Chapter 1

 

My name is Augustus Henry Russell but of course I am called Gus in the family. I am now twenty-nine years old and am the latest Russell to head up our branch of that illustrious family who occupy the title of Duke of Bedford in England. We are not titled and in any case, in Australia titles are rarely used and are rather scorned as old-world and pretentious.

Our family have lived in Toorak, possibly Melbourne's premier suburb and we still occupy the first grand house built by my great-great-great grandfather in the very upmarket St George's Road in the very early days of Victoria as a colony that later became self-governing.

I became the current head of the family when my parents were killed in a freak accident when Dad was flying the pair of them and my brother and sister up to Sydney for a family get together. The only reason I wasn't also present in the aircraft was that I needed to attend an annual meeting of one of our companies in Dad's stead.

Their deaths left me as the only surviving member of our particular branch of the family. I was very conscious therefore of my duty to beget an heir however there was a major problem here.

I am gay and have never made any secret of that fact. My parents and siblings accepted it in me and of course Robert, my younger brother had been engaged to be married and so there was no problem with the direct line of our family. Now that he was gone I had to face up to my responsibilities in that regard.

Although I had acknowledged to my family, friends and anyone else that was interested of my homosexual leanings, I had never had a permanent boyfriend or lover. I had had casual flings with other men of my age during the late adolescent and early twenties but nothing had ever emerged that looked as if it might become permanent.

We had a paid butler and housekeeper as well as a head gardener, but every other servant in the house and garden was a slave. You would be aware that at the moment of being made a slave, a person lost his or her citizenship and also their very humanity. They were now things, objects that could be bought and sold the same as any other commodity.

You will also be aware that when the institution of criminal slavery had been introduced a generation ago, the various countries around the world had been careful to legislate so as to underline this point to everyone, slave and freeman alike, that slaves must be held under strict discipline, worked long hours, seven days a week 365 days a year. And they were to be punished physically for any breaches of discipline or obedience.

In our household, they were treated fairly but strictly and Hobson, our butler, and Mary, his wife and our housekeeper had primary responsibility for maintaining this. I believe both of them were and are fair with the slaves but still require their full effort every single day of the year.

We all of us mourned the passing of my family but as one does, soon got back into the running of our household and of the various companies which of course had come to me as Dad's now only remaining heir.

By this time I was twenty-seven years old and had graduated from Melbourne University a couple of years earlier with an honours degree in Business. Dad had of course kept me in the loop with regard to his administration of these companies and of our household but, believing that he would be around for another thirty or forty years, I hadn't delved as deeply into their affairs as I might otherwise have done.

However I did so now and soon came to grips with the various aspects of each of them, guided by the managing directors in each case but very able to form my own opinions from the various financial and other accounts that either filtered across my desk at home (from where Dad had run things on a day-to-day basis) or when a particular aspect interested me and I delved further myself.

All this meant that I quickly gained a good insight into each operation and I think impressed the various M-D's and I think that if they had ever had any idea of running me rather than the other way round, they soon forgot about them in their aim to keep me legitimately informed of their particular company's operations and progress.

 

I now want to turn to the events that led to my acquiring the subject of this account - my perfect slaveboy.

Although Dad and Mother had had their own slave-valet and slave-personal maid, none of us three children had been given that luxury and indeed were required to keep our own rooms neat and tidy, our clothes put away or sent down the chute to the laundry and our beds properly made and ready for inspection. Although Dad was one of Australia's wealthiest men, he and Mother were not the kind of parents who left the upbringing of their children to others and therefore inculcated in us their precepts that included good manners to persons of all status and classes; the duty of helping others in need; and particularly, the principle that our wealth should never be used simply to satisfy our cravings for the best in life.

We certainly had holidays and saw the world but Dad spent many hours a week on his various charities and donated millions every year to their support.

And so I just continued where he had left off. But people in high places are always going to be the subject of bitterness and a quite unreasoning hatred, no matter what their good intentions (and actions) might be.

John Ashburner was a rival of my father and owned a rather small-time chain of department stores that was restricted to Victoria only. He was therefore nothing like in Dad's league. But for some unknown reason he took an intense dislike to Dad and my family generally and unbeknownst to us, and aided by his son Michael, had begun to undermine the confidence hitherto placed in them mainly due to Dad's careful stewardship of every part of the conglomerate. But of course that only emerged later...

It was my duty to read the Australian Financial Review from cover to cover and I quickly unearthed an alarming trend wherein the shares in our various companies were dropping significantly.

This all happened in the last days of the week when they all took off down to Sydney with such sad and calamitous effect and so for the first few days this rather worrying discovery went onto the back burner. But then, once the funerals were over and I had settled in as chairman of each of the various companies I again searched out the AFR and other papers to discover that the trend was continuing.

As a graduate in Business, you might think that I was qualified to investigate this myself. Not so. I believe I was quite competent in the area of running and developing our interests but investigating fraud or rumour-mongering that are often the reason for a company or even an enterprise to fail was quite outside my purview.

Dad had always had a personal solicitor and accountant who came in daily from Monday to Friday and worked with him in his small office suite and of course I had kept both of them on upon his death.

