‘So I’ve taken a room there, Miss,’ reported Bert on the pub telephone. ‘And I gotta go back tonight. I want to meet this hypnotist chap.’
‘Yes, you do want to meet him,’ agreed Phryne. ‘But be careful, won’t you? They sound like very unpleasant people.’
‘So am I,’ growled Bert, baring his teeth. ‘Me and Cec is very unpleasant people, as well.’
‘All right, my dear, but keep in mind that I want to know all about the man before you pulp him. You have guessed about Jane, haven’t you?’
‘Yair, Miss, I guessed. As soon as I heard about the mesmerism.’
‘So I want him alive,’ said Phryne urgently. ‘He might be able to give her her memory back!’
Bert reluctantly accepted the justice of this. ‘All right, Miss, I see what you mean. Me and Cec will be gentle with him. And there might be another waif, Miss. Orphan called Ruth. That bitch don’t treat her right — beg pardon, Miss.’
Phryne sighed. Suddenly her life seemed to have become over-populated.
‘Oh, well, one more won’t make any difference, bring her along. When?’
‘Termorrer, Miss, if we can manage it, and you might have your tame cop standing by.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Phryne, and Bert felt a chill go through his spine, the remembered over-the-top thrill.
‘All right, Miss, I’ll see you then, goodbye.’
He hung up, paid the publican for the call, and returned to Cec.
‘She said that we can take the little girl as well,’ he commented. ‘Your shout, mate. No alcohol allowed in me new place of residence.’
Phryne stared at the photograph which had been delivered. Had this man mesmerised Gabrielle Hart? It was time that Miss Hart was found. She would go to see Klara in Fitzroy.
Bert went back to Miss Gay’s house, and found that dinner was on the table. Cec had returned to their own lodging house to explain Bert’s absence to their excellent landlady.
The dining vault was as cold as a Russian military advance and not as well provisioned. The great table, which was made of mahogany which had not been polished in decades, was laid with a spotted off-white cloth and a harlequin range of dishes. Quite of lot of them were cracked or chipped, and the silverware was Brittania metal and not clean. Bert observed that one place was set with clean, new dishes and real silver, and in front of it was the cruet, the bread and the butter.
The five other occupants of the house were already seated. They seemed a forlorn collection, with all the spirit crushed out of them by a combination of life, circumstances, and their landlady. Bert thought of his own Mrs Hamilton, all dimples and a dab hand with pastry, and envied Cec his dinner. There were two old men, vague and possibly senile; a young man in the last stages of consumption, who was as thin as a lath; a labourer or small tradesman with a missing arm, who seemed to retain some individuality; and a sleek and roly-poly gentleman in spotless evening costume, waistcoat and white tie, and probably evening pumps, though Bert did not look under the table. His manicured plump white hands cut the bread and buttered it as though there were no starving men at the same table. He had brown eyes like pebbles and that thick, pale skin which speaks of too much greasepaint at an early age. Miss Gay came in, bearing a tureen of frightful soup (which the gentleman did not take), and Bert was introduced.
‘This is Mr Smith,’ announced Miss Gay, dispensing pig swill. ‘Mr Brown, Mr Hammond,’ she said gesturing at the old men, who made no sign—‘Mr Jones,’ to the young man—‘Mr Bradford,’ to the tradesman, who nodded and spooned up his soup as though he was used to the taste. ‘And allow me to introduce Mr Henry Burton.’
‘I saw you once,’ commented Bert, pinning down an elusive memory, ‘on the Tivoli. You were on the same bill as that Chinese magician, the one who used to catch bullets in his teeth.’
Mr Burton bowed. ‘The Great Chang; he died, poor fellow, doing that bullet trick, a few years later.’
