The tall young man tripped, almost fell and ran across the road, stumbling through the traffic. He fell into a waiting car and was gone.
The whole incident had taken seconds.
Phryne opened her own gate, thinking deeply. It might have been an attempted handbag snatch—they were happening more frequently as unemployment began to bite and more and more people were rendered desperate. Phryne was certainly well dressed and the ordinary robber would be justified in thinking that her purse would be worth investigation. But there had been the car. The planned escape route.
And she had seen so little! She spat out a very rude word. Just a tall, moderately strong, moderately young man, face hidden by a scarf. He had not spoken. The car had been of some nondescript colour—black, maybe, or dark blue. She had not seen the numberplate. Nothing, in short, to go on.
'May beets grow out of their bellies,' cursed Phryne. She could really get to love Yiddish. It was a language made for situations like these.
No one but the Buders were home. Dot had presumably taken Miss Lee for her walk about the city. The girls were out on a picnic. Phryne was passing the phone when it rang.
'Yes?'
'Miss Fisher, can you send my son home?' asked a heavily accented voice.
'Mrs Abrahams?'
'You have someone else's son?' asked Julia Abrahams. 'Someone else's son you have as well as mine?'
'No, I haven't even got yours,' said Phryne. 'I haven't seen him since breakfast.'
'Oy, gevalt. Sons you have. Trouble you have!'
'He isn't home?' asked Phryne, wondering where Simon might have got to. He had wanted to come with her to set Miss Lee at liberty, and she had rather snubbed him. Probably the Abrahams boy was somewhere suitably depressing, eating worms.
'I expect he's just sulking,' she assured Julia Abrahams.
'You saw him this morning?'
'Yes, and I went out directly after breakfast. I thought he was going home to talk to his father.'
'Here, he hasn't come,' said Mrs Abrahams. 'Where can my Simon be?'
'I'm sure he's somewhere. Where is Mr Abrahams?'
'In the workshop. Always the workshop. I'll phone him. No, I'll send Chaim. Maybe Simon is there.'
'Listen, Mrs Abrahams, if he isn't there, can you phone me again?'
'You're worried, nu?' Mrs Abrahams' voice sharpened.
'I'm a little concerned,' temporized Phryne. 'But I'm sure he'll be all right.'
She replaced the receiver on another 'Oy!'
Where was the boy?
Phryne requested strong coffee. She wanted to think.
In the bag which the robber had tried to steal was the rubber ball which Dr Treasure had so triumphantly made. The formula was concealed inside Phryne's bust band. An obvious precaution. She had removed it that morning from its place in her packet of sanitary napkins. She had gambled on that not being searched. The subconscious male taboo on menstruation worked on customs officers, too. How desperate the buyer must be getting, to risk attacking Phryne in the street in broad daylight!
Phryne took up the phone and called Jack Robinson. The adorable Dr Treasure and his family must be protected. Phryne had watched as he had poured out all the chemicals used in the making of Yossi's artificial rubber, and the rubber itself had been destroyed with acid and also poured away Dr Treasure, however, knew the formula. It might be tortured from him, especially if they had his wife or the fat noisy baby. And Phryne had enjoyed kissing him. People with that much osculatory skill cannot be wasted.
Detective Inspector Robinson agreed, though Phryne did not mention the kiss. There was no need, she considered, to tell policemen more than they needed to know.
Miss Lee set about reclaiming her shop and her life with customary efficiency. Her interval in prison was now firmly behind her. She had bathed at length and most luxuriously in a huge sea-green tub, attended by Dot, who had supplied half an ocean of very hot water and pine bath salts. The soap had been of the finest milled castile, guaranteed to bring bloom to the complexion, and the bath sheet had been fluffy and exceptionally absorbent. Miss Lee had washed and rinsed her hair and was as clean as the soapmaker's art could make her. She was clad in new underclothes, which Phryne had donated and Dot had selected. Her stockings were of silk. She was wearing her own clothes, her sensible shoes and her beige linen dress with two horses embroidered on the bosom.
And she had talked, not about prison, which she was not intending to think about for some months, but about the shocking price of butter and why Miss Fisher's hens were not laying so that eggs had to be bought from that scoundrel of a grocer. She had eaten an egg boiled to perfection and very good bread and butter and drunk several slow cups of ambrosial strong fragrant tea. She had also inspected Mrs Butler's orchids, had been greeted respectfully by two very nice schoolgirls, and had been licked by Molly the puppy and ignored by Ember the cat.
'Perhaps a little touch of sheep dog,' she suggested, as the girls held Molly up for her approval. Jane and Ruth, also, knew about being rescued. Possibly so did Molly, because she gave a small bark and began to gnaw Miss Lee's thumb. This was cheering. The real world was still there, it still contained puppies being puppies and cats being cats.
Then, accompanied by Dot, who talked or remained silent as she perceived her companion required, she took a tram to Flinders Street and walked through the city to the Eastern Market. Her natural pace was fast.
It was all still there, she thought. There was the bulk of the post office. Buckley and Nunn had not even changed their windows. The pallid mannequins were in the same pose, hung with the same jewellery, wearing the same dresses. Foy and Gibson's at the corner of Bourke Street was still advertising unparalleled cheapness in summer garments. Art silk dresses for nine and six!
The big advertising board told her that customers preferred Dunlop tyres.
Exercise was soothing Miss Lee's fears. Her stockings whispered as she walked and she was pleasantly conscious of the silk underwear. The sun was beginning to bite, and her suitcase was getting heavier, loaded as it was with Latin books.
'I should go home first,' she commented to Dot. 'If I still have a home. My landlady keeps a respectable house. She may not want me back.'
'Oh, yes, Miss, I'm sure you still have a home,' said Dot. She was sure of this, because she had heard Miss Fisher talking to the landlady about the matter. Miss Fisher had been very firm, and when Phryne was firm even a boarding house landlady might quail.
Miss Lee led the way up the stairs to her apartment. Mrs Smythe (with a y, please) met her on the landing with a pleasant smile.
'Miss Lee, glad to see you home,' she said. She had, of course, been intending to evict Miss Lee neck and crop—imagine, a woman accused of murder in her nice house! But her conversation with Miss Fisher had ameliorated her views. A woman who has been cleared of a murder charge which should never have been laid in the first place and who moreover had aristocratic connections was a different matter. Miss Lee smiled faintly and continued climbing.
'It all looks the same,' she said, as she opened her own door.
'I'll see you in an hour,' said Dot with tact, and withdrew.
Miss Lee unpacked her suitcase, put all of her prison garments in a bag to be washed, and sat down on her bed.
It was all still here. Her books piled on her bedside table. Her narrow bed, made up with clean sheets. On the table which she used as a pantry someone—Mrs Smythe?—had put a fresh jug of milk and a brown paper bag of biscuits.
Miss Lee, with sacramental care, made tea and bit into a biscuit. It was the oatmeal and treacle mixture called an Anzac.