Away With The Fairies (26 page)

Phryne knew what was being inferred. After Mr Hewland had gone to his own narrow and unpleasant version of heaven, Mrs Hewland might dare see her grandchildren as she had not dared see her daughter.

‘Why do you stay?’ she asked, not expecting an answer but anxious to be out of this suffocating air of piety, which meant retrieving her arm which Mrs Hewland still gripped tightly.

‘“The wife should be in subjection to her husband”,’ quoted Mrs Hewland with St Paul, who was also low down on Phryne’s list of favourite people.

She walked back to the car murmuring Hilaire Belloc’s ‘Epitaph on a Puritan’: ‘“He served his God so faithfully and well, That now he sees him, face to face, in Hell.”’

‘What was that, Miss Fisher?’ asked Mr Butler.

‘Nothing at all, Mr B,’ said Phryne. ‘Drive on.’

At four o’clock Phryne received a message from Bert and made an appointment. At four-fifteen she telephoned Li Pen and gave her password. At four-thirty she gave orders for an early dinner and refilled her flask with old brandy.

Bert and Pirates had found the SS
Gold Mountain.

‘I knew as soon as I heard its new name,’ she told Li Pen when they met on the dock.

‘Which is?’

‘SS
Apu
,’ said Phryne.

‘Ah,’ said Li Pen. ‘The famous pirate. That was unwise of them. I have heard of an offer of silk of very good quality at a very low price. The merchant’s name is not given. The auction is tomorrow.’

‘Then we had better do something about SS
Apu
tonight.’

Li Pen inclined his head.

It was nine o’clock.

Bert whistled. Phryne and Li Pen crept along the wet black tarmac of the dock. Slab-sided ships rose and fell gently on the ebbing tide. Rain scattered, making a rattle like small shot. Phryne tightened the scarf over her head. She was dressed in the loose black pyjamas worn by Chinese sailors and her hair was plastered flat by a broad bandanna. She could not hear Li Pen’s feet on the asphalt, but that was to be expected.

‘She’s the same,’ said Bert quietly. ‘Had it from Pirates himself. She’s been painted green and yellow and her superstructure’s been gussied up a bit, but it’s her and Pirates’ll swear off the grog if it ain’t. What’re you goin’ to do now, Miss?’

‘Can you find out if her crew are still aboard?’

‘Most of ’em’ll be in the fleshpots by now,’ said Bert. ‘Bar a nighwatchman and an officer.’

‘I want you to distract them,’ said Phryne. ‘Cec can wait in the taxi and keep the engine running. We might want to get away quite fast.’

‘How?’ asked Bert, spreading his arms wide in a gesture of entreaty.

‘Ask for passage, ask for a job, complain about the rats, pretend you are drunk. Try not to annoy them so much that they throw you in the river. But if they do I’ll pay you double. That’s the
Gold Mountain
and if Lin Chung is aboard, I am going to find him.’

Bert, who was about to call upon his maker to deliver him from unconscionable demands from stroppy sheilas, decided not to on receipt of a fifty megawatt glare from those strange green eyes. He felt a moment of gentle Christian pity for whoever tried to stop Miss Fisher from retrieving her Chink, and began staggering along the dock, singing, ‘Roll me over, roll me over, even though you’ve never done before …

’ ‘Roll me over,’ whispered Phryne, ‘in the clover, and you’ll never be a maiden any more.’ She had sung it to Lin Chung, and been surprised when he joined in the chorus.

‘Miss?’ asked Li Pen. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Let’s go. How do we get onto the ship?’

‘Hawser,’ he grinned. ‘If the rats can do it, so can we.’

‘Squeak,’ agreed Phryne.

The hawser was as thick as her waist. She crawled along, grateful for the soft shoes which allowed her feet to flex. The hawser swung a little and the ship moved, adjusting herself to this extra weight. Bert was bellowing ‘Roll me over!’ at the top of his voice and two people were demanding in fluent Cantonese what in the devil’s name he thought he was doing, waking respectable seamen at this hour with his drunken roundeye bawling.

This didn’t mean a lot to Bert, who kept singing, mounting the gangplank so clumsily that it creaked and swayed. Phryne reached the gunnel, arched and caught the side, then went over in one fluid leap and crouched, out of sight of the gangway, a black puddle in the night. Li Pen dropped beside her. He touched her shoulder and she followed him as he slid to the open companionway and went down, turning sharply to the right and into a ’tween deck.

