Fandorin in English 1-10

Boris Akunin

The Winter Queen

The first book in the Erast Fandorin series

2003

This is the first book featuring Erast Fandorin, a gentleman sleuth who solves murders and mysteries in tsarist Russia. A 23 year old law student commits suicide in broad daylight in Moscow’s Alexander Gardens. Fandorin is put on the case to find out what drove him to it, a case that deepens as he discovers that the young man was the son of a rich and influential factory owner. The story is enhanced by its authentic backdrop of nineteenth century Russia. After all, it’s difficult to keep your mind on a case when the new Dostoyevsky novel has just hit the shops. Fandorin has been described as ‘the James Bond of the 19th century’ and Akunin has been compared to Gogol, Tolstoy and Conan Doyle. The UK publication of these books will be an international literary event and mark the arrival of a startling new voice in the thriller marketplace.

CHAPTER ONE

in which an account is rendered of a certain cynical escapade

ON MONDAY THE THIRTEENTH OF MAY IN THE year 1876, between the hours of two and three in the afternoon on a day that combined the freshness of spring with the warmth of summer, numerous individuals in Moscow’s Alexander Gardens unexpectedly found themselves eyewitnesses to the perpetration of an outrage that flagrantly transgressed the bounds of common decency.

The public strolling the alleyways between blossoming lilac bushes and flower beds ablaze with the flaming scarlet blooms of tulips was smartly decked out: ladies holding aloft lacework parasols (to avert the threat of freckles), nannies minding children in neat little sailor suits, and young men affecting an air of boredom in fashionable cheviot frock coats or jackets cut in the short English fashion. With nothing apparently portending any disagreeable turn of events, a lazy satisfaction and gratifying tedium suffused the atmosphere, mingling with the scents of a mature and confident spring season. The rays of the sun beat down in earnest, and every last one of the benches that happened to stand in the shade was occupied.

Seated on one of these benches located not far from the Grotto and facing the railings so as to afford a view of the beginning of Neglinnaya Street and the yellow wall of the Manиge were two ladies. One of them, a very young lady (indeed, not really a lady at all, more of a girl), was reading a small morocco-bound volume and glancing about her from time to time with an air of distracted curiosity. Her much older companion, wearing a good-quality dark blue woolen dress and sensible lace-up ankle boots, rotated her needles in a regular rhythm as she concentrated on knitting some item in a poisonous pink, yet still found time to turn her head to the right and the left with a rapid glance so keen that there was certainly no way anything the least bit remarkable could possibly escape it.

The lady’s attention was caught immediately by the young man in narrow check trousers, a frock coat casually buttoned over a white waistcoat, and a round Swiss hat. He was walking along the alley in such a remarkably strange manner, stopping every now and again as he attempted to pick out somebody among the strollers, then taking a few abrupt steps before stopping yet again. Glancing suddenly in the direction of our ladies, this unbalanced individual seemed to resolve upon some course of action, and immediately set off toward them with broad, decisive strides. He halted in front of the bench and addressed the young girl, exclaiming in a clownish falsetto, “My lady! Has no one ever told you that your beauty is beyond all endurance?”

The girl, who was indeed quite wonderfully pretty, gaped at the impudent fellow in startled amazement, her strawberry-red lips parted slightly in fright. Even her mature companion seemed dumbfounded at such unheard-of familiarity.

“I am vanquished at first sight,” said the stranger, continuing with his tomfoolery. He was, in fact, a young man of perfectly presentable appearance, with hair trimmed fashionably short at the temples, a high, pale forehead, and brown eyes glinting in feverish excitement. “Pray allow me to impress upon your innocent brow an even more innocent, purely fraternal kiss!”

“Zir, you are kvite drunk!” said the lady with the knitting, recovering her wits and revealing that she spoke Russian with a distinct German accent.

“I am drunk on nothing but love,” the insolent fellow assured her, and in the same unnatural, whining voice he demanded: “Just one little kiss or I shall lay hands upon myself this instant!”

