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[Note: Even among aficionados of the pulp magazines of the ‘30s and ‘40s, few have heard of a publication called Spicy Tickling Tales. This is unsurprising, as the magazine was only published for less than two years before it was targeted by a “public decency” group known as the Knights of Christianity United in Faith. The KCUF not only forced Spicy Tickling Tales to cease publication, it gathered up nearly all the magazine’s print run and burned it. According to some accounts, they also stormed the offices of the publisher, the innocuously named Jocular Tales Magazines, and administered savage beatings and inspirational sermons. Today, JTM is part of the Conde Nast media empire, run out of the sixth-floor art supply closet, and its only publication is Mirth, the Children’s Magazine, a fixture of pediatricians’ waiting rooms countrywide. When I called to find out if anyone there remembered the publisher’s lurid history, the woman who answered swore out a restraining order against me and hung up.
[However, some copies of Spicy Tickling Tales escaped the purge and exist in private collections today. The well-known Lt. Col. (ret.) Andrew B. Mayfair of New York City possesses the only known surviving copy of the May 1935 issue and has graciously consented to allow us to reproduce the lead story from it.]
THE LAUGHING MADNESS
by Rob Kennethson
Chapter IV. In the Dungeons of Waldhofen!
“I won’t!” snapped Cindy Mellon, tossing her tousled blond head. That was almost the only part of herself she could move, stretched tightly as she was on a torture rack, a relic of the Dark Ages pressed into service in our modern age. She was still dressed in the pilot’s clothes she had been wearing when she was taken, but her work shirt had been unbuttoned and lay open, exposing the soft white skin beneath, her whipcord breeches had been loosened, and her sturdy leather boots stood beside the rack, as far out of her reach as if they were on Mars. Another woman might have been cowed to be in that position, but the curvy little aviatrix was a veteran of more tight spots than might be credited. “I won’t, you – you stinker, and if you don’t like it, nuts to you!”
“Inarticulate as ever, but I thoroughly endorse the sentiment,” drawled Deirdre Grantham from where she stood. The Englishwoman had been abducted from the ball being given by the Count of Waldhofen – which was still going on many floors up, the happy guests with no inkling of the desperate scene taking place in the long-abandoned dungeons of Castle Waldhofen, far below them. Even with her black cocktail dress torn and one of her shoes missing, even hanging by her wrists with her feet, bound together at the ankles, balanced precariously on a small block of wood, Deirdre was unruffled. She still managed to look more like a debutante out for a night on the town than what she was, a newspaperwoman who had filed dispatches for the London Clarion from everywhere from Paris to Shanghai. Her gray eyes were cool and amused despite the extremity of her situation. Like Cindy, she had seen worse, and survived to report on it for the Clarion’s readers. “Really, von Arnsberg, you and that harpy of yours are just wasting time with this shabby melodrama.”
“Who’s inarticulate?” snapped Cindy, outraged. “I’m plenty articulate! Just ‘cause I don’t talk like I’m coming down with lockjaw, you tea-drinking –“
“Do you even know what articulate means, you colonial barbarian?” sneered Deirdre. “You probably think it’s part of an engine.”
“Aw, go write a Miss Lonelyhearts column!”
“Ladies! Of your screeching make an end!” snapped their captor, glaring at them through his monocle. The light of the torches that fitfully illuminated Castle Waldhofen’s dungeons gleamed on his shaven pate. Cindy and Deirdre fell silent. Though they were always ready to go at it hammer and tongs on the slightest pretext, they were actually the best of friends, and understood that they would need to save their energy for what was to come. Next to von Arnsberg, his aide, the vulpine Karin, grinned and licked her lips. Her unnerving predator’s gaze never wavered from Cindy.
“So you will not tell me where the original copy of the treaty concerning the tantalum mines ist?” he demanded.
“Exactly right,” said Deirdre. “We have no intention of giving you anything, up to and including the time of day. Those mines belong to Waldhofen, and neither you nor your country will lay a finger on them.”
“Ach! How noble. But you are not in a position to be noble, mein Kinder. This room many dark deeds has seen. Many tongues have here come loose. Yours shall too.” Von Arnsberg raked Deirdre’s helpless form from top to toe with his eyes. “We have ways of making you talk.”
“Phooey!” burst out Cindy. “We ain’t a couple of nervous Nellies! Me and the clothes horse over there have been tortured before, and it takes more than that to get us talking! Plus, Hope Silver’s looking for us now, and if you think you’ve got long before she finds us and wipes up the floor with you and your rotten crew, you’re wrong as a three-legged duck!” Deirdre rolled her eyes to the heavens and allowed herself a tiny groan at Cindy’s mangling of the language.
“Und you think you are the only ones to have that expected?” von Arnsberg smirked. “I know your Fraulein Silver will be you following, and for her I have prepared … a surprise.” But even as he said it, there was a tremor in his voice, for Fritz von Arnsberg had good reason to know that Hope Silver was no ordinary woman. He had clashed with her before and barely escaped with his life both times, his sinister plans in ruins.
“Fritzie, enough,” Karin said, her guttural accent thicker than his. “We show them now?”
“Ja, Karin,” von Arnsberg leered. “We will show them very well….”
Cindy continued to rain insults and curses on the Teutonic pair, but they were no longer listening. Von Arnsberg approached Deirdre with slow tread, while Karin closed in on Cindy. “Stop staring at me like that, you she-vampire,” snarled Cindy. “You’re giving me the creeps!”
With a long-taloned hand, Karin gripped the top of one of Cindy’s tiny pink feet, forcing it back. “Hush, meine Liebling,” she purred.
“Get your hands off me-EEEEEEEEE!” Cindy’s angry tirade broke off in a yelp as Karin raked her sharp nails down the length of her bare sole. “What’s the-EEEEEEE!” Cindy yanked hard on the cuffs, her eyes screwed up and her face flushing pink from the effort of not laughing as Karin’s expert fingers tested her toes.
“Bist du kitzlig?” Karin mocked.
“Talk American, blast—“ Cindy exploded in laughter as Karin swiftly snuck in a tickle on her other foot, taking her by surprise. With gleeful cruelty, Karin seized both feet, holding them tightly as her thumbs scratched and worked in Cindy’s soft arches, tickling her mercilessly and ensuring that she couldn’t stop laughing. Cindy’s exposed belly heaved with the force of her laughter. Her need to writhe away from the tickling, frustrated by the taut chains of the rack, was translated into an uncontrollable trembling that made every part of her body quiver. Karin drank in the delightful sight, pressing the heels of her hands against the balls of Cindy’s feet to keep them taut while her nails worked a swift, spidery tattoo all over the soles. The dark halls of the Castle Waldhofen dungeons had likely never heard such a sound as Cindy’s high-pitched, wild giggling. which resounded off the bricks.
“Your friend has ticklish feet,” von Arnsberg observed to Deirdre with an unpleasant smile. She looked back at him with utter contempt.
“This is the best you could think of?” the Englishwoman asked. “Tickling?”
