingled as full circulation was restored to her hands.

Melody climbed shakily to her feet and made her way to the front door, where she paused and listened. Her caution paid off, because she caught the sound of voices approaching from up the street. With her heart in her mouth, and hoping desperately that the house had a back door, Melody ran as quietly as she could to the back of the house. A doorway minus its door opened onto a vacant lot, and when she stepped into the open Melody saw behind her a line of broken down houses while in front of her across the grassy block stood a row of warehouses.

Where to run? Away from the direction in which the voices were coming from was the best move. The warehouses on the skyline above her gave Melody a sense of foreboding. She would not venture there. To be caught and held in such a place would be more lonely and frightening than to be a prisoner in one of the houses. So Melody ran along the back of the empty houses until she came to the end of the block. There was no sound of cries behind her, hardly to be expected considering they were kidnappers who would not be keen on having their presence known.

*

Tilly’s house was one of five at the end of a cul de sac, an area free of traffic noise for most of the day except for the minor sounds of commuters heading to work in the morning and returning home after five. Still shaken by the way the gang had shadowed her flat and then abducted her, Melody took care to observe potential danger spots near the house. Most serious of these and one about which she could do nothing was the footpath that ran along one side of the house next to the fence. It allowed access from her street to a parallel road about a hundred yards away.

How safe was she? Did the gang members have any means of discovering her new address? They had managed to find out where she lived before easily enough. And what was that silly young woman Jasmine up to? She wondered what advice Brod would give if he knew she had already been kidnapped and escaped on her own. She did not like to tell him, not only because he would worry about her but also because she felt embarrassed at her own over-confidence.

The phone began ringing and Melody ran to it. But it was not Brod as she had hoped. It was a woman’s voice, by now familiar to her ears.

‘It’s Jasmine isn’t it?’ How on earth could she get this phone number?

‘Ms Hazard, I’ve got to talk with you urgently.’

‘What is it, Jasmine?’ There was fear in the girl’s voice. What was she up to now?

‘They’re following me. And they’re after you too. The gang looking for the diamond.’

‘If that’s true, Jasmine, we’d better meet in a public place. Where are you now?’

‘I’m at the Lakeside Hotel Coffee Palace,’ Jasmine replied tearfully.

‘Okay. Stay there till I arrive.’

Melody lowered the receiver, cutting Jasmine off. She dialed another number immediately and ordered a taxi.

While she waited for the taxi to arrive Meloldy changed her light silk blouse and gold neck chains for a thick silk blouse and business suit. She wrapped a large white silk chiffon scarf around her throat as a protection against the cold, and put on the overcoat with the fleecy collar. She paused and considered whether to wear the overcoat Tilly had loaned her. She had intended to return it but in the flurry of the last few days she had completely forgotten about it. It was such an awful garment that Melody could not bear the thought of being seen wearing it in public, and anyway she already had on the jacket that had protected her in the abandoned house.

The taxi arrived in due time and within twenty minutes she was alighting outside the hotel by the lake. It was not raining but the sky was blanketed with dark storm clouds.

She found Jasmine sitting in a cubicle at the far end of one of the lounge room bars, a cup of coffee on the table before her that had gone cold. The agitated girl appeared to be in no mood for drinking. Melody however could do with a hot drink and she ordered a coffee at the bar for herself and a fresh one for Jasmine before sitting down opposite the girl. Melody opened the conversation.

‘I hope this is important. I’m fed up with your habit of running off before anything’s been resolved.’

Jasmine nodded and dabbed a lace handkerchief to the corner of one eye. ‘It’s about that diamond,’ she began.

‘I guessed,’ replied Melody impatiently. ‘And those men. You always seem to be one step ahead of them. But let’s start from a logical beginning. First, how did you know my phone number? In fact how did you know I had left my apartment?’

‘Well,’ said Jasmine shamefacedly, ‘When I visited your flat when you were out, I looked in the notebook by the phone and saw a card in it with an address and number scribbled on the back. I knew you worked at the Swag Boutique, so I copied it down because I thought it would be useful later. I thought at first you’d be able to help me hide out from those men. But things are different now. I want to make you a proposition.’

‘Another one! You know my answer on that already, Jasmine. It’s no deal.’

The girl shook her head. ‘We have to tell them. They won’t let up until they have that diamond. And they’ve offered to make it a two-way split, between them and us.’

‘Who are you talking about?’

‘The two men who told me where your apartment was.’

It can`t have been Brod and Oscar! ‘Who are they? Do you know their names? Describe them!’

‘There’s no need to,’ answered Jasmine miserably. ‘They’re here now.’

Melody saw the girl’s round frightened eyes focus on an area beyond her shoulder. She turned quickly. Walking towards them from the entrance to the lounge were Brentford and Orly.