The Maltese Duck: A Lisette Rivers Case
by
Brian Sands
Spicy Tales “Sally the Sleuth: Death by Appointment,” Crime Smashers #8, June 1952, courtesy c3c Yahoo Group, colours added by Brian Sands
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Chapter Three: Revenge
Lisette could not know when Flax Pierpont or his henchman Howard Goon might return to collect her. The Pimlico Museum of Antiquities was a considerable distance from Flax Pierpont’s office building, so she had to assume it would take at least an hour to make the two-way journey. But an hour might not allow sufficient time to get free from her bonds and find a means of opening the locked door.
Fighting back panic, Lisette began to pick open the loose threads which held the seams of her belt together. She extracted the precious blade that with its serrated edge had been the means of cutting her free in past adventures. Thick hempen rope, cable ties, binder twine, thin computer cable had all given way to Lisette’s blade. It was her most useful gadget for crime fighting.
True to its nature, the blade made short work of the thin sash cord at her wrists and within half a minute of struggling she had successfully removed the body ties and those at her legs. The next step was to find a way out of the cell. Lisette scrambled over the packing cases to the doorway and tried the handle. It was rigid, a deadlock. The door itself was thick and scarcely made a sound when she beat upon it.
Lisette turned again to her trusty blade. It did not take long to unscrew the hinges of the door with the blade’s straight edge. The heavy door fell outwards across the passageway, coming up against the opposite wall with a dull thud. Lisette had to clamber across it to reach the corridor.
She found her way cautiously up the steps from the basement to the ground floor: So far so good. Instead of making a quick escape through one of the ground floor exits, Lisette on impulse continued upward to the poky office where she had her first encounter with Flax Pierpont. She wondered whether there was any clue of the man’s criminal activities that she might be able to use as evidence. She was angry. Allowing herself to be trapped and overpowered hurt her pride, and she was thirsting for revenge.
Lisette’s opportunity came sooner than she expected. As she entered the room where she had been held prisoner earlier she heard the sound of the front door slamming shut. Ergo, the door had been opened and someone had entered carelessly, the door caught by a strong wind that funneled its way along the narrow street outside.
She listened, her ear against the door, which she held ajar. Footfalls receded into the nether distance as the interlocutor, a man she guessed, and from the heavy tread very likely Howard Goon. There was a pause followed by a muted roar and a string of obscenities as Goon discovered that his captive had escaped her bonds and fled.
The heavy footfalls started again. This time they came closer and did not pause at the floor below but drew nearer. Lisette realized that the room where she was hiding had a telephone. Howard Goon, who presumably did not own a mobile phone, was going to contact his boss.
Her heart pounding, Lisette looked frantically for some sort of weapon but there was little available. She was about to grab one of the bottles on the shelf when the thought of what damage she might cause by using it made her stop. The idea of “glassing” someone was abhorrent.
She turned empty-handed as the door flew open. Howard Goon burst into the small space intent on going to the phone and was taken completely by surprise to find Lisette standing in his way.
It was an uneven contest, Lisette’s light frame against Goon’s physical bulk, but she did her best. Bryce la Plage had taught her the basics of boxing as well as some Aikido. She chose a well-known boxing punch. Her uppercut to Goon’s jaw staggered the man, but from then on it was a losing battle.
Lisette held her own for perhaps half a minute – a long time when one is struggling against an attacker – and she might even have succeeded in stunning the man when she picked up a wooden stool and began to swing it about with fair accuracy, making Goon jump back and eliciting a grunt from him when part of the stool’s round edge caught him in the ribs. Goon was temporarily winded and fell back.
Then things started to go wrong. Lisette turned towards the door and might have escaped down the passageway. But, as she crossed the floor between Goon and the threshold, her foot caught on a trailing length of cord attached to the rickety wooden shelf. She stumbled to her knees, just saving herself from a nasty fall, but by then Goon was upon her.
Doc Savage courtesy c3c Yahoo Group, colours changed by Brian Sands
The big man descended upon her and it was all over. Lisette subsided with a faint groan, winded and barely conscious. She was beginning to recover, and had attempted to sit up on one elbow, when a cloth pad was held over her nose and mouth. She tasted the sweet sickly smell of chloroform and began to struggle. But she was dazed from the fall and quickly succumbed to the fumes.
Spicy “Sally the Sleuth,” courtesy c3c Yahoo Group, colours added by Brian Sands
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Lisette came to slowly, her mind whirling with jumbled images that settled in time to a room shifting about her. There was tightness around her face and when she tried to move she was unable to do so. Some while later she made better sense of it when the walls stopped moving.
She was on her side bound hand and foot upon a reclining sofa that belonged more appropriately to the outdoors. When she tried to move her arms she found that her wrists had been tied together with what felt like heavy rope. A broad band of cloth covered her mouth. It felt like thick silk and had been tied very tightly. She remembered that she had been carrying a second silk scarf in her handbag. They had probably used because it was conveniently at hand.