“You will sing a different tune soon,” von Arnsberg promised, raising his hands to her. “One more like your little friend’s…”
“She’s no friend of mine.” Deirdre’s last word quavered slightly as the man set the tips of his fingers in her armpits. Her smooth bare arms, tied firmly over her head, tensed slightly. Von Arnsberg’s watery blue eyes locked with Deirdre’s gray orbs, and she shuddered at the inhuman lusts she saw there. Or perhaps it was the feel of his fingers circling the hollows of her arms. Despite her defiant talk, Deirdre was easily as ticklish as Cindy, and knew it all too well. She dropped her head, looking away from his gaze as she fought for self-control …
… and lost. Despite her steely determination, Deirdre was unable to shut out the feel of the fingers that traced her sensitive flesh. She squeaked and wriggled her shoulders, tugging on the manacles that bound her arms uselessly above her, then started chuckling as von Arnsberg pressed his fingertips into her soft skin just above the edge of her low-cut evening gown and began to move them rhythmically. Being unable to lower her arms to protect her armpits, normally so easy to defend, made her feel even more exposed, and that in turn made the tickling even worse. It only emphasized how completely she was at the mercy of this man and his vile lusts; she would not be able to stop him, no matter what he chose to do to her. And she was just so damned ticklish.
As if he could hear her thoughts, von Arnsberg began tickling her more swiftly, and Deirdre responded instantly, with a low, throaty laugh that jumped and wavered all over the scale as he skittered his fingers up and down her uncovered skin. He teased the undersides of her biceps, sending goose pimples down her arms, and laughed as she squirmed uncomfortably. Her slim body swayed, wobbling slightly on the block. “You do not like that, nicht wahr? Maybe this will be more to your taste…” And he slipped his hands back into her armpits, digging in deeper into the smooth hollows, and she laughed wildly, tossing her head back as the laughter poured out of the white column of her throat. Her toes gripped at the edge of the block of wood as she squirmed and twisted in a futile attempt to find relief. The relentless fingers were inescapable, and her agonized laughter grew more desperate by the second.
“Pl—“ Deirdre choked off the word as the horror of her situation hit her. She’d been within a second of saying please stop to this contemptible man, her enemy, even knowing it would do her no good. Even worse, he knew it. The vicious triumph in his face showed it. He slowed the tickling, almost caressing her now. Deirdre’s skin crawled, and she flushed with humiliation as she realized that he was actually toying with her.
“’Please,’ you ask?” von Arnsberg mocked, his hands gliding down her sides, crawling under the edges of her gown to tickle the tops of her ribs, each quick squeeze sending a bolt of laughter through her. Deirdre shimmied and twisted, curving her body this way and that and jerking at every ticklish twitch of his fingers. “You know what I want, if you want the tickling to stop….”
Cindy’s shrieking laughter was nearly ceaseless now. Karin had produced a package of ordinary pipe cleaners and threaded eight of the fuzzy wires between Cindy’s wriggling toes. Then, seizing both ends of one set of pipe cleaners, she sawed them back and forth, the soft fuzz tickling every part of the gaps at once, driving her to the heights of hysteria. Karin switched rapidly between one foot and the other, making it impossible for Cindy to relax. Cindy’s head rolled from side to side, her face a mask of laughter, as her hips made tiny little bucking motions, the rack making it impossible for her to move any further. Giggling sadistically, Karin added to Cindy’s torment with sudden scratches and flicks of her nails on Cindy’s soles, bringing a nearly inaudible screech of laughter every time. Unlike von Arnsberg, Karin said nothing to her writhing victim – not because of her limited English, but because for her, the missing treaty was secondary in importance. All she was doing now was relishing the opportunity to torture the pretty blond pilot, and that she was one of the closest friends of the famous Hope Silver only added a savor to the fun in Karin’s demented mind. The sight of Cindy’s scarlet face, her wide-stretched mouth, the tears of laughter leaking from the corners of her eyes – that only inflamed her further. Treaty or no treaty, she meant to keep tickling Cindy until she fainted from breathlessness, and then – She darted a greedy glance at Deirdre, who still wriggled and laughed under von Arnsberg’s tickling fingers, then leered at Cindy, attacking the balls of her feet with clawed hands. Cindy screamed, her breath so exhausted that it faded out into a tiny squeak halfway through.
Von Arnsberg knelt before Deirdre, taking hold of one ankle and removing her other high-heeled shoe, leaving both of her stockinged feet exposed. The small block her heels balanced on gave no protection to the rest of her soles, and he wasted no time in taking advantage of that, slipping his fingers under them and tickling along the smooth surfaces. Deirdre jerked and gave an undignified squeal totally at odds with her usual cool reserve, giggles racking her body as his devilish fingers traced the edges of her feet. In this position, she could barely wiggle her toes, and the rest of her feet were immobile, so he could just lightly and swiftly scribble all ten of his fingertips up and down them, each quick stroke on her stockinged feet tickling unbearably.
An additional torture swiftly made itself apparent. The wooden block was not secured, and it swayed and wobbled alarmingly as Deirdre writhed in ticklish agony. Were she to squirm too far, it would come unbalanced entirely and fall over, so she would drop down, all her weight crashing down on her suspended arms at once. The pain would be tremendous, even if her shoulders were not dislocated immediately. The evil von Arnsberg knew this as well as Deirdre herself did, and his swift touches and tickles on her feet were calculated to surprise her, to afflict her with sudden violent jolts of laughter, followed immediately by terrified writhing to keep the block in place. He tickled the balls of her toes, making her rock back and nearly overbalance as she laughed, and as she fought to regain her balance, he wiggled his fingers in her arches, the tormented laughter pouring out of her even as the sweat stood on her forehead. She was tiring rapidly; each rake of von Arnsberg’s fingers down her exquisitely ticklish soles was more unbearable than the last, and her desperate need to move her feet, try to escape the maddening sensation, built and built with no end in sight. Every peal of high-pitched mirth he forced out of her seemed to take a little of her strength with it, making it harder to concentrate on not falling off the block. The only escape was to beg him for mercy, promise him what he wanted, and she could not do that…
From Cindy there came only a thin high keening, mixed with agonized bouts of silent laughter. Finally tiring of torturing Cindy’s feet, Karin had kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the rack herself, sitting astride Cindy and tickling all over her bare torso as Cindy shuddered helplessly under her. With her limbs stretched out, and Karin’s thighs gripping her waist, Cindy was essentially immobile, completely at the mercy of Karin, who all too clearly had none. Karin scrambled her hands up and down Cindy’s defenseless sides, squeezing her hips, tweaking her ribs, dancing fingers in her armpits, and driving her insane with laughter. When Cindy was sobbing and panting in hysterics, Karin lowered her fingers to the pilot’s quaking belly, tickling the soft skin with just the tips of her sharp nails. She drew curlicues and spirals spinning out from Cindy’s navel, the constant stimulation making it impossible for Cindy to stop her hysterical giggling. Whenever Cindy’s laughter started to slack off, a swift vibration of Karin’s fingertips in the flesh of her midriff made her scream afresh. Karin laughed cruelly, thoroughly enjoying the way that she was subjecting the little blonde to hellish torture with just the tiniest movements of her fingers. Her leering gaze swept over Cindy’s scarlet face, her half-nude body with all its muscles straining as Cindy fought desperately to make the terrible tickling stop….
