Lisette Ruisseau
&
the Case of the Kidnapped Heiress
by
Brian Sands
Von Ryan’s Express, Rafaella Carra
Chapter Two Travelling Trunk
Stringy gave a further demonstration of his efficiency. Lisette was sat up on the bed. A small loop about an inch in diameter was tied at the end of the long piece of cord. The end was then passed between Lisette’s upper arms and her body and the other, plain end of the long cord was threaded through the small loop and the slack taken up. There was a lot of cord to go through. When the loop within the loop almost reached its end, it encircled Lisette’s arms just above the elbows. Stringy pulled firmly and the single strand noose tightened, drawing Lisette’s arms back together between her shoulder blades. Lisette was forced to arch her spine and sit straighter. She was glad that she was still wearing her light jacket. Its sleeves helped to cushion the noose.
The man continued to wind the cord around the young woman’s body, a single pass below her breasts and around her back, another pass above her breasts and also around her back. What remained of the cord was then threaded between her arms below the existing windings and brought up to her shoulders – across the shoulders and down again for the single end to be knotted firmly as a cinch between her elbows for the cords that wrapped her body. When it was pulled tight and made fast, Lisette’s arms were squeezed in against her back. She was trussed in a single length, and in such a way that there was no give in the bonds at all. Stringy found another, shorter length of cord, made a small loop at one end as before, passed the cord around her waist, threaded its end through the loop, and tightened it off, winding another turn around her waist for good measure before cinching it between her arms and her body. The girl’s hands were now firmly nested at the base of her spine, tight against her buttocks.
Lisette tested her bonds. She could not move her arms at all. As if to make his point, Stringy gave her a light push and she fell helplessly to one side, bouncing gently upon the soft bed covers.
The man disappeared into the other room and returned within a few seconds carrying another piece of cord, the creased table napkins, and Lisette’s handbag. He tossed the cord and the napkins onto the bed beside Lisette, placed her bag on the bedside table, opened it, and drew from it a colourful silk square. He approached her.
Lisette swallowed and spoke quickly. “B- Before you put that on me, can I have another drink of water … please?”
Stringy paused. He shrugged. “Sure, why not? You’re going to be here a long time.”
He left. She heard a tap running in the kitchen for a moment, and he reappeared with a glass of water in his hand.
“H- How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long are you going to leave me tied up like this?”
“The rest of the day. We can’t do anything until it’s night ... Here …” He propped Lisette up and held the glass to her lips. “Drink. That’s enough talking.”
Lisette nodded and obeyed. She was allowed three sips before Stringy took the glass away. He raised it pointedly in an ironic salute and left the room. Upon his return he said, “Another small detail, we leave nothing like a drinking glass for you to cut your bonds.”
“You think of everything …’
“I said, no more talking!”
The silk scarf was bunched up and brought to Lisette’s lips. She opened her mouth resignedly and lay still while the gag was packed in behind her teeth. The table napkin that had been used to gag her earlier was again stuffed between her jaws and tied off tightly at the back of her neck. Lisette groaned inwardly. He’s making sure there’s not a peep out of me.
Stringy stood, cracked his knuckles, then continued making his captive secure. He shook out an unused table napkin, folded it to a triangle then into a broad band of cloth. This he placed beside Lisette’s head so that she could look at it for a moment and guess its purpose. The old blindfold was then replaced over her eyes, its creases moulding around her head and the bridge of her nose. When its knot had been made fast, Lisette felt the other, fresh, lightly starched napkin being bound over her mouth, covering her face from the point of her chin to rest immediately below her nose. Its knot was tied above the knot holding the blindfold so that, when it was tightened, Lisette’s eyes and mouth felt as though they were sealed within a tight cloth hood. The layers of cloth covering her ears occluded all except, she supposed, the loudest sounds so that the soft background hum of the air conditioner could no longer be heard.
Lisette’s discomfort was not yet complete. She felt hands on her ankles. A cord was passed between them in an extra cinch that was made tight then brought to form another cinch between her shoulders. Her legs were drawn back until they were bent at ninety degrees. It was not the most stringent hogtie, not hands against feet, but it might just as well have been. She did not test it, however, but waited for her captor to leave.
She lay on the bed, all remaining senses alert, but had no idea whether the man had gone or whether he was still there observing her. Eventually, after counting off ten minutes slowly in her head, Lisette decided that he had probably left. She flexed her hands and attempted to search for a saving knot, and discovered two things immediately. The first was that her fingers were already stiffening up due to the restricted circulation in her hands. The second discouraging fact was that she was unable to find a knot anywhere. They had all been placed cunningly away from her questing fingers. Even the ankle ties that held her legs bent must be on the opposite side where her fingers could not reach.
Lisette began to despair about her predicament because other discoveries just as daunting were soon made. When she tried to roll onto her face and then over onto her other side, the goal seemed almost impossible. The bed was so soft that her body sank into the coverlet and the mattress beneath, allowing her no firm surface that she could rock against to create momentum. In any case, her choice was restricted. If she was able to roll about on the bed, her struggles could carry her over the edge, and she was completely powerless to save herself if she was to fall. The floor beneath the carpet was concrete and a fall even from the comparatively low height of the bed would be dangerous. When she attempted to rub her face against the coverlet in a bid to dislodge either the gag or the blindfold, the same softness thwarted her efforts. She succeeded only in burying her face into the loose layers and had to raise her head quickly to catch her breath and keep from smothering. The covering gag and the blindfold, linked together by their respective knots, refused to budge.
