She was beautiful, I’ll grant you that. She was only of moderate height; she only came up to about the height of my nose, but every bit of her was just what a young fellow could fantasize about..

Her long, wavy hair was as black as coal and her skin was smooth and white, though with a touch of pink on her cheeks.  She had dark brown eyes and her small mouth with her red lips,  that had no need of lipstick, were set off by pearly white, even teeth.

Her waist was slim and flexible and her sheer nylon-clad legs seemed to go on for ever under her short skirts that she always wore in college.  She wore black high-heeled court shoes all the time, which shaped her calves prettily and emphasised the smallness of her feet and the neatness of her ankles. Her breasts were high on her body, not so large as to be out of proportion  with the rest of her, but apparently, as far as anyone knew, firm and perfectly shaped.  No-one actually knew for certain, because she never indulged in any physical  exercises or sports that the college made available for us, so we never saw her dressed in other than her neat white high-necked blouse  and short black skirt.
Ellen was clever, highly intelligent about most things, and was universally hated.
The girls in our class were jealous of her beauty and hated her because she seemed to think that speaking to her was an impertinence, because she thought she was so much better than them. The lads hated her because she teased them, telling them tacitly, that what she was showing them was not available and that she had no intention of ever giving in to any of us.

There was one fellow in the class who was worse affected than any of us.  His parents had burdened him with the name of, do you believe it?, Cuthbert Culbertson.
Cuthbert was a six-footer, as strong as a horse and a very popular colleague.  Due to his initials, he was known to everyone (out of his earshot) as Cissie.  He played Rugby in his spare time. When, that is, when he was not mooning over Ellen, following her every movement with his eyes whenever she was  anywhere near him.  He had to sit at the front of any lectures we had, so that he could pay  attention to the subject. Once, she sat on the same bench as he and he had to copy notes from half a dozen people after the lecture, because he had not heard a word  of the it. Ellen knew, we were all certain, that Cuthbert was head over heels in love with her. She would see him gazing at her and would stare right through him without a word and turn away with a slight, superior smile on her face which Cuthbert never noticed, but which drove us mad.

Things came to a head one evening as we were getting ready to leave for home or other activities. Ellen had collected her books and as she passed Cuthbert, he attempted to say something to her.  "Er, excuse me . . . !"
That was as far as he got.  Ellen pushed past him rudely, saying "Out of my way, you - " Cuthbert looked angry, but didn’t say another word to anyone.  He left the lecture theatre alone and went to the gym, where he beat seven bells out of the spring punch-bag. The janitor next morning told one of our class-mates that it had been ruined. Apparently, its base had  been sheared off! From that day on, he was never called Cissie again.
The next day, one of the girls said," We’ll have to do something  about that Ellen."Ci- . .er, Cuthbert deserves better than that!"  "Yes," said another," but what? Let’s get everyone together in the canteen tomorrow night and see what we can work out."  The word was passed round and the next night plans were made, discussed and discarded, but nothing was actually decided.
One of the lads came to me a few days later and showed me a pair of handcuffs he had bought at a fancy-goods shop in the town. Alan said, "Those might come in very handy for Ellen!"
I agreed and said, "But she mustn’t know who puts them on her. We’ll have to blindfold her without letting her see anyone."
Alan said,"Let’s get the girls in on it. They might be able to give us some ideas."
I knew four of the girls who had been insulted by Ellen and said I would ask them.
Mary suggested,"How about making a bag that someone could pull over her
head?  If it was thick, black material, she would have no chance"
"She’d suffocate." Alan pointed out.
"Not if we made a hole for her mouth, though." added Shiela,  "And we could make the mouth of the bag like a draw-string and if we tied it, she would never be able to get it off, would she?"
"O.K., then," I said, Make one for us and we’ll see what we can do!"  I had an idea to improve the thing.  I would get some of those long plastic cable ties like the American forces use when they have to handcuff a lot of people in a riot.  You can pull them closed, but they jam and you can’t loosen them again.  You have to cut them to undo them.   I could thread one through instead of a drawstring and she would never  get it off by herself if it were round her neck. I’d make a stop on each one, so they could not be pulled enough to throttle her.  Sheila made a bag with a deep hem and when I tried a cable tie in it,  it kept the mouth of the bag open, into a full circle.
Sheila volunteered to try it out. We said that we’d try to catch her with it to see if one of us could capture her without her finding out who did it.