And stop it did, after what seemed like an eternity of tickling. Cindy and Deirdre gasped for air, both trembling with exhaustion. Deirdre was the first to recover, raising her head wearily – and relief blazed up inside her as she saw, shining like a full moon in the doorway, a mane of snow-white hair. It could only belong to one woman, and she started to cheer as she saw the Amazonian form of Hope Silver. But the yell died unuttered in her throat as Hope moved forward, and Deirdre saw that her hands were shackled behind her back, and two hard-faced, swarthy bravos from the local Gypsy tribe – whom, Deirdre knew well, were in the pay of von Arnsberg – flanked her. She towered over the stocky men, her crystalline blue eyes at the level of their hats, but she made no move to resist as they pulled her forward, hands near the wicked knives in their belts. Astonishing as it might seem, Hope Silver came to the dungeon not as a savior, but a prisoner.
Even von Arnsberg seemed astonished, but he recovered quickly, smirking at the new arrival. “So the great Fraulein Silver did not evade my little trap! Karin and I have ourselves amused with your stubborn allies. But now that you are here, I think we can get the information we need from, what is your Englisch phrase, the mouth of the horse?”
Hope Silver’s calm, unlined face showed no hint of fear, and she said nothing to von Arnsberg’s boasting. Despite the danger of the situation, both Deirdre and Cindy felt a rush of pride at their friend’s coolness of nerve. Von Arnsberg stared at her for a moment more, as if waiting for her to break down and begin pleading, but he could not face her clear gaze for long. Reddening and looking aside, he barked orders to the Gypsies in their own tongue. With malicious laughter, they drew their knives. Cindy let out a yelp and Deirdre’s breath caught, but Hope might have been a marble statue as the knives began to slash. Her tough, practical clothing parted and fell away. The Gypsies cut off the cleverly designed vest she habitually wore, with its thousand little pockets containing every tool she could possibly desire, and with much grunting and sawing managed to cut away the light, flexible bulletproof undergarment that sheathed her from neck to ankle. Her boots were taken, to the dismay of Cindy and Deirdre, who knew well what useful devices were concealed in the thick soles. Under von Arnsberg’s direction, the Gypsies searched her carefully, even discovering the tiny lockpick set hidden by her hair and the miniature poison-tipped dart sealed in a flesh-colored pouch on the back of one knee. When they were done, Hope was left nude except for a few scraps of cloth that could not have concealed a nail file.
Red highlights from the torches gleamed in her strange, prematurely white hair. Hope Silver stripped was a sight to make any man’s, and some women’s, pulse beat like a triphammer. Every day without fail she put herself through a program of intense, scientifically designed exercise that would have left a Marine gasping in a pool of sweat, and as a consequence she was the peak of physical perfection, with a strength in her feminine form that had been the undoing of more than one overconfident foe. But her life of adventure and danger had not hardened her. Despite the power of her body, she also had the grace and untouched beauty of a high-fashion model, and when she walked down a city street, heads turned so fast to stare at her that she left a trail of sore necks in her wake.
Hope Silver was not merely a physical ideal, though. The mind behind those bewitching sapphire eyes was one of the world’s most keenly honed. She was a world-renowned expert in fields from astronomy to zoology, with an alphabet soup’s worth of advanced degrees. Her name was known in the most far-flung corners of the globe, as were her love of adventure and fierce hatred of injustice -- the qualities that had brought her and her companions to this tiny Central European country to confront von Arnsberg and his band of international spies. But would all her knowledge and resourcefulness be enough to save her from the fate von Arnsberg had planned?
The leering master spy had produced a small black automatic, which he kept trained on Hope as the Gypsies undressed her. Now he jerked it to direct them, and they took Hope’s arms, steering her to where a heavy pair of wooden stocks sat, with a low bench behind them. As von Arnsberg snapped quick orders, Hope quietly allowed the Gypsies to set her up, kneeling, on the bench. Her ankles were locked behind her in the stocks, and her arms were drawn over her head, bound together, and tied to a ring set in one of the dark wooden beams in the room’s ceiling. The beam and ring were set some way behind the bench, so Hope’s body was forced to sway backward like an inverted number 7, stretching out her torso. It was an uncomfortable position, and one difficult to move in, but Hope bore it with total equanimity. Cindy and Deirdre glanced at each other. Both were confident that Hope had some sort of plan to escape, but it was hard to see what it was when she allowed herself to be rendered helpless so easily. As a final touch, the Gypsies pried her legs apart and bound her knees to the bench with many coils of rope so that she could not close them. At von Arnsberg’s further direction, they bowed and left the dungeon, casting glances over their shoulders at Hope.
“Now, Fraulein Silver, we shall see how strong you are,” von Arnsberg gloated. “Your assistants have already been humiliated with only tickling. It will please me to bring you down to their level … and you will beg to tell me where the treaty is. Karin?” But the sadistic blonde needed no invitation – she was already stalking toward Hope, fingers clawed and scarlet nails gleaming. She ran their tips down Hope’s taut belly, and Hope did not so much as twitch, even when Karin probed her navel. Scowling, Karin tested Hope’s sides, carefully spidering her way up and down them, running her fingers all around Hope’s underarms. Not a smile rewarded her. From the remoteness of Hope Silver’s expression, she might have been back in her own laboratory, studying a simple chemical reaction. Karin hissed in frustration and attacked Hope, fingers flying all over her body. Hope’s skin, smooth and soft and, it seemed, completely insensitive, turned pink where Karin’s wildly tickling nails scrambled, but she didn’t giggle even once. “You’re wasting your time,” she told Karin in her calm, resonant voice when the blonde stopped, eyes blazing.
Muttering a curse, von Arnsberg joined Karin, and together the two of them poked, prodded, and tickled Hope’s unresisting body. Only someone who knew Hope Silver as Cindy and Deirdre did could see the increase of tension as she was forced to endure twenty fingers tickling her: the line of her jaw tautened, her breath came shorter, and occasionally something flashed in the depths of those blue eyes. Cindy and Deirdre could tell Hope felt what the two spies were doing to her, but try as they might, they could not overcome her resistance. For von Arnsberg and Karin, who didn’t notice those clues, it was as if they were trying to tickle a block of wood. They finally drew back, muttering furiously to each other.
Despite herself, Cindy laughed derisively. “You really thought you were gonna break Hope Silver down with just a little kitchy-coo? Looks like you don’t know as much as you thought!” Then she yelled with wilder laughter as Karin crossed the dungeon in two furious strides, grabbed the nearest bare foot, and began to tickle it mercilessly, unloading her frustration. Von Arnsberg looked from Hope to the shrieking Cindy to Deirdre and back again, rubbing his chin.
“Karin, enough!” he snapped. “We must try other things…” At his direction, Cindy was removed from the rack under gunpoint. Exhausted from the relentless tickling, she put up no resistance as Karin and von Arnsberg set her up kneeling on the bench to Hope’s left, facing Hope. Her legs stretched off the edge of the bench, and her ankles were closed in a second pair of stocks behind her. One of her arms was tied to a rope attached to the beam directly overhead, while the other was free. Deirdre was unbound next and set up in an identical position to Hope’s right. Von Arnsberg seated himself behind Cindy, and Karin settled behind Deirdre. Karin’s nails trailed almost teasingly on Deirdre’s helpless feet, and despite herself, the Englishwoman burst into giggles immediately.
“As you said, we do not know Fraulein Silver well,” Von Arnsberg said, reaching up to delicately tickle Cindy’s exposed ribs with just two fingers, meanwhile tracing a zigzag pattern on her soles. Cindy writhed in laughter, her free arm flailing. “But you, my ticklish little Frauleins, know her better than any. So you will tickle her and make her tell us where the treaty is…or suffer further tickling.”
