Chapter 27 The Interrogation Begins
"Well, where is he?" thundered Richard Chan to Ming-tsu. He had summoned
her to the Black Pagoda, the dark fortress on Nanking Road that was the
headquarters of the Black Scorpions.
******
His brother, George had left not long before, but not until after the two
of them had administered another cruel flogging to the beautiful 'thief' who had
hung head down so helplessly in the vertical rack. Richard Chan had given the
windlass another crank, causing the stout chains leading upward to stretch
Ci-ci's body another fraction; she felt as if every muscle in her body were
aflame.
But her suffering -- and her screams -- had only begun.
It had been some days since George had had a woman on whom he could unleash
the full measure of his sexual cruelty; Ming-tsu had been a pleasant afternoon
diversion, but there were limits as to how violent he could be with his former
concubine. But he felt no such constraints vis-a-vis the beauteous young thief.
George had stalked her like a jungle predator, at first lashing out with
the black strap at the painfully distended muscles along the fronts of Ci-ci's
supple thighs, and then at her vulnerable abdomen with its lovely skin stretched
violin-string tonight over her gently protruding pelvic bones and rib cage.
Then the leather strip descended again to the soft flesh of her golden
thighs, searing them with its fiery kiss. George painstakingly lashed his way
from her knees to her navel and back again.
"Don't you know that it is wicked to steal from your betters, girl?" he
asked sardonically before slashing away at the soft fuzz-patch at the juncture
of her well-striped thighs.
"Please sir, I swear on my grandmother's hon..."
"CRACCKK" the burning tongue of the strap set her sweet young breasts
aflame with pain. "Eaaaaaahhhhh!!"
"Do not think that invoking the name of your ancestor will spare you from
paying the penalty for the crime you have committed, girl," Richard snarled as
he struck her plump buttocks with a glossy cane fashioned from a prized Malacca
hardwood.. "No doubt she was a slut and a thief, too!"
But for the most part, Richard Chan was content to watch as his maid's
tempting young breasts endured the brunt of George Chan's sadistic fusillade.
Moving from side to side, the younger Chan had attacked her sharp-nippled
melons, so delightfully pendulous in her inverted position, from every
conceivable angle -- crisp chain-rattling blows to the outer curves of her
breasts, sweeping uppercuts to her honey-gold upper slopes and punishing
downward slashes across the oh-so-sensitive undersides of her sweet young
breast-globes.
Ci-ci's tight, tempting nipples were George's special targets; he lashed
the delicious brown buds again and again -- from above, from below and from
straight on -- punishing overhands, jolting forehands, and violent backhands,
each snap of the strap landing with a resounding CRACCKK!! and drawing a fresh
moan of agony from the nubile young 'thief'.
Richard, thin-lipped, his eyes narrowed to cruel slits, enjoyed the
spectacle, only occasionally interpolating a wicked slash with his own
yard-long, chopstick-thin cane down into the alluring crevice between Ci-ci's
rounded bottomcheeks -- just to remind her that he was still in the room.
After some two dozen withering slashes to the front of Ci-ci's bowstring
taut body, George sighed reluctantantly and folded up the strap, saying, "As
pleasurable as I find this, Richard, I regret to say that time is short tonight;
my cell-leaders will be wondering what became of me. In any event," he added as
he admired the flame-hued color of Ci-ci's tortured breasts, "you will need to
dispose of this one somewhere, will you not? If the joss is good, you'll be
entertaining new guests later tonight."
"Quite so, George, " Richard agreed before opening another thin gash on
Ci-ci's plump young bottomcheeks with a final slash of the cane. "We have had
good joss this day; and if our luck continues to hold, the traitor will be in
our hands tonight. On your way to the meeting, stop by and inform Ming-tsu that
she is to come here at once. I may have need of her tonight."
Then, after showing his brother out, Richard summoned one of the Scorpions
to the dungeon. "Feng" he told his squadron leader, "take her down," indicating
the rosy-breasted girl hanging from the clinking iron chains. "You can take her
to the Pit. Tell the boys they can have some fun with the little slut!"
The "Pit" was the nickname the Scorpions had given to a dormitory for a
couple of dozen mid and lower level gang members that was situated on the rear
of the grounds of the Black Pagoda.
"Very good, sire," the gleaming-skulled Scorpion assented with a lewd
grin. "Any particular, er, rules of engagement, " he asked as he began
unraveling the complicated network of chains in which Ci-ci was bound.
