Part 19 (2/2)

'You can't turn me against Wallace,' sneered Roddy. 'He's as loyal as a dog.'

'And you want him to pine to death on your grave, do you?' asked Phryne. 'Have you a nice, quiet death picked out for him? Over the side on the voyage home? They say that the South China Sea is full of sharks. They demolish a man in five minutes, nothing left to say who he was and why he followed a madman to destruction. There's an excuse for you, Roddy. You are quite obviously insane. And you are a lord, of course. That will always make a difference. At your trial, all you need to do is blame Wallace. He's clearly sane and he's a peasant- isn't that what you called Bill? A peasant? Isn't that what you think of him? No one who knows you will ever testify that you had the capacity to think of this on your own.'

'You aren't going to be able to twist my thoughts!' yelled Roderick, swelling and turning red. He shook Phryne until her chair broke completely. 'You won't turn me from my purpose with your clever voice!'

His face bore a look of utter astonishment as he found himself falling after the gun b.u.t.t came down hard on his head.

'I wasn't trying to turn you,' spat Phryne. She heaved, shrugged off the ropes and the remains of the chair and added another scientific blow to the base of the neck with a lump of wood. She took the gun out of Wallace's hand and shoved it in her pocket. Then she went to Bill Gaskin. While she was struggling with the knots she said over her shoulder, 'Give me your knife, Wallace, and if I were you I'd leave. Quite fast. Before the cops get here.'

Wallace, who had felled Roderick under the spell of Phryne's voice, turned pale and handed over the knife.

'Where can I go? What shall I do?' he stammered.

'Pinch whatever Roddy's got and go while the going is good, is my advice. Your future career is up to you. Goodbye,' said Phryne, shoving him out of the door of the hut and dragging Bill Gaskin after her. He seemed dazed. 'Come on, Bill, make an effort. I need your ropes to secure the giant. Young Billy, can you walk?'

'Yes, Miss, I think so, Miss,' said Billy, who was not at all clear on the course of events. Except that the Seventh Cavalry hadn't arrived and he was somehow free. This was not in his mental script at all and he was already fuzzy with terror, thirst and the blow to his head.

'Then walk, Young Billy,' said Phryne. 'Take your dad with you. See if he can get the Bentley started. I am quite bored with this hut.' She knelt on the fallen Roderick, tying sheet bends around his wrists and ankles. He was awake, fuming impotently. Phryne dived a hand into her petticoat pocket and found that the packet was empty. She investigated the picnic basket. None there. d.a.m.n! She insinuated a hand into Roddy's breast pocket and brought out a cigarette case and a lighter. Thank the lord for that.

When Lin Chung came into the bark hut, he found Phryne Fisher, much dishevelled and corpse-white with flour, sitting on Roderick Cholmondeley's back and smoking luxuriously.

'Have one?' she said, smiling up at him. 'Turkish that side, Virginian this.'

Lin was torn between terror, fear, relief and astonishment. He did not know what to say. Though he had tried to comfort Dot, he was at a loss to explain how Phryne, who from the look of the weals on her arms had been tied to a chair the whole time, had managed to get the better of two strong, armed men.

He settled for a cigarette.

Phryne explained. 'I just had to find the sane one and convince him of the madness of the plan. I would be wasting my powder on Roddy, he is completely away with the pixies. So it had to be Wallace. I presume Li Pen is with you? So he probably has Wallace. I think we should let him go. He did save my life.'

'Only after endangering it,' said Lin severely. 'The ambush must have been his idea if Cholmondeley is as stupid as you say.'

'Probably. But by himself he is not dangerous.' Phryne was losing interest. She combed her hair with her fingers and took stock of herself. 'It's the rag bag for this dress,' she said. 'And I seem to have lost my hat. My stockings are ruined, though Dot can probably save the shoes. But there's nothing wrong with me which a little attention wouldn't cure.'

'Shall we go back to Castlemaine, then?' he asked, still amazed.

'We'd better take Bill Gaskin and Young Billy home. Young Billy has had a bang on the head and should see a doctor. And we have to hand over this menace to public order and see him confined in a nice safe cell. They can hold him on bilking the Imperial. I bet he didn't pay his account.'

Li Pen had secured Wallace and brought him into the hut.

'I really don't think letting him go is just,' said Lin. 'He is an accomplice, and I believe he was the man who tried to run Dot down.'

'It was Rod!' pleaded Wallace. 'He told me to!'

'You knew he was mad,' said Lin. 'You helped him.'

'He wasn't all that mad,' said Wallace. 'Not until today. Then he went cuckoo. Before that he was just determined.'

'You could tell us a lot about him,' said Lin.

Wallace struggled. 'Please, Father!' he said. 'I didn't do nothing!'