The girl cowered against the back of the bench and turned her pretty face toward her protectrice, who remained undismayed by the alarming nature of the situation and displayed perfect presence of mind. “Get avay from here zis instant! You are crayzee!” she cried, raising her voice and holding her knitting out in front of her with the needles protruding in bellicose fashion. “I call ze conshtable!”

Then something utterly fantastic happened.

“Ah! So I am rejected!” the young man squealed in counterfeit despair, covering his eyes theatrically with one hand and swiftly extracting from his inside pocket a small revolver of gleaming black steel. “What meaning has life for me after this? A single word from you and I live. A single word from you and I die where I stand!” he appealed to the young girl, who was sitting there herself more dead than alive. “You say nothing? Then farewell!”

The sight of a gentleman gesticulating with a gun could not fail to attract the attention of the promenading public. Several of those who happened to be close at hand—a stout lady holding a fan, a pompous gentleman with a cross of the Order of St.Anne hanging around his neck, two girls from boarding school in identical brown frocks with pelerines—froze on the spot, and some student or other even halted on the pavement on the far side of the railings. In short, there was reason to hope that the scandalous incident would rapidly be brought to a close.

What followed, however, occurred too rapidly for anyone to intervene.

“Here’s to luck!” cried the drunk or, perhaps, the madman. Then he raised the hand holding the revolver high above his head, spun the cylinder, and set the muzzle to his temple.

“You clown! You motley buvfoon!” whispered the valiant German matron, demonstrating a quite respectable knowledge of colloquial Russian.

The young man’s face, already pale, turned gray and green by turns. He bit his lower lip and squeezed his eyes tight shut. The girl closed her eyes, too, just to be on the safe side.

It was as well she did so, for it spared her a horrendous sight. When the shot rang out, the suicide’s head was instantly jerked to one side and a thin fountain of red and white matter spurted from the exit wound just below his left ear.

The ensuing scene defies description. The German matron gazed around her indignantly as if calling on everyone to witness this unimaginable outrage, and then set up a bloodcurdling squealing, adding her voice to the screeching of the schoolgirls and the stout lady, who had been emitting piercing shrieks for several seconds. The young girl lay there in a dead swoon. She had half opened her eyes for barely an instant before immediately going limp. People came running up from every side, but it was all too much for the delicate nerves of the student who had been standing beyond the railings, and he took to his heels, fleeing across the roadway in the direction of Mokhovaya Street.

XAVIER FEOFILAKTOVICH GRUSHIN, detective superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Moscow Police, sighed in relief as he set aside the summary report on the previous day’s serious crimes, adding it to the Out pile on his left. During the previous twenty-four hours nothing of any note that required the intervention of the Division had occurred in any of the twenty-four police precincts in this city of 600,000 inhabitants: there was one murder resulting from a drunken brawl between factory hands (the murderer was apprehended at the scene), two cabdrivers had been robbed (the local stations could take care of those), and 7,853 rubles had gone missing from the till at the Russo-Asian Bank (that was a matter for Anton Semyonovich at the commercial fraud department). Thank God they’d stopped sending Grushin’s department all those petty incidents of pickpocketing and maids who hanged themselves and abandoned infants; nowadays those all went into the Police Municipal Incidents Report that was distributed to the departments in the afternoons.

Xavier Grushin yawned comfortably and glanced over the top of his tortoiseshell pince-nez at Erast Petrovich Fandorin, clerk and civil servant fourteenth class,* who was writing out the weekly report to His Excellency the chief of police for the third time. Never mind, thought Grushin. Let him get into neat habits early; he’ll be grateful for it later. The very idea of it—scraping away with a steel nib on a report for the top brass. Oh, no, my friend, you just take your time and do it the good old–fashioned way with a goose quill, with all the curlicues and flourishes. His Excellency was raised in Emperor Nicholas I’s day; he knows all about good order and respect for superiors.