"No; you and the others can fuck the little thief's brains out, for all I
care."
"Ah, the boy's 'll like that, sire. She's a pretty one. And young. We
like 'em young sir, at the Pit, sire. Like that little Taiwanese tart last mon
...."
"Feng," Richard cut him off abruptly. "I don't have time to listen to the
story of your conquests right now. Just get this slut out of here. And one
more thing, Feng!"
"Yes, sir?" the brawny Scorpion replied.
"Return here in an hour -- with three men. I have another mission for you
tonight."
******
"Where is he, I said?" the silver-robed elder Chan repeated irritably to
Ming-tsu. "There can be no question that Li Chang is the traitor, now." He
had cleverly sent two men who knew the neighborhood of Zhong the printer, to
keep a vigil on that block. They were ordered to remain out of sight, but to
report back at once if any of their foes assembled to defend the printer from
the presumed attack. The Scorpions had reported that they had indeed seen a
dozen or more watchful young men, mostly in two's and three's, who were
strangers to the neighborhood. Clearly Li Chang, the only man whom Richard had
told of the 'attack', had, at the very least, tipped off their adversaries.
"I'm not certain, your excellency," Ming-tsu responded in the deferential
voice of a servant speaking to her master. Ming-tsu was wearing an attractive
black two-piece costume, similar to the one worn by practitioners of the Chinese
martial arts - loose fitting trousers and a V-necked jacket, that afforded her
plenty of freedom of movement.
She was more than a little intimidated by her ominous surroundings. Like
many in the the teeming city of Shanghai, she had heard whispers about the
unlucky souls who were taken to the cellar of the Black Pagoda; the dungeon's
appearance lived up to its frightening reputation. Her eyes took in the
flickering torches that lined the walls, the great central pillars, the
assortment of hooks, chains, and manacles that hung from walls and ceiling.
Beneath one series of chains she saw what appeared to be still-damp circlets
of blood. Incongruously, a large wall clock was mounted on one wall, while a
large mirror ran nearly the length of another wall. Evidently, she decided, so
that the dungeon masters could enjoy their victims' suffering from a variety of
angles. The squall outside added to the menacing atmosphere. The sound of huge
thunderclaps, lightning flashes, and the rhythm of a pounding rain were to
punctuate the proceedings throughout that long night.
"Did he not return to your home tonight?"
"No, sire; he never returned." Li had sent one of his friends, one Luk
Yee, to tell her that he had to leave the city for a time. Despite her betrayal
of Li Chang, Ming-tsu was annoyed that her lover had apparently fled without
bothering to bid her a personal farewell.
"But I think I know how to find him," Ming-tsu continued. "He told me that
he lived for years in the home of Wen-chi and his grand-daughter."
"Yes, George so informed me earlier," Richard Chan responded as he
scratched at his sinister beard with a long nail.
"Surely," Ming-tsu continued nervously, "they will know where he is hiding
or where he has gone."
"It would seem so. You have done well, Ming-tsu. Even now, my men are
bringing the girl and the old man here. I will leave it to you to question them
and to discover Li Chang's whereabouts." Richard Chan stared at her sternly
through thin-slitted eyes. It was no wonder that his brother prized her highly.
Her black jacket was cut so that a man's eyes were inevitably drawn to the
mouthwatering upper slopes of the close -set honey-gold breasts that peeked out
throught the v-neck of the garment.
Ming-tsu could feel the heat of his piercing gaze through the thin garments
she wore. She listened nervously as he continued.
"We have entrusted you with the responsibility of keeping an eye on Li
Chang; we shall hold you responsible if he escapes. Be careful that you do not
confuse my brother's fondness for your considerable charms, " and again she
felt his eyed boring into her rounded breasts, "with any willingness on our part
to experience failure. Or your stay here may not be pleasant." There was no
mistaking the menace in Richard Chan's voice. "Meanwhile George and I will
convene our council of lieutenants upstairs to see if any of them can help us
lay our hands on this renegade."
Ming-tsu bowed servilely as the stern-visaged Richard Chan stalked out of
the room.
While she waited for the Scorpions to return with their quarry, Ming-tsu
explored the dungeon for a few minutes, mentally cataloging the myriad
implements of torture. Less than a quarter of an hour later she heard a
commotion at the outer door of the underground chamber. A few moments later a
heavy stone door was pushed open from the outside, a door which she was later to
learn led, via an underground passageway, to a secret entrance near the main
gate of the Chan Estate. Through the doorway four of the Black Scorpions
dragged the aged Wen-chi and a terrified Liu into the forbidding cellar.
