He leaned his head back against her thigh as she sat behind him on the arm of the chair, and she ran her hand through the curly hair.
‘Continue,’ she ordered. ‘So what did you do?’
‘I hid myself outside the gate,’ sighed Sasha. ‘And the car drew up as they had arranged, and a packet was exchanged. Then they saw me, and I ran, like a fool! Two of them chased me, on foot, luckily. I don’t know what became of the car. Then I realised that the one who had first seen me, who had lunged at me with a knife, he had wounded me. . I was failing. . then I saw you, and flung myself at your feet, and with great wit and a speed of thought to be marvelled at, you hid me and contrived to convey me here. Where is here?’
‘The Hotel Windsor. I think that you had better stay here tonight. The Princesse is coming in a few hours to take me to the Turkish bath of Madame Breda. I can smuggle you out with us. What is your address?’
‘We are staying at Scott’s; a good hotel, but not luxurious, as this one is. I should like to live here,’ said Sasha artlessly, reaching out his unwounded right hand for the coffee cup.
Phryne laughed. ‘I daresay you would. But you would shock my maid,’ she added, wondering what Dot would make of the visitor.
She dragged the quilt off her bed and made Sasha comfortable on the sofa, despite his preferred wish to sleep with her, ‘Like brother and sister, you know.’ Phryne knew that her will to resist temptation was weak. She turned off the lights, pinned a note on Dot’s door that said, ‘It’s all right, he’s a visitor, and anyway he’s hurt. Call me at eight with tea and aspirins, P.’. Then she put herself to bed, resolutely turning the key in her door more as a warning to herself than out of any suspicion of Sasha’s motives.
In any case, as soon as the lights were off, she slept like a baby.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Come down and relieve us from virtue Our Lady of Pain
Algernon Swinburne ‘Our Lady of Pain’
Phryne awoke, feeling unhuman. Dot was tapping on her door. She lurched out of bed, accepted the tray, and sat down to swallow aspirins and tea at top speed.
‘Run me a bath, Dot, please, with lavender salts.’
Dot stayed put. ‘What about ’im?’ she jerked a thumb back over her shoulder. Phryne had forgotten Sasha. It was very early in the morning.
‘Sasha? He was attacked in the street, and I brought him back here because it was too late for him to get back into his hotel. He’s hurt, Dot, and I want you to be nice to him.’
She joined her maid at the door and saw that Sasha had thrown off the covers as he slept and now lay sprawled, like a youthful faun wearied with one orgy too many, naked to the waist, fast asleep and heart-stoppingly beautiful. Phryne sighed.
‘But not too nice. Let him sleep, and if he’s still asleep at lunch, leave him here. He won’t do any damage,’ she added. Her private papers were on her person and most of her jewels were in the hotel safe. As for her other possessions, well this might be a good way of ascertaining if Sasha was a thief. Phryne Fisher had a taste for young and comely men, but she was not prone to trust them with anything but her body.
‘Run my bath, please, Dot, and remember this is your afternoon off. Are you doing anything interesting?’
‘I’m going home,’ said Dot, receding in the direction of the bathroom. ‘Then to the flicks. There’s a new Douglas Fairbanks.’
Phryne sat down to drink her tea, adding a judicious measure of Benedictine. She decided upon severe black trousers, a white shirt, and a loose, bloused, black jacket as suitable dress for a visit to a Turkish bath, and she loaded the capacious pockets with the usual accessories. Finding the pouchy velvet bag of the night before, she removed the little gun, surveyed it thoughtfully, and added it to her accoutrements. Her headache began to ease. Sasha rolled over, fast asleep, and moaned. Phryne laid a hand on his forehead, but it was cool. He did not seem to have sustained any lasting damage.
Dorothy returned with the news that her bath was run, and Phryne subsided into the steam with a deep groan. All of her muscles hurt. She resolved to take more exercise before she danced with Sasha again, and applied some cream to her face. ‘Too many nights like that, m’girl, and you’ll be getting haggard,’ she reproved herself, lathering her pale slender arms and breasts with Parisian soap. Despite the creaking of the tendons, she remained slim as the gunmetal nymph and completely unblemished. She sluiced herself down, dried and dressed, and accepted a light breakfast which Dot had ordered. The coffee completed her recovery. After further deep thought, she gave the small gun to Dot and ordered her to hide it. One cannot take much except intelligence and religious convictions into a Turkish bath, and one’s garments are available to be searched.
The Princesse arrived at half-past eight, dressed in a shabby linen outfit evidently made for someone who was much taller and stouter. She said little, but stalked off down towards Russell Street, and Phryne followed.
The streets were windswept and chilly. The only sign of life appeared to emanate from Little Lonsdale Street, where the late-night revellers were eating eggs and bacon in the company of girls far too skimpily clad for the climate. The Bath House of Madame Breda was but a hop, skip and jump from these scenes of bacchanalian fervour, and Phryne, cold and disgruntled, felt that the neighbourhood was hardly salubrious.
The bath was a large building, running the width of the block between Russell and Little Lonsdale. The stone was respectable and the doorway imposingly austere. Phryne was regretting her bed, possibly with Sasha in it, when the door was opened by a severe maid in black with a white cap. She ushered them in without a smile, and they entered a hall scented with the most ravishing, oriental steam. Phryne, after a little thought and several deep sniffs, analysed it as a heavenly compound of bergamot orange, sandalwood, and something rare and precious — frangipani, perhaps, or orchid — a seductive, slightly sour scent, quite ravishing to the unprepared senses. The Princesse nudged Phryne in the ribs with an elbow evidently especially sharpened for the purpose of compelling attention.
‘Smells like a brothel, n’est-ce-pas? A Turkish brothel.’ Phryne’s experience of brothels was not extensive, and her knowledge of Turkish ones was non-existent; but this was certainly how a Turkish brothel should have smelt. She nodded.
Madame Breda was advancing on them with an outstretched hand. Phryne stepped back a pace, for Madame was enormous. She stood a full six feet high and must have weighed fifteen stone; blonde and muscular, she could have walked on as a Valkyrie and gained nothing but applause. Her eyes were blue, her cheeks red, her complexion excellent, and her hair luxuriant; she was as strong as a goddess and very intimidating. And she was completely wrong for the part of King of Snow. She was the last person in the world whom Phryne could imagine selling any sort of drug. She was so oppressively healthy.
They were led into a pink-tiled room, filled with the overpowering scented steam, and divested of their clothes. The actual swimming bath was a full fifteen feet long, about four feet deep, and half-filled with Nile-green water.
‘The demoiselles will begin in the steam-room,’ suggested the maid. She was unruffled, not a hair out of place, though the heat was reddening Phryne’s cheeks and slicking her hair to her skull. They followed the maid into the Scandinavian bath, where the air was suffocatingly hot. There they shed their towelling robes and sat naked on rather spiky cane chairs. Phryne noticed that the Princesse, though wizened, was as straight of limb as a woman of twenty, and was as healthy as a tree.