this stuff of Manning’s was a cinch for her. She did a
The Wrong Venus — 79
page of it in Faulkner one day, just to bug
Merriman, and it was perfect. She could write as
fast as Sanborn, too, but she’s just not overwhelmed
with the seriousness of it all. The reason he got
ahead of her is he slept nights.
“Sometimes she wouldn’t get home till ten a.m.,
long after he’d gone to work. For breakfast she’d
have a split of champagne, six cups of coffee, and
three or four eggs, and then sit down at the
typewriter and start banging away. Vitality galore.”
“I can see how she and Dudley might get on each
other’s nerves,” Colby said. “Oh, she never paid any
attention to him. She just laughed at him or brushed
him off like a gnat—except that morning they had
the argument, I mean. She was apparently upset
about something, and when he started complaining
about her late hours, she blew up and told him off.”
“And that was the day she was kidnapped.”
“Yes. Nobody saw her leave, but apparently it was
in the evening. They must have picked her up in
front of the house.”
Colby nodded, and turned his attention to the
photograph of Sabine Manning on the back of the
book jacket. It was the usual gussied-up job of the
glamour photographer, softened and diaphanous
and full of subtly hinted mystery, but no amount of
technique could entirely cover up the spinsterish
aspect of its small, prim mouth, the lost and
defeated wallflower face, and its drab topping of
undistinguished hair that was probably somewhere
between brindle and dried-thistle brown.
“What’s she like?” he asked Martine.
“It’s not a kind thing to say,” she replied with
some reluctance, “but mousy is the word you have to
use. She’s just one of those people that nothing ever
happens to, that nobody ever sees—”
“No charisma.”
“Worse. The girl at the cocktail party hiding in a
corner with an empty glass pretending to be
interested in book titles on a shelf. I thought when
The Wrong Venus — 80
Roberto shook her up she was going to live a little,
but maybe it was too late.”
“She might have found another boyfriend. I mean,
if Roberto left her.”
“It’s possible, I suppose. But she’s so—so
ineffectual, the poor dear. Actually, we don’t even
know she went away with Roberto in the first place;
we just assumed she did. That postcard from Samos
sounded so ecstatic . . . I don’t know, it baffles me.”
* * *
It was a narrow gravel road running between
hedges. "Two kilometers,” Colby said.
He glanced at his watch in the glow of the
instrument panel. Six minutes to nine. Just after
making the turn they’d passed a farmhouse showing
lights, but he could see no more ahead. It was lonely
enough. A rabbit bolted across the road ahead of
them. Then he picked up the wooden bridge.
Three kilometers on the nose,” he said, as they
rolled across it and stopped. “This is the place.”
“I’ll go on and turn left to get back to the
highway.” She was silent for a moment and then
shivered slightly, and said, “I almost wish we hadn’t
got mixed up in this. I’m scared, Colby.”
“So am I,” he said. He turned. Faint starlight
shone in her eyes and he was conscious of the subtle
hint of perfume. Then she was in his arms and he
was kissing her to the accompaniment of fireworks
and violins.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Damn it to hell—”
“Mmmmmmm—what?”
“The bucket seat. Nobody but an automobile
manufacturer—”
“Well, the pills can’t do it all.”
“Have you ever been to Rhodes?”
“Uuuuummmmmm-uuuuummmmm.”
“What?”
“No,” she said.
The Wrong Venus — 81
“Its wonderful there—”
“That joke’s older than both of us.”
“I didn’t mean the joke. Rhodes. Bougainvillea,
wine-dark sea, roses, music. Tomorrow we’ll have
six thousand dollars—”
“You do the most exciting audit. Or is it a
travelogue?”
“Will you?”
“I think I might be persuaded. Let you know
tomorrow?”
“All right.” He broke it up, reluctant to let her go,
said “Geronimo,” and stepped out. She blew him a
kiss. The taillights of the Jaguar disappeared down
the road.
He lighted a cigarette, waited a minute until his
eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and began
walking slowly ahead along the left side of the road,
his mind still swamped and overrun with the
prospect of this intoxicating girl against the perfect
background of Rhodes. It was going to be worth
getting involved in Dudley’s madhouse.
