Ruth took the broom and began to sweep noisily, and Bert asked, ‘What was this man?’
‘The mesmeric man, the hypnotist. On the halls, he was. At the Tivoli. He tried to hypnotise me, but I just pretended. He mesmerised Jane lots of times. He could make her think that ice was a red-hot poker, and after he touched her with the ice a red blister would form on her arm. He made her think that she was talking to her grandma, and telling her how the missus beat her, and then the missus would punish her when she came round. It was horrible,’ confessed Ruth, sneezing in the plaster dust. ‘But I was glad it wasn’t me.’
‘He still here?’ asked Bert, shocked, and Ruth nodded.
‘He’s her fancy man,’ she said gravely. ‘That’s what the lodgers say. He’s got the best room and the window and all, and he gets all the good food — bacon and eggs and rolls and that.’
‘You hungry?’ asked Bert. ‘Where did she get you?’
‘From the orphanage. I’m not her flesh and blood! She adopted me. My parents are dead. I wish she hadn’t,’ said Ruth sadly. ‘I liked the orphanage. The nuns were letting me teach the younger kids their ABC. I didn’t want to leave, but she took me. . there,’ she added in a loud voice, ‘I’ve swept up all the plaster, Mr Smith.’ Ruth’s hearing, sharpened by pain, had picked up the approach of Miss Gay before Bert had heard her. He opened the door, and Ruth went out, carrying the broom and the dustpan. Bert emerged into the passage.
‘I’m just going out for a couple of hours, Missus,’ he said flatly, and walked down the stairs and out at the hall door to where Cec had been lurking in the unkempt garden. Bert felt that he had been dipped neck-deep in sewage.
He found the cab, with Cec in it, around the corner in Charles Street, and Cec started the engine.
‘To the pub,’ ordered Bert. ‘I never, in all my born days, saw such a place as that. It’s filthier than a pigsty and God alone knows what would happen to a girl.’
‘So, we don’t go back,’ said Cec, stopping the cab outside the Mona Castle, and Bert shook his head.
‘Oh, yes we do,’ he said grimly. ‘Something nasty is going on in that place, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.’
‘What was Miss Fisher not telling us?’ asked Cec, when they had glasses in their hands, and Bert rolled another smoke.
‘I don’t know, but I’m beginning to guess, and I don’t like what I’m thinking, Cec, I don’t like it one bit.’
Bert told Cec what he was thinking, and they bought another beer.
‘So I’ve taken a room there, Miss,’ reported Bert on the pub telephone. ‘And I gotta go back tonight. I want to meet this hypnotist chap.’
‘Yes, you do want to meet him,’ agreed Phryne. ‘But be careful, won’t you? They sound like very unpleasant people.’
‘So am I,’ growled Bert, baring his teeth. ‘Me and Cec is very unpleasant people, as well.’
‘All right, my dear, but keep in mind that I want to know all about the man before you pulp him. You have guessed about Jane, haven’t you?’
‘Yair, Miss, I guessed. As soon as I heard about the mesmerism.’
‘So I want him alive,’ said Phryne urgently. ‘He might be able to give her her memory back!’
Bert reluctantly accepted the justice of this. ‘All right, Miss, I see what you mean. Me and Cec will be gentle with him. And there might be another waif, Miss. Orphan called Ruth. That bitch don’t treat her right — beg pardon, Miss.’
Phryne sighed. Suddenly her life seemed to have become over-populated.
‘Oh, well, one more won’t make any difference, bring her along. When?’
‘Termorrer, Miss, if we can manage it, and you might have your tame cop standing by.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Phryne, and Bert felt a chill go through his spine, the remembered over-the-top thrill.
‘All right, Miss, I’ll see you then, goodbye.’
He hung up, paid the publican for the call, and returned to Cec.
‘She said that we can take the little girl as well,’ he commented. ‘Your shout, mate. No alcohol allowed in me new place of residence.’
Phryne stared at the photograph which had been delivered. Had this man mesmerised Gabrielle Hart? It was time that Miss Hart was found. She would go to see Klara in Fitzroy.
Bert went back to Miss Gay’s house, and found that dinner was on the table. Cec had returned to their own lodging house to explain Bert’s absence to their excellent landlady.
The dining vault was as cold as a Russian military advance and not as well provisioned. The great table, which was made of mahogany which had not been polished in decades, was laid with a spotted off-white cloth and a harlequin range of dishes. Quite of lot of them were cracked or chipped, and the silverware was Brittania metal and not clean. Bert observed that one place was set with clean, new dishes and real silver, and in front of it was the cruet, the bread and the butter.
The five other occupants of the house were already seated. They seemed a forlorn collection, with all the spirit crushed out of them by a combination of life, circumstances, and their landlady. Bert thought of his own Mrs Hamilton, all dimples and a dab hand with pastry, and envied Cec his dinner. There were two old men, vague and possibly senile; a young man in the last stages of consumption, who was as thin as a lath; a labourer or small tradesman with a missing arm, who seemed to retain some individuality; and a sleek and roly-poly gentleman in spotless evening costume, waistcoat and white tie, and probably evening pumps, though Bert did not look under the table. His manicured plump white hands cut the bread and buttered it as though there were no starving men at the same table. He had brown eyes like pebbles and that thick, pale skin which speaks of too much greasepaint at an early age. Miss Gay came in, bearing a tureen of frightful soup (which the gentleman did not take), and Bert was introduced.
‘This is Mr Smith,’ announced Miss Gay, dispensing pig swill. ‘Mr Brown, Mr Hammond,’ she said gesturing at the old men, who made no sign—‘Mr Jones,’ to the young man—‘Mr Bradford,’ to the tradesman, who nodded and spooned up his soup as though he was used to the taste. ‘And allow me to introduce Mr Henry Burton.’
‘I saw you once,’ commented Bert, pinning down an elusive memory, ‘on the Tivoli. You were on the same bill as that Chinese magician, the one who used to catch bullets in his teeth.’
Mr Burton bowed. ‘The Great Chang; he died, poor fellow, doing that bullet trick, a few years later.’
Miss Gay served what smelt like a tasty chicken soup to Mr Henry, from his own small saucepan. The other lodgers lacked the spirit even to glare at this arrant favouritism. Mr Henry had a wonderful voice: rich, deep, persuasive, a vocal instrument perfectly wielded. Bert remembered the act which he had seen — a man behaving like a chicken, a woman stretched stiff as a board between two chairs. It had been very impressive. What was the great man doing in a dump like this? Surely he could not dote upon the appalling Miss Gay?
Ruth came in to remove the soup plates, and to hand out dinner plates, which were also mismatched and chipped. Miss Gay brought in congealed gravy, fatty, depressed roast beast of some sort — Bert suspected horse — and potatoes as hard as bullets. The lodgers munched their way uncomplainingly through this detestable repast, while Mr Henry Burton dined on a pheasant in redcurrant jelly and winter broccoli.
Pudding was a floury suet thing with very little gooseberry jam. Even the old men could not eat it. Mr Burton had water biscuits and stilton cheese. Bert drank a cup of hot water in which three tea-leaves had been steeped, and went up to bed. Most of the lodgers did the same. Bert reflected, as he lay down in the creaking cot, that he had been more comfortable on the hills among the dead men and the Turkish snipers.