The ship was crammed with cargo. There were corded boxes and bales of silk. Li Pen glided through the darkness. Phryne found that if she shut her eyes some sixth sense prevented her from colliding with anything as long as she moved with the same gentle self-assurance as warm air. She began to feel invulnerable, invisible, as the argument went on overhead and nothing moved in the bowels of the ship but Li Pen and Phryne and a few rats.

Working lights were on in the companionways, giving a dim unreliable light. Li Pen opened doors gently, scanned the contents and closed them again. Crew’s quarters, squalid and depressing. More boxes and bundles, strings of partially dried fish, bundles of herbs which stank so foully that their only use could be in a witch’s brew of henbane and mandragora. Nothing moving, nothing breathing. And overhead Bert must have been running out of arguments by now.

She touched Li Pen. ‘Split up?’ she mouthed. He thought about it, then nodded. He pointed to Phyne and then the floor, to himself and the smoke-raddled ceiling. Very well. Phryne would go down and Li Pen up—presumably to cope with the argument above.

Li Pen vanished like a mosquito who has provided an appetiser for a carp. Phryne searched for a way to go down.

To find the ladder, she had to creep back across the ’tween deck and up the other side. The air was thick with stenches, man-made and machine-made. Twice she halted and grabbed her upper lip to stop a sneeze.

Then she found the engine room. A drunken engineer was asleep on the floor, flat on his back, snoring like a whole orchestra. Phryne slipped past him, looking for another way out.

There was none. If the
Gold Mountain/Apu
went down and the crew couldn’t leave by that one ladder, then they would drown along with the rats. The ship was alive with rats.

The slumbering man gave a cough and a grunt; Phryne froze. She stood so still that a questing rat paused in its passage across her foot, whiffling its whiskers, wondering if the engineer was dead enough to provide a late-night snack.

Loathing washed over Phryne so strongly she was afraid that she would retch. The clammy tail was across her bare ankle. It was cold. It was one of the vilest things she had ever felt in her whole life and if it had gone on for another second she might have flinched.

But the engineer turned over in his rancid couch and the rat moved on to seek for more comatose prey. On impulse, without any reason, Phryne followed it.

The rat heard a footfall behind it and speeded up to a fast walk. It was clearly unafraid of whatever its next target might do. Phryne hung back, not wanting to frighten the creature. She had searched through all that she could see of the
Gold
Mountain/Apu
, and this might be as good a guide as any.

The rat trailed its revolting tail around a machine and then scrabbled up over a watertight sill through a small door which she had not noticed. Seated in front of an indistinct bundle on the filthy floor was a guard with a pistol.

He was so sleepy that he did not rouse at once. He saw the rat and kicked at it half-heartedly. Then he saw Phryne and leapt to his feet.

At the same time the bundle swore and tried to sit up.

Phryne knew that voice. She had a knife in her belt but she did not bother to draw it. She tripped the guard. Just as he was getting up he found that he was actually getting down. He shouted something, and then Phryne was on him. She dropped on his chest with both knees and vengefully banged his head on the floor, once to knock him out and twice because it made her feel better.

‘Quick,’ she said to Lin Chung. ‘It’s me. Get up! Can you walk?’

‘Not with all these ropes,’ he said quietly. She drew the knife and hacked at the knots and the ropes fell away. Then she extended both hands and dragged him up and into her arms at last.

Lin Chung indeed, not crippled, not nailed to anything, and apart from some surface grime and the blood-blotched wound on the side of his head, in one piece. He staggered as he tried to move. Phryne held him strongly for a moment. He smelt like he had stolen his garments from a previous owner who had been dead at least a week.

‘Come,’ she said. ‘Li Pen and I have come for you.’

‘I knew you would,’ murmured Lin Chung. ‘Where are we?’

‘Melbourne,’ she said. ‘Talk later. The engineer’s asleep outside—’

‘No,’ said Lin Chung dreamily. ‘I think you’ll find that actually he’s awake and in here.’

Phryne ducked a swung club, grabbed a sinewy arm, and helped the engineer on his journey into the bulkhead. He hit it with a satisfying clang, rebounded, and dropped the club. He dived for her throat, both arms outstretched and huge hands clutching. Phryne kicked him hard in the groin and he went down screaming.

‘Grab that pistol,’ she snapped. ‘That idiot will rouse the whole waterfront! Shut up, you fool!’ she snarled at the engineer. Lin Chung obliged with a translation and the injured man, comforting the offended parts with both hands, clamped his mouth shut with a click.

‘What did you say?’ asked Phryne, interested, shoving Lin Chung rung by rung up the ladder.