Her experiments in calling for help through the gag also came to nothing. She could not form words because the rolled up scarf in her mouth tangled her tongue and helped to reduce resonance. It was difficult to move her jaws, and the cloth covering her mouth muffled the sounds that did filter through. Her cries were made through a mouth that was wide open, that was blocked, and in addition cushioned beneath the seal of the broad napkin. They were the sorts of cries she might have attempted during a visit to the dentist when her mouth was held open by the dental gag, except that her mouth was packed and bound in cloth as well. She could hear herself, and the faint strangled mewing that came out she knew would only be heard by someone in the room. Anyone in the adjoining room or out in the hotel corridor would be totally oblivious to her cries.
Lisette whimpered in frustration. Tears stung her eyes beneath the blindfold. The young woman prepared resolutely to spend the rest of the day in the hateful confinement. Stringy had said he would return in the evening. It was still mid-morning, and relief of any kind was many hours away.
The rest of the day passed through one interminable hour after another. Lisette fretted occasionally at her inability to move, speak, see or hear. When it became too much to bear she struggled anew, but it always ended in the same way, with exhaustion, her wrists burning from the tight cords that held them together, her jaws stretched wide apart, mouth clogged with silk, head pounding from the blindfold tied over her eyes. Most of the time she lay still, accepting her present helplessness, awaiting developments.
She could hear nothing except the loudest of sounds. After what seemed many hours but was in fact less than an hour, she was roused from her torpor by the distant roar of a jet passing overhead. Lisette remembered that the hotel stood beneath one of the flight paths to the nearby airport. It was only the loudest of jets that she heard, but it was enough to give her a tenuous grip on how the hours were passing. Lisette guessed that one series of distant roars marked midday and early afternoon flights. She shifted uncomfortably in her bonds, settled back on the bed, and continued to wait out the day.
The feeling of hands on her arms came so unexpectedly that Lisette bucked in her restraints then cringed down into the mattress. She had not heard the opening of the bedroom door, and the long slow hours of dark and silence left her dazed and disoriented. Lisette raised her head and mewed faintly into her gag, a sound that came from her throat and scarcely penetrated through the cloth in her mouth. Her face and jaws were numb and her tongue felt swollen. Fingers worked at the knot of the blindfold. She squeezed her eyes shut against the light in the room and, when she opened them cautiously, they stung and watered as sight was restored. Amazingly, the gag was removed as well.
Lisette was propped up against the headboard of the bed and a plastic bottle of pure spring water straight from the suite’s mini-bar was held to her lips. She sipped experimentally. Her captor waited patiently while she slowly drank down more than half the contents of the bottle. Fresh water had never tasted as good as it did at that moment. The dryness of her palate became a thing of the past. Her tongue began to feel normal again. The sheer movement of opening her mouth a little to receive the drink, however, sent stabs of pain through her cramped jaws.
“Feel better?” asked Stringy in a tone that was not unkind.
Lisette nodded mutely. “Mm hmm … I can’t move my jaws much, and my face is numb.” The words came out slurred and faint but her captor understood them.
“Your pretty mouth will be numb again when it’s time to move you.”
“When …?”
Stringy looked at his watch. “In about an hour from now. It’s seven-thirty in the evening. We’ll move you before nine. The young lady scheduled for abduction arrives at her apartment from her art class at ten. You’ll meet her face to face.”
“The- then …?”
“We’ll set you free, as I promised.”
“Th- thank you. But … ?”
“The girl we keep. That’s our job.”
“Re- reconsider?”
“No way. We snatch the girl. We let you go. End of story … as far as you’re concerned. There’ll be a ransom demanded and paid for the girl. She will be held safely, at slightly less inconvenience than what you are experiencing at present.”
“I- I’m glad of that. But …”
“That’s enough talk!”
Stringy raised the broad folded napkin that had been Lisette’s blindfold and brought it over her head. The cloth, still with a faint napping from the starch that made it a little stiff to the feel, was fitted across her mouth and its ends tied firmly at the back of her head over her hair.
“I advise you not to try to get it off,” said Stringy. “If you do, I will gag you as thoroughly and even more tightly than before. Do you understand?”
“Mm hm,” Lisette nodded.
“It will muffle any cries you decide to make. I hope you do not try!”
Lisette nodded again. Stringy took her around the shoulders and under the backs of her knees and lowered her down onto the bed, rolling her to one side. None of her wrist, ankle or body bindings had been touched. Lisette was trussed up just as she was that morning. Thankful for small mercies, the young woman lay still and looked at the curtained window after Stringy had left, watching as if in a trance the faint pattern of light that filtered through to play upon the walls from street lamps and advertising neon. The cloth bound over her mouth pressed her lips against her teeth and slowly became uncomfortable. The threat of something worse encouraged her to resist the impulse to fight free of the gag.