Deirdre and Cindy looked at each other through eyes damp with laughter, and saw dismay mirrored in each other’s faces. Von Arnsberg, through evil chance, had struck on a weakness. After their terrible adventure with Leda Marienburg and her will-sapping drugs , Deirdre and Cindy knew only too well where Hope was ticklish – and to be forced to turn that knowledge against her was a bitter prospect. But how could they fight back? Even as they hesitated, Karin began to dig and scratch with her nails around the edges of Deirdre’s feet, and von Arnsberg gripped Cindy’s sides just above the waistband of her breeches, sending them both into squeals of laughter. Cindy shoved at von Arnsberg’s hands with her free hand, but she had no strength to dislodge him.
“Do it.” Although Hope didn’t raise her voice, it was still clearly audible through Deirdre and Cindy’s hysterics. The ticklers slowed, but did not stop. Cindy, not letting herself think twice, reached out swiftly, running her fingers down Hope’s bare flank. Deirdre was only a second slower, circling a fingernail in one of Hope’s underarms. Hope allowed a smile to cross her face, shifting slightly in her bonds.
“Ja, ja,” von Arnsberg said greedily. “Make her laugh, make her scream…you dare not stop!” His fingers kneaded Cindy’s ribs, forcing pants and gasps of laughter out of her. Every fiber in the little pilot’s body screamed for her to lower her arm, protect her ticklish ribs, but she knew that doing so would only doom herself. She had to trust Hope and believe that Hope’s iron will would enable her to endure the tickling to come. If Hope could not, then she and Deirdre would have no choice but to break down and tell the spies what they wanted to know. Deirdre was thinking the same, reaching down to the one spot where they both knew Hope could not stand being tickled. Hope’s abbreviated outfit left her thighs bare, and more importantly the long crease where her legs joined the body, and it was to this spot that Deirdre’s long, elegant fingers – trembling as Karin tickled the backs of her thighs wickedly – went. Hope shuddered as Deirdre’s manicured nails slid along the little valley, gooseflesh crawling over her skin. And then, as Deirdre tickled up and down the crease and Cindy’s stubby but delicate fingers spread over her firm belly, digging into the steely muscles beneath, Hope’s hips twitched and she began to laugh softly. It was a sight the crime lords of six continents would have given their left arms to see – Hope Silver and her two aides, giggling and squirming for all the world like helpless little girls!
Hope’s laughter came faster as Cindy joined Deirdre, tickling her thigh on the other side. She gave a violent squirming not unlike the legendary Hawaiian hula dance, muscles standing out all over her perfect body, but bent over backward as she was, she could bring no leverage to bear. Deirdre began to spider-walk her fingers up Hope’s side, but her progress was awkward and stumbling. While von Arnsberg was tickling Cindy’s twitching feet slowly, distracted by Hope’s ticklish fit, the sight had only inflamed Karin, who had buried her fingertips in Deirdre’s bare armpits and was tickling her ruthlessly. Deirdre’s face was dark with hysteria as she howled, scarcely able to control herself. “STOP IT!” she finally screamed, and von Arnsberg barked a command to Karin. The blonde slowed her tickling, not without a resentful pout, as Deirdre, panting, focused on Hope again. Perhaps inspired by what Karin had done to her, she swirled the tips of her nails around Hope’s underarm, all up and down the smooth hollow.
Hope was laughing steadily now. The situation did not allow Deirdre and Cindy to show her any mercy – if they let her gather her will and regain her composure, the spies’ wrath would fall on them, with disastrous results. They had to tickle her constantly, hating every second but helpless to do otherwise. It was some reassurance that even as Hope rocked with laughter as Cindy and Deirdre tickled her armpits, the heavy wooden beam creaking as Hope’s arms yanked desperately down, she did not plead for the tickling to stop. But could even she endure this kind of torment for long?
Von Arnsberg rattled off another order to Karin, and Deirdre and Cindy saw Hope’s crystal-blue eyes widen as she heard it. A second later, they understood as well, as Karin swiftly moved behind Hope and, giggling as if being tickled herself, began to run her nails down Hope’s bare feet! Hope’s eyes squeezed shut reflexively and she let out a fresh howl of laughter. Deirdre, without Karin’s tickling to spur her on, began to let her arm fall – but von Arnsberg had moved to the front of the bench, so he could reach both her and Cindy, and he grabbed one set of each woman’s ribs in either hand, fingers squeezing rapidly, tickling them until they had no choice but to attack Hope again. Cindy wiggled her fingertips on the side of Hope’s belly, crawling them across one step at a time, while Deirdre drew fingernail circles on the sensitive skin along her sides.
Now Hope was in trouble. Unlike Deirdre or Cindy, Karin was all too willing to torture her, tickling her feet relentlessly. Hope had large feet, in proportion to her giantess’s stature, and every bit of them was ticklish, easy prey for Karin’s cruel fingers. Karin raked her soles from toes to heels, her nails leaving pink lines in their wake as Hope’s feet wriggled and her legs spasmed, helpless in the heavy wooden stocks. Hope’s shrieks were so loud in the dungeon that Deirdre was amazed no one else in Castle Waldhofen heard them. Karin tickled one of Hope’s feet with both hands, one set of fingers working in the soft arch and the other scribbling and scratching on the tougher skin over the ball, forcing Hope into paroxysms of laughter. She shook her head frantically, as if on the edge of a breakdown. Her white hair whipped the air until it was a tangled, sweat-soaked mass. Then, just as Hope was beginning to pant, laughter winding down, Karin jumped her hands to the other foot, tickling it mercilessly. Hope thrashed, caught in the grip of crimson-faced silent laughter, unable to stop as long as Karin’s hands worked on her ticklish feet.
Cindy and Deirdre’s tickling was almost an afterthought compared to what Karin was putting Hope through, but von Arnsberg would not let them stop – the slightest flagging in their efforts earned them vicious tickling on ribs, bellies, or feet. Exhausted by now, the two of them were working almost automatically, so that von Arnsberg need only give them a swift tickle now and then to remind them not to stop. He had noted well what the two of them had done to Hope, and now he began to slowly run his fingers along those two unendurable spots, the creases of her thighs. Had he started tickling anywhere else, Hope would probably not have even felt it, not insane with laughter as she already was. But being tickled there was the one thing she could not take, and its effect on her now was like an electric shock. The bench rattled as she bucked, and von Arnsberg looked briefly alarmed, but she couldn’t find the strength to do it again. Any woman would break down into a gibbering mess at the mere prospect of being tightly bound and mercilessly tickled on her most sensitive spots by no fewer than four people. That Hope could endure it at all was a testament to her mighty willpower. But even Hope Silver’s will could only be pushed so far, and when Karin began to tickle the tops of her tightly curled toes while von Arnsberg teased her thighs and Deirdre and Cindy’s hands crawled over her drumhead-taut belly, it seemed she could take no more.
“Stop!” Hope screamed. “I’ll – HAHAHAAHAAHAHA! – tell youHAHAHAHAAHAA –“
Deirdre and Cindy looked at each other in horror. A smirk of triumph crossed Fritz von Arnsberg’s face. Even Karin, grinning, looked up from her torment of Hope’s feet. Had Hope Silver actually been tickled past the limits of even her endurance? Would she really confess and doom the simple folk of Waldhofen to conquest and slavery?