It was a beautiful night, clear, but moonless, and
crisp with autumn without being cold. He wore only
the tweed suit, having left the topcoat at the house.
The shadowy masses of the hedges continued,
closing him in on both sides. In less than ten
minutes the headlights showed behind him. In spite
of himself, he felt his nerves begin to tighten.
The car came on, slowed, and went past. He
recognized the distinctive, carapace silhouette of a
Citroën. After it had gone out of sight, he
remembered the lipstick, and scrubbed at his lips
with a handkerchief. It was supposed to be Dudley
who’d dropped him, and the fewer things he had to
explain the better. His shoes made a crunching
sound on the gravel. Now the car was coming back.
The headlights were on high beam, blinding him.
He felt for the edge of the gravel with his feet to
give it room to go past if it were the wrong one. But
it was already slowing. It came to a stop less than
The Wrong Venus — 82
twenty feet away. He turned his back and put his
hands on top of his head.
Footsteps sounded in the gravel, two sets of them,
and came up behind him. He felt the hair lift on his
neck. A voice growled, “If the salaud twitches a
muscle, shoot him!”
Naturally theatrical, he wondered, or just trying to
impress the gangstair américain? Or maybe they
hadn’t bought a word of it; it was possible they
didn’t read the Série Noire. Hands patted him under
the arms, on the pockets, and ran down his trouser
legs.
“Nothing,” another voice said.
A dark cloth was placed over his eyes and knotted
behind his head. Then there was the tearing sound
of tape being unrolled as the man wound it around
and around his head, over the blindfold and into his
hair. A hand guided him back to the car. He groped,
found the open rear door. He got in.
“Kneel,” the voice said. He crouched on his knees,
his face on his arms atop the seat. He heard the
others get in, in front, and the door closed.
Something cold and hard nudged the back of his
head, and the voice said, “No tricks. Brains are hard
to clean off upholstery.”
He had a fine flair for drama, Colby thought; he
was feeling less nervous now. It was impossible to
tell which of them he’d talked to—the French
telephone is seldom a high-fidelity instrument. The
gun muzzle left his head, but he knew it was still
pointed at him. The car lunged forward with the
sound of scattered gravel. It was a Citroën, all right;
he recognized the exaggerated vertical movement of
its shock-absorbers.
The first turn was to the left, which meant they
were going away from Maintenon, but after that he
paid no attention. It would be elementary, even for a
child, to make an unnecessary number of them,
going in a twisting, roundabout route, in order to
confuse him. He lost track of time. It could have
been thirty minutes later, or forty-five, when they
The Wrong Venus — 83
made a sharp turn, bounced over a rough road for
some hundred meters, made two turns in quick
succession, and stopped. Doors opened.
“Descend,” one of the voices said.
He climbed out, his knees cramped from kneeling
on the floor. He was conscious of the ubiquitous
odor of rotting manure of all continental farms, and
heard a horse kick his stall. He was in a barnyard.
A hand took his arm, and he felt the gun in his
back. After three or four steps he felt concrete or
flagstone under his feet, and then a mat. He wiped
his shoes. One of them brushed something that
moved with a wooden clatter. Probably a pair of
sabots. A door clicked open, and he was pushed into
a room with a bare wooden floor. No light at all
penetrated the blindfold, but he could feel the
warmth of a stove nearby, and smell coffee and the
residual odors of cooking.
The Wrong Venus — 84
8
The whole ride had been in silence, but this was now
swept away with the suddenness of a collapsing
dike. "Alors! Another pensionaire! It was a female
voice, young, assertive, and charged with
accumulated grievance. "Maybe we will get in the
Guide Michelin, with a star, and crossed manure
forks—”
“Écoute—!”
“Another one to cook for and wash dishes for,
when I’m not shoveling food down that bottomless
pit of a woman, or scrubbing floors, or milking your
Uncle Anatole’s excrement of a cow—”
“Quiet!” one of the men shouted. “This one lays
the golden egg.”