Having satisfied myself that the share prices in our various companies which were still declining and without any tangible reason, I called them in to what was now my private office, offered them a cuppa and sat them around the coffee table area and then prepared myself to put the evidence before them.

Jim Scully had been a friend of Dad's and had studied for his bachelor of commerce degree and subsequently became a chartered accountant and when dad had invited him to join him as his in-house financial advisor he had jumped at the chance and now spends his time checking up on various aspects of our companies financial operations and soundness.

Henry Bradshaw, LLB, had also been a friend during dad's university years and had similarly joined him when he had taken over the running of the family enterprises.

Jim didn't even give me a chance to explain why I had invited them into my office. "This is about our declining share value, isn't it Gus?

I smiled at both of them and agreed. "Do you have any idea what's behind it, Jim?"

"Not a one! When it first started, I thought it was just the usual movement up and down the share index but this has now assumed a momentum all of its own and while there is nothing wrong with any of our enterprises so far as their operation and profitability is concerned, there are vague rumours circulating around the exchange that we are not as sound as we would like everyone to believe.

"Not wanting to bother you while we were all still in mourning, I talked about it to Henry, here, and he used his contacts to try and discover any reason for it..."

"Yes, Gus, Jim did discuss it with me and I put out feelers but like him, I can't come up with any valid reason. As you own a majority shareholding in every one of our companies, it won't make the slightest difference to you personally, however events such as this tend to spark wildfires in the stock exchanges and brokerage houses around the country. We do need to do something about it and I would now suggest that we seek out the very best in commercial private investigators to track down the root of all these rumours.

"My best guess is that somebody has it in for you personally but I can't for the life of me think of anyone close to us who might be guilty of such a horrible crime..."

"My thoughts entirely," I said softly. "All right whom do we know who is competent and trustworthy enough to undertake this investigation?"

"I would suggest Anderton and Anderton, Gus. They are based here in Melbourne and I have heard good things about similar investigations they have undertaken on behalf of large corporations. Why don't I ring them and invite them around for a conference?"

I nodded. "Do it, Jim, and indicate that we consider it urgent and would appreciate an early response..."

He used the telephone on my desk, identified himself with a very brief synopsis of our problem and asked when one or both of the two partners could call upon us to discuss the matter. He listened for a moment or two and then smiled and hung up.

"The pair of them will be here within the hour, Gus, and I think I detected a particular note of interest in John's voice and so I suspect they may already know something about what is going on."

That meeting was a momentous turning point in my life for more reasons than one but as I want to present this as a chronological account of events, I won't jump the gun except to say that John and his brother James had already noticed the trend in the value of the shares of my various companies that had not been reflected in any others of similar size and operations.

They suggested that someone or some group had singled Dad, me or my group out for rumourmongering that was fuelling the decline in our values. They also said that they had particular expertise in discovering the source of these rumours and would get back to us ASAP.

 

I was pleased with the speed with which they were able to conduct their investigations and came back to us. "Mr Russell, and gentlemen, it didn't take us very long at all to follow the trail back to this pair. The father did the thinking and the son, the running, but both are in our opinion as culpable as the other.

Ashburner senior held an unreasoning jealousy towards your father and you, Mr Russell and blamed you for his lack of similar success while his son followed him in everything very willingly and in fact proud of his own part in it.

"It isn't very difficult to plant seeds such as this pair did when the stock market is very willing to believe anything it hears of this nature. They still don't know that I am onto them but here is the evidence. It will be enough to lock them away as criminal slaves for a long, long time, I believe. I suggest to you that the fraud squad will be very pleased to receive this evidence..."

I nodded to Henry to give them a call that resulted in the visit of a Detective Inspector within the hour. The Anderton's had indicated they would wait until the police arrived to answer any questions they might have and so we treated them to lunch with us at the house.

It took Detective Inspector Jones only a few days to verify everything the Andertons had uncovered and then John and Michael Ashburner were arrested and charged with many crimes including fraud and falsely inciting the collapse of our businesses. They were of course convicted and both sentenced to slavery for the rest of their lives.

Furthermore, the court awarded the ownership of their bodies to me as the principal target of their nefarious schemes. We didn't actually take physical ownership of their bodies for a few days because they had to be processed at the State Slave Centre which handles all slaves convicted and sentenced as such by the courts.

By the time we did however, they were now indeed ready and I went myself to take custody of them. This involves the use of a special vehicle, or at least in most cases it does. It is quite illegal for a slave to be transported in a normal motorcar except in the boot or unless he is designated as its slave-chauffeur. But when more than two slaves are to be moved, it must be by what has become known as a Slave Transport Vehicle or STV for short.

We already had one of these vehicles at the house so that Hobson could use them to assist him in shopping, etc and so because I wanted to shame them by public exposure of their newly naked bodies, I now used it to call at the SSC to pick up the pair of them.

By this time, they had been processed and this means stripped naked of all their clothes and their bodies then depilated nude from their eyelashes down. My first sight was of John Ashburner and I shuddered as I looked at his horrible body naked. I turned away in disgust and then my eyes fell upon his son.

Yes of course I had seen both of them during the court proceedings and had noted both the obesity of the father and the good looks of the son but I hadn't then appreciated just what an incredible body he had.

I had now discovered my perfect slaveboy!