Xavier Grushin genuinely wished the boy well and felt a fatherly concern for him, for there was no denying life had dealt hard with the novice clerk, leaving him an orphan at the tender age of nineteen years. He had known no mother since he was a young child, and his hothead of a father had squandered his entire estate on worthless projects and then given up the ghost. First he’d built up a fortune during the railway boom, and then he’d ruined himself in the banking boom. As soon as the commercial banks began going under the previous year, plenty of respectable people had found themselves out in the cold. The most reliable interest-bearing bonds were suddenly reduced to worthless trash, to nothing, and the retired Lieutenant Fandorin, who promptly departed this life under the blow, had left his only son nothing but a bundle of promissory notes. The boy should have finished his studies at the gymnasium and gone on to the university, but instead it was out of the parental halls and off into the streets with you to earn a crust of bread. Xavier Grushin snorted in commiseration. The orphan had passed the examination for collegiate registrar all right (that was no problem for such a well-brought-up lad), but what on earth could have made him want to join the police? He should have a post in the Office of Statistics or perhaps in the Department of Justice. His head was full of romantic nonsense and dreams of catching mysterious Caududals. But we don’t have any Caududals here, my dear chap. Xavier Grushin shook his head disapprovingly. We spend most of our time around here polishing the seats of our pants and writing reports about the petty bourgeois Potbelly dispatching his lawful spouse and three little ones with an ax in a drunken fit.

The youthful Mr. Fandorin was only serving his third week in the Criminal Investigation Division, but as an experienced sleuth and a real old hand, Xavier Grushin could tell for certain that the boy would never make a go of it. He was too soft, too delicately raised. Once, during the first week, Grushin had taken him along to the scene of a crime (when the merchant’s wife Krupnova had her throat cut). Fandorin had taken one look at the dead woman, turned bright green, and gone creeping back all the way along the wall out into the yard. True enough, the merchant’s wife had not been a very appetizing sight—with her throat ripped open from ear to ear, her tongue lolling out of her mouth, and her eyes bulging out of her head—and then, of course, there was that pool of blood she was swimming in. Anyway, Xavier Grushin had been obliged to conduct the preliminary investigation and write the report himself. In all honesty, the case had proved simple enough. The caretaker Kuzykin’s eyes had been darting about so crazily in his head that Xavier Grushin had immediately ordered the constable to take him by the collar and stick him in the lockup. Kuzykin had been in there for two weeks now and he was still denying everything, but that was all right. He’d confess—there was no one else who could have slit the woman’s throat. In the thirty years he’d been working here, Grushin had developed the nose of a bloodhound. And Fandorin would come in handy for _the paperwork. He was conscientious; he wrote good Russian and knew foreign languages; he was quick on the uptake and pleasant company, unlike that wretched drunk Trofimov who’d been demoted last month from clerk to junior assistant police officer over at the Khitrovka slums—let him do his drinking and talk back to his superiors down there.

Grushin drummed his fingers in annoyance on the dreary standard-issue baize covering of his desk, took his watch out of his waistcoat pocket—oh, there was still a fair old spell to lunch!—and decisively pulled across the latest Moscow Gazette.

“Well now, what surprises have they got for us today?” he asked aloud, and the young clerk eagerly set aside his hateful goose-quill pen, knowing that the boss would start reading out the headlines and other bits and pieces and commenting on what he read. It was a little habit that Xavier Feofilaktovich Grushin had.

“Take a look at that now, young Mr. Fandorin, right up there on the front page, where you can’t possibly miss it!”

THE LATEST AMERICAN CORSET

LORD BYRON

constructed from the most durable of whalebone for a truly manly figure

AN INCH-THIN WAIST AND YARD-WIDE SHOULDERS!

“And yard-high letters to suit. And way down here in tiny little print we have:”

THE EMPEROR DEPARTS FOR EMS

“But of course, how could the person of the emperor possibly rival the importance of ‘Lord Byron’!”