The prisoners, both gagged, seemed to have been literally dragged from
their beds; a petite young woman clad only in a revealing, rain-soaked shift,
and an old man dressed in his nightclothes. The girl's arms were pinned behind
her by a huge bovine-faced Scorpion; the feeble old man was easily restrained by
a pimple-faced adolescent who looked vaguely familiar. When she saw the way
spittle formed in the corner of his mouth as he ogled the slender young woman,
she remembered -- the boy was the son of Hong, the host at the inn in the
mountains, to whose care the German girl had been entrusted before and after the
infamous training session. Apparently the lad had earned a promotion after that
successful undertaking.
'The Drooler' as Ming-tsu came to think of him, had good cause to ogle.
Wen-chi had been allowed to throw on a house coat. But the diminutive Liu was
shivering in a sheer, rain-soaked nightdress. Her face was damp from the rain,
as was the lustrous hair that cascaded down to the small of her back. As her
captors dragged her further into the torch-lit dungeon, they were able to get a
better look at the effect the downpour had had on her thin garment.
The white fabric was sodden with precipitation and clung to the petite
young woman's body like a second skin, and particularly to her small but
perfectly formed breast-cones. Her nipples, chilled to an ardent erection by
the cold night air, poked insistently against the wet fabric, which was also
plastered tight against her belly, her loins, her slim hips and her superb
buttocks. The dark bush which adorned the juncture between her slender,
well-shaped thighs was clearly discernible to her captors.
The Scorpions nudged each other, snickering in anticipation. Liu, of
course, was mortified. She was a virgin; no man had ever seen her in such a
state. She stole a shamed glance at her grandfather to see if he too, could see
her nakedness beneath the shift. But the old man seemed disoriented; his
nearly sightless eyes circled the room wildly; she could not be certain whether
the old man clearly understood the nature of his surroundings.
But Liu could. Her body shivering with damp and cold, she looked fearfully
around the chamber of horrors to which she had and her grandfather had been
summoned, even as Ming-tsu directed Gap-tooth to remove her gag. Despite her
apprehension over the fate that awaited them in such a dark and dreadful place,
Liu bravely turned to the exotic beauty in black and asked, "Where is Li Chang?
They said he had been hurt? May I see him?"
Ming-tsu gestured to the Drooler to drag the old man a little further away.
"Good evening. So you are the saintly Miss Liu?" Ming-tsu said with a
sneer. Ming-tsu let the back of one scarlet-nailed hand slide across the
rain-damp firmness of Liu's left breast. "These don't look very saintly to me,
though, you little slut! I'll bet the boys have had some fun with these."
"Please... do not speak of such things," Liu begged as she squirmed
desperately to escape Liu's roving fingers and the clutches of the ox-like man
who held her fast; but since the slab-faced Ox was well over a foot taller than
she, and weighed perhaps twenty stone to her seven, her struggles were in vain.
"Where is Li Chang? Is he safe?" she asked again, frantically.
Ming-tsu could see why Li Chang had spoken so highly of Liu's beauty; her
figure was indeed exquisite, though by no means as voluptuous as her own. The
struggling captive's long black hair hung far down her back; and even though it
was rain-drenched, it was unmistakably the hair of a beautiful woman. "If you
don't mind, Miss Liu," Ming-tsu almost spat out the name, "it is I who shall ask
the questions here. My name is Ming-tsu ..."
"Oh --- you are Li Chang's friend!" Liu said with relief. "Then this must
all be a mistake. Tell these men to let us go!"
The muscular, bald-skulled Feng nudged his gap-toothed cohort with a
wolfish grin. "What do you think, Dao? Should we let the girl go?"
Dao, the gap-toothed man, chuckled obscenely, but didn't bother to answer.
He was pre-occupied by the way Liu's perky nipples pressed against the clinging
shift.
"I am afraid I must correct you, Liu," Ming-tsu said with a
conspiratorial smile. "He WAS my friend. It is no mistake, you little slut.
Besides, do you not know that it is rude for a guest to wish to leave a party
too soon? Especially one being held in her own honor?"
"Let me begin again. I will ask you the same question you have been asking
me. If you tell me the truth, you and this ancient fool can be on your way
quickly. Where is Li Chang?"
