Chapter 33: Musical Interlude In Room 4

The Emir had been reading some of the books from the bookcase at the end of the torture suite room and had built himself a novel device he had read about; that is to say, he had personally supervised the eunuchs who did the actual work. The device seemed to be workable, and yet it was so simple. It had been used during the Second World War to extract information from female spies, but some of them had died from its excessive use. The Emir intended to use it as a standard means of execution, instead of strangling. Once he was sure it would work it would be used in front of some of the more rebellious women and then they would fall in line.

At about five feet from the ground in the centre of one wall he had a ring bolt firmly inserted in the wall. It was tested as being able to bear a one ton weight or pull without becoming dislodged. Exactly opposite a pulley was fixed to the wall and tested to two tons pull. Below the pulley, and about two feet six off the ground a cable drum drive was fitted with a handle and worm gear drive. Interchangeable drums were provided which carried varying thicknesses of wire and rope, each ending in a loop. On to the ring bolt a double ended clip was fitted so that the wire or rope could be passed through the pulley and taken across the room and clipped to the bolt opposite. The final touch was that in the exact centre of the room two padded cuffs were fitted at floor level so that the ankles of the victim could be held firmly in place, one on either side of the wire or rope.

Before he had had time to test this arrangement properly, a curious incident at the hunt intervened. A dancer who had been kidnapped from London refused to be hunted and simply sat in the main path into the hunting grounds and waited to be caught. After that the shouted her defiance at the Emir.

"Now you all fuck me, I know that," she yelled, "After that I suppose the young bastard in charge of this business will have me flogged to death for failing to give you your sport. Well I don't care."

The last thing she expected was that the pampered young jumped up princeling would understand English. An intake of breath all round was held while the hunters waited for the Emir, may he live for ever, to reply to this unforgivable insolence from a slave.

"The hunters will make use of you, yes; you will be flogged, yes; flogged to death, no," he said thoughtfully in perfect English with just a trace of an Oxford accent, and the girl blenched as he added, "I have something much more special for you than flogging, or strangling."

She was duly raped and sodomised and the hunters' riding crops marked her flesh, but these acts were performed more out of duty to the Emir than with any of the exuberant pleasure associated with a 'kill' after an exhilarating hunt. Then came a routine flogging by a eunuch for disobedience, administered at the site of the unsatisfactory 'kill', but only six lashes. Then the Emir took the whole party to the Ruby Palace where, he intimated, he wished to show them something.