Xavier Grushin’s entirely good-natured grousing produced a quite remarkable effect on the young clerk. He became inexplicably embarrassed; his cheeks flushed bright red, and his long, girlish eyelashes fluttered guiltily. While we are on the subject of eyelashes, it would seem appropriate at this point to describe Erast Fandorin’s appearance in somewhat greater detail, since he is destined to play a pivotal role in the astounding and terrible events that will shortly unfold. He was a most comely youth with black hair (in which he took a secret pride) and blue eyes (ah, if only they had also been black!), rather tall, with a pale complexion and a confounded, ineradicable ruddy bloom on his cheeks. We can also reveal the reason for the young collegiate registrar’s sudden discomfiture. Only two days previously he had expended a third of his first monthly salary on the very corset described in such vivid and glowing terms and was actually wearing his Lord Byron for the second day, enduring exquisite suffering in the name of beauty. Now he suspected—entirely without justification—that the perspicacious Xavier Grushin had divined the origin of his subordinate’s Herculean bearing and wished to make him an object of fun.

Grushin, however, was already continuing with his reading.

TURKISH BASHI-BAZOUK ATROCITIES IN BULGARIA

“Well, that’s not for reading just before lunch…”

EXPLOSION IN LIGOVKA

Our St.Petersburg correspondent informs us that yesterday at six-thirty in the morning a thunderous explosion occurred at the rental apartment house of Commercial Counselor Vartanov on Znamenskaya Street, completely devastating the apartment on the fourth floor. Upon arrival at the scene the police discovered the remains of a young man, mutilated beyond recognition. The apartment was rented by a certain Mr. P., a private lecturer at the university, and it was apparently his body that was discovered. To judge from the appearance of the lodgings, something in the nature of a secret chemical laboratory had been installed there. The officer in charge of the investigation, Counselor of State Brilling, conjectures that the apartment was being used to manufacture infernal devices for an organization of nihilist terrorists. The investigation is continuing.

“Well now, thanks be to God our Moscow’s not Peter!” Judging from the gleam in his eyes, the youthful Mr. Fandorin would have begged to differ on that score. Indeed, every aspect of his appearance was eloquently expressive of the idea that in the real capital people have serious work to do, tracking down terrorist bombers, not writing out ten times over papers which, if truth were told, contain nothing of the slightest interest in any case.

“Right, then,” said Xavier Grushin, rustling his newspaper. “Let’s see what we have on the city page.”

FIRST MOSCOW ASTAIR HOUSE

The well-known English philanthropist Baroness Astair, through whose zealous and unremitting efforts the model refuges for boy orphans known as Astair Houses have been established in various countries of the world, has notified our correspondent that the first institution of such a type has now opened its doors in our own golden-domed city. Lady Astair, having commenced her activities in Russia only last year, and having already opened an Astair House in St. Petersburg, has decided to extend her support and assistance to the orphans of Moscow…

“Mmmm…” The heartfelt gratitude of all Muscovites…“ Where are our own Russian Owens and Astairs?…All right, enough of that. God bless all the orphans…Now, what have we here?”

A CYNICAL ESCAPADE

“Hmm, this is curious:”

Yesterday the Alexander Gardens were the scene of a sad incident only too distinctly typical of the cynical outlook and manners of modern youth, when Mr. N., a handsome young fellow of twenty-three, a student at Moscow University, and the sole heir to a fortune of millions, shot himself dead in full view of the promenading public.

According to the testimony of eyewitnesses, before committing this reckless act, N. swaggered and boasted to the onlookers, brandishing a revolver in the air. The eyewitnesses at first took his behavior for mere drunken bravado. N., however, was in earnest and he proceeded to shoot himself through the head, expiring on the spot. From a note of outrageously atheistic import which was discovered in the pocket of the suicide, it is apparent that N.’s action was not merely the outcome of some momentary impulse or a consequence of delirium tremens. It would appear that the fashionable epidemic of pointless suicides, which had thus far remained the scourge of Petropolis, has finally spread to the walls of Old Mother Moscow. ‘O tempora, o mores’ To what depths of unbelief and nihilism have our gilded youth descended if they would make a vulgar spectacle even of their own deaths? If our homegrown Brutuses adopt such an attitude to their own lives, then how can we be surprised if they care not a brass kopeck for the lives of other, incomparably more worthy individuals? How apropos in this connection are the words of that most venerable of authors, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, in his new book published in May, ‘A Writer’s Journal’:

“Dear, good, honest people (for all of this is within you!), what realm is this into which you are withdrawing? What has made the dark silence of the grave so dear to you? Look, the spring sun is bright in the sky, the trees have spread their leaves, but you are weary before your life has even begun.”

Xavier Grushin sniffed with feeling and cast a strict sideways glance at his young assistant in case he might have noticed, then continued speaking in a distinctly cooler voice.

“Well, and so on and so forth. But the times really don’t have anything at all to do with it. There’s nothing new to all of this. We’ve had a saying for these types in the land of Rus since ancient times: “Just don’t know when they’re well off.” A fortune of millions? Now who might that be? And see what scoundrels our precinct chiefs are—they put all sorts of rubbish in their reports, but they haven’t bothered to include this. So much for their summary of municipal incidents! But then I suppose it’s an open-and-shut case: he shot himself in front of witnesses…All the same, it’s a curious business. The Alexander Gardens. That’ll be the City Precinct, second station. I’ll tell you what, young Mr. Fandorin, as a personal favor to me, get yourself smartly across there to Mokhovaya Street. Tell them it’s for purposes of observation and what have you. Find out who this N. was. And most important of all, my dear young fellow, be sure to make a copy of that farewell note. I’ll show it to my Yevdokia Andreevna this evening—she has a fondness for such sentimental stuff. And don’t you keep me waiting either—get yourself back here as quick as you can.”

Xavier Grushin’s final words were already addressed to the back of the young collegiate registrar, who was in such great haste to forsake his dreary oilcloth-covered desk that he nearly forgot his peaked cap.

AT THE STATION the young functionary from the Criminal Investigation Division was shown through to the superintendent. However, on seeing what an insignificant and lowly individual had been dispatched on this errand, the superintendent decided not to waste any time on explanations and summoned his assistant.

“Be so kind as to follow Ivan Prokofievich here,” the superintendent said to the boy in a kindly voice (he might be only a small fry, but he was still from the Division). “He’ll show you everything and tell you all about it. And he was the one who went to the dead man’s apartment yesterday. My humble regards to Superintendent Grushin.”

They seated Erast Fandorin at a high desk and brought him the slim case file. He read the heading:

CASE of the suicide of hereditary honorary citizen Pyotr Alexandrov KOKORIN, 23 years, a student of the Faculty of Law at the Imperial University of Moscow. Commenced on the 13th day of the month of May in the year 1876. Concluded on the_____day of the month of____in the year 18___’ and unfastened the knotted tapes with fingers trembling in anticipation.

“Alexander Artamonovich Kokorin’s son,” explained Ivan Prokofievich, a scrawny, lanky veteran with a crumpled face that looked as if a cow had been chewing on it. “Immensely rich man he was. Factory owner. Passed away three years ago now—left the lot to his son. Now why couldn’t he just enjoy being a student and make the most of life? Just what is it these people want? I can’t make it out at all.”

Erast Fandorin simply nodded, not quite knowing what reply to make to that, and became absorbed in reading the statements of the witnesses. The number of reports was rather large, about a dozen in all, the most detailed of them drawn up from the testimony of the daughter of a full privy counselor, Elizaveta von Evert-Kolokoltseva, aged seventeen, and her governess, the spinster Emma Pfьhl, aged forty-eight, with whom the suicide had been in conversation immediately prior to the shooting. However, Erast Fandorin failed to extract from the reports any information beyond that which is already known to the reader, for all the witnesses repeated more or less the same thing, differing only in their degree of perspicacity. Some affirmed that the young man’s appearance had instantly filled them with alarm and foreboding (“The moment I looked into his crazy eyes, I went cold all over,” stated Titular Counselor’s wife Khokhryakova, who went on, however, to testify that she had seen the young man only from the back). Other witnesses spoke, on the contrary, of lightning from out of a clear blue sky.

