might be looking at it; so she felt along the house again, around the corner and out of ear-shot. On one side, the house shared a wall with another house; that was no good. Slowly, and without noise, she moved back to the right-hand side and found that a narrow alley, two feet wide, had been left between the house and the brick wall. Along this she slid, hoping for an unguarded window.
The back door was flung open with a crash, and Phryne froze with her mouth against the stone. A light from an electric torch illuminated the area, blinding her. Then the door slammed.
‘Nah, no one,’ she heard the Bull say as the door closed. ‘You’re getting the jumps, Cokey.’
‘He’s getting the jumps,’ thought Phryne, crooking cold fingers over a likely sill and removing a knife from her jazz garter. She found the latch by touch and forced it easily, raising the window with only a few heart-stopping creaks and drawing herself up. She stepped into a dark room, closed the window behind her, and sat down on the sill, listening.
She had not replaced her knife, and when attack came upon her without warning, she stabbed upwards with all her force, and caught the sagging body. Although trained in street fighting by apache masters, she had never stabbed anyone, and she fought back nausea as she rolled out from under her attacker and allowed the body to slump to the floor. A little street lighting seeped through the window, and as she turned the body over she saw that her assailant had been Madame Breda’s maid, Gerda. This was evidently her bedroom. Gerda’s limp hand released the cook’s chopper which she had been holding. Phryne listened at her breast. She was not dead. The knife had caught her under the collarbone and delivered a nasty but non-lethal wound, and Phryne’s teachers would have been disgusted by their pupil’s relief.
Phryne lit a match, located Gerda’s candle, and stripped a pillowcase off her bed to bind the wound. Because Phryne had let go of the knife once it struck, as she had been expressly told not to do, not much blood had been spilled. She ascertained that Gerda had merely fainted. She bound her up like a mummy, and used the rest of the woman’s garments to tie her to the bed and gag her. Phryne had the notion that Gerda would not wake up in a pleasant mood. Meanwhile, there was Sasha downstairs, still screaming, and the King of Snow to interview.
Phryne crept to the door and listened, Gerda’s knife in hand. She hefted the chopper experimentally and decided that it really was too heavy for agile use, and laid it under Gerda’s bed. No sound from the kitchen, now, but there were footsteps pacing up and down the hall. She caught a puff of the delicious scent of the bath which was the specialty of Madame Breda, and longed to go to the front of the house for a quick wash. Gerda had a water-jug and washstand, and Phryne removed the filth of the yard with good soap as she listened to the feet in the hall, passing, and re-passing.
Opening the door a crack after she had extinguished her candle, Phryne saw Cokey Billings. Gnawing his nails, he approached the front door, opened it, looked out, sighed, and closed it. Apparently it had been some time since his last dose. It would be impossible to slip past him. Sasha was silent — what were they doing to him? Had they killed him? Phryne rummaged through Gerda’s clothes and found a bathrobe. She stripped off her holed stockings, put her gun in the pocket, and peeped out again. Cokey had been joined by Gentleman Jim.
‘Stop pacing about like a caged animal,’ snapped the Gentleman. ‘His Majesty said you were to have four doses a day, and you’ve had them. It’s three hours until tomorrow.’
‘It doesn’t last like it used to,’ whined Cokey. ‘Just a sniff. . just a whiff. . me nerves is bad. .’
‘No, I told you the King said four doses,’ he retorted.
‘Just. . a pinch. . it’ll never be missed. .’ begged Cokey, and the Gentleman relented, taking a paper from his pocket.
‘Just this once, mind,’ said the Gentleman, stalking away to the kitchen. Phryne waited until Cokey was sitting on the stairs with his eyes closed, then flitted past into the front of the house. Cokey was off in his own world and did not see her go.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Algernon Swinburne ‘Dolores’
Dr Macmillan, roused from her bed, accepted yet another mysterious parcel from a laconic messenger, and padded downstairs to the laboratory in her slippers to apply the usual tests. She ascertained that it was common salt, cochineal and about five per cent cocaine, then wrote a brief analysis, wrapped sample and script up in a bundle and placed it in the laboratory safe.
‘I hope that she’s nearing the end of this adventure,’ muttered Dr MacMillan, making herself tea on the gas- ring in the night nurses’ kitchen. ‘I worry about the child.’
She had nearly finished the cup, when an excited probationary nurse came calling for her. Still worrying, she gulped down the rest of the tea and lumbered away to attend to the breech delivery in Ward Four.
. .
Dot, asleep in her bed with the door bolted, heard a brief tapping, then a click as the door was unlocked. She froze, trying not to breathe, as the door was gently pushed twice, against the restraining bolt. There was an exasperated sigh, and the lock was turned into place. Nothing else happened for the rest of the night, but Dot did not sleep. She pulled the blankets over her head and wished she had never left Collingwood.
Phryne found herself in Madame Breda’s office, out of Cokey’s line of sight, and continued as far as the steam-rooms, just to assure herself that it was the same place. The delicate scent was all about her. She returned to the office, leaving the door just ajar, and began to search by the light coming in through the hall. She found a locked drawer, forced it, and brought a wad of documents to the light. Bills of lading for bath salts and cosmetic preparations from France.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded. Phryne adopted an accent.
‘I am the cousin of Gerda. I got lost, looking for the convenience.’ She looked down, so as not to catch his eye, and drew her bathrobe closer across her bosom. She would have succeeded if Cokey had not had his intelligence restored by his recent dose.
‘You’re that tart I saw in Toorak!’ he exclaimed, and lunged for her.
His yell attracted the Bull and the Gentleman, and all three pounced together. She eluded the Bull with ease, but just as she was reaching for the knife in her garter, Gentleman Jim threw a towel over her head and struck her sharply with a blunt instrument. The world receded, but she did not lose consciousness. She sagged in her captor’s arms, listening hard.
‘I tell you she’s the tart I met in Toorak Road, the night we stabbed that dago!’ she heard Cokey explain.
‘Well, we shall put both the birds into one cage, and His Majesty shall deal with both of them. Come on, Bull; stop slavering. She’s only a little tart. No lady would wear those undergarments,’ Gentleman Jim replied.
The Bull’s hands roamed over Phryne’s flesh, and she had to remind herself not to shudder.
‘Throw her in with the other; we may get something if they talk — hurry up, Bull, the King’s due in an hour!’
Phryne was aware that she had been dropped on a cold oil-cloth covered floor, and that a light was shone on her face at some stage in the next few hours.
It was not until dawn had brought an end to the most frightful night of her experience that she returned to full consciousness. She was lying in Sasha’s arms, and she had a terrible headache.
‘I must give up mixed cocktails,’ she said muzzily, turning her face against his chest. ‘My head hurts.’
Realisation had flooded in on her as soon as she had woken. Sasha opened his mouth to speak and she covered it with a firm hand. She moved up in his embrace and put her mouth to his ear.
‘We don’t know each other,’ she mouthed, then groaned and dropped into her Australian accent.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded, sitting up cautiously. Sasha had taken the hint.
He replied stiffly, ‘I am Sasha, mademoiselle. Who are you?’
‘Janey Theodore,’ answered Phryne, grasping at the first name that entered her head, and thus libelling a prominent politician.
‘My head hurts. Where are we?’
She looked around. It was a small room with a high leadlight window in blue and red. The room was relatively clean and was furnished with two couches and a cabinet. It appeared, from the smell of liniment, to have been used