TO BE CONTINUED
Watch for Chapter V: A Secret Revealed!
In our June 1935 issue – look for it at your newsstand!
[Unfortunately, I have yet to find a copy of the June 1935 issue of Spicy Ticklish Tales. I urge anyone who has information about this publication to contact me in care of this magazine.]
Hope Silver: THE LOST TALES - AVAILABLE NOW!
http://www.mtjpub.com/ezines/HopeSilver.html
[However, some copies of Spicy Tickling Tales escaped the purge and exist in private collections today. The well-known Lt. Col. (ret.) Andrew B. Mayfair of New York City possesses the only known surviving copy of the May 1935 issue and has graciously consented to allow us to reproduce the lead story from it.]
THE LAUGHING MADNESS
by Rob Kennethson
Chapter IV. In the Dungeons of Waldhofen!
“I won’t!” snapped Cindy Mellon, tossing her tousled blond head. That was almost the only part of herself she could move, stretched tightly as she was on a torture rack, a relic of the Dark Ages pressed into service in our modern age. She was still dressed in the pilot’s clothes she had been wearing when she was taken, but her work shirt had been unbuttoned and lay open, exposing the soft white skin beneath, her whipcord breeches had been loosened, and her sturdy leather boots stood beside the rack, as far out of her reach as if they were on Mars. Another woman might have been cowed to be in that position, but the curvy little aviatrix was a veteran of more tight spots than might be credited. “I won’t, you – you stinker, and if you don’t like it, nuts to you!”
“Inarticulate as ever, but I thoroughly endorse the sentiment,” drawled Deirdre Grantham from where she stood. The Englishwoman had been abducted from the ball being given by the Count of Waldhofen – which was still going on many floors up, the happy guests with no inkling of the desperate scene taking place in the long-abandoned dungeons of Castle Waldhofen, far below them. Even with her black cocktail dress torn and one of her shoes missing, even hanging by her wrists with her feet, bound together at the ankles, balanced precariously on a small block of wood, Deirdre was unruffled. She still managed to look more like a debutante out for a night on the town than what she was, a newspaperwoman who had filed dispatches for the London Clarion from everywhere from Paris to Shanghai. Her gray eyes were cool and amused despite the extremity of her situation. Like Cindy, she had seen worse, and survived to report on it for the Clarion’s readers. “Really, von Arnsberg, you and that harpy of yours are just wasting time with this shabby melodrama.”
“Who’s inarticulate?” snapped Cindy, outraged. “I’m plenty articulate! Just ‘cause I don’t talk like I’m coming down with lockjaw, you tea-drinking –“
“Do you even know what articulate means, you colonial barbarian?” sneered Deirdre. “You probably think it’s part of an engine.”
“Aw, go write a Miss Lonelyhearts column!”
“Ladies! Of your screeching make an end!” snapped their captor, glaring at them through his monocle. The light of the torches that fitfully illuminated Castle Waldhofen’s dungeons gleamed on his shaven pate. Cindy and Deirdre fell silent. Though they were always ready to go at it hammer and tongs on the slightest pretext, they were actually the best of friends, and understood that they would need to save their energy for what was to come. Next to von Arnsberg, his aide, the vulpine Karin, grinned and licked her lips. Her unnerving predator’s gaze never wavered from Cindy.
“So you will not tell me where the original copy of the treaty concerning the tantalum mines ist?” he demanded.
“Exactly right,” said Deirdre. “We have no intention of giving you anything, up to and including the time of day. Those mines belong to Waldhofen, and neither you nor your country will lay a finger on them.”
“Ach! How noble. But you are not in a position to be noble, mein Kinder. This room many dark deeds has seen. Many tongues have here come loose. Yours shall too.” Von Arnsberg raked Deirdre’s helpless form from top to toe with his eyes. “We have ways of making you talk.”
“Phooey!” burst out Cindy. “We ain’t a couple of nervous Nellies! Me and the clothes horse over there have been tortured before, and it takes more than that to get us talking! Plus, Hope Silver’s looking for us now, and if you think you’ve got long before she finds us and wipes up the floor with you and your rotten crew, you’re wrong as a three-legged duck!” Deirdre rolled her eyes to the heavens and allowed herself a tiny groan at Cindy’s mangling of the language.
“Und you think you are the only ones to have that expected?” von Arnsberg smirked. “I know your Fraulein Silver will be you following, and for her I have prepared … a surprise.” But even as he said it, there was a tremor in his voice, for Fritz von Arnsberg had good reason to know that Hope Silver was no ordinary woman. He had clashed with her before and barely escaped with his life both times, his sinister plans in ruins.
“Fritzie, enough,” Karin said, her guttural accent thicker than his. “We show them now?”
“Ja, Karin,” von Arnsberg leered. “We will show them very well….”
Cindy continued to rain insults and curses on the Teutonic pair, but they were no longer listening. Von Arnsberg approached Deirdre with slow tread, while Karin closed in on Cindy. “Stop staring at me like that, you she-vampire,” snarled Cindy. “You’re giving me the creeps!”
With a long-taloned hand, Karin gripped the top of one of Cindy’s tiny pink feet, forcing it back. “Hush, meine Liebling,” she purred.
“Get your hands off me-EEEEEEEEE!” Cindy’s angry tirade broke off in a yelp as Karin raked her sharp nails down the length of her bare sole. “What’s the-EEEEEEE!” Cindy yanked hard on the cuffs, her eyes screwed up and her face flushing pink from the effort of not laughing as Karin’s expert fingers tested her toes.
“Bist du kitzlig?” Karin mocked.
“Talk American, blast—“ Cindy exploded in laughter as Karin swiftly snuck in a tickle on her other foot, taking her by surprise. With gleeful cruelty, Karin seized both feet, holding them tightly as her thumbs scratched and worked in Cindy’s soft arches, tickling her mercilessly and ensuring that she couldn’t stop laughing. Cindy’s exposed belly heaved with the force of her laughter. Her need to writhe away from the tickling, frustrated by the taut chains of the rack, was translated into an uncontrollable trembling that made every part of her body quiver. Karin drank in the delightful sight, pressing the heels of her hands against the balls of Cindy’s feet to keep them taut while her nails worked a swift, spidery tattoo all over the soles. The dark halls of the Castle Waldhofen dungeons had likely never heard such a sound as Cindy’s high-pitched, wild giggling. which resounded off the bricks.
“Your friend has ticklish feet,” von Arnsberg observed to Deirdre with an unpleasant smile. She looked back at him with utter contempt.
“This is the best you could think of?” the Englishwoman asked. “Tickling?”
“You will sing a different tune soon,” von Arnsberg promised, raising his hands to her. “One more like your little friend’s…”
“She’s no friend of mine.” Deirdre’s last word quavered slightly as the man set the tips of his fingers in her armpits. Her smooth bare arms, tied firmly over her head, tensed slightly. Von Arnsberg’s watery blue eyes locked with Deirdre’s gray orbs, and she shuddered at the inhuman lusts she saw there. Or perhaps it was the feel of his fingers circling the hollows of her arms. Despite her defiant talk, Deirdre was easily as ticklish as Cindy, and knew it all too well. She dropped her head, looking away from his gaze as she fought for self-control …
… and lost. Despite her steely determination, Deirdre was unable to shut out the feel of the fingers that traced her sensitive flesh. She squeaked and wriggled her shoulders, tugging on the manacles that bound her arms uselessly above her, then started chuckling as von Arnsberg pressed his fingertips into her soft skin just above the edge of her low-cut evening gown and began to move them rhythmically. Being unable to lower her arms to protect her armpits, normally so easy to defend, made her feel even more exposed, and that in turn made the tickling even worse. It only emphasized how completely she was at the mercy of this man and his vile lusts; she would not be able to stop him, no matter what he chose to do to her. And she was just so damned ticklish.
