Chapter 30.
Stan sat back in the Pullman coach as the train made its way along the eastern shore of the Hudson. It was late afternoon on a pleasant summer Saturday, a day when, but for the incident with Barbara that had gotten him banned from the track, he might have been earning his keep betting on the horses at Saratoga.
Instead, he was voyaging in search of his lost love, who had been exiled to some Institute that was supposedly going to cure her of the very spunky spirit that had made him fall for her and caused her to fall for him.
Earlier that day, he had presented himself at the desk at the Plaza Hotel and accosted Mario Pellegrino. “Ah, Mr. Goldman, how nice to see you,” the slimy bastard had greeted him.
Stan had crooked his finger. “I think this is a conversation we should have outside, Mario,” he had said.
“But, I’m on duty,” Mario had protested.
“Take a five minute break. Have one of these other gentlemen cover for you. Things don’t look too busy right now,” Stan had said. “I’ll meet you out front.”
There, Stan had come straight to the point. “Listen, Pellegrino, I happened to encounter Kristina, a former employee of yours, and she spilled the beans all about your goings on with her and Barbara Moore.”
Mario had blanched visibly, but had quickly regained his poise. “What goings on? Where did you encounter Kristina, may I ask?”
“None of your business. But I got the whole story. You watched her and the lovely Miss Moore going to town and joined in with a wooden object and then fucked Kristina right in front of Barbara. You would have fucked Barbara, too, if she would have let you. And all while you were supposed to be working. I wonder what the hotel management would say if they knew?”
“I will deny it completely. I am a valued employee here.”
“Kristina will back me up.”
“She is a disgraced former employee, dismissed for immoral activities. And don’t be so sure that she will.”
“Immoral activities that you participated in.”
“What is it you want, Mr. Goldman?”
“Where did Barbara’s father send her?”
“I don’t know,” Mario had replied. “And if I did I wouldn’t tell you.”
“I think you do know and you need to tell me. It isn’t worth risking this very lucrative position you have here.”
“Besides keeping quiet, what else are you willing to offer, Mr. Goldman?”
“$ 100,” Stan had replied, without thinking. He wasn’t sure he could lay hands on that much money right now, but Mario didn’t know that. “But only if what you tell me checks out.”
“I’ll need the money up front,” Mario had said.
“Oh, no you don’t, Pellegrino,” Stan had replied. “Not after that phony meeting you had supposedly set up between me and Barbara on the 26th of May.”
“You mean May 25th, sir. And you stood her up.”
“Miss Moore and I compared notes, my friend,” Stan had told him. “This was some sort of grift on your part. Here’s the deal. I’ll give you $ 20 now and the rest only if your tip proves accurate.”
Mario had sighed and shrugged his shoulders, but accepted the proffered banknotes. “Very well, Mr. Goldman, but only because I like you and because Barbara wants to be with you for reasons that I cannot understand.”
Then, he had continued, “Her father had me send a telegram to the Darwin Institute for Wayward Young Women up in Rhinecliff. And he had me purchase two train tickets for that station, one a one way ticket and one a return trip. I leave it to you to figure out which one of the two used the return ticket.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pellegrino,” Stan had replied. “I will let you get back to work now.”
After that conversation, Stan had returned to his rooms and packed a suitcase and headed to the train station.
***
Stan had dozed off, tired from his late night with Kristina and his confrontation with Mario earlier in the day. He was awakened by the conductor informing him that the upcoming stop was Rhinecliff. Descending from the train, he found some horse and buggies waiting for passengers. He approached the nearest one and asked to be taken to the nearby village of Rhinebeck.
There, he secured a room at the Beekman Arms Inn, an old hotel that had begun as a tavern back before the Revolution and had hosted such luminaries as George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, the latter of whom had exchanged insults there with Aaron Burr which had led to their infamous duel in which Hamilton had been killed.
On his way to dinner, Stan stopped at the desk and inquired about the Institute. The clerk wasn’t sure, but he had heard rumors of such a place in an old mansion over towards the river, back in the direction of Rhinecliff and gave Stan directions. Stan decided it was too late to go there today and decided to go have a look around the next day.
***
The next day, Sunday, dawned clear and warm. After breakfast, Stan donned the “country” clothes he had brought with him-Knickerbockers with knee socks, a white cotton shirt without a tie, ankle-high lace-up boots with gaiters, topped with a jaunty woolen Irish hunting cap.
The desk clerk had said that the house he suspected of being the Darwin Institute for Wayward Young Women was a bit over two miles from the hotel, on a bluff overlooking the Hudson, so he decided to walk rather than attracting attention by calling for a cab.
Stan followed a well maintained dirt road out of the village, through woods mixed with farmland in which some cows were grazing contentedly. He picked up a fallen branch of the appropriate length to use as a walking stick and whistled a happy tune as he strolled along, cheered immensely by the prospect of seeing Barbara once more.
It took perhaps 45 minutes to arrive at a wall that ran along the road on the side facing the river. The wall was about six feet high, made of stones dug from nearby fields, piled on top of each other without mortar, in the local style.