Liu was trying to make some sense of why Li Chang's lover had had them
dragged from their house. Something had clearly gone horribly wrong. "I do not
know, miss. Does he not live with you? Surely you know more about him than I
do."
Ming-tsu slapped Liu viciously across the face. "Do not make me angry,
bitch. He told me about you and the old man. Now I'm going to ask you nicely
once more. I need to find Li Chang. Where is he?"
Liu noticed the large clock on the wall behind Ming-tsu. The clock read
10:10. Li had told her that he would be on the midnight boat leaving for Taipei;
if she could keep that knowledge a secret for two hours, the man she loved would
be able to reach safety.
Her head still spinning with confusion, Liu tried to understand how Li
Chang could have fallen in love with this smiling she-devil. She was grateful
that she had not shared her knowledge about Li's plans to flee the city with her
grandfather. It was best that he knew nothing. This way, Li's fate rested
solely in her hands.
"I do not know. I have not seen him for a long time."
Ming-tsu nodded to Feng, the apparent head of this quartet of Scorpions.
The powerfully built man stroked his sinister goatee as he nonchalantly stepped
in front of Liu. Then, without warning, he back-handed her left breast through
the flimsy, dripping silk.
"Ungh!!" Liu cried out in pain. She would surely have fallen to her knees
if she had not been held up by the Ox who held her arms pinioned behind her. As
it was, she doubled up in pain. Through her tears she saw her aged grandfather
struggling furiously but fruitlessly in the grasp of the young man who held him.
"Do you think you can deceive the Black Scorpions, girl?"
When Liu remained silent, pondering this revelation, Ming-tsu nodded
again and Feng smacked her other right breast with a short compact swing of his
powerful arm. "Aaaghhhh!! Why are you doing this?" Liu moaned through the
nascent tears that were forming in her exquisite brown eyes
Ming-tsu gestured again and this time the gap-toothed man stepped forward.
Liu shook her head in horror as Dao spoke to the Ox. "Hold her steady for me,
Zheng!" Then as the Ox pulled her hair back viciously, Gap-tooth drove a
powerful fist into the softness of her belly, instantly robbing her of her
breath.
"Uughh!!" Liu, who had never been struck in anger in her young life,
could not believe that such pain was possible. She tried to stifle her groans,
so as not to add to the misery of her nearly deaf and nearly blind grandfather,
but suppressing them completely proved impossible.
"Well, old man!" Ming-tsu stepped across the room to where the Drooler held
Wen-chi tight in his grasp. She tugged fiercely at the saintly white beard of
Liu's venerable grandfather. "Are you going to tell us what we want to know, or
should I let Feng continue?" She nodded to Feng, who briskly cuffed Liu across
her right breast again. "Aaaghh!"
"Where is Li Chang, old man?" Then Ming-tsu pulled down Wen-chi's gag, to
let him speak.
"Miss," said the old man, breathing heavily, "Do you think I could remain
silent while you beat my grand-daughter, the treasure of my life? I would do
anything to spare her suffering. But I do not know where he is. Please -- let
us go. We have not harmed you. We have not harmed anyone."
Ming-tsu studied him carefully, and replaced his gag. She tended to think
that perhaps the old man really didn't know. And perhaps the girl didn't know
either. But there was only one way to be sure. She gave Feng another glance,
and with a sadistic grin he backhanded Liu's other breast with another savage
blow.
"Aaughhh!!" Liu groaned weakly again, but managed to speak. "Please, miss,
let my grandfather go. He is an old man, past eighty; he is not well. And he
knows nothing of this."
When she saw the intent look Ming-tsu gave her, she realized her slip, and
added, "And neither do I." But she sensed that it was too late. She felt
certain that they knew that she knew.
"Please, if you have any feelings for Li Chang at all, let my
grand-father go." Liu prayed that Wen-chi would be spared the agony of having
to watch her inevitable interrogation; if she failed to keep her secret she
would be humiliated before him. And even if she somehow succeeded in
maintaining her silence, she had no illusions that the next two hours would be
anything but painful for him to witness. Liu knew the reputation of the Black
Scorpions.
But her former affection was the last thing on Ming-tsu's mind. "Tie the
old man to the chair. And put this whining bitch on the Tiger; she'll tell us
what we want to know soon enough."
