'She'll do as her father says,' replied Wallace.

'I don't think so,' said Phryne. 'She's a Sapphic. She's in love with my sister. Even if Roddy resorts to what used to be called marriage by capture, she isn't going to be overcome by his physique, you know. She'll just lay a complaint of rape. And they hang you for rape in Australia, even if you are a lord. Also for being an accessory, I believe.'

'Shut up,' said Wallace.

'They also hang you for murder,' said Phryne quietly.

'I said shut up!' Wallace came close enough to slap Phryne across the face. At least it got rid of some of the flour. The slap rocked the chair back on its back legs. It made a heartening cracking noise. Phryne tried to make it thump down hard on one leg, which creaked. Excellent. If she couldn't get the ropes off perhaps she could demolish the chair.

'That's enough of that, my man!' snapped Phryne, using the accents which Wallace had obeyed all his life. He backed off, returning to his place by the fire.

'Historic little hut,' remarked Phryne after a few moments of listening to the rain. 'Where are we?'

'Why should I tell you that?'

'Because I am asking civilly,' she said, using the same tone.

'Hasn't got a name,' said Wallace. 'Close to the Moonlight road. Bloke in the pub told us about it. Hunters use it.'

'And it has a nice deep mine shaft. Did the bloke in the pub tell you about that too?' asked Phryne encouragingly. Wallace found he was having a conversation.

'No, it was a stroke of luck. Rod almost fell down it. We dropped a plummet and it's at least thirty feet and water at the bottom. Perfect.'

'How very useful. Every convenience. They will take you away to the court, Wallace. An old man with a black cap on his wig will sentence you to death and ask G.o.d to have mercy on your soul. Then you'll wait awhile, imagining what it is going to be like. Then they'll come in the morning, they'll march you up the wooden stairs. They'll put a bag over your head and a hemp rope around your neck. Eight turns in the hangman's rope, Wallace. Then they'll drop you through the trap and into eternity. If they've been careful, it will break your neck almost instantly. If they've been careless, and they are not highly paid men, then you'll strangle slowly, kicking, or the drop will tear your head off. All this if you stay with Roddy and his insane plans. All this will come to pa.s.s.'

Her voice was soft, hypnotic. Wallace took some time before he snarled, 'I told you to shut up!' and hit Phryne again. The chair back snapped, but he did not notice.

'We ain't gonna get out of this, son,' said Bill Gaskin to Young Billy.

'Don't say that, Dad!' protested the dazed boy. 'We just have to hold on until the cavalry arrives.'

The door burst open. It wasn't the cavalry. Roderick had come back.

Poems of a Vagrant Weed I call for another pot of wineAnd me and the moon drink togetherShe never takes more than a sipSo there's lots left for me.

The spring wind blows harshlyAnd tears the blossoms from the tree.Spring has dealt so harshly with meThat all my flowers are blown.

Sweet songs the oriole sings;Spring songs. I shut the blind.I wish no songs of spring in my houseWhere learning is my mistress.

It is so warm and gentle a day The sun pools heavily in my upturned palms. One would never have thought That blood once filled my hands with red Also warm; also alive.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Oh, hush the night, each minute an ounce of gold While faintly floats the music of flute and song. So fragrant the air, so cool the midnight courtyard, While darkly glides the silent night along.

Su Tungpo, translated by Lin Yutang Li Pen arrived after a slow journey on the early train and found his master buying drinks in the bar of the Imperial for the morning crowd. There was plenty to talk about and the pub was busy. Li Pen was about to utter a reproof when he realised that Lin Chung had one untouched gla.s.s of beer in front of him, while the rest of the pub was enjoying OP Queensland rum heart-starters. Lin was pale but composed and Li Pen decided not to comment; in fact, he would recommend a gla.s.s of brandy when Lin had ascertained whatever it was he was trying to find out.

'So you talked to this Atkins,' said Lin very gently, as if he was trying to coax a wild bird into his hand. 'And he was a great hunter?'

'Shot and fished all over the world,' said Mr Harrison.

'Knew a lot about it. Told some good stories. Aub told him about his croc. Said he wanted to do a bit of rough shooting and we said there's only rabbits round here, mate, and he said he didn't care.'

'And where did you suggest that he go for his rabbits?' asked Lin delicately. The bird was just stepping onto his palm.

'Up that way,' said Mr Harrison, pointing. 'Second turn on the right off the Moonlight road there's a big burnt stump. Turn off there and there's a bush hut about quarter of a mile. He said that'd be good-o.'

'Thank you,' said Lin, his timid bird in hand at last. He dropped some silver on the bar, drained one small gla.s.s of the OP rum, and collected Li Pen on the way out.

'I've been pumping those fools for half an hour,' he said to Li Pen a little defensively. 'That was my only drink.'

'I was about to suggest that you take one,' said Li Pen. 'You have not slept. You feel that the Silver Lady is in that hut?'

'Yes, or nearby. Cholmondeley hasn't had time to find a more elaborate hiding place. That is the only suitable one those morons in there told him about.'

'Then we should tell the police of your suspicions,' said Li Pen.

'I left a note,' said Lin. 'Sergeant Hammond is out hara.s.sing motorists. A young boy is missing also and the only reason he was wanted is because he is the final heir. They must be going to kill them, Li Pen. Nothing else makes sense.'

'Sense and nonsense are in the eye of the beholder,' said Li Pen. 'Let us go and try to sort out one from the other.'

The big car slid out through the roadblock.

The directions were no more difficult to follow than such directions usually are. After taking one wrong turn and digging the car out of a wallow, Lin Chung saw the hut and stopped the car.

'How shall we know that she is there?' asked Li Pen.

Lin pointed to a new, shiny, mud-spattered Bentley.

They closed the car doors very quietly. No window in the rude hut faced this gravel track. They approached the house, treading as light as leaves.

Roderick had reached the conclusion that Phryne had hoped he wouldn't.

'If we just kill them,' he told Wallace, 'then it doesn't matter about the d.a.m.ned paper.'

'You care a great deal about the honour of your family, don't you, Roddy?' asked Phryne in her English voice.

'Of course,' he responded automatically.

'The accusation of murder which Thomas Beaconsfield made against your great grandfather upset you, didn't it?' insin-uated Phryne, leaning on the weak leg of her rickety chair. It had started to splinter very promisingly. 'Your family honour is your obsession.'

'The nerve of that hound, saying such things about a Cholmondeley!' said Roddy, looking at Phryne for the first time. Bill Gaskin and Young Billy didn't move, sensing that something was happening. 'I won't have such things-such lies-noised abroad.'

'And what are you going to do with Wallace?' asked Phryne in the same intimate tone, as though they were alone. 'Think of what he knows about you! Think of what he could tell the press! Think of waking up one morning to find the paper with a headline "Dunstable Dishonoured"!'

'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 shirt 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.