“Hah! Like your Uncle Anatole’s imbecile of a
horse lays the golden egg in a basket of laundry—”
“Tais toi, Gabrielle! One should never put things
down near a horse—”
D’accord! Not near the horse of Uncle Anatole. Or
the cow of Uncle Anatole, or the chickens, or the
sheep, or anything else in this paradise where
constipation was only a rumor. If she ever saw a
piece of pavement again. . . .
The Wrong Venus — 85
Colby stood in silence while language played
around his head. Then somebody caught him by the
arm and he was pushed into a chair. He could feel a
table in front of him. “Listen!” a voice shouted, as a
fist banged the table, causing dishes to rattle. This
one says she is not Mademoiselle Manning. Let us
examine his so-called proof!”
“In my right-hand coat pocket,” Colby said.
“Aha! He does not speak with the accent of Cheekago!”
“What do you know of the accent of Cheek-ago?
You have heard it in films, with French actors—”
“Alors! So Oomfrey Bogarr is a French actor—”
“It is never the voice of Oomfrey Bogarr!”
“To hell with the accent of this one! Let us see the
proof.”
A hand dug into his pocket and brought out the
folded dust jacket and Kendall Flanagan’s passport.
“Voilà! It is the passport of ours.”
“And the faces are not the same.”
“Writers put other names on their books, why not
other faces?”
“Regard! If you had the face of ours, would you
put the face of that one on your book?”
“So! You too!” It was the girl’s voice. “Maybe I
should keep the key to her room.”
“I am only stating what anyone can see—”
“You are as sickening as Jean-Jacques. You would
need the equipment of alpinisme. I see you, roped
together, mounting the north wall of this blonde Alp
—”
“Quiet! We must decide.”
“What is there to decide? Truly, she is not
Mademoiselle Manning. We take the money and we
go.”
“But thirty thousand francs—”
All the voices erupted at once, but it was the girl’s
Colby was following. She was full up to here with
The Wrong Venus — 86
Uncle Anatole’s farm. This was the Paris she’d been
promised? The discothèques, the Moulin Rouge, the
Champs Élysées, champagne? For five days she’d
been up to her knees in fumier, taking care of an
idiot of a cow, and cooking food and opening bottles
of wine for the unbelievable appetite of this
unbelievable species of woman who was the wrong
woman to begin with. And besides, Uncle Anatole
might return tomorrow—
She was immediately pounced upon and silenced,
but Colby had caught it. He was going to win; they
had to settle tonight. He gave no sign he’d heard,
but said curtly, “Nobody gets anything until I’ve
talked to Mademoiselle Flanagan.”
“You shall talk to her.”
“Good. Give me back the passport. And your letter
is in my left-hand pocket.”
The passport was placed in his hand. He returned
it to his pocket. Someone else removed the letter.
“What a species of imbecility, in your own
handwriting,” the girl’s voice said. “It’s a good thing
you have an American gangstair to tell you how to
conduct an affair of this sort.”
“Come,” one of the voices said. He stood up, and
was turned, marched forward, and turned again. He
thought they were going down a hallway. They
stopped. He heard a key being inserted in a lock,
and had an impression of a door opening.
“She will tell you she is all right,” the man said. It
was the one called Jean-Jacques. Then he warned,
“No English.”
“Mademoiselle Flanagan?” Colby asked,
addressing the blackness directly ahead of him.
“Yes. Who are you?” There was no fear in the
voice, which seemed to be coming from the far side
of a room. It was pure American French; they
weren’t running in a ringer on him.
“Duke Colby, from Chicago,” he said. “I work for
Carl. Trouble-shooter, enforcer—like that.” He
wasn’t sure how much of this she could understand,
The Wrong Venus — 87
but it was for the others anyway. “I flew in today to
see if I could cool this thing before it got loused up
with cops or newspapers.”
“How is Carl?”
“Chewing nails, you know him. He wanted to move
in with a bunch of muscle, but I talked him out of it.
Bad for business. You’re okay, then?”
“No complaints.”
“That’s all I wanted to know. Dudley’s just waiting
for word from me to deliver the payoff. I’ll see you.”
The key turned in the lock again. “Now, are you
satisfied?” Jean-Jacques asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Call the same number. When
Monsieur Dudley answers, say only one word.
Bingo.”
