Russians were as amoral and attractive as kittens. One thing, however, she vowed. Not one penny would Sasha extract from her purse, and she was not going to marry him. To be exploited was the fate of many women, but Phryne was not going to be one of them if she could help it.
Phryne opened the first of her letters and found that the solid white envelope contained an invitation, in impeccable taste, from Mr Sanderson, MP, to dinner that night. She replaced the card in its envelope and tore open the scented one. A large sheet of violently violet paper bore the subscription of Lydia Andrews’ house, and a short message asking Miss Fisher to call at her earliest opportunity. Phryne snorted. The woman was a clinger, after all. She crumpled the message and left the cafe, dropping Lydia’s invitation into a rubbish-bin. She would go to dinner with Sanderson, but before then she and Dot had places to go and people to see.
The first thing to do was to hire a car. Phryne was a good driver, and disliked having to constantly call taxis.
There was a garage in this street, she recollected, down at the edge of the city, where the livery stables had been for the city’s hansom cabs. Phryne caught a cable-car, holding on tightly as instructed, and breathed in the strange, ozone-flavoured burned dust scent, until she was dropped off at the corner of Spencer Street. The garage was large and newly painted, and an attentive, if oil-stained, young man stood up suddenly as she entered. The dim interior of the ex-stable was gleaming with brass lamps and lovingly polished paintwork. The young man wiped his hands hastily on a piece of cotton waste and hurried towards her.
‘Yes, ma’am, what can I do for you?’
‘I want to hire a car,’ said Phryne. ‘What have you got?’
The young man gestured towards a sober Duchesse, high-axled, with a closed body built by a coachmaker. Phryne grinned.
‘I’m not ready for something as quiet as that. What about this one?’ she asked, patting the bright red enamel of a Hispano-Suiza racing car. It was built rakishly low, wide-bodied to hold up an engine of fiendish power. The young man looked Phryne up and down, attempting to gauge her nerve.
‘Take it out for a spin, shall we? Then you will see that I can drive her all right. I wouldn’t harm a lovely lady like this — but I need a fast car. Come on.’
The young man threw down the cotton rag and followed helplessly.
He watched Phryne narrowly as she choked the engine, swung the starter with a skilled flip, and started the engine. The cylinders cut in with a roar; the muffler was not a standard piece of equipment on this car. Phryne took the wheel, released the brake, and the car rolled out into Spencer Street. She achieved a neat turn to the left.
They were a mile out along past the cricket ground when she opened the throttle and allowed the full power of the engine to surge forward. The mileometer flicked up into the red; the mechanic leaned forward and bellowed, ‘That’s fast enough, Miss! I’m convinced! You can have her!’
Phryne allowed the car to slacken speed and, for the first time, took her eye off the road. She seemed a little disappointed.
‘Oh, very well,’ she grumbled, completed a screaming U-turn, and proceeded to whisk the mechanic back to his garage with more expedition and skill than he had before experienced.
They swept into the garage, and Phryne stopped the engine. ‘I want it for a week, to begin with,’ she said affably. The young man observed that her shining cap of black hair was not even ruffled. ‘I don’t mind what it costs,’ she added. ‘And if you really jib at hiring it out, I’ll buy it. A lovely vehicle. . how much?’
‘I don’t want to sell it, Miss, I’m going to race it myself. . I rebuilt the engine, took me two months. .’
‘Fifty quid for the week?’ offered Phryne, and the mechanic, with a celerity not entirely induced by this monstrous offer, tossed the starting handle into the car and received the bundle of notes.
Phryne restarted the warm engine, set the car at Spencer Street as she would set a hunting hack at a hedge, and roared out, scattering pedestrians. The young man picked up the card, noticed that his client was staying at the Windsor, and closed the shop early. He needed a drink.
Phryne rolled to a halt at the main entrance to the hotel and called to the doorman. ‘Where can I leave her?’
