‘Yes,’ said Lydia, a trace of animation creeping across her features. ‘It was very strange, full of meanings which I just couldn’t grasp, and the music was odd — almost off key, but not quite.’
‘I know what you mean,’ agreed Phryne, reminding herself that Lydia was not of such profound stupidity as she chose to appear. She offered her a cigarette, and lit another for herself. The dancers had completed their foxtrot, and Sasha was making for Phryne. Lydia pressed close to her.
‘I like you,’ she said confidingly in her little-girl voice. ‘And now that Russian boy is coming to take you away. Come to luncheon tomorrow — will you?’
The little powdered face turned up with a pout to Phryne. She felt a sudden sinking of the stomach. She had met women of this cast of mind before — the clingers, fragile and utterly ruthless, who wore down friend after friend with their emotional demands, always ill and exhausted and badly treated, but still retaining enough energy to scream reproaches at the retreating friend as she fled, guilt-stricken, down the hall. And the next week to replace that friend — always female — with another. Phryne recognised Mrs Andrews as an emotional trap, and had no choice but to throw herself in.
‘Delighted,’ she said promptly. ‘What time?’
‘One o’clock,’ sighed Lydia, as the Russian boy emerged from the sea of people as sleek as a seal, smiling enchantingly. He took Phryne’s hand, kissed the knuckle more lingeringly than was necessary, and gestured at the dancing. The band were essaying a tango, with shuddering atonal shriekings added to make the sound modern, and Phryne smiled on her companion. The tango was a dance she had learned in Paris from the most expensive gigolo on the Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche, and she had not had an opportunity to dance it in polite society. They attracted general attention as he led her out on the floor; both slim and pure of line, and the young man so unadorned that he could have been naked.
The whole room had stopped to watch them as they began to dance, so fluid their movements, so highly charged the sacramental caresses. Sasha slid, moved, turned, with the effortless grace expected of a dancer, but there was more in his tango than mere practice. The more impressionable of the ladies in the audience were reminded of a panther; and one of the serving-maids, clutching her silver spoon to her bosom, whispered to her companion, a waiter, ‘Ooh, he’s a sheik!’
The waiter was unimpressed with Sasha, but Phryne’s dancing, as the satin and fur flowed ahead and behind her, affected him profoundly. She could combine the grace of a queen with the style of a demimondaine, and he had never seen anything like her in his life.
‘Oh, if I could ’ave ’er!’ he whispered, and the serving-maid rapped him sharply with the spoon.
Dancing with Sasha, Phryne decided, was almost as exciting as doing a loop-the-loop in a new plane in a high wind. He was graceful, and she could feel the ripple of excellent muscles beneath the leotard which fitted him like a second skin; he was exceedingly responsive to her slightest movement, but he led with confidence; she had no fear that he would drop her, and he smelt sweetly of a male human and Russian Leather soap. Her emotions were stirred, but she could not afford to become infatuated with him. She was explaining patiently to herself that she was not infatuated, but merely sensibly attracted to one who was personable, graceful and an excellent dancer, when they swept to a synchronised stop, and bowed to the applause which broke out all around them.
Sasha was holding her hand and drawing her down into yet another bow. Phryne woke up, resisted the pull, and removed her hand from his, not without an inward pang. The boy turned her gently by the shoulders as the band lurched into a foxtrot, and Sasha said his first words.
‘You dance very well,’ he commented. ‘I have seen you dance before.’
‘Oh?’ asked Phryne, resisting the urge to move into his embrace. He had the muscular nervousness of a highly bred horse; intensely alive, and reacting to every touch.
‘Yes, in the Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche,’ continued Sasha, ‘with Georges Santin.’
‘So it was,’ agreed Phryne, wondering if the young man was attempting to blackmail her. ‘It was Georges who taught me to tango, and it cost me a pretty penny, I can tell you. I saw you in Paris too, with the Compagnie des Ballets Masqués in the old Opera. Why did you leave so suddenly?’ she asked artlessly.
If the young snake was intending to ask embarrassing questions, then he would learn that Phryne had a fair battery of them too.
‘It. . it was expedient,’ said Sasha, missing a step and recovering instantly. He spoke thenceforward in French, in which he was fluent, but with a heavy Russian accent. Phryne’s French was suitably Parisian, but in her Left Bank days she had picked up a number of indelicate apache idioms, and used them with alarming candour.
‘I find you very attractive, my beautiful boy, but I cannot be blackmailed.’
‘The Princesse told me that it would not work,’ admitted Sasha ruefully. ‘And I should not have persisted against her wisdom, but I did, and see what a fool I am revealed to be? Beautiful, charming lady, forgive your humble suppliant!’
‘Before I forgive you, tell me what you wanted,’ said Phryne.
Sasha paused, quivering, then led her to where the old Princesse sat perched on a golden metal chair, nibbling caviar russe and surveying the dancers with a sardonic eye, like an old parrot on a perch. She eyed Sasha and Phryne, and cackled.
‘Et puis, mon petit,’ she cackled. ‘Next time you will listen to me. Always I am right — infallibly right. It runs in the family; my father told the Tsar to attend to Rasputin and not declare war, but he did, and came to a bad end. As did poor Russia. And now I come to think of it, me. And you. Foolish boy! Is mademoiselle still speaking to you, worthless one? I told you she is not one to yield to pressure! But she might have reposed in your arms and agreed to your every wish had you used what charm the Lord God saw fit, for some reason, to endow you with!’
Phryne, observing that her partner was thoroughly chastened, and rather at a loss as to how to react, claimed a cocktail and some of the Princesse’s caviar russe, and resolved to wait until the old woman’s attention could be diverted from the hapless Sasha to explain.
‘I still might — they are very pleasant arms to repose in,’ she agreed placidly. ‘But I need more information. What do you want? Money?’
‘Not precisely,’ said the old woman. ‘We have a thing to do, and we believe that you can help us. You are investigating the strange illness of that female in rose, are you not? Colonel Harper—’e is an old friend of mine.’
‘I can give you no information until you reciprocate,’ temporised Phryne through a mouthful of the excellent caviar. The old woman cackled again.
‘Bon. You suspect the snow, do you not?’
‘Cocaine?’ asked Phryne, thinking that it was a surprising question. It had not entered her head that Lydia was a drug-fiend.
‘We came from Paris in pursuit of the trade,’ stated the old woman calmly. ‘We of the Compagnie des Ballets Masqués are chasing the king of the trade. We believe that he is here — and you will help us find him. You cannot approve of it?’
Phryne, recalling the haggard cocaine-addicts, twitching and vomiting to an early grave through torments not surpassed by the Inquisition, shook her head. She did not trust her interlocutor, and she had difficulty believing anything which she was hearing, but both of them seemed serious.