“Beengo.”
“That’s it. He’ll deliver the money as soon as he
can get there.”
“Beengo. Remember it well, Rémy.”
He was marched back along the hallway a few
steps and apparently into another room. His hands
were tied behind him, and he was pushed backward
onto a bed. “We are being robbed,” Jean-Jacques
complained bitterly. “Thirty thousand francs—hah!
But what can one do? We will drop you with the
Cicero.”
They went out. He could hear them in the kitchen,
still arguing, still addressing each other by name. In
a few minutes a door slammed and there was silence
except for an occasional banging of pots and pans by
Gabrielle. They had gone to phone Dudley. He shook
his head. In a deal like this, give him professionals
every time; these blousons noirs were careless and
reckless enough to freeze his blood except that he’d
been lucky enough to sell them the Chicago story.
In the twenty minutes he’d been here he’d learned
enough about them for the police to locate the farm
in an hour, with nothing but a copy of the tax rolls
and the telephone numbers of the local
gendarmeries. It was owned by a man named
The Wrong Venus — 88
Anatole, who’d been away somewhere on a trip and
who had a nephew named Jean-Jacques. Jean-
Jacques had a friend named Rémy, whose girl friend
was called Gabrielle. They’d pick them up in an
afternoon. Well, it didn’t matter; he’d convinced
them nobody was going to the police.
With his hands bound behind him, there was no
way to get comfortable in bed. After awhile he sat
up on the side of it, wishing he had a cigarette. The
bonds weren’t tight enough to cut off circulation,
and he could probably have worked his way out of
them if he’d tried, but it would be stupid. He would
accomplish nothing except to antagonize them,
which was the last thing he wanted now that success
was in sight.
There was nothing to do but wait, as he had a
thousand times in the Army. He had no idea how
many hours later it was when he heard the kitchen
door fly open and then the sound of their voices, all
three talking at once. He started to grin, but it
faded. Something had changed. He leaned forward,
listening intently. He could make out only a word
now and then, but there was some quality in the
voices that hadn’t been there before. A chill moved
slowly up his spine as he began to place it. It was
panic.
What could have gone wrong? They must have the
money by now, and certainly there couldn’t have
been any police in the area. But several times he
heard the word among the shouts and violent
recriminations. They were scared to death, and
blaming each other. The flap went on for what could
have been ten minutes, and then the key turned in
his door.
“You. Get up.” It was Jean-Jacques’ voice, and
there was an unnecessary toughness in it again, as
there had been when they’d picked him up. There
was no doubt he was scared.
Colby stood up. “The money was delivered?”
“Yes. We have it.”
“And there were no police, just as I promised?”
The Wrong Venus — 89
“We saw none.”
“So you’re going to release us?”
“Of course we’re going to release you, salaud!
What do you think, we want to adopt you?”
He’s lying, Colby thought. For some reason now
they think they have to kill us, and they’re trying to
work themselves up to it. But what had happened?
He was marched along the hallway. They were
apparently back in the kitchen, judging from the
odors, though he could no longer feel any warmth
from the stove. He could hear the voices of Rémy
and Gabrielle somewhere behind him.
“How about untying my hands?” Colby asked.
“Shut up! We will untie your hands when we get
there.” Then, apparently to the others, “Her
handbag, everything! Be sure nothing is left.”
He heard a new sound, the clicking of high heels
along the hall. Gabrielle hadn’t worn them, so they
were bringing Kendall Flanagan. He was marched
ahead, heard the door open, and they were outside
in the barnyard. “Her first,” Jean-Jacques ordered.
“Now this one.” He was pushed forward. A hand
forced his head down. Getting in was awkward with
his hands tied, and he fell over against Kendall. He
was hauled into the position he’d been in before,
kneeling with his face down on the seat. Kendall was
on his right. “Stay down!” a voice commanded. He
heard the three of them get in the front seat. The
car shot backward, swung, and surged ahead.
Almost immediately there was an explosive curse in
French and it slammed to a stop. What now?
One of the front doors opened and he heard
running footsteps going away. In a moment they
came back. The trunk opened, and something was
thrown in it, something that landed with a metallic
clang. He froze. A shovel? No, he told himself,
fighting panic, it could have been something else.