Out of the four of us. I got the job for the first experiment. I was waiting near the entrance of the canteen and was about to make my move, when I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of Ellen, coming along the corridor. I managed to hide the bag and turned into the canteen  without her seeing me. Next day, I caught Sheila.
She was walking alone in the garden of the flat where she and several other students lived. I had the bag over her face before she knew anything  about it and by then it was far too late to do anything about it.  She tried, as hard as she could to get the bag off, so her hands were easy to catch and cuff behind her.
I enjoyed that bit, especially when I took off the bag! Sheila was relieved to be able to breathe freely and to see again and she showed me just how relieved she was, before I took off the cuffs. I asked her, after we had calmed down, whether she had known who I was before I took the bag off.
"No, I thought it was Alan, but I’m glad it was you. Will you take these handcuffs off now?"
"You haven’t said the magic word!" I replied. It was nice, having an attractive girl at my mercy.
She smiled and said,"Please!"
"Or paid the fee!", I said, putting my arms round her. She gave me a kiss and I felt I’d gone about as far as I dared, so I brought out the key  and let her go free.
I decided then that owning a pair of handcuffs was a good idea, and I determined to see a jeweller that I know and get him to make me a jewelled, decorative pair of bracelets that I could fasten together. A girl might be pleased to wear a pair like that if she didn’t know their secret.
Anyway, our next ‘volunteer’ was Mary and Alan was voted the best one to be the captor. It took a week before he was able to try to get her and he did not manage to get the bag over her head before she caught it and saw him.  He had to be instructed how to hold it so that it could be pulled tight under her chin  before she could prevent him, so of course, we had to get another ‘volunteer’. Yvonne said she would be ‘it’, but we told her, "Sorry, you are too tall. We have to have someone about the same size as Ellen."
The five girls who were in the plot looked at each other.  Dana said reluctantly, "I suppose that only leaves me?" "Well", I said. "we could do it with Yvonne first, I suppose, but the final trial ought to be nearer to Ellen in height."  Dana said, "All right, then, I’ll be your guinea-pig if all the others will."
They giggled a bit and said they would volunteer, too. They said that they wanted to bring in another girl; one who had been particularly rudely treated by Ellen. They said that Betty was still smarting under the last insult she had got. Well, Betty was just what we needed. She was almost identical in size and weight to Ellen, but much more athletic.  Incidentally, too, she was a good bit prettier than the other members of the group. I thought then that when she came up for ‘trial’, I wouldn’t mind being her captor. The other three lads were all keen to try out the game.  They tossed a coin away from the girls to see who would be next. As luck would have it, the one chosen was John.
He caught Joan easily enough, but she fought him and made so much noise that we decided that our plan might fail. Ellen had a loud voice at the best of times and she would be absolutely deafening when the bag went over her head!
Someone would be bound to come and interfere.
Joan complained that it was very nasty when she had been caught. "I thought I’d die." she said.   "I could hardly breathe and being blindfolded made it worse!  Then when he put the handcuffs on, it was terrible.  I was helpless and whoever it was that caught me, left me for ages.  I still don’t know who did it."
"Good!" I said."We didn’t want it to be nice. The object it to teach her a lesson."
"Oh, it will be a lesson, all right!" said Joan." When we have finished with her, she’ll know  for certain that there are things she can’t get away with." The other girls grinned to each other. I wondered what ideas were going round amongst them, but when I asked Sheila, all she would say was, "Wait and see!"
John had the solution to the noise problem. He said,"Look, if she opens her mouth to make the din we’re expecting her to do, we’ll just have to stop it up. Let’s make some breathing holes near her nose, then we can shove something in her mouth to stop her foul remarks. I know what! Let’s use a tennis ball!" "Yes," said Alan."But don’t need to have a mouth hole. If we shove the ball hard through the cloth, it will stay in until the bag is off.
And that won’t  be at all nice for her, will it, specially if the bag is made of something like a blanket."
Sheila made the new bag from a piece of blanket and George dyed it black in the physics lab, where black bags were often used for experiments  with photographic materials.
"Ooh!" cried Anna, when she saw it," It’s my turn next. I’m not going to enjoy this at all!" She didn’t, but Alan did.
He caught her very easily and she was captured and made helpless in seconds.
The noise she made after the ball went in was so quiet that we didn’t hear a thing until he brought her to us, struggling furiously.
"I shan’t volunteer for that again!" she said, when the bag was off  and she got back her breath. "Get these handcuffs off me! It’s awful!"
I asked her,"Who did it?"
"Get the handcuffs off!"she repeated.
