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daughter.
    She sat piously, knowing that for now no one must get beneath the prim, drab exterior she had managed to maintain since those days in Lebanon. To look at her now, she thought wryly, no one would recognize her as a glamorous night-club entertainer, sleek and svelte under the muted pink spots, a sheath of rippling gold on her body. John had saved her, but she knew she would go back to that, some day. She had no voice, and little enough real talent, but her figure more than compensated for whatever else she lacked.
    She had been restless in New York, and the deal that Tom Huppman suggested, touring Egypt and Lebanon and cashing in on the oil-rich Arab sheiks, seemed just the thing to break the monotony. But disillusionment come fast after she arrived three months ago. There was too much competition from the blonde, warmly fleshed, amoral women from Middle Europe, who were there for the purpose of attracting rich Arabs and went willingly to bed with them, first on the basis of being a mistress and then, somehow as it always happened, working as a call girl in the plush tourist hotels, and then finally going downhill into the worst sort of degraded, nightmare existence in the cribs, passed from hand to hand, from camel driver to oil-rigger and anyone else willing to part with money.
    Luckily, she had been smart enough to see the handwriting on the wall, and she never took that first step, no matter how much Ali Khalil ben Tourami tempted her. Thinking about it in the warmth of the hut now, she could still see the glitter of Ali Khalil’s diamond-studded hands, still feel his fat and searching fingers, still hear his softly whispered insistence like the hissing of a snake. It had been a mistake to reject him with such open contempt, however. She hadn’t played it smart, but there was something about the Arab that made her flesh crawl. She was no angel. She knew all about men, and used what she knew to good advantage, usually. But Ali Khalil was something she couldn’t bring herself to take.
    His anger when she rejected him was sudden and venomous. Even now, remembering, she felt cold and frightened, as if poised on the edge of a graveyard pit.
    She had gotten into a taxi in downtown Beirut one night and given her hotel address, overlooking St. George’s Bay, where every guide eagerly told the story of the slaying of the legendary dragon. She hadn’t paid much attention to the route the driver was taking, weaving through the traffic of crowded buses and clanging trolleys. She had left Ali Khalil that evening at the Ghalainni, for the last time, she hoped, turning down a conciliatory offer from him to go sightseeing at the ruins of Baalbek. When she suddenly realized the driver of her taxi was not taking her back to her hotel, it was already too late. There were no police around. And at her sharp protest, the cab driver simply speeded up, rocketing out into the barren desert mountains behind the city, the Syrian border was not far. When she tried to jump out, the cab simply went faster, and she did not dare. Finally the car slowed near a copse of olive trees growing below the looming walls of what looked like an abandoned monastery, and here they were surrounded by half a dozen evil-smelling, rough-handed Lebanese, led by Ali Khalil.
    She knew at once what was going to happen, and when Ali Khalil tried to drag her from the cab, she fought and screamed in the night, stabbing at him with a nail file hastily pulled from her purse. But she was really helpless to fight back, unless she wanted to be killed for resisting too much. Ali Khalil ordered her stripped, and it was done slowly, so he could relish the slow exposure of her body in the moonlit copse of olive trees. He was a fat, giggling man, and he paid no attention to her curses and protests. He ordered her flung to the ground naked, and spread-eagled by his helpers, and then he threw himself upon her. But she fought against him, twisting and turning her body to avoid