The final item lying in the file was a crumpled note written on light blue monogrammed paper. Erast Fandorin fastened his eyes greedily on the irregular lines (due, no doubt, to emotional distress).

Gentlemen living after me!

Since you are reading this little letter of mine, I have already departed from you and gone on to learn the secret of death, which remains concealed from your eyes behind seven seals. I am free, while you must carry on living in torment and fear. However, I wager that in the place where I now am and from where, as the Prince of Denmark expressed it, no traveler has yet returned, there is absolutely nothing at all. If anyone should not be in agreement, I respectfully suggest that he investigate for himself. In any case, I care nothing at all for any of you, and I am writing this note so that you should not take it into your heads that I laid hands on myself out of some sentimental nonsense or other. Your world nauseates me, and that, truly, is quite reason enough. That I am not an absolute swine may be seen from the leather blotter.

Pyotr Kokorin

The first thought to strike Erast Fandorin was that the letter did not appear to have been written in a state of emotional distress.

“What does this mean about the blotter?” he asked.

Ivan Prokofievich shrugged. “He didn’t have any blotter on him. But what could you expect, the state he was in? Maybe he was meaning to do something or other, but he forgot. It seems clear enough he was a pretty unstable sort of gentleman. Did you read how he twirled the cylinder on that revolver? And, by the way, only one of the chambers had a bullet in it. It’s my opinion, for instance, that he didn’t really mean to shoot himself at all—just wanted to give his nerves a bit of a thrill, put a keener edge on his feeling for life, so to speak, so afterward his food would have more savor and his sprees would seem sweeter.”

“Only one bullet out of six? That really was bad luck,” said Erast Fandorin, aggrieved for the dead man. But the idea of the leather blotter was still nagging at him.

“Where does he live? That is, where did he…”

“An eight-room apartment in a new building on Ostozhenka Street, and very posh too.” Ivan Prokofievich was keen to share his impressions. “Inherited his own house in the Zamoskvorechie district from his father, an entire estate, outbuildings and all, but he didn’t want to live there, moved as far away from the merchantry as he could.”

“Well then, was no leather blotter found there?”

The superintendent’s assistant was astonished at the idea. “Why, do you think we should have searched the place? I tell you, I’d be afraid to let the agents loose around the rooms of an apartment like that—they might get tempted off the straight and narrow. What’s the point, anyway? Egor Nikiforich, the investigator from the district public prosecutor’s office, gave the dead man’s valet a quarter of an hour to pack up his things and had the local officer keep an eye on him to make sure he didn’t filch any of his master’s belongings, and then he ordered me to seal the door. Until the heirs come forward.”

“And who are the heirs?” Erast Fandorin asked inquisitively.

“Now, there’s the catch. The valet says Kokorin has no brothers or sisters. There are some kind of second cousins, but he wouldn’t let them inside the door. So who’s going to end up with all that loot?” Ivan Prokofievich sighed enviously. “Frightening just to think of it…Ah, but it’s no concern of ours. The lawyer or the executors will turn up tomorrow or the next day. Not even a day’s gone by yet—we’ve still got the body lying in the icehouse. But Egor Nikiforich could close the case tomorrow, then things will start moving all right.”

“But even so it is odd,” Fandorin observed, wrinkling his brow. “If someone makes special mention of some blotter or other in the last letter he ever writes, there must be something to it. And that bit about ‘an absolute swine’ is none too clear either. What if there is something important in that blotter? It’s up to you, of course, but I would definitely search the apartment for it. It seems to me that blotter is the very reason the note was written. There’s some mystery here, mark my words.”

Erast Fandorin blushed, afraid that his impetuous suggestion of a mystery might appear too puerile, but Ivan Prokofievich failed to notice anything strange about the notion.