A short distance along the wall was a wrought iron gate, which Stan found to be locked. Peering through the bars, he could see a crushed stone carriage path leading through a well-tended lawn to a large and rather gloomy looking house.
Stan looked around for any sign identifying the place as the Institute, but didn’t see one. ‘Is this it?’ he wondered.
His question was answered a few moments later when the door to the house opened and a figure emerged, followed by a group of a dozen or so females. Some were dressed, but at least some appeared nearly naked, with some kind of loincloth-like garment around their waists. ‘One of them must be Barbara,’ Stan thought, his heart beating quickly at the thought of her being so close, yet out of reach, at least for the moment.
‘Was she one of the almost naked ones?’ he wondered. He couldn’t be sure from where he stood, but he saw no immediate way to get closer.
Very shortly, a large male figure and another female figure emerged, followed by a smaller, well-dressed man, who appeared to be addressing the assembled young women. ‘That must be that Darwin fellow, who runs the place,’ Stan decided.
Then, Stan observed a most strange and shocking sight, indeed. The young women began removing their clothes, the fully dressed ones, as well as the nearly naked ones, leaving their garments in piles on the ground.
Even though he was too far away to really see the details of all those naked female bodies, he found himself getting hard at the mere idea of the spectacle and the near certainty that Barbara was among them.
Once they had all stripped, they began doing some sort of calisthenics, bends and stretches, presumably to limber up for something. Then they were lined up on the carriage path, facing towards the gate by which Stan stood, his mouth agape at the strange, but highly erotic spectacle.
Then, at some signal he couldn’t hear, they were off, like the horses in the countless races Stan had watched, but far more alluring, heading down the path straight towards him.
Stan was mesmerized by their naked breasts bouncing enticingly as they ran or, more accurately, loped, their bare feet obviously experiencing discomfort as they trod on the sharp stones. Suddenly he realized that he would be visible to them, so he quickly ducked back behind the wall, just peeking out through the gate at the vision of female loveliness approaching.
And, as they reached almost to the gate, he saw her, in the middle of the pack, his lovely Barbara! Stan’s head swum; he could barely breathe as he gazed upon her luscious breasts and limber thighs. This was what he had wished to see from the moment their eyes locked at the restaurant, yet here he was, unable to take her naked body in his arms and make passionate love to her, as he ached to do.
Then, the runners turned and headed back on the home stretch towards the house. Now, instead of a dozen pairs of breasts, Stan got to look at a dozen delightful naked buttocks as they made their way back to the house.
He was intrigued to see that, around the halfway point on the home stretch, Barbara and another one of the girls broke from the pack and finished one-two, though Stan couldn’t discern the order from where he was. The race complete, there was some kind of reward for the top finishers, served to them in bowls. ‘Perhaps ice cream, most welcome on this warm day,’ Stan mused.
Then, four of the girls, Barbara among them, broke into pairs and began wrestling on the lawn. Stan would have given most of his dwindling fortune to be able to observe this delightful turn of events up close. He was very aroused just imagining Barbara in the clutches of one of the other girls, rubbing their naked bodies together. Oh, if only that could be him!
Finally, the match ended and the four competitors were subjected to some sort of examination by Darwin, after which Barbara was sent off, naked, into the woods that lined one side of the house, accompanied by another woman, who was fully dressed. The other girls headed off around the house in the direction of the river.
‘What was going on?’ Stan wondered. He walked along the road, following the wall to where the stone structure turned away from the road at right angles, heading through the woods in the direction of the river. The ground was uneven and Stan had to watch his footing, but eventually he came upon another gate.
Peering through the bars, he saw Barbara, completely naked, close enough to see that she held some supple birch branches about as long as her arm. He caught a snippet from the older woman accompanying her. “That one should do very nicely,” she said, handing Barbara a pair of garden shears.
‘Do for what?’ Stan wondered. Barbara set down the branches she was holding and snipped the selected one off where it joined a larger limb and added it to the others.
“A couple more should do,” the older woman said, as they moved out of earshot.
After adding two more branches, they headed back through the woods in the direction of the house. Stan carefully picked his way back to the road and followed it to the main gate. There, he saw that the naked girls had returned from the river and were now assembled in front of the house.
A wooden bench of some sort had been placed on the flagstones. Barbara was being led to the bench and made to bend over it and was secured in place.
The branches had been bound together at one end, though the other ends were left free. The instrument was given to one of the naked girls, who took her place behind Barb and struck her very hard on the ass.
She continued striking Barb’s behind every twenty seconds or so. It looked terribly painful and Stan thought he could hear Barb wailing in distress. Stan found the spectacle was both horrifying and intensely erotic. He desperately wished he could burst through the gate and run to her, though whether to stop her punishment or simply observe it at closer range, Stan’s swirling brain could not decide.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the birching ended. Barbara was released and the two fully clothed women helped her stand and escorted her into the house.
Stan would have given everything he owned to be able to comfort her, but he knew that could not be, at least not right now. But what he had seen left him certain that he had to rescue her from this awful place.
To do that he needed a plan. He would also need money to execute any plan, probably more than he could lay his hands on at present. He walked back to the hotel, where he checked out and found a ride to the train station to return to the city to marshal his resources.