"What else has he got going?"
"I don't know exactly. Not now, anyway. But some funny things were going on years ago, when I worked for him."
"When was that?"
"in the forties and fifties. I ran out of money for the treatments after a few years in Switzerland. I tried to get my agent in Hollywood to find me another picture, but nobody in the business wanted to take a chance on me. Commercial flights to Europe were practically nonexistent during the war, so I couldn't get back to talk to them myself. Besides, I didn't have enough cash to take a supply of the formula with me back to America. So I stayed."
"What kind of job did Foxx offer you?"
"The usual," she said. "At first I was his mistress. He was rough, really bad. He liked to hurt. I hated him, but I needed the injections. In time, though, he got tired of me. I was glad about that. But he'd grown to
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trust me. By the time he was ready to move his operation here to Shangri-la, I was keeping some of his books."
"Oh?" Remo said, interested. "What was in them?"
"Different things. The income from the Geneva clinic, mostly. That's where he produced the formula. In those days, he was gone quite a bit, and I'd run the clinic for him. There weren't any guests there by then, of course. Foxx wanted to get back to America, so he had cut all his patients off. . . ."
She started to tremble. "What's wrong?" Remo asked.
"Nothing. I was just remembering. . . ." She shrugged it off. "Anyway, sometimes he'd leave for months at a stretch. During those times, while I was at the clinic in Switzerland, he'd give me instructions over the phone. Sometimes he wanted me to pick up these packages that were left in weird places- alleys, old warehouses, places like that. They were always wrapped in brown paper, those packages."
"What was in them?"
She looked up. "Gold," she said softly. "That's what was strange. Millions came in that way. Always brown packages dropped somewhere with bricks of gold inside."
"Did you know who left them?"
"How could I? They were just dumped. But that's not all of it. Something else began happening around that time, too. Foxx started calling and telling me to ship out huge quanties of the formula to the States."
"Here?"
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"No. It was odd. He wanted me to send them all to South Dakota."
"South Dakota?"
"Don't ask me why South Dakota. The post office boxes where ! was supposed to send them were all over the Black Hills region."
"Is this still going on?"
"I don't know. The clinic in Geneva was sold. He keeps the supplies for the guests in the basement here, but I don't know where he produces the formula these days. I don't work for him any more."
She spoke as if she were in a daze. "He was going to cut me off when he left Switzerland. He said that if I couldn't pay for the drug in one way or another, I could do without it."
"It might have been the kindest thing he ever did for you," Remo said.
She smiled ruefully. "Maybe. In a way, it might have been. I married a Swiss industrialist I'd met while Foxx was on one of his long visits to America. Fortunately, he was quite wealthy. Before Foxx left Geneva for good, he sold us a quantity of the formula, enough for several months. My husband wanted to try it, so I began giving him the injections, too."
"Just two happy little addicts," Remo said.
She started to shake again. "I introduced him to it," she whispered. "He was killed in an automobile accident two months later. I saw him after he died. ..." A low moan issued from her throat. She looked as if she were on the verge of screaming.
"Posie? Posie!" He shook her back into the present.
"Remo," she said. "Oh, please don't take the treat-
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ment. I know what it does, even after one time. I've seen it. Don't. . .don't. . . ."
She was sobbing. "Hey, take it easy," Remo said, rocking her in his arms.
"Get out of here as soon as you can. Before it's too !ate for you, too."
He kissed her. And suddenly he didn't care how old she was. There was something about Posie Ponselle that made him feel like the happiest man who ever lived, something womanly and yet almost unbearably fragile, as if at any moment she would disintegrate in his arms.
They made love again. It was even better than the last time, because there was more of Posie in it-not just Posie, the beautiful blonde who knew every imaginable way to please a man, but another, wise, sad, infinitely tender.
"If you don't watch out, I'm going to fall in love with you," Remo said.
Her smile faded. "Don't do that," she said. "For your sake, don't. Just leave."
"I can't. Not until I've talked to Foxx."
"What for?" she said, alarmed. "You're not a spy for him or anything, are you?"
Remo shook his head. "Posie, I can't tell you what I am just now, but I think Dr. Foxx is more dangerous than you know. I've got to see him personally."
She looked at him for a long moment. "If I arrange a meeting, will you promise to leave? Without taking the treatment?"
"I won't take the treatment," Remo said.
"Fair enough." She put on her dress and kissed him good-bye.
She closed the door behind her. Remo sat in silence in the pool of pink light cast by the bedside lamp.
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Her arms! If half of Posie's strange story was true he would have to get her out of here. Felix Foxx was into a lot more than the health resort business.
He felt a strange vibration behind the bed. He searched for the source, but saw nothing except a loose telephone wire that obviously had been cut deliberately. He held it up. The buzz vibrated through his fingers.
That was funny. There wasn't any ringing in the rest of Shangri-la, so every other phone in the house must have been disconnected, too. He manipulated the wires into the telephone. By the fifteenth soundless ring, he made the connection.