As if he could hear her thoughts, von Arnsberg began tickling her more swiftly, and Deirdre responded instantly, with a low, throaty laugh that jumped and wavered all over the scale as he skittered his fingers up and down her uncovered skin. He teased the undersides of her biceps, sending goose pimples down her arms, and laughed as she squirmed uncomfortably. Her slim body swayed, wobbling slightly on the block. “You do not like that, nicht wahr? Maybe this will be more to your taste…” And he slipped his hands back into her armpits, digging in deeper into the smooth hollows, and she laughed wildly, tossing her head back as the laughter poured out of the white column of her throat. Her toes gripped at the edge of the block of wood as she squirmed and twisted in a futile attempt to find relief. The relentless fingers were inescapable, and her agonized laughter grew more desperate by the second.
“Pl—“ Deirdre choked off the word as the horror of her situation hit her. She’d been within a second of saying please stop to this contemptible man, her enemy, even knowing it would do her no good. Even worse, he knew it. The vicious triumph in his face showed it. He slowed the tickling, almost caressing her now. Deirdre’s skin crawled, and she flushed with humiliation as she realized that he was actually toying with her.
“’Please,’ you ask?” von Arnsberg mocked, his hands gliding down her sides, crawling under the edges of her gown to tickle the tops of her ribs, each quick squeeze sending a bolt of laughter through her. Deirdre shimmied and twisted, curving her body this way and that and jerking at every ticklish twitch of his fingers. “You know what I want, if you want the tickling to stop….”
Cindy’s shrieking laughter was nearly ceaseless now. Karin had produced a package of ordinary pipe cleaners and threaded eight of the fuzzy wires between Cindy’s wriggling toes. Then, seizing both ends of one set of pipe cleaners, she sawed them back and forth, the soft fuzz tickling every part of the gaps at once, driving her to the heights of hysteria. Karin switched rapidly between one foot and the other, making it impossible for Cindy to relax. Cindy’s head rolled from side to side, her face a mask of laughter, as her hips made tiny little bucking motions, the rack making it impossible for her to move any further. Giggling sadistically, Karin added to Cindy’s torment with sudden scratches and flicks of her nails on Cindy’s soles, bringing a nearly inaudible screech of laughter every time. Unlike von Arnsberg, Karin said nothing to her writhing victim – not because of her limited English, but because for her, the missing treaty was secondary in importance. All she was doing now was relishing the opportunity to torture the pretty blond pilot, and that she was one of the closest friends of the famous Hope Silver only added a savor to the fun in Karin’s demented mind. The sight of Cindy’s scarlet face, her wide-stretched mouth, the tears of laughter leaking from the corners of her eyes – that only inflamed her further. Treaty or no treaty, she meant to keep tickling Cindy until she fainted from breathlessness, and then – She darted a greedy glance at Deirdre, who still wriggled and laughed under von Arnsberg’s tickling fingers, then leered at Cindy, attacking the balls of her feet with clawed hands. Cindy screamed, her breath so exhausted that it faded out into a tiny squeak halfway through.
Von Arnsberg knelt before Deirdre, taking hold of one ankle and removing her other high-heeled shoe, leaving both of her stockinged feet exposed. The small block her heels balanced on gave no protection to the rest of her soles, and he wasted no time in taking advantage of that, slipping his fingers under them and tickling along the smooth surfaces. Deirdre jerked and gave an undignified squeal totally at odds with her usual cool reserve, giggles racking her body as his devilish fingers traced the edges of her feet. In this position, she could barely wiggle her toes, and the rest of her feet were immobile, so he could just lightly and swiftly scribble all ten of his fingertips up and down them, each quick stroke on her stockinged feet tickling unbearably.
An additional torture swiftly made itself apparent. The wooden block was not secured, and it swayed and wobbled alarmingly as Deirdre writhed in ticklish agony. Were she to squirm too far, it would come unbalanced entirely and fall over, so she would drop down, all her weight crashing down on her suspended arms at once. The pain would be tremendous, even if her shoulders were not dislocated immediately. The evil von Arnsberg knew this as well as Deirdre herself did, and his swift touches and tickles on her feet were calculated to surprise her, to afflict her with sudden violent jolts of laughter, followed immediately by terrified writhing to keep the block in place. He tickled the balls of her toes, making her rock back and nearly overbalance as she laughed, and as she fought to regain her balance, he wiggled his fingers in her arches, the tormented laughter pouring out of her even as the sweat stood on her forehead. She was tiring rapidly; each rake of von Arnsberg’s fingers down her exquisitely ticklish soles was more unbearable than the last, and her desperate need to move her feet, try to escape the maddening sensation, built and built with no end in sight. Every peal of high-pitched mirth he forced out of her seemed to take a little of her strength with it, making it harder to concentrate on not falling off the block. The only escape was to beg him for mercy, promise him what he wanted, and she could not do that…
From Cindy there came only a thin high keening, mixed with agonized bouts of silent laughter. Finally tiring of torturing Cindy’s feet, Karin had kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the rack herself, sitting astride Cindy and tickling all over her bare torso as Cindy shuddered helplessly under her. With her limbs stretched out, and Karin’s thighs gripping her waist, Cindy was essentially immobile, completely at the mercy of Karin, who all too clearly had none. Karin scrambled her hands up and down Cindy’s defenseless sides, squeezing her hips, tweaking her ribs, dancing fingers in her armpits, and driving her insane with laughter. When Cindy was sobbing and panting in hysterics, Karin lowered her fingers to the pilot’s quaking belly, tickling the soft skin with just the tips of her sharp nails. She drew curlicues and spirals spinning out from Cindy’s navel, the constant stimulation making it impossible for Cindy to stop her hysterical giggling. Whenever Cindy’s laughter started to slack off, a swift vibration of Karin’s fingertips in the flesh of her midriff made her scream afresh. Karin laughed cruelly, thoroughly enjoying the way that she was subjecting the little blonde to hellish torture with just the tiniest movements of her fingers. Her leering gaze swept over Cindy’s scarlet face, her half-nude body with all its muscles straining as Cindy fought desperately to make the terrible tickling stop….
And stop it did, after what seemed like an eternity of tickling. Cindy and Deirdre gasped for air, both trembling with exhaustion. Deirdre was the first to recover, raising her head wearily – and relief blazed up inside her as she saw, shining like a full moon in the doorway, a mane of snow-white hair. It could only belong to one woman, and she started to cheer as she saw the Amazonian form of Hope Silver. But the yell died unuttered in her throat as Hope moved forward, and Deirdre saw that her hands were shackled behind her back, and two hard-faced, swarthy bravos from the local Gypsy tribe – whom, Deirdre knew well, were in the pay of von Arnsberg – flanked her. She towered over the stocky men, her crystalline blue eyes at the level of their hats, but she made no move to resist as they pulled her forward, hands near the wicked knives in their belts. Astonishing as it might seem, Hope Silver came to the dungeon not as a savior, but a prisoner.
