Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (42 page)

Phryne had crept through ships before. Her cabin was not in the depths, below the waterline, where the engine crew worked. The tarts would be on this level or the one above. She needed to subdue the captain, then she could unload the prisoners.

Then she heard someone weeping desolately behind a door and decided that she could just as easily do it the other way round.

The door was latched on the outside. Phryne opened it. The woman inside tried to knock her down.

‘It’s all right, I’m your rescue party. Gather your wits and let’s get out of here.’

‘What about De Vere?’

‘He’s out of it,’ said Phryne.

‘And Harry?’

‘I suspect I may have got him too. Who else is here?’

‘I dunno. I heard someone crying last night.’

‘Unlatch all the doors and get them all out,’ Phryne told her. ‘I’ll keep watch. What’s your name?’

‘Lily.’

‘I’m Phryne. Get on, I can hear the engines getting faster.’

Lily unlatched and soon ten women were in the narrow way.

‘That bastard locked me in!’ swore one. ‘I’ll rip ’is balls off!’

‘No time for pleasures, ladies—climb,’ instructed Phryne. ‘I’ll go first, Lily will go last. Any other women on board?’

‘They said there were ten of us,’ said the thinnest young woman.

‘Right. Up we go. When you get to the deck, get ashore and run. Into the street, not the beach. Someone will meet you there. Don’t panic and don’t fall.’

‘What about the captain?’ asked Lily.

‘Leave him to me,’ said Phryne.

They climbed.

Phryne was just about to emerge on deck when she saw the greasy cap turn suspiciously, this way, that way. He had heard something, sensed something. She took a penny out of her pocket and flicked it onto the deck, toward the bow. It clinked as it fell. He turned toward the noise. Instantly Phryne was out of the companionway and in front of him. Behind her, women streamed up to freedom, leaping ashore, running toward the town lights.

‘Stop!’ he yelled. ‘I paid good money for you!’

‘Unless you want to die where you stand,’ said Phryne, ‘you revolting specimen of something resembling humanity, you’ll shut up and put your hands on your head.’

‘You! You bitch! Who are you? Where’d you get that gun?’

‘It’s mine,’ said Phryne. ‘I brought it with me. Look on me as Spartacus. This is a slave revolt.’

He grabbed for her. She shot him in the foot. As he lay groaning, she said quietly, ‘You wouldn’t make a noise like that if you knew where I really intended to shoot you.’

Thereafter he was quiet and compliant as the police came to take him away.

‘Good pinch,’ said Jack Robinson. ‘We’ll gather up the ladies and get statements.’

‘Here’s De Vere’s pocketbook with all his transactions in it,’ said Phryne. ‘He’s rather tied up downstairs, as is another sailor. The contact in Port Said is Jim Simmonds at the High Commisson. Now, Jack, we have to hurry.’

‘Why?’ asked Robinson, disapproving of this modern tendency to hustle.

‘Because four little girls are on the Thisbe, and she’s just started to move.’

‘Get the harbour master on the phone!’ yelled Jack to Collins. ‘Call the pilot boat. I need an arrest warrant for a ship!’

Phryne had already left him. She had run to the Thisbe and scrambled aboard, golden curls and silly blue hat and all, and in a moment the boat was out of range.

Jack Robinson swore for so long that even the attendant wharfies were impressed.

Aboard the Thisbe Phryne was seized, disarmed, and carried below to see the captain.

Chapter Eighteen

Come, friends, who plough the sea
Truce to navigation
Take another station
Let’s vary piracy, with a little burglary!

Gilbert and Sullivan, The Pirates of Penzance

Phryne, as she was being dragged down into the depths of the Thisbe, admitted to herself that her actions had been silly, reckless, foolish, precipitate and likely to lead to her early and unpleasant demise. Then she charitably forgave herself and took a deep breath. She did not struggle, so the sailor who was holding her did not discover the knife attached to her arm. She was put down into a chair and the same sailor tied her hands behind her back. At least she would now meet the mastermind behind this frightful operation.

The boat was moving. Phryne was alone. She occupied herself while waiting by attempting to remember the flex of muscle which would bring the hilt of the knife down into her hand. She had practised it enough. But she was shaking with shock, and her arms felt like they were made of noodles.

The cabin was luxurious, in a ‘Midnight of the Sheik’ style. The owner clearly travelled to the Middle East. There were many pillows, hangings, a full-sized double bed about which she preferred not to speculate, a hookah from which she could detect the scent of kif, and paintings of the sort sold on postcards in the street in Cairo. Known to the vendors as ‘feelthy pictures.’ They all concerned children. Though the animal kingdom was represented, in several sentimental pictures of dogs, and of course the woman and the donkey.

