The Case of the Mad Scientist novel Chapter 9

Chapter 9: No One will Miss Her

“Is this the best you could get?”

The speaker was Dr. William Sorren. The location was a small research laboratory built into the basement of a large house on a hillside not far from the small town of Kitakara, Japan. There were no windows in the underground lab, but from the top level of the house one had a fine view of Hibara Ko, a moderate sized lake about three miles in length in the wooded foothills of northern Honshu. Dr. Sorren wore a typical lab coat, and had pushed his reading glasses up on his forehead. His beard was salt and pepper and his eyes rather dark, almost brooding when no other emotion animated his face. The age spots and wrinkles of an older man were setting in.

“She is a whore from Tokyo. Ozaki picked her up,” said Gato, his Japanese assistant. “No one will miss her.”

The woman in question was kneeling before Sorren, head bowed. She was dressed in a cheap, tight-fitting dress of the type used by streetwalkers to attract customers. Her arms were bound behind her back and Gato was holding on to the ropes linking her elbows. Unable to understand the English spoken by those two, she could only try to keep her fear inside her and hope that all these men wanted was to use her body and then - hopefully - let her go. She was in her late twenties and had been a prostitute since she was sixteen. A few times she had been sort of “kidnapped” by a customer, but always once he had his satisfaction with her, he would let her go. One man kept her in his apartment for two days, but even then she was not really scared.

These men were different. The two who had kidnapped her from a street late at night had not used her body or even forced her to service them. There was this long drive in a van after they bound her arms and feet, and then she was hauled out and brought before this American in the white coat.

She refused to look up at him, keeping her eyes on the floor in a very submissive pose. It was the way she had survived so many years in a rough trade. Offer no resistance, and make sure the man was sexually satisfied. Little did she know that this gray-haired American did not want her for sexual purposes.

Sorren was unhappy because he had told Gato that he wanted young women. This one was at least ten years older than he had expected. She was pretty, in a way, and that body in the tight yellow dress looked pretty good. But, for his testing he wanted a woman whose body had just reached sexual maturity.

He sighed. “Tell Ozaki to get another. And tell him to make sure she is no older than twenty, preferably younger.”

“I shall.”

Sorren placed a finger under her chin and tilted her face up so he could see her better. There was fear in those eyes, but she hid it well. It had amazed him when he first began experiments on Japanese women. Where an American woman would be kicking and screaming, they were meek and docile. Must be a different upbringing.

She still tried to avert her eyes from his, the sign of submission in any animal species. Do not make eye contact. He let her go.

“Before you talk to Ozaki, fix this one up in the chamber. I’ll run a test on her this afternoon. But I fear she is too old.”

“Yes, doctor.”

Gato jerked on the rope and the woman rose to her feet. When he ordered he to move, she did, still keeping her eyes down and trying to keep the increasing fear inside. She kept telling herself that they would use her and then… But it was becoming harder to believe that. She knew she had an attractive body but they let her keep her dress on. What kind of men were these? What did they want, if not sex?

Gato led her to the far end of the lab where a small steel door was set into the wall. Beside it was a window set in a metal frame and appearing to be of quite thick glass. Through the window could be seen two metal poles, set solidly in the floor and attached to the ceiling. The walls were made of metal and painted a dull, depressing gray. He opened the door and led her in. Once inside, he pushed her up against one of the metal poles. Hanging from it was a short chain and a padlock. He placed that chain around her neck and locked it so that her neck was chained very closely to the pole. He untied the knots and removed the rope from her arms. She brought them around in front of her body and rubbed at her wrists but did not try to fight him.

“Take the dress off,” he told her in Japanese.

Her eyes opened a little wider but she complied. Under the dress, she wore no panties or bra; this was her working clothing, and the customers usually liked the fact that she was naked under the dress. She stepped out of the dress and, without being told to, kicked off her shoes.

She deliberately made no move to cover herself with her hands. Let him look. She wanted him to get interested in her body. Once he had sex with her, she would be better off, she was sure. He might even let her go. It bothered her that she was chained by the neck to that pole, but she was used to men who liked their women tied up. She was wondering if she should initiate things. She was afraid, and the sooner she got things back into normal patterns the better she would feel. But the usual way to get a man interested was to kneel down and open the fly of his pants. The chain around her neck kept her from kneeling.