“You’re right there. We should at least have looked through the papers in the study,” he admitted. “Egor Nikiforich is always in a hurry. There’s eight of them in the family, so he always tries to sneak off home as quick as he can from inspections and investigations. He’s an old man—only a year to go to his pension—so what else can you expect…I’ll tell you what, Mr. Fandorin. What would you say to going around there yourself? We could take a look together. And then I’ll put up a new seal—that’s easy enough. Egor Nikiforich won’t take it amiss. Not in the least; he’ll only thank us for not bothering him one more time. I’ll tell him there was a request from the Division, eh?”

It seemed to Erast Fandorin that Ivan Prokofievich simply wished to examine the ‘posh’ apartment a bit more closely, and the idea of ‘putting up’ a new seal had not sounded too convincing either, but the temptation was simply too great. There truly was an air of mystery about this business…

Erast Fandorin was not greatly impressed by the decor of the deceased Pyotr Kokorin’s residence (the piano nobile of a rich apartment building beside the Prechistenskie Gates), since he himself had lived in mansions that were its equal during the period of his father’s precipitately acquired wealth. The collegiate registrar did not, therefore, linger in the marble entrance hall with the Venetian mirror three arshins* in height and the gilded molding on the ceiling, but strode straight through into the drawing room, a lavish interior with a row of six windows, decorated in the highly fashionable Russian Style, with brightly painted wooden trunks, carved oak on the walls, and a smart tiled stove.

“Didn’t I say he had a taste for stylish living?” Fandorin’s guide said to the back of his head, for some reason speaking in a whisper.

At this point Fandorin bore a remarkable resemblance to a year-old setter who has been allowed out into the forest for the first time and is crazed by the pungent and alluring scent of nearby game. Turning his head to the right and the left, he unerringly identified his target.

“That door over there, is that the study?”

“It is indeed, sir.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

The leather blotter was not long in the seeking. It was lying in the center of a massive writing desk, between a malachite inkstand and a mother-of-pearl shell that served as an ashtray. But before Fandorin could lay his impatient hands on the squeaky brown leather, his gaze fell on a portrait photograph set in a silver frame that was standing in the most conspicuous position on the desk. The face in the portrait was so remarkable that it completely drove all thought of the blotter from Fandorin’s mind. Gazing out at him in semiprofile was a veritable Cleopatra with a dense mane of hair and immense black eyes, her long neck set in a haughty curve and a slight hint of cruelty evident in the willful line of her mouth. Above all the collegiate registrar was bewitched by her expression of calm and confident authority, so unexpected on a girl’s face (for some reason Fandorin very decidedly wanted her to be a girl, and not a married lady).

“She’s a looker,” said Ivan Prokofievich with a whistle, popping up beside him. “Wonder who she is? If you’ll pardon me…”

And without the slightest trembling of those sacrilegious fingers he extracted the enchanting face from its frame and turned the photograph over. Inscribed on it in a broad, slanting hand were the words:

To Pyotr K.

And Peter went out and wept bitterly. Once having given your love, never forswear it!

A.B.

“So she compares him with the apostle Peter and herself with Jesus, does she? A little arrogant, perhaps!” snorted Ivan Prokofievich. “Maybe this creature was the reason our student did away with himself, eh? Aha, there’s the blotter. So our journey wasn’t wasted.”

Ivan Prokofievich opened the leather cover and extracted the solitary sheet of light blue notepaper covered in writing with which Erast Fandorin was already familiar. This time, however, there was a notary’s seal and several signatures at the bottom.

“Excellent,” said Ivan Prokofievich, nodding in satisfaction. “So we’ve found the will and testament, too. Now I wonder what it says.”

It took him no more than a minute to run his eyes over the document, but that minute seemed an eternity to Fandorin, and he regarded it as beneath his dignity to peer over someone else’s shoulder.