He was about to cry and Lin was revolted. He waved a hand, dismissing his objections. This was a pathetic creature. Li Pen had held the dark man without difficulty but released him on Phryne's order. He ran away through the trees without a word.

Then the Shaolin monk checked Roderick's bindings, approved of Phryne's knots and stowed him in the boot of the Bentley. Both cars' engines purred easily as the starting handles were employed.

'I'll drive this car,' said Phryne. 'You drive yours. You'll have to show me the way. I came here in a sack and I didn't notice any landmarks.'

The cars went soberly back into Castlemaine. The police cavalcade met them coming the other way. It was an exultant group who came into the town, blowing horns and cheering. The whole staff of the Imperial was on the front step. Annie was crying happy tears. Sergeant Hammond was looking as relieved as a man could be who was now no longer expecting instant demotion and who knew his bunions wouldn't stand walking the beat again. That was how he'd got the bunions in the first place.

Roderick was lodged in a small but well-appointed cell with locks straight out of Little Dorrit. He still had not spoken. Phryne, having bathed and changed, sat in the front bar (where women did not sit, ever, not even women of an unfortunate profession) eating breakfast and accepting champagne from the old French part of the cellar while chain-smoking Roddy's cigarettes. The guard dog sat at her feet, thumping the floor with his tail and accepting bacon rind. Old Bill Gaskin supped a beer, still disconcerted but of a mind to agree with his old mates Bert and Cec that this sheila was different from all other sheilas. After the doctor had diagnosed mild concussion, Young Billy had been taken home by his Aunt Madge to lie in a nice dark room and be fed lemonade. Lin and Li Pen joined the party. It had been such a prodigious day that the presence of a Chinese priest and his acolyte did not seem strange.

Phryne interrupted this to telephone home. It took her some time to calm Dot and longer for Dot to calm Miss Eliza, but eventually, she gathered, her household was going to sit down to a late breakfast, everyone having been too distraught to eat their early one, and then they were all going to have a little nap, especially Miss Eliza and Lady Alice, who had sat up listening for the phone all night. Then they were setting out on the train for Castlemaine and expected to be there for dinner.

After some hours of carousing, Phryne slid a hand onto Lin's ca.s.sock-clad knee. 'Is there somewhere we can go?' she asked. 'Or can you come to me?'

'Certainly,' said Lin. He stood up. 'Miss Fisher has asked me to escort her to her room. She is feeling a little overcome,' he announced in his suave priest's voice. No one in the public bar said a word.

Phryne waved as they left and climbed the stairs.

'I'm not the only one with a powerful voice,' she commented.

As soon as the door was locked, Phryne sprang on Lin Chung and tore at the b.u.t.tons on his ca.s.sock, stripping off her own clothes as they came to hand. Lin felt an answering fire leap in his own breast. He shed the ca.s.sock and the s.h.i.+rt underneath tore as her clever fingers found more b.u.t.tons and she rubbed her face against him like an amorous cat, growling in her throat.

She backed Lin until he fell across the well-sprung bed and then with a flash of smooth flanks she was on him and he wondered, as teeth closed on his throat, if this was how it felt to lie down under a tiger. The predator growled, stooped and pounced, and Lin cried out at the conjunction, a pure animal sound. She had him. He could not move. She could. She rose over him; the first thrust went deep enough to hurt.

The clutch of her internal muscles brought him almost to o.r.g.a.s.m, and he groaned at the waste, but his captor was alert to the prey's every move. Twisting, she toppled them over so that he was lying on her breast, her legs wrapped around him, and they coupled like dragon and phoenix, so close that not a hair could come between the lithe body and the supple one and their black hair mingled on the pillow.

It was too intense to last. Phryne collapsed on Lin Chung and gasped as though she had been pulling a rickshaw. He held her carefully, in case she bit him again. He was astonished, gratified, and lightly bruised.

'The prospect of death makes one love life,' he said.

'I was so close,' she panted. 'So close to Death last night that I could smell his breath. But I'm alive. Lin, did I hurt you?'

'Nothing like as much as you pleased me,' he said. 'Come and I'll show you another way to defy death,' he said, and touched tiny, delicate caresses to all the pressure points along her back. When he reached the lowest one she convulsed.

'The theory is that each one of these points is a centre of ch'i,' he told her. 'That is, life force. Your ch'i has been disrupted by spending a lot of time tied to a chair in danger of being murdered,' he added.

Phryne laughed shakily. 'Yes, that can certainly disrupt a girl's ch'i energy,' she agreed.

'Then if we do this...' The clever fingers slid along her spine. 'And this...' They slipped sideways onto her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. 'We can regulate your breathing like that of a Shaolin master.'

The caresses were not slowing Phryne's heartbeat. She felt it pound. She reached and captured the hand.

<script>