Assault on Soho by Don Pendleton

about blackmail mills—this one was a natural goldmine for anyone with such ambitions.
    His attention was drawn to the monitor showing the cell with the barrel balancing trick. An Amazonian beauty in weird garb had just stalked into camera range in that cell. She wore thigh-high boots of glossy black leather and a tightly laced corset affair that sucked her into an hourglass from armpits to hips. Cutouts at the chest provided a free and high projection of magnificently sculpted breasts. Thick black hair descended in a free fall to her waist. Grotesque facial cosmetics conveyed a convincing impression of satanic evil. She must have stood six feet tall even without the high-heeled boots, Bolan guessed, and she carried the inevitable black whip.
    A well formed young man occupied the balancing platform. His back was to the camera; he was imprisoned by the wrist irons with his face to the wall. The devil girl went directly to the task at hand, lashing out energetically against his nude flanks with the whip. He reacted with a believable display of pain, lunging away from the stinging tips of the lash, losing his footing, clawing desperately at the chains to relieve the harsh pressure at his wrists—just about as Bolan had visualized the thing earlier.
    The performance was too realistic for Bolan. He supposed that the whip was made of some sort of trick material, but it was still too much for his stomach. He whirled away from the console, wondering what had become of Charles and what had prompted the old man to desert his station and leave it wide open. This was obviously a party night at the museum, certainly no time for the security watch to be relaxed.
    Bolan made another quick inspection of the entire basement area, returning none the wiser some minutes later to the control room. During his absence the black man had left the stage in the party room and another act had replace him. This consisted of two young men lashed nakedly together back to back and two girls bound to each other in a side-by-side arrangement. The nude foursome's problem of the night was an erotically obvious one, and their frantic attempts at resolving it were acrobatically ingenious.
    Bolan's attention was suddenly diverted from the Siamese-twin act by a peculiar movement across the screen of one of the cell monitors. A satanic Amazon had uncharacteristically staggered past the camera lens, her face showing genuine shock and revulsion as she hurried out of the little room. Bolan bent closer to the monitor. The scene there, at first look, seemed a typical one. A "victim" was imprisoned in a variation of the stocks—a particularly evil device consisting of a small platform raised a few inches above the floor, in which were set ankle holes for imprisoning the victim's feet; just behind this was another platform slightly higher off the floor, with holes for neck and wrists.
    Bolan had noticed the contrivance on his trip through the maze, and there had been no puzzle as to its function. The victim would be required to bend over double, standing in the stocks in a grotesque position with his head practically between his feet. Too much bodily fatigue, vertigo, dizziness, or any other circumstance which would cause the victim to sway too much in any direction would undoubtedly choke him. Total imbalance would result in a broken neck. Bolan had gathered all this in one quick glance, the previous night. Now he realized that he had not grasped the full diabolicalness of this device. In its present usage the victim was doubled over
backwards
, and an extra feature had been added. A narrow platform, resembling a sawhorse with steel spikes along its back, was thrust under the arched spine. If this had been a staged act, the role would have called for a contortionist.
    But this victim was no contortionist. The closer inpection sent chills along Bolan's spine and sucked all the moisture from his mouth. This victim was no performer. He was quite an old man, and there was