From time to time, Lisette Ruisseau looked with horrified fascination to the corner of the room where the dark japanned trunk with its brass reinforcements stood. She shuddered.
*
Much later, the bedroom door opened and both Stringy and Big Bear entered. Stringy sat Lisette up against the headboard again and began to untie the gag. Big Bear walked to the corner of the room and busied himself tilting and shifting the large trunk. Lisette felt cold and sick in her stomach as she watched the larger man’s activities.
“Yer bein’ cooperative,” said Stringy as the gag came away from Lisette’s face. “Good girl.”
“I- I don’t want you to hurt me,” Lisette replied in a small voice that was as slurred and indistinct as when she had spoken two hours earlier.
Her lips still felt numb from the gag’s pressure and her mouth was dry again, although it had been closed this time. In response to her faint enunciation, Stringy held the water bottle to her lips. Lisette drank gratefully.
“I- … I need to use the bathroom … please?” she asked huskily, a dribble of water running down her chin.
Stringy hesitated before untying the bonds around her legs and ankles. He freed the young woman of the cords that trussed her body and helped her to her feet, leaving her wrists tied together behind her back. When she took a step forward, she swayed and almost fell. Stringy caught and steadied her. Step by step, she made her way to the door of the en suite.
“I- I can’t use my hands properly, tied like this,” Lisette stammered.
“Do the best you can. We’re not allowing for any funny business.”
Lisette swallowed nervously and stepped across the threshold.
“The door stays open,” added Stringy. “We won’t look, unless you take too long.”
Lisette did not attempt to argue. It was the best she could manage of a bad business. The hours of lying bound, and the impending horror of the black trunk, dampened her usually feisty mood. At times she had slipped into a trance-like state, a blessed relief from straining painfully against the ropes, the blindfold and the gag. It was difficult to rouse out of that mood. She still felt dazed from the ordeal, and she knew that it was not yet over. She paused and glanced across her shoulder at the man, her eyes pleading.
“I’ll help you,” he said decisively. “We don’t want a mess in here to arouse interest in the hotel, or outside in the van - the hire company will ask questions.”
It was not the response Lisette wanted. Her pleading gaze had meant “Untie me please.” But Stringy dealt with her plight in a businesslike fashion. Her skirt and panties were pulled down and she was left immediately to her own devices. When those devices were completed, he returned and skilfully replaced panties and skirt, never once touching her intimately, even resisting the understandable impulse to fondle her breasts that other kidnappers had not always been able to ignore. Lisette looked at him questioningly.
“You’re a paramedic or a nurse?” she surmised.
“Close,” the man replied, “But it’s better for me to remain anonymous. You are, after all, a private investigator.”
Lisette was led to the bedside where she was made to sit while her ankles and legs were bound together once again. Then her arms were tied back at the elbows and trussed to her body as before. He tested the new bonds. She could not move her upper arms but she was able to twist her forearms a small distance from her body to either side. Stringy soon set that right by passing more cord around her midriff and over her forearms a few inches above her bound wrists. When the cord was passed between her body and her arms and cinched tightly, the young woman could no longer move her arms. They were fixed ramrod straight behind her, the backs of her hands pressed against the base of her spine as before.
The water bottle was held to Lisette’s lips and, when she had taken several swallows, she was gagged again, but with the difference that additionally a handkerchief was rolled into a ball and packed into her mouth after the scarf. One of the table napkins was secured tightly to hold the packing in place, but this time a knot was made in its centre and pressed between her teeth. When it was tied off, the gag stretched her mouth wide open, almost to the limit that her jaws could accommodate. Another napkin was bound over the lower part of her face. This time it was arranged to cover her nose. Lisette was scarcely able to take in air through her mouth, the passage sealed by the wet silk of the scarf, and the handkerchief that was already becoming damp with drool. The weave of the napkin covering her nose allowed her to breathe in enough air … if she lay still and concentrated on the process.
Stringy watched dispassionately. “That’s the way,” he said, “take slow, shallow breaths. It won’t be for long … just long enough for us to get you into the van. Too long and you will asphyxiate. With your mind concentrated on living, you won’t be making a sound.”
Stringy nodded to his henchman. Lisette was picked up in the arms of Big Bear and carried towards the black trunk that now stood with its lid wide open, a huge mouth about to engulf her into total encasement and darkness. The young woman kicked her legs and tried to scream, the effort causing her to hyperventilate and slip dangerously towards unconsciousness.
As she was lowered into the box and onto her side, Lisette attempted to get a grip on her panic. Sweat beaded her brow and ran down the side of her neck and under her armpits. Her silk blouse clung wetly to her body. Her heart was beating so loudly that she thought her captors must hear it. She raised her head as the lid came down and sealed off all light and sound from the outside world. A wail of pure terror built up in her throat and was lost in the gag. She was suffocating and choking by turns.
Clenching her fists, Lisette fought to remain calm. Her mind worked overtime. He said it’s only for a little while, long enough to sneak me out of the hotel without anyone noticing. There’ll be enough air for maybe ten minutes, if I breathe slowly.