‘I told him that if he was quiet you’d go away, but if he kept yelling you’d bite them off. And eat them.’

‘Nice,’ approved Phryne. ‘Shows a realistic appraisal of my mood.’

They emerged through the hold into the main part of the ship. Lin was walking with more confidence, as though his feet had been recalled to their duty. Even in the dim glow of the working lights he was blinking.

‘Where now?’

Phryne listened. There was no sound overhead. What had they done with poor Bert? Where was Li Pen?

She shrugged. ‘Is that gun loaded?’

Lin showed her the gun. It was rusty, but the action was oiled and it had six bullets. She rotated the chamber and clicked it back together.

‘Up?’ asked Lin Chung. He still felt that he was in a dream, but it was an engrossing and delightful dream and he was interested to see what would happen next.

‘Might as well,’ said Phryne.

She pulled down his head, very gently, and kissed him on the mouth. He stank like the long deceased and he tasted of starvation and fear, but he was Lin Chung and she did not mean to lose him again.

The kiss awakened Lin Chung. He had never managed a kiss like that in a dream. Dream kisses tasted of flowers and wine, not old brandy and excitement. Perhaps he was actually free and awake, as unlikely as that might seem to a logical mind.

The companionway was deserted. They climbed up and up and saw no one. There was no sound but a murmur of conversation overhead, quiet and in Cantonese. Phryne wondered who was talking.

They clambered up the last flight to the deck. Lin Chung went first. Phryne was close behind him.

Perhaps his long captivity had made him clumsy. As he stepped over the sill, he stumbled a little and the man at the gangway turned around and saw him. Phryne, flinging herself sideways along the deck, saw him open his mouth in a perfect ellipse.

But no sound ever emerged. Two hands reached from behind the watchman and closed around his throat. He gave a small sigh and slipped out of the action. Li Pen lowered the body gently.

He smiled at Lin Chung.

‘So, she found you,’ he said softly. ‘I thought she would.’

‘I saw what they did to you,’ said Lin Chung.

Li Pen made a dismissive gesture. He reached out a hand to help Lin Chung towards the gangway. Phryne got up and brushed herself.

‘Stop,’ said a voice. There was a flapping of discarded tarpaulin and a grating screech as something metal was dragged across metal.

‘It’s a good gun,’ said a smooth voice, in English. ‘We got it off an English ship. It’s a Hotchkiss and at this range there will be little left of you or that Shao Lin to cremate.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The third line, divided, shows the subject bringing
himself round to whatever may give pleasure.
There will be evil.

Hexagram 58: Tui
The I Ching Book of Change

This is it, thought Phryne, staring down the barrel. Now we will all die. What a pity. I haven’t done half the wicked things I wanted to do, and the ones I have done I haven’t done anything like enough.

‘The noise might create rather a stir,’ said Lin quietly. ‘Melbourne is not used to gunfire by night.’

‘You need to give that warning to someone who cares,’ said the smooth voice. ‘I, as it happens, do not.’

‘And would not our dissolution into mangled fragments rather destroy your scheme?’ asked Lin, leaning on the rail.

‘Scheme?’ asked Phryne. ‘What scheme is this? Who is this person, Lin, dear?’

She slid under Lin Chung’s arm, supporting him and masking the disappearance of Li Pen behind the deckhouse. The unseen maniac had his finger on the trigger. Her gun was of no immediate use.

‘Oh, haven’t we been introduced? My apologies. My name is Lin, also, Miss Fisher. Might I say how fetching you look in that sailor’s garb? Lin Tai, at your service.’

‘My cousin,’ explained Lin Chung. ‘And heir, if Grandmother disinherits me, to the Lin family lands.’

‘And despite your shameful behaviour with that roundeye harlot, she shows no signs of doing that. So, when the pirates freed you, I intercepted the cargo. I had every intention of delivering you once the handover of the Lin family lands was completed with my agent in Bias Bay,’ he added. ‘But now that you’ve managed to free yourself—’

‘I was rescued,’ Lin pointed out.

‘—and forced me into declaring myself, I have to kill you. I assume that this threat will be sufficient to make you and the interfering Miss Fisher tie each other up and jump overboard. They say that drowning is an easy death, once you stop trying to breathe. No, I really would advise you not to move. And tell that monk to stay where he is. I really don’t want to shoot you, Chung, though I have always hated you. And you, Miss Fisher. My agents have shown disgraceful lack of initiative. I thought that they would have killed you by now. I knew you would try to retrieve Chung.’