She rolled onto her back and managed to prop herself up against the couch in order to look around her. Her captor had placed her in a small room. The casual furniture suggested that it was what people call a “sun room,” but the wall where one would ordinarily see a large window was screened off with a heavy curtain. Beside the couch stood a round coffee table on which was an empty flowerpot.
Wing Comics “Jane Martin,” Fiction House (Dec. 1946), p. 14, courtesy c3c Yahoo Group, colours changed by Brian Sands
As her head cleared and her mind became functional again, Lisette began to plan her escape. The blade still lay tucked into her belt where she had replaced it after use in the office building. But her belt had shifted and the blade was out of reach somewhere across the side of her waist. She tried to reach her belt so as to drag it around her waist but the heavy ropes made it almost impossible to move her hands.
Lisette looked speculatively at the flowerpot. Her bonds were tight and thick but she felt that they would not withstand a shard of pottery for long. She had no idea the duration she had been lying there unconscious. The way they had bound her, not taking the trouble to truss her up or gagging her more effectively than layered silk over her mouth, suggested that they expected her to remain long unconscious.
Now would be a good idea to get free and try to escape again. It would probably be her last chance. The next time they caught her they would surely take steps to prevent her from breaking free and escaping for a third time.
She swung her legs over to the coffee table and with a sharp kick toppled the heavy terracotta pot onto the floor. It fell upon a scatter rug, but the floor itself was of kiln-fired pavers in an Italianate design so that the pot broke apart, spraying soil and small stones in which a plant had once grown.
Counterpoint, Fawcett (1980) by Isabelle Holland
Carpet and soil together muffled the sound of breaking so that all Lisette heard was a dull ”crump” that would not be audible outside the room. She lowered herself to her knees, controlling the slow drop with her elbows until the last moment, and succeeded in arriving on the floor without mishap. Lying upon her side, Lisette scrabbled with her fingers through the broken shards of pottery searching for a piece that had an edge sharp enough to cut her bonds.
When she found a piece and began to saw at the rope, the terracotta crumbled after a few strokes. Lisette was stymied regularly as one after another the pieces of pottery fell apart in her fingers. But slow progress was made and after about twenty minutes of patient work one strand of rope parted and she was able to unwrap her wrists.
With a groan Lisette reached up, pulled the gag down from her mouth, and began to untie the rope that held her ankles. This also took a long time. The thick knots resisted her tired fingers and her hands shook from the adrenalin rush that came with breaking free, together with a touch of panic over how long it had taken.
When at last her legs were untrammelled Lisette lost no time in deploying the gadgets that she had about her. She told herself: This time if I’m recaptured there’ll be a couple of safety nets to help me out. It rankled that she had been unable to reach the blade hidden in her belt. What’s the point of having all these things if I can’t use them?
She reached to the pearl necklace that was entwined with her small silk neckerchief and found the flat circular button that was embedded in one side. They were freshwater pearls, unevenly shaped spheroids. The button, which she now pressed, was hidden on the inner side of the pearl against her throat. The microchip within it was now emitting a signal that would be picked up by a GPS. Lisette hoped that Sophie or Chèrie would be alerted to her whereabouts when their computers chimed automatically. That is if they were in the office.
This Island Earth Faith Domergue, scan by Brian Sands
Next Lisette turned to her shoes and the miniature mobile phone hidden in one heel. She weighed the small item in her hand and considered whether to use it immediately to alert her friends. It seemed a little like overkill considering the GPS was already up and running. But she could not be sure whether Chèrie or Sophie would pick up the GPS message in time. Using the point of her blade she keyed the office number. There was no reply in person but Sophie’s pleasing voice notified callers that their message would be taken while the office was unattended. This result could either be reassuring or alarming: reassuring if the GPS bleep had been picked up, but alarming if her friends were preoccupied with other matters.
Lisette looked about the small room. Where was she? How important was this place? The heel of her other shoe contained the bugging device. She decided it might be a good idea to plant it in the room so that her friends would have an additional clue to her disappearance. An photographic print hanging on the wall was the only other item of furniture aside from the couch on which she had been lying, and the side table. Quickly she activated the circular black device and pressed it into one corner at the back of the frame.
The door of the room was unlocked. This puzzled Lisette: Why are they so confident that I’m secure? She stepped cautiously into a central hallway that ran the length of the building. Down its vista she saw at one end what appeared to be the kitchen, from which came the sound of voices and the clink of cutlery. So they were close at hand. That explained it.
At the opposite end was a front door, the area around it well-lit by a large glass panel. She stepped as lightly as possible towards it.
© Brian Sands 2009.
The Bondage Fiction of Brian Sands