The odd picture out was a cabinet photo of a stern-faced woman in severe black. The only point of relief in the picture was a large crucifix on her breast. His mother? That might prove a useful chink in Mastermind’s armour. There was a surge and the boat rocked. Phryne seemed to remember Bert telling her that boats couldn’t get out of the river until the turn of the tide, which was usually about three a.m. There was some maritime reason for this. So Mastermind would have time to play with Phryne before any serious sailing happened.

Not a nice thought. She returned to flexing and loosing the muscles. Something was happening outside in the corridor, if ships had corridors. Men were running and shouting. Perhaps Jack had already organised a pursuit. Which would mean that she would be rescued and have to be grateful and Phryne had always failed at that. She wriggled with more effort.

‘Scared, aren’t you?’ asked a voice from the door.

Ah, the Mastermind. Just the tone of voice she had expected. A sadist who liked tormenting small animals and little girls.

‘Should I be?’ she asked coolly.

He came into the room and closed the door. An ordinary devil of about five-foot-six, quietly dressed in a good suit (though she detected Cairo tailoring) and neat: small hands and feet, clean-shaven, mid-brown as to hair and eyes. I bet he’s got pairs and pairs of perfect kid gloves, thought Phryne, staring into his eyes.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. His voice was educated and had a faint Irish lilt. Attractive, if he hadn’t been a monster.

‘I’ll try,’ she promised.

He stared at her. Her gun was dangling from his hand.

‘Once I tell you what I am going to do with you, whore,’ he said to her, ‘then you will be scared.’

‘And you feed on fear, don’t you? I shall try to oblige. Tell me, how long have you been in the slave trade?’

‘Why should I speak to you?’ he asked, disconcerted.

‘It will while away the time,’ said Phryne. ‘I’m not going anywhere else at present. You have my full attention.’

He giggled. ‘All right. You just sit there,’ he said. ‘Don’t get up.’

Sadistic and nasty with it, thought Phryne. That tone must have made little girls cry. I bet he loved that.

‘The trade?’

‘I cornered the market,’ he told her, lounging against the corner of his desk. The movement of the ship did not unbalance him. He must do a lot of sailing. ‘The others are all sending worn-out old whores like yourself. They only last a couple of years. But I can sell a blonde virgin for a hundred pounds—English pounds, not dinars. One of them pays for the voyage and the rest are pure profit. I love my work.’

‘Simmonds from the High Commission put you up to this profession?’ asked Phryne, trying to bend her fingers in ways which fingers are not meant to move.

‘It was my idea,’ he said. ‘Simmonds…shares my tastes. Easy to slake in Port Said, but blondes are a rare treat.’

‘It must be trying,’ she said conversationally, ‘to have to deliver those little golden-haired girls
virgo intacta.
’

‘I control myself until we get to the port,’ he said. ‘Then I can buy as many of the little dark-haired darlings as I wish.’

‘But they aren’t the same, are they?’

He came closer. He had put her Beretta on the desk. Phryne wriggled again and at last felt the hilt begin to slide. She couldn’t do anything with the knots—they had been tied by a real sailor. If she pulled, they got tighter, and they were beginning to cut off her circulation.

***

Jack Robinson was still in deep and furious negotiation with a harbour master who woke up slowly and cross when Bert looked at Cec. All the policemen were on the Pandarus, except the ones who were guarding the prisoners or providing blankets, tea, brandy, cigarettes and consolation to the freed prisoners and taking statements. No one was looking at them.

‘Which one you reckon, Cec?’

‘That one,’ said Cec, pointing his chin at a shiny white pleasure boat. ‘Got a fair turn of speed. Ought to catch that old tramp.’

‘Before the tide turns?’

‘Too right.’

‘Fancy a bit of piracy, mate?’

‘Too right.’

They strolled along the pier. Jane, Tinker and Ruth were not deceived and fell in behind in approved sheepdog fashion.

‘Oh no, I’m not takin’ you kids,’ Bert protested. ‘This is real dangerous and real illegal.’

‘Too right,’ said Tinker, copying Cec. ‘You’ll need a crew. I been on fishing boats all me life. And Jane and Ruthie can learn fast. And meanwhile that boat’s getting away.’

‘All right, a man can’t stand around all night arguing. Can you all swim?’

They nodded.

‘Then come on,’ urged Bert.

A brief conversation with the watchkeeper on the shiny new yacht, a member of the Seamen’s Union and a comrade, and they were starting the engine. It was new and caught immediately. The yacht was drawing away before anyone noticed, and then it was too late.