“That’s a fine St. George’s Day present for you, granny! And a fine little present for the third cousins!” Ivan Prokofievich exclaimed in a voice filled with incomprehensible gloating. “Well done, Kokorin—he’s shown them all what’s what. That’s the way to do it, the Russian way! Only it does seem a bit unpatriotic somehow. Anyway, that explains the bit about the ‘absolute swine.’ ”

Finally abandoning in his impatience all notion of decorum and respect for rank, Erast Fandorin grabbed the sheet of paper out of his senior officer’s hand and read as follows:

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

I, the undersigned Pyotr Alexandrovich Kokorin, being of sound mind and perfect memory, do hereby declare, in the presence of the witnesses named hereunder, my will concerning the property belonging to me.

All my salable property, of which a full inventory is held by my solicitor, Semyon Efimovich Berenson, I bequeath to the Baroness Margaret Astair, a British citizen, so that all these resources may be used entirely as she shall deem fit for purposes of the education and upbringing of orphans. I’m sure that Madarn Astair will out these funds to more sensible and honest use than our own Russian captains of philanthropy.

This is my final and definitive will and testament; it is valid in law and supersedes my previous will and testament.

I name as my executors the solicitor Semyon Efimovich Berenson and the student of Moscow University Nikolai Stepanovich Akhtyrtsev.

This will and testament has been drawn up in two copies, of which I am retaining one; the other is to be delivered for safekeeping to the office of Mr. Berenson.

Moscow, 12 May 1876

PYOTR KOKORIN

CHAPTER TWO

which consists entirely of conversation

“SAY WHAT YOU WILL, MR. GRUSHIN, BUT IT’S still odd!” Fandorin repeated vehemently. “There’s some kind of mystery here, I swear there is!” He said it again with stubborn emphasis. “Yes, that’s it precisely, a mystery! Judge for yourself. In the first place, the way he shot himself is absurd somehow, by pure chance, with the only bullet in the cylinder, as if he didn’t really intend to shoot himself at all. What kind of infernal bad luck is that? And then there’s the tone of the suicide note. You must admit that’s a bit strange—as if it had just been dashed off in some odd moment, and yet it raises an extremely important problem. The very devil of a problem.” The strength of Fandorin’s feelings lent his voice a new resonance. “But I’ll tell you about the problem later. Meanwhile, what about the will? Surely that’s suspicious?”

“And just what exactly do you find so suspicious about it, my dear young fellow?” Xavier Grushin purred as he glanced listlessly through the Police Municipal Incidents, Report for the last twenty-four hours. Usually arriving during the afternoon, this was more or less uninformative reading, since matters of great importance were not included. For the most part it was a hodgepodge of trivial incident and absolute nonsense, but just occasionally something curious might turn up in it. In this edition there was a report on the previous day’s suicide in the Alexander Gardens, but as the highly experienced Xavier Grushin had anticipated, it provided no details and, of course, it did not give the text of the suicide note.

“I’ll tell you what! Although it looks as if Kokorin didn’t really mean to shoot himself, the will, for all its defiant tone, is drawn up in full and proper order—notarized, signed by witnesses, and with the executors named,” said Fandorin, bending down a ringer as he made each point. “And I should think so—it’s an immense fortune. I made enquiries: two mills, three factories, houses in various towns, shipyards in Libava, half a million alone in interest-bearing securities in the state bank!”

“Half a million!” gasped Xavier Grushin, glancing up sharply from his papers. “The Englishwoman’s a very lucky lady, very lucky.”

“And, by the way, can you explain to me how Lady Astair is involved in all this? Why has everything been left to her and not to anyone else? Just what is the connection between her and Kokorin? That’s what we need to find out!”

“He wrote himself that he doesn’t trust our own Russian embezzlers of public funds, and the newspapers have been singing the Englishwoman’s praises for months now. No, my dear fellow, why don’t you explain to me why your generation holds life so cheap? The slightest excuse and—bang! And all with such pomp, such pathos, such contempt for the entire world. And just how have you earