She went to bed early, it had been a long day for her, but somehow she couldn't sleep. So she got up and started to write a letter to Jane, telling her all the wonderful things that were happening, and how she would give her more news later. Somehow she got carried away, and the letter was pages long by the time she realized it. So she decided to post it anyway. But she didn't have a stamp, and Gloria hated to leave things unfinished. So she got up, put one of her robes on and went out to find David to ask him for one.

The house seemed to be deserted, and she hadn't really been round it much. She followed the passages quietly, not wanting to wake anybody who was asleep, listening for any sound. For a long time she didn't hear a thing, and she was getting a little frightened. She was in one of the lower passages when she heard a sound coming through one of the doors. Thinking it had to be David, she opened it and went though.

It was another, even darker passage, and Gloria had to grope her way to a thin stream of light coming under another door down the hall. She opened it. The room beyond was dark, and what light there was came through a window in the far wall. Gloria went over to it and got the biggest shock of her life.

CHAPTER TWO

It took a little while to sink in. The window, which couldn't really be a window, Gloria realized, looked down into a large basement room. Most of the walls were bare stone, and on them were racks of whips and strange devices. There were some raised platforms on the floor, some of them padded and some not. There were also numerous ring bolts and other restraints all over the place, and several pieces of what almost looked like gymnasium apparatus.

All that was bad enough, but there in the room was David with Mandy and Alva. He sat casually in a large chair, no longer dressed in his usual immaculate suit, but in tight leather pants and an open-necked white shirt. He toyed with a leather whip, running it through his hands slowly as he stared at the girls.