The car lunged ahead again. They bounced and
jolted their way to the road, and made a left turn
with tires squealing as they came onto the
pavement.
The Wrong Venus — 90
“Something’s bugged them,” Kendall said next to
his ear.
“Silence!” a voice shouted from in front. “No
English.”
“How about French, then?” She said several words
Colby wouldn’t have thought she’d know. But then
she’d been here five days.
“Shut up, or I will shoot!”
She fell silent. Colby could hear the three of them
arguing in violent whispers in the front seat. It was
ominous, and he was conscious of a cold and empty
feeling in his stomach. He could make out only an
occasional word, but heard police several tunes.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “Don’t
you know by now we’re not going to the police?”
“They’re not going to the police, he says—hah!” It
was the girl.
“Shut up!” Jean-Jacques shouted. “Everybody talks
too much!”
Colby felt his heart leap then. Kendall’s hands
weren’t tied. One of them had moved over and was
resting on his. She’d probably been tied to the bed
and they’d merely released her in their hurry. The
fingers moved, exploring the turns of rope around
his wrists. She began to tug at the knot.
She might be able to do it, he thought, hardly
daring to hope. His hands were directly below and
behind the three of them in the front seat, and
unless one turned all the way around and looked
down they might not see it. Also, it was still dark. Or
should be; he didn’t think it could be dawn yet.
They were traveling at high speed, their tires
screaming on the turns. He felt the ropes give a
little, but dreaded from one minute to the next he’d
hear the shout of discovery and the impact of a gun
barrel on her head or arm. The warfare of
impassioned whispers was still going on in the front
seat. He could catch a word or phrase now and then.
“. . . you and your stupid ideas!. . . everything wrong
. . . talk too much. . . .” Then one that spread the
The Wrong Venus — 91
chill between his shoulder blades. “. . . no, this was
your idea, you do it!”
The ropes slipped then and gave way. His hands
were free.
“Hit the dirt,” Kendall said. Then his ears were
assaulted by a scream that years later would still
come back and echo along his nerves.
He was swinging his upper body toward the floor
when the car seemed to take off like a jet at the end
of a runway. It dipped, and then went up, and there
was a sound like the snapping of violin strings. Just
as he was beginning to think it was airborne for
good, it crashed down, still upright, with a
cannonading of exploded tires, and plowed into
something he could only assume was a solid wall of
water. There was a great wh-o-o-o-shing sound like a
giant exhalation of breath, accompanied by violent
deceleration that plastered him against the back of
the seat in front of him. It lurched then, and began
to roll. It went all the way over once, with a crashing
and rending of metal and a snapping off of burstopen
doors, came upright, and then over again,
almost gently this time and with a strange, feltlike
absence of sound, as though it had found a bed to
climb into to die.
His eardrums must have ruptured, Colby thought.
No, he could still hear the engine. Blindfolded, and
after having been in total darkness for hours and
then whirled in this centrifuge, he had | no idea
where he was or which way was up. He was groggy
and bruised, but nothing seemed to be broken. He
could move his arms and legs. One of his hands
brushed the upholstery of the seat, directly over his
head.
There was an eruption of outcries in French, and
the car began to rock gently from side to side. He
could smell gasoline, and could hear the engine still
purring, while the whole thing seemed to quiver
with a strange, jellylike vibration. He threw his
hands about again, seeking a way out before it burst
into flames, and where the door had been he could
The Wrong Venus — 92
feel straw. There were probably a number of ways
you could explain that, he thought. Say, for example,
the car was upside down on top of a haystack.
He heard a succession of dry, swishing sounds
nearby, and more curses in French. But he had to
locate Kendall and get them out before it caught
fire. The smell of gasoline was growing stronger. He
swung his arms, but they encountered nothing
except the seat over his head and the back of the
front one. She was gone. He groped for the door
again. The opening wasn’t completely filled with
straw. At the top, near the floor of the car, there was
a space where his hand met nothing. He began to
push his way out, like a surfacing mole. A hand
caught his arm and hauled. He was out, lying in
more straw.
