Read Players at the Game of People for Free Online

out of money? It won't work on me, chummy, if that is

your game! I've had 'em all in here, and I keep the ones who can afford

it. And only those! Now you get lost, okay?" To one of the heavies he

added, "Show him back to the foyer. And I mean show him! Don't turn him

loose to 'lose his way' and sneak back into the disco!"

Meekly Godwin let himself be shown, knowing what was in store.

He just had time, eluding his escort, to vanish through the door marked

Gentlemen before the pangs of punishment descended. There was one

astonished young man in the toilet -- barely more than a boy -- who

summed up his condition in a single glance and hurried away . . . and

was wrong. Contrary to appearances, Godwin was not drunk enough to vomit,

though his paleness and unsteady gait combined to give that impression.

He was simply suffering, and resigned to the fact. He had, after all,

messed up his assignment . . . one of the sort he was good at.

In a bolted cubicle he struggled not to resist the pangs, recognizing

them as just. But repressing the moans called forth from him cost all

his energy, and when it was over he had to sit with head in hands for

a long while before he dared venture forth again.

He used the time well, though, and made plans.

Miraculously, it appeared that no one had remembered to get at Jackson.

Emerging cautiously into the hotel lobby, Godwin put on the boldest face

he could contrive, and strolled toward the entrance as though to glance

at the weather. The commissionaire leaped to attention.

"Going out, sir?"

"Not right away," Godwin said musingly, and contrived to slide a fiver

into the man's hand. "But . . . Well, you saw Prince Rashad and Prince

Afif leave some time ago with a couple of girls?"

"Oh, yes! With Peggy and Gorse. I called them a cab."

"Well, I'm going to be in the lounge bar for a while" -- with a jerk

of his head. "I'd like to know when they come back. I take it they will

come back? They have rooms here?"

"The Imperial Suite on the second floor," Jackson confided. He had made

the money vanish without so much as a rustle.

"Fine. I'll sit where I can see you reflected in that glass door,"

Godwin said, having rapidly checked several possibilities in his mind's

eye. "Give me a signal -- wave your arm up and down, or something --

as soon as you recognize them. Okay?"

"Will do," Jackson said, and Godwin headed for the lounge.

It was almost two hours before the signal came. Thirty cabs had drawn up

-- for want of any better way to pass the time, Godwin had kept score --

and this was the thirty-first. The lounge barman was reading a newspaper

and trying not to yawn; the lights were lowered in the foyer; outside,

the last of the beggars had quit for the night.

Godwin rose to his feet with electric rapidity and strode out through

the automatic doors so fast they would not have had time to open for

him. Jackson, though, was already treading on the sensor pad against the

arrival of the princes and their women. The taxi was drawing away. Godwin

shouted commandingly, "Hang on, driver! I want you!"

Obediently the woman -- for it was a woman at the wheel -- braked and

reversed.

The girl who had been identified by the peculiar name of Gorse was

red-eyed and looked as though she had been crying. Peggy was attempting

to comfort her. Both the brothers wore expressions of thundercloud rage

and were talking to one another in rapid Arabic, paying no more attention

to the girls than to make sure they were not trying to cut and run.

The moment they recognized Godwin, they halted in their tracks and

flinched away from him. He closed on them with his fists raised to elbow

height, wider apart than the width of his body, and the eyes of each

fixed, fascinated, on one fist.

"I told you," he said mildly. "I don't care what you get up to in

wog-land, but here we don't buy and sell women!"

And instead of punching, he kicked, leaping into the air like a ballet

dancer. He caught