Miss Gay served what smelt like a tasty chicken soup to Mr Henry, from his own small saucepan. The other lodgers lacked the spirit even to glare at this arrant favouritism. Mr Henry had a wonderful voice: rich, deep, persuasive, a vocal instrument perfectly wielded. Bert remembered the act which he had seen — a man behaving like a chicken, a woman stretched stiff as a board between two chairs. It had been very impressive. What was the great man doing in a dump like this? Surely he could not dote upon the appalling Miss Gay?
Ruth came in to remove the soup plates, and to hand out dinner plates, which were also mismatched and chipped. Miss Gay brought in congealed gravy, fatty, depressed roast beast of some sort — Bert suspected horse — and potatoes as hard as bullets. The lodgers munched their way uncomplainingly through this detestable repast, while Mr Henry Burton dined on a pheasant in redcurrant jelly and winter broccoli.
Pudding was a floury suet thing with very little gooseberry jam. Even the old men could not eat it. Mr Burton had water biscuits and stilton cheese. Bert drank a cup of hot water in which three tea-leaves had been steeped, and went up to bed. Most of the lodgers did the same. Bert reflected, as he lay down in the creaking cot, that he had been more comfortable on the hills among the dead men and the Turkish snipers.
Phryne dismissed her taxi in Gertrude Street and emerged into the cold, wrapping her furs around her and snuggling her chin into the sumptuous collar of red fox. She was uncertain as to where she should begin in this rough place, in search of Gabrielle Hart.
She had a photograph of the girl. She looked again on the thin, unsensual, plain face, beaky nose and deep eye-sockets, a generous mouth. This young woman was not pretty, and would be consequently easy to seduce by flattery. She was sixteen.
By arrangement, Phryne met the unsettling Klara in a tea and sly-grog shop on the corner.
‘Phryne! Come and buy me some tea,’ called Klara. She was a small, thin woman dressed in a gym slip. Her hips and breasts had never developed adult curves; she looked like a pre-pubescent school girl. She was twenty- three, lesbian, and very acute.
Tea was purchased. Phryne liked Klara, but found her company worrying. No one hated the whole male sex, absolutely and without exceptions, like Klara. She was a very successful whore, and her tax returns usually came in above three thousand pounds a year.
The tea-shop was cold. Klara was wearing only her gym slip and a ratty overcoat; her skinny legs were bare and muddy. Phryne huddled into her coat.
‘Aren’t you cold, Klara? Have some of this disgusting tea.’
‘Oh, I’m cold all right, but that’s what the punters pay for, ain’t it? I’ll be warm enough when I get home. Show me the photo.’
Klara drank the luke-warm tea and considered.
‘I ain’t seen her, but that don’t mean she ain’t here. We’ll start at the end of the street and work our way down. Lucky it’s such a crook night; no one’ll be out pounding the pavements if they can avoid it. You equipped for trouble, Phryne?’
Phryne nodded. Her little gun was loaded and in her pocket.
‘All right. Come on, love. Bye, Jack!’
A figure shining with grease looked up from the chip fryer and grinned.
‘This is the first. The other two only deal in chinks. Hello, Alice. Got a friend with me tonight. Seen this girl?’
‘Hello, Klara,’ said the big woman in purple satin uneasily, shooting a sidelong glance at Phryne. ‘No, I ain’t seen her, she ain’t one of mine.’
A languid girl, wearing only a stained silk petticoat, looked in on the mistress.
‘The gent in number four is passed out,’ she said casually. ‘Better call the boys and put him out. I don’t like his breathing; he’s gone purple and is puffing like a grampus. Hello, Klara! What are you doing in this abode of vice?’
‘Hello, Sylvia. Looking for this girl.’
Sylvia pushed back a mop of bleached curly hair and considered Phryne.
‘You don’t look like one of them Soul Rescue people,’ she commented. ‘What do you want her for?’
‘I want to take her home,’ said Phryne. ‘Her father is worried about her.’
‘Jeez, I wish I had a father to worry about me.’
‘Do you know her, Syl?’
‘Is there a reward?’
‘There might be.’ Klara consulted Phryne with a look.
