She opened her eyes again. She was lying on a prickly woolen blanket on the floor and Frank Mordant was looking down at her with a grin. Somebody else was looking down at her, too – a suntanned man with very white hair.
“Got us a beauty this time, Frank,” said the suntanned man. “Done yourself proud.”
Frank Mordant knelt down beside Julia and helped her up into a sitting position. She felt sick and the floor was slowly rising up and down like the deck of a car ferry. She put her head down between her knees and it was only then that she realized that she was naked.
She looked up, woozy but startled. Frank Mordant was still grinning at her as if she were the victim of a huge practical joke.
“What have you done? What have you done to me?” Covering her breasts with her arm, she tried to get up, but she lost her balance and fell sideways. As she fell, the harsh thing around her neck almost choked her and she reached up to pull it free. Except that it wouldn’t come free. It was a thick rope, tied around her neck in a noose.
She tried again to climb to her feet, and this time she managed to get herself into a kneeling position. “What’s happening?” she gasped. “What are you trying to do to me?”
Frank Mordant took hold of the loose end of the rope and pulled it. Immediately, it tightened around Julia’s neck, and she looked up. The rope ran through a large hook fixed in the center of the ceiling.
She stared at Frank Mordant in disbelief. Apart from him and the white-haired man with the suntan, there were three other men there, standing in the far corner by the television. They were all middle-aged, wearing respectable suits. A dark-skinned, languid-looking man with a hooked nose. A heavily built man with bushy gray hair. A smaller bespectacled man, who must have been Thai or Malay.
Three spotlights had been arranged around the room so that they shone directly on Julia. And the video camera was now tilted on its tripod so that it was facing toward her, too. There was a smell of hot light bulbs and alcoholic breath, and a taut, expectant atmosphere. Yours in anticipation, Frank Mordant.
Julia’s head was completely clear now, and she looked at the men and the spotlights and the video camera with increasing horror. She felt almost absurdly weak, and completely defenseless, and she was so frightened that her lower lip was juddering and she couldn’t speak clearly.
Frank Mordant and the suntanned man took an arm each and tried to lift her on to her feet. Immediately her knees buckled, but Frank Mordant pulled the rope until it was tight around her neck again, and then she was forced to stand up.
“You’re choking me,” she pleaded. “Please don’t choke me. I can’t stand anything round my neck.”
“Well, there’s one way to relieve that choking feeling,” smiled Frank Mordant, “and that’s to slacken the rope. Here, Tun,” he beckoned the Malay-looking man. “Do us a favor and bring us over that little stepladder, please.”
The Malay carried over a small wooden stepladder and set it down right in front of Julia. He paused for a moment, and scrutinized her through his bright shining glasses. His eyes were dark brown and deeply curious, as if he were looking at an exhibit in a natural history museum. He stared into her eyes and then down at her naked body.
Frank Mordant gave the rope another sharp tug. “If you climb the stepladder, Julia, the rope will be slacker. The higher you go, the slacker it will get.”
“You can’t do this,” Julia protested. “You just can’t do this.”
“And who’s to say that we can’t?”
“The law! This is assault!”
Frank Mordant thought about that, and then he said, “Yes, you’re right. It is assault. But I don’t think that the law is going to be able to help you, do you?”
“Let me go!” she screamed at him. “You’re sick! You’re totally sick! If you don’t let me go right now, mister …!”
“You’ll what?” said Frank Mordant, and the slowest smile broke over his face as he watched her remember what he said about the underlay.
“Let me go,” she breathed. “Please let me go. I won’t tell anybody what happened here.”
Frank Mordant tugged on the rope again. She reached up and tried to force her fingers between the noose and her neck, but it was far too tight.
“Please don’t do this. Please let me go. I’ll do anything you want me to do. Please.”
“You’re already doing what I want you to do. Now, why don’t you take a step up the ladder and give yourself a little slack?”
He pulled the rope harder and in spite of herself she let out a horrible, high-pitched cackle. He pulled again and she felt as if she was going to choke. She reached out with her right foot and found the bottom rung of the stepladder and climbed on to it: and then, with her left foot, the second rung. The rope relaxed, and she was able to gasp in three or four mouthfuls of air.
“Mr Mordant, I don’t know why you’re doing this …”
“My dear, you don’t have to know. All you have to do is to play your part.”
“Is this personal? Is there something I’ve done to upset you? If there is, I’m sorry. I’m really, truly sorry, and I swear to God that I’ll make it up to you.”
Frank Mordant looked at her with those hooded blue eyes and she thought for a moment that she saw the slightest hint of compassion.
“Mr Mordant, if I did anything wrong, anything, I’ll put it right. I have people back home who are going to be worried about me. My mother, my father. My brother. They’re good people, Mr Mordant, you can do what you like to me but don’t make them suffer.”
The suntanned man with the white hair turned to the others and spread his hands wide in mock bewilderment. “Why do they always do this? Why do they always get so sentimental? You’d think they’d eff and blind and kick their legs about, wouldn’t you? I mean, that’s what I’d do, if somebody was doing it to me.”
The Malay didn’t take his eyes off Julia, but he said, with a slight smile, “That’s because you’re afraid of dying, Roy. You know what the next world has in store for you.”
Julia had made a mistake. What she had seen in Frank Mordant’s eyes wasn’t compassion at all. If it was anything, it was simply a predatory flicker, like a snake refocusing before it strikes. Frank Mordant wound the rope around his arm and took up all of the slack that Julia had given herself by climbing up the stepladder. “Don’t,” she gargled. “Please don’t.”
The dark-skinned man with the hooked nose looked impatiently at his wristwatch. In the middle of her terror, Julia realized that he was bored. The thought of that was so awful that her eyes filled with tears. She was naked, utterly humiliated, choking, and he was bored.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “I can’t stand this any longer! Let me go!”
Frank Mordant yanked the rope hard. “You can’t stand it any longer? Then take another step up. Go on! That’s the only way you’ll get any slack!”
She tried to shake her head and say no, but he wrenched the rope again and this time she saw stars winking in front of her eyes. She climbed up another step, and then another, and now she was only one step from the top.
“You won’t get away with this,” she whispered. “I swear to God that you won’t get away with this.”
Frank Mordant pulled the rope one more time. “You wanted to be in television, didn’t you?” he asked. He didn’t sound sarcastic, or triumphalist. He simply sounded pleased for her. “You wanted to be famous? Well, believe it or not, your wish is about to come true. You’re going to be seen by thousands of very appreciative viewers, for years to come! Who knows, you’re probably going to be a television classic!”