The man’s jaw dropped. He hurried forward. ‘Park her just here, Miss, and I’ll keep an eye on her. Beautiful car, Miss. Lagonda, is she?’
‘Hispano-Suiza; see the stork on the radiator cap? First one was built for King Alfonso of Spain — this is the 46CV, isn’t she splendid?’
Phryne eased the car into the indicated kerb and switched off the engine. She swallowed to regain her hearing. The Hispano-Suiza had been roaring like a lion.
She ran up the steps and ascended the great staircase, reached her own suite, and surprised Dot in the middle of darning a stocking, so that she ran a needle into her finger.
‘Leave that, Dot, we’re going for a ride.’
‘A ride, Miss? In a motor-car?’ Dot sucked her finger and draped the stocking over the chair back. ‘What shall you wear?’
Phryne was already rummaging in the wardrobe, flinging clothes out by the armload.
‘Trousers, perhaps, and a big coat. I know that it’s May, but it’s freezing out there. Shall we go for a picnic?’
‘It might rain,’ said Dot doubtfully, rehanging the garments as Phryne tossed them away.
‘Never mind. The car’s got a hood. Ring down and ask the kitchen for a luncheon basket. And an umbrella.’
Phryne found her greatcoat and donned trousers in dark, respectable bank-manager’s serge, while Dot obeyed.
‘Ten minutes, they say, Miss.’
‘Good. And what are you going to wear? Would you like to borrow some trousers?’
Dot shuddered, and Phryne laughed.
‘Take your winter coat, the blue cloche, and the carriage rug, then you’ll be warm enough. I don’t know how far we’ll be going.’
‘Why, Miss, there’s all the parks to have picnics in, we don’t have to go out of the city,’ protested Dot, who had no love for open, unsafe spaces with no conveniences.
‘Now then, off we go!’ said Phryne. ‘Got everything?’
Dot picked up her handbag and the coat and the carriage-rug, which was of kangaroo-skin, and trailed her excitable employer down the stairs.
The kitchen had provided a hamper, which the doorman had already loaded into the rear of the auto, and Phryne leapt into the driver’s seat as Dot ensconced herself, very gingerly, in the passenger’s seat.
‘Miss, do you mean to drive?’ she whispered, and Phryne laughed.
‘Miss May Cunliffe, champion of the 1924 Cairo road race, taught me to drive, and said that I had the makings of a racer,’ she declared, as the doorman swung the engine over and it caught with a throaty roar. ‘You’re safe enough with me, Dot. Thanks,’ she screamed to the doorman, tossing him a two-bob bit. He bowed.
‘All clear, Miss,’ he yelled and Phryne steered the car out into the road. Dot shut her eyes and commended her soul to God.
‘Eight litre engine, overhead cam, multiple disc clutch, live axle drive,’ Phryne was yelling over the noise of the car, which sounded to Dot like a big gun. ‘Won the challenge at the Brickyard seventy miles an hour for eighteen hours — oh, it’s a spiffing machine! One hundred horse power at 1600 revs per minute — I wonder if he’d change his mind and sell it to me? Dot? Dot, open your eyes!’
Dot obeyed, saw a looming market van skid to a halt, and shut them again.
‘It will be better when we’re out of the city. I need to pick up a couple of friends of mine. They should be waiting at the corner of Spencer Street. . ah, there they are!’
She jammed on the brakes, and waved. Dot, thrown forward, peered apprehensively at a battered taxi-cab, and saw an arm wave, giving some sort of signal; then Phryne pushed the Hispano-Suiza into a higher gear. The railway yards shot past, and Dot, surprised to find herself alive, squinted under her hat-brim, tears filling her eyes as the wind whipped past. Landmarks were flowing away from her. They were on Dynon Road, heading West with tearing speed. The long, grey-green swamps, owned by the railways, were almost gone; the bridge slipped under the fleeting wheels, and the roar of the massive engine, vibrating, seemed to enter Dot’s bones. Half an hour passed in this way.