“We may have set a new record for making it to
the hay,” Kendall said. The hand let go his arm,
there was another rustling, plunging sound, and he
was alone.
He sat up, tearing at the blindfold, and then the
straw gave way under him and he was sliding
backward down a gentle incline. The blindfold tore
off just as he hit bottom and came to rest, his head
and shoulders on the ground and his feet still up on
the slope above him.
He was looking straight up at the Citroën. It lay on
its back atop the haystack, slanting down a little
forward, the engine still humming while its hind
wheels turned futilely in the air and its headlights
searched the darkness like great anguished eyes
imploring help. It looked, Colby thought, as though
it had climbed out onto the beach to lay its eggs and
somebody had flipped it over on its back to make
soup out of it.
He heard an impact of some kind, followed by a
grunt. He turned then, and saw Kendall Flanagan
for the first time.
It was a sight that would be stamped into his
memory forever with the perfection of detail and
sharpness of definition of something caught on high-
The Wrong Venus — 93
speed film with a strobe light, and while he learned
later this was not an uncommon experience among
men on whom she burst in full glory this suddenly
and without any preparation at all, there was the
fact that in his case she was clothed. In another
instance, of which he heard later, she was as naked
as a radish. The searing effect of this, and its
potentiality for erasing even the memory of all
previous visual experience, was something on which
the mind could only speculate.
All the judo experts he ever told about it afterward
were unanimous in the opinion it was impossible;
given the acceleration of falling bodies and the time
necessary to fit the shoulder into the socket under
the arm, bend forward, and throw, she simply
couldn’t have had both of them in the air at once,
but he knew what he saw. Maybe he didn’t know
judo, but they didn’t know Kendall Flanagan.
She was directly in the beam of the headlights like
an illuminated tableau of some Old Testament
miracle, six feet and one hundred and sixty pounds
of stacked and silvery blonde in a black cocktail
dress, silver high-heeled slippers, and a rope of
pearls, while out in front of her near the end of his
trajectory Jean-Jacques/Rémy was still airborne a
hundredth of a second before landing on the back of
his neck, and the leather-jacketed form of
Rémy/Jean-Jacques was just coming off her shoulder,
already separated and beginning to wheel upward
and out into the same flight pattern.
The first landed with a tooth-rattling thud and lay
still. Almost instantaneously the other crashed down
beside him in an identical position, tried once to get
up, thought better of it, and lay back. She
straightened her dress.
“If you need any help,” Colby said, “I can whip the
girl.”
“Oh, she’s over there.” Kendall turned and pointed
behind her. In the edge of the headlight beam, the
girl was just sitting up. Kendall looked around at the
devastation to see if anybody was in the mood for
The Wrong Venus — 94
seconds, flashed a joyous smile in Colby’s direction,
and suggested, “Maybe we’d better move out. That
gun is still around here somewhere.”
She turned and climbed up the haystack. Thinking
she might be going to throw the car down, Colby
scrambled to his feet to get out of the way. She knelt
beside it and groped around inside. “Catch,” she
said, and Dudley’s briefcase sailed out toward him.
He caught it, and at the same moment she said,
“Wheeeee!” and disappeared down the other side.
Colby ran around, but she had only slid down. She
was sitting up, tugging her skirt and slip down from
under her arms. She stood up, carrying her
handbag, took a couple of steps, and halted with a
gurgle of amusement. “Hold this a minute,” she
asked, passing Colby the purse, and began to grope
under her skirt. “Hay in my pants,” she said. “Man
bites dog.”
The girl was shouting imprecations in French
behind them now, urging Jean-Jacques and Rémy on
to the pursuit. This was apparently encountering
some lack of enthusiasm, for she began crying out
for somebody to find the gun. Colby and Kendall
hurried on. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness
again, and directly ahead he could see an exploded
haystack that looked as though somebody had
lobbed a mortar shell into it.
This was what they’d hit that had slowed them
down. Just beyond it were the burst strands of a
wire fence, and then the road. It made a sweeping
turn here, coming toward the field and its haystacks
and then going off at almost right angles.
“What did you do to him?” Colby asked, as they
ran across the ditch and up onto the pavement.