As John unlocked them, she said," I think there must have been two of you, but I don’t know whose face I’m going to slap when I do find out."
John said, "Then we’d better not tell you, had we?" and stood back as she aimed a right hand at him. Alan grinned. It was clear that he had taken a few liberties when he’d had the opportunity.
George was just as successful. Alex was made helpless without much of a struggle and looked almost disappointed when she was released, hot and dishevelled, from the bag and tennis ball.
I was the lucky one, as I’d hoped. Betty was so nice to capture and I’d have enjoyed it more if Sheila hadn’t been with me when I did it, and if Betty hadn’t kicked me on the shins twice, once during  the struggle and once afterwards! Sheila was a bit cool to me that day. It cost me a dinner and a bunch of roses before she was placated.
We held a council of war after all the trials had been completed. We decided that the chemistry lab was the best place to do the deed.   There was an empty store-room just across the corridor where we could leave her bound and gagged until we thought she had had enough. George was voted to have been the most successful, so we agreed  that he would be the one to get her.
We chose a day when we knew we knew Cuthbert was going for Rugby practice just after the last lecture and Betty said she knew how to detain Ellen for long enough for most of the rest of the class  to go home.  It was usual for our lecturer to leave immediately he had given the day’s lecture, so it was really nail-biting when he stayed behind to talk to Ellen for the very first time that term!
However, just when we had almost resolved to abort the operation, he left and Betty put her question to Ellen. We all heard Ellen’s snort of derision and her nasty, high-pitched laugh as she went to the blackboard to explain how stupid Betty was for not knowing the answer.
George did his part perfectly. Betty screamed the name of another of the lads who we all knew had gone home, to mislead Ellen, and she was in our power!  We four fellows were going to get Ellen into the store-room, but Betty stopped us.
"Not yet. We have something to do first!" she whispered.  All five girls fell on the bagged and gagged Ellen, ripped off her clothes and stood back to admire their work. The shivering and shocked Ellen stood, quite unable to do anything.
Then the girls began to chant, one word each at a time. "This" said one "is" said another, "how" " we . . . are . . .going . . . to . . .teach  . . .you . . .how . . . to  . . .behave!" They went on, each in turn, so that Ellen would not be able to identify  them from their voices,  "We are going to punish you like this!"  Each girl in turn was handed a bamboo cane as she said her word and, while another lifted Ellen’s hands back behind her head, causing her to bend over, gave her a slash on the bottom or leg. The boys were silently offered the cane and each delivered another blow. By the time we’d finished, Ellen’s backside had changed from white to rosy red with darker red stripes. The bag over her head was wet with tears and the ball was still there, pulsing a little in time with Ellen’s sobs.
We left her there for a few minutes, bent over without moving. Then Joan, with a smile on her face, pulled her upright and with a few flat-handed slaps to Ellen’s unprotected body from all the girls, signed to us to get her into the store-room.
John and I took an arm each and marched her into the store-room.  I cut the tie round her neck, then we quickly left and locked the door behind us, leaving the key to the store-room in the lab. I don’t know what had happened to Ellen’s damaged clothes, because they were nowhere to be seen when we came out of the store room. Betty went to find Cuthbert and she let me know afterwards what had happened. I wish I had been there to see it!
She had told him that Ellen was asking for him. She had told Cuthbert Ellen was locked in the store-room. She had followed Cuthbert and he had gone back there and found Ellen standing, nude, of course, with her hands locked behind her and absolutely nothing else in the room except a slip of paper with the words "Handcuff key at Culbertson’s place." Ellen had managed to dislodge the ball, but had not been able to do anything else.  She had apparently said nothing to Cuthbert when he picked her up in his arms and had taken her to his car.
Betty had not seen any more, but the next day, Cuthbert had a smile on his face as he came into class hand in hand with Ellen.
Betty said "Good morning!" to them and Cuthbert replied.
Ellen somewhat reluctantly said "Good morning, Betty."
It was the first time she had spoken anyone’s Christian name since we started in that class, and there was a little gentle clapping from some of the others. Ellen smiled - and that was the first time any of us had seen that as well!
We had to pay Alan for his handcuffs; everyone joined in. It was worth it for the improved atmosphere in our class  - and as for me, Sheila has been my constant companion since the day of the first ‘trial’.
I bumped into Cuthbert by accident one day and a pair of handcuffs fell out of his pocket. I wonder why he kept them there?
I’m sure the red marks still round Ellen’s wrists ought to have faded  by now.