Even von Arnsberg seemed astonished, but he recovered quickly, smirking at the new arrival. “So the great Fraulein Silver did not evade my little trap! Karin and I have ourselves amused with your stubborn allies. But now that you are here, I think we can get the information we need from, what is your Englisch phrase, the mouth of the horse?”
Hope Silver’s calm, unlined face showed no hint of fear, and she said nothing to von Arnsberg’s boasting. Despite the danger of the situation, both Deirdre and Cindy felt a rush of pride at their friend’s coolness of nerve. Von Arnsberg stared at her for a moment more, as if waiting for her to break down and begin pleading, but he could not face her clear gaze for long. Reddening and looking aside, he barked orders to the Gypsies in their own tongue. With malicious laughter, they drew their knives. Cindy let out a yelp and Deirdre’s breath caught, but Hope might have been a marble statue as the knives began to slash. Her tough, practical clothing parted and fell away. The Gypsies cut off the cleverly designed vest she habitually wore, with its thousand little pockets containing every tool she could possibly desire, and with much grunting and sawing managed to cut away the light, flexible bulletproof undergarment that sheathed her from neck to ankle. Her boots were taken, to the dismay of Cindy and Deirdre, who knew well what useful devices were concealed in the thick soles. Under von Arnsberg’s direction, the Gypsies searched her carefully, even discovering the tiny lockpick set hidden by her hair and the miniature poison-tipped dart sealed in a flesh-colored pouch on the back of one knee. When they were done, Hope was left nude except for a few scraps of cloth that could not have concealed a nail file.
Red highlights from the torches gleamed in her strange, prematurely white hair. Hope Silver stripped was a sight to make any man’s, and some women’s, pulse beat like a triphammer. Every day without fail she put herself through a program of intense, scientifically designed exercise that would have left a Marine gasping in a pool of sweat, and as a consequence she was the peak of physical perfection, with a strength in her feminine form that had been the undoing of more than one overconfident foe. But her life of adventure and danger had not hardened her. Despite the power of her body, she also had the grace and untouched beauty of a high-fashion model, and when she walked down a city street, heads turned so fast to stare at her that she left a trail of sore necks in her wake.
Hope Silver was not merely a physical ideal, though. The mind behind those bewitching sapphire eyes was one of the world’s most keenly honed. She was a world-renowned expert in fields from astronomy to zoology, with an alphabet soup’s worth of advanced degrees. Her name was known in the most far-flung corners of the globe, as were her love of adventure and fierce hatred of injustice -- the qualities that had brought her and her companions to this tiny Central European country to confront von Arnsberg and his band of international spies. But would all her knowledge and resourcefulness be enough to save her from the fate von Arnsberg had planned?
The leering master spy had produced a small black automatic, which he kept trained on Hope as the Gypsies undressed her. Now he jerked it to direct them, and they took Hope’s arms, steering her to where a heavy pair of wooden stocks sat, with a low bench behind them. As von Arnsberg snapped quick orders, Hope quietly allowed the Gypsies to set her up, kneeling, on the bench. Her ankles were locked behind her in the stocks, and her arms were drawn over her head, bound together, and tied to a ring set in one of the dark wooden beams in the room’s ceiling. The beam and ring were set some way behind the bench, so Hope’s body was forced to sway backward like an inverted number 7, stretching out her torso. It was an uncomfortable position, and one difficult to move in, but Hope bore it with total equanimity. Cindy and Deirdre glanced at each other. Both were confident that Hope had some sort of plan to escape, but it was hard to see what it was when she allowed herself to be rendered helpless so easily. As a final touch, the Gypsies pried her legs apart and bound her knees to the bench with many coils of rope so that she could not close them. At von Arnsberg’s further direction, they bowed and left the dungeon, casting glances over their shoulders at Hope.
“Now, Fraulein Silver, we shall see how strong you are,” von Arnsberg gloated. “Your assistants have already been humiliated with only tickling. It will please me to bring you down to their level … and you will beg to tell me where the treaty is. Karin?” But the sadistic blonde needed no invitation – she was already stalking toward Hope, fingers clawed and scarlet nails gleaming. She ran their tips down Hope’s taut belly, and Hope did not so much as twitch, even when Karin probed her navel. Scowling, Karin tested Hope’s sides, carefully spidering her way up and down them, running her fingers all around Hope’s underarms. Not a smile rewarded her. From the remoteness of Hope Silver’s expression, she might have been back in her own laboratory, studying a simple chemical reaction. Karin hissed in frustration and attacked Hope, fingers flying all over her body. Hope’s skin, smooth and soft and, it seemed, completely insensitive, turned pink where Karin’s wildly tickling nails scrambled, but she didn’t giggle even once. “You’re wasting your time,” she told Karin in her calm, resonant voice when the blonde stopped, eyes blazing.
Muttering a curse, von Arnsberg joined Karin, and together the two of them poked, prodded, and tickled Hope’s unresisting body. Only someone who knew Hope Silver as Cindy and Deirdre did could see the increase of tension as she was forced to endure twenty fingers tickling her: the line of her jaw tautened, her breath came shorter, and occasionally something flashed in the depths of those blue eyes. Cindy and Deirdre could tell Hope felt what the two spies were doing to her, but try as they might, they could not overcome her resistance. For von Arnsberg and Karin, who didn’t notice those clues, it was as if they were trying to tickle a block of wood. They finally drew back, muttering furiously to each other.
Despite herself, Cindy laughed derisively. “You really thought you were gonna break Hope Silver down with just a little kitchy-coo? Looks like you don’t know as much as you thought!” Then she yelled with wilder laughter as Karin crossed the dungeon in two furious strides, grabbed the nearest bare foot, and began to tickle it mercilessly, unloading her frustration. Von Arnsberg looked from Hope to the shrieking Cindy to Deirdre and back again, rubbing his chin.
“Karin, enough!” he snapped. “We must try other things…” At his direction, Cindy was removed from the rack under gunpoint. Exhausted from the relentless tickling, she put up no resistance as Karin and von Arnsberg set her up kneeling on the bench to Hope’s left, facing Hope. Her legs stretched off the edge of the bench, and her ankles were closed in a second pair of stocks behind her. One of her arms was tied to a rope attached to the beam directly overhead, while the other was free. Deirdre was unbound next and set up in an identical position to Hope’s right. Von Arnsberg seated himself behind Cindy, and Karin settled behind Deirdre. Karin’s nails trailed almost teasingly on Deirdre’s helpless feet, and despite herself, the Englishwoman burst into giggles immediately.
“As you said, we do not know Fraulein Silver well,” Von Arnsberg said, reaching up to delicately tickle Cindy’s exposed ribs with just two fingers, meanwhile tracing a zigzag pattern on her soles. Cindy writhed in laughter, her free arm flailing. “But you, my ticklish little Frauleins, know her better than any. So you will tickle her and make her tell us where the treaty is…or suffer further tickling.”
Deirdre and Cindy looked at each other through eyes damp with laughter, and saw dismay mirrored in each other’s faces. Von Arnsberg, through evil chance, had struck on a weakness. After their terrible adventure with Leda Marienburg and her will-sapping drugs , Deirdre and Cindy knew only too well where Hope was ticklish – and to be forced to turn that knowledge against her was a bitter prospect. But how could they fight back? Even as they hesitated, Karin began to dig and scratch with her nails around the edges of Deirdre’s feet, and von Arnsberg gripped Cindy’s sides just above the waistband of her breeches, sending them both into squeals of laughter. Cindy shoved at von Arnsberg’s hands with her free hand, but she had no strength to dislodge him.
“Do it.” Although Hope didn’t raise her voice, it was still clearly audible through Deirdre and Cindy’s hysterics. The ticklers slowed, but did not stop. Cindy, not letting herself think twice, reached out swiftly, running her fingers down Hope’s bare flank. Deirdre was only a second slower, circling a fingernail in one of Hope’s underarms. Hope allowed a smile to cross her face, shifting slightly in her bonds.
“Ja, ja,” von Arnsberg said greedily. “Make her laugh, make her scream…you dare not stop!” His fingers kneaded Cindy’s ribs, forcing pants and gasps of laughter out of her. Every fiber in the little pilot’s body screamed for her to lower her arm, protect her ticklish ribs, but she knew that doing so would only doom herself. She had to trust Hope and believe that Hope’s iron will would enable her to endure the tickling to come. If Hope could not, then she and Deirdre would have no choice but to break down and tell the spies what they wanted to know. Deirdre was thinking the same, reaching down to the one spot where they both knew Hope could not stand being tickled. Hope’s abbreviated outfit left her thighs bare, and more importantly the long crease where her legs joined the body, and it was to this spot that Deirdre’s long, elegant fingers – trembling as Karin tickled the backs of her thighs wickedly – went. Hope shuddered as Deirdre’s manicured nails slid along the little valley, gooseflesh crawling over her skin. And then, as Deirdre tickled up and down the crease and Cindy’s stubby but delicate fingers spread over her firm belly, digging into the steely muscles beneath, Hope’s hips twitched and she began to laugh softly. It was a sight the crime lords of six continents would have given their left arms to see – Hope Silver and her two aides, giggling and squirming for all the world like helpless little girls!
Hope’s laughter came faster as Cindy joined Deirdre, tickling her thigh on the other side. She gave a violent squirming not unlike the legendary Hawaiian hula dance, muscles standing out all over her perfect body, but bent over backward as she was, she could bring no leverage to bear. Deirdre began to spider-walk her fingers up Hope’s side, but her progress was awkward and stumbling. While von Arnsberg was tickling Cindy’s twitching feet slowly, distracted by Hope’s ticklish fit, the sight had only inflamed Karin, who had buried her fingertips in Deirdre’s bare armpits and was tickling her ruthlessly. Deirdre’s face was dark with hysteria as she howled, scarcely able to control herself. “STOP IT!” she finally screamed, and von Arnsberg barked a command to Karin. The blonde slowed her tickling, not without a resentful pout, as Deirdre, panting, focused on Hope again. Perhaps inspired by what Karin had done to her, she swirled the tips of her nails around Hope’s underarm, all up and down the smooth hollow.
Hope was laughing steadily now. The situation did not allow Deirdre and Cindy to show her any mercy – if they let her gather her will and regain her composure, the spies’ wrath would fall on them, with disastrous results. They had to tickle her constantly, hating every second but helpless to do otherwise. It was some reassurance that even as Hope rocked with laughter as Cindy and Deirdre tickled her armpits, the heavy wooden beam creaking as Hope’s arms yanked desperately down, she did not plead for the tickling to stop. But could even she endure this kind of torment for long?
Von Arnsberg rattled off another order to Karin, and Deirdre and Cindy saw Hope’s crystal-blue eyes widen as she heard it. A second later, they understood as well, as Karin swiftly moved behind Hope and, giggling as if being tickled herself, began to run her nails down Hope’s bare feet! Hope’s eyes squeezed shut reflexively and she let out a fresh howl of laughter. Deirdre, without Karin’s tickling to spur her on, began to let her arm fall – but von Arnsberg had moved to the front of the bench, so he could reach both her and Cindy, and he grabbed one set of each woman’s ribs in either hand, fingers squeezing rapidly, tickling them until they had no choice but to attack Hope again. Cindy wiggled her fingertips on the side of Hope’s belly, crawling them across one step at a time, while Deirdre drew fingernail circles on the sensitive skin along her sides.
Now Hope was in trouble. Unlike Deirdre or Cindy, Karin was all too willing to torture her, tickling her feet relentlessly. Hope had large feet, in proportion to her giantess’s stature, and every bit of them was ticklish, easy prey for Karin’s cruel fingers. Karin raked her soles from toes to heels, her nails leaving pink lines in their wake as Hope’s feet wriggled and her legs spasmed, helpless in the heavy wooden stocks. Hope’s shrieks were so loud in the dungeon that Deirdre was amazed no one else in Castle Waldhofen heard them. Karin tickled one of Hope’s feet with both hands, one set of fingers working in the soft arch and the other scribbling and scratching on the tougher skin over the ball, forcing Hope into paroxysms of laughter. She shook her head frantically, as if on the edge of a breakdown. Her white hair whipped the air until it was a tangled, sweat-soaked mass. Then, just as Hope was beginning to pant, laughter winding down, Karin jumped her hands to the other foot, tickling it mercilessly. Hope thrashed, caught in the grip of crimson-faced silent laughter, unable to stop as long as Karin’s hands worked on her ticklish feet.
Cindy and Deirdre’s tickling was almost an afterthought compared to what Karin was putting Hope through, but von Arnsberg would not let them stop – the slightest flagging in their efforts earned them vicious tickling on ribs, bellies, or feet. Exhausted by now, the two of them were working almost automatically, so that von Arnsberg need only give them a swift tickle now and then to remind them not to stop. He had noted well what the two of them had done to Hope, and now he began to slowly run his fingers along those two unendurable spots, the creases of her thighs. Had he started tickling anywhere else, Hope would probably not have even felt it, not insane with laughter as she already was. But being tickled there was the one thing she could not take, and its effect on her now was like an electric shock. The bench rattled as she bucked, and von Arnsberg looked briefly alarmed, but she couldn’t find the strength to do it again. Any woman would break down into a gibbering mess at the mere prospect of being tightly bound and mercilessly tickled on her most sensitive spots by no fewer than four people. That Hope could endure it at all was a testament to her mighty willpower. But even Hope Silver’s will could only be pushed so far, and when Karin began to tickle the tops of her tightly curled toes while von Arnsberg teased her thighs and Deirdre and Cindy’s hands crawled over her drumhead-taut belly, it seemed she could take no more.
“Stop!” Hope screamed. “I’ll – HAHAHAAHAAHAHA! – tell youHAHAHAHAAHAA –“
Deirdre and Cindy looked at each other in horror. A smirk of triumph crossed Fritz von Arnsberg’s face. Even Karin, grinning, looked up from her torment of Hope’s feet. Had Hope Silver actually been tickled past the limits of even her endurance? Would she really confess and doom the simple folk of Waldhofen to conquest and slavery?
TO BE CONTINUED
Watch for Chapter V: A Secret Revealed!
In our June 1935 issue – look for it at your newsstand!
[Unfortunately, I have yet to find a copy of the June 1935 issue of Spicy Ticklish Tales. I urge anyone who has information about this publication to contact me in care of this magazine.]
Hope Silver: THE LOST TALES - AVAILABLE NOW!
http://www.mtjpub.com/ezines/HopeSilver.html