With that Dao and the Drooler of the Scorpions threw Wen-chi into a nearby
wooden chair, and quickly tied and gagged him so that he was helpless to do more
than watch, through aged eyes, the ensuing mistreatment of his grand-daughter.
Meanwhile Feng and the Ox dragged Liu over to the large wooden device that
Ci-ci had noticed in the corner earlier that day. It was carved and painted in
the size and shape of a Siberian tiger. But this tiger had one unusual
anatomical characteristic: its spine came to a very sharp ridge.
"Well, Miss Liu, I give you one last chance, before I let you feel the
embrace of the Tiger. Where is Li Chang?"
Liu trembled with fear as she examined the terrible tiger, but said
nothing. Her fawn-like eyes made a quick ciruit of the room -- the slab-faced
giant with the vacant expression that they called the Ox; the eager-eyed skinny
boy whose eyes never left her nearly naked body; the stocky, balding Feng, with
his dark and devilish goatee; and the grinning gap-toothed Dao, who was
continually stealing glances at Ming-tsu, the Mistress in Black. She could well
understand now why Li Chang had been captivated by Ming-tsu's exotic allure;
despite her own youth and comeliness, she felt small and rather plain in the
presence of Li's lover, whose every movement seemed to exude sexuality.
"Feng," Ming-tsu continued with a cruel smile, "a prisoner with a secret is
like the last few drops of milk in a woman's breast. Sometimes one has to
squeeze with considerable force; but eventually, little by little, the milk, or
the truth, will come squirting out. You may begin squeezing now."
The bald squadron leader put his powerful hands to the lace-edged neckline
of Liu's sodden nightgown, preparing to rip it to shreds. But Ming-tsu stopped
him, "No, not yet. Just put her on the Tiger for now."
Disappointed at being deprived, at least for the moment, of the opportunity
of enjoying the nude beauty of their comely captive, the two burly Scorpions
lifted the struggling girl up, and deposited her on the sharp "saddle" of the
wildcat, allowing the ridge-back of the tiger to press painfully against the
tender petals of her virginal vagina.
Then the muscular Scorpions each pulled a pretty ankle down hard along the
flanks of the tiger, and enclosed it in a manacle that was affixed to its belly,
thereby pulling Liu's body's weight even harder against the sharp ridge. Then
Feng cuffed her two wrists together and lifted them high over her head and
attached them to a hook that hung down from the ceiling; this posture lifted the
alluring curves of her breasts into bold relief against the wet-clinging fabric
of the rain-soaked shift.
After only a few minutes of her ride on the Tiger, Liu felt the flesh
between her legs begin to burn with pain. Her soft brown eyes sought out the
clock on the wall; time was marching with infinitely slow steps tonight -- it
was still only 10:15. Could she possibly withstand another hundred minutes of
this torment? Her only consolation was that her interrogators did not know that
they were operating against a midnight deadline; they seemed to be taking their
time. She gave secret thanks that Wen-chi's eyesight was poor and that the
eerily torchlit dungeon was quite dark; if she could suppress her cries of pain,
perhaps she could spare her half-deaf grandfather the full knowledge of her
plight.
The embrace of the tiger was excruciating; it felt as if her love-nook was
on fire. With a tremendous effort Liu was able to pull herself up slightly
toward the hook above, but this caused her ankles to rub painfully against the
manacles that held them in place. Better her ankles than her private parts,
though, she thought ruefully. Unfortunately her arms and shoulders could not
long sustain the terrible strain, and when they tired, her body descended on to
the fiendish ridge again. Until she could recover enough strength to lift
herself once more.
Ming-tsu, Feng and the others watched with cruel satisfaction as the gently
curved form of the girl struggled to defy gravity but continually fell victim to
its implacable force. After several minutes of this torture, they could no
longer tell to what extent it was rainfall and to what extent it was
pain-induced perspiration that bathed her body in an attractive sheen of
moisture.
"Now, Feng, you may remove the nightgown." At Ming-tsu's words, Feng moved
toward the girl eager to strip the damp nightgown from her slim young body.
"What a typical man! Always In such a hurry. With no imagination."
Ming-tsu's hand held Feng back. "Not that way. With this." And she bowed and
extended the handle of a menacing black whip to the husky squad leader. The very
whip that she had held in her mouth and felt on her body on the Night of the
Forty Lashes.
"This whip has a score to settle with my VIP, Mr. Li Chang. Remove her gown
with this."