“When I screamed,” Kendall replied, “I put my
blindfold over his eyes.”
Going into a turn at a hundred kilometers an hour,
Colby thought; it would have an unsettling effect on
a driver. If word ever got around, she should be as
unlikely a prospect for future kidnappings as Red
Chief.
The Wrong Venus — 95
The gun barked behind them then, and something
snicked through the branches of a tree on the other
side of the road. They could hear sounds of pursuit,
and turned right, running along the pavement.
Kendall stopped, yanked off the high-heeled
slippers, and sprinted on. Colby took the purse from
her, carrying the briefcase in his other hand. There
was enough starlight for the others to see them in
the open like this, but another fifty yards ahead on
the left was a dark line of timber. They plunged into
it, groped their way on for a few more yards, and
crouched down in a clump of evergreens. They could
hear the pounding of footsteps along the pavement,
and shouts, and one of the men made a foray into
the timber, crashing through the underbrush less
than twenty yards away.
The tumult went on down the road, but a few
minutes later the three of them were back again,
still arguing violently and blaming each other. The
voices died away in the direction of the car.
“I think they intended to kill us,” Kendall said.
“Don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. It still baffled him. “Something
queered it when they went to pick up the money.”
“Do you suppose it is money? Dudley would rather
open a vein than part with ten francs.”
“Martine wouldn’t have stood for anything like
that,” he said. “Besides, he had to get you back to
finish the book.” He unzipped the briefcase and
flicked on his cigarette lighter, shielding the flame
with his body. It was filled with bundles of francs—
tens, fifties, and hundreds, just as Dudley had
brought it from the bank.
“It beats me,” he said. He was overcome with
yearning for a cigarette, and they were sufficiently
screened by the dense underbrush. He took out the
pack. “Smoke?”
“I’d love one. Thanks.”
Over the flame of the lighter he had a brief
glimpse of a very lovely face and amused and utterly
reckless gray eyes. “You’re a friend of Martine’s
The Wrong Venus — 96
then?” she asked. “I thought you might be, from that
Cosa Nostra routine.”
“I met her a couple of days ago.” Was it only two
days? It didn’t seem possible. “Dudley hired us to
get you back.”
“How is Sunny Jim? Ilium is doomed? There’s no
hope for the whooping crane?”
Colby grinned. “He just doesn’t trust the situation.
Some OB man conned him into being born before he
could check with his lawyer.”
There was continued silence from the direction of
the road. When they had ground out their cigarettes,
they eased back to it. The farther they were from the
area by daybreak, the better. There was no sign of
the others. They started walking, Kendall still
carrying her shoes. A few hundred yards ahead they
went around another turn and there was still no
sound of pursuit. A half-hour later it was growing
light in the east. They came to an intersection with
another road. Paris was one hundred and ten
kilometers to the right, a sign said, and the next
village was St.-Médard-au-bout-de-la-colline,
fourteen kilometers.
Two or three cars went past, but refused to stop.
Then, just as it was full light, Colby managed to flag
down a farmer in a battered old truck loaded with
sheep. They’d had an accident, he explained, and
would like a lift to St.-Médard. There wasn’t room
for both of them in the cab, so Colby helped her in
beside the driver and climbed in back among the
sheep. The old truck rumbled, and crawled ahead.
After it had gone about a mile, it lurched suddenly
and almost ran off the road. This puzzled him until a
shredded pair of nylons flew out the window and
sailed past. He grinned.
The sun came up. It was a crisp, exhilarating
morning with air like champagne. He felt wonderful.
It was in the bag now; it had been a highly profitable
night, and successful beyond all expectation. Maybe
they should brace Dudley for a bonus, to be split
with Kendall, for having recovered the thirty
The Wrong Venus — 97
thousand francs. In another hour or two he’d see
Martine again, and if his luck continued to hold
maybe by this afternoon they’d be winging their way
toward Rhodes, that island whose specifications
might have been drawn up by a man with a beautiful
girl on his mind and plenty of experience in using
terrain. He hummed a few bars of “Oh, What a
Beautiful Morning,” and grinned at his companions,
but they merely stared back at him with the vast
apathy of sheep toward all phenomena not overtly
menacing or recognizably edible. He lighted a
cigarette and was content.
St.-Médard-au-bout-de-la-colline was a small
farming village of three or four streets lying athwart
the road with a church steeple at the back of it,
looking quaint and peaceful in the early rays of the
sun. The farmer stopped at the intersection of its
principal street. Colby helped her down, thanked
him, and passed him ten francs. He tipped his cap to
Kendall, looked at her once more with disbelief, and
drove on. A man coming along the sidewalk craned
his neck, and narrowly missed walking into a light
standard.
Besides jettisoning the ruined nylons, she had
combed her hair, which was like burnished silver
springs, and repaired her make-up during the drive.
Aside from a few wrinkles in the black dress, she
could be just starting out for an evening in Paris,
and he was conscious of his own stubble of beard
and the wisps of hay clinging to the tweed.
She grinned. “I don’t know about you, but I’m
ready to eat anything that doesn’t attack me first.”
He glanced around. It didn’t appear too promising,
at this time of day. Directly across from them a
boulangerie was in business, and up in the next
block a newspaper kiosk and a small café, but if
there were a restaurant at all it wouldn’t be open till
time for lunch. But there should be a telephone in
the cafe where he could call Martine. They walked
up and crossed the street. A man going past on some
kind of rubber-tired farm machine turned to stare at
Kendall. Colby visualized her crossing a street in
The Wrong Venus — 98
Rome during an hour of peak traffic; the carnage
would be staggering.
There were no tables set up on the sidewalk yet,
but eight or ten inside, and a small bar with beer
taps and an espresso coffee machine. Besides the
patron behind the bar and one waiter, there were
half a dozen customers, mostly in farm clothing or
workers’ blue denim, some of them reading the Paris
newspapers. Papers were lowered and necks craned
as they came in. One man, arrested in the act of
raising a glass of beer to his lips, seemed in some
danger of having his eyes drop in it, Colby thought,
if he were to move his head suddenly.
It puzzled him; even as big and beautiful as she
was, they were overdoing it for Frenchmen. Italians,
maybe, but—well, this wasn’t Paris, by any means.
He glanced toward the bar. There was a telephone,
but he’d have to wait. The patron had just picked it
up himself. The waiter came over. He seemed dazed
too.
Kendall smiled at him and said in fair French, “A
bottle of champagne, four cups of coffee, some
bacon, and—hmmmm—six eggs, and a plate of
croissants,” Even if all this were obtainable, which
was unlikely, Colby wondered if she thought they
could eat that much. She turned to him. “And what’ll
you have?”
Visibly shaken—whether by the size of the order
or the size of the girl, Colby wasn’t sure—the waiter
started to explain it was only a café. They had no
facilities for cooking champagne—that is, eggs.
“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “Then bring us some
ham sandwiches.”
“But of course, Mademoiselle. How many?”
“Just keep bringing them till we tell you to stop.”
It would take some time to chill the breasts—a
thousand pardons, the champagne.
She interrupted with another smile and a wave of
the hand. Bring up a bottle from the cellar; it would
be cold enough. She appealed to Colby. “Impress it
The Wrong Venus — 99
on him he’d better get some food on the table before
he goes the way of Dr. Millmoss. Tell him I’m
pregnant. Anything.”
Colby grinned and said the young lady was
famished. The waiter departed. She picked up the
briefcase and unzipped it. “Breakfast will be on that
great, open-handed patron of the arts, Lorenzo the
Magnificent Dudley—hey, what is it?” She snapped
her fingers. “Colby, dear, look at me.”
“I am,” Colby said. He was staring past her,
directly over her shoulder, with a sensation like the
prickling of icy needles between his shoulder blades.
A man had just sat down at the next table with a
newspaper and started to open it. It was Francesoir,
and covering a good quarter of the front page
was a picture of Kendall Flanagan. Beside it, black
headlines leaped out at him:
DID BOUGIE KILL PEPE?
WHO IS THIS RAVISHING BOUGIE?
He tried to point. He couldn’t seem to move, or
say anything. All he could think of was that the
patron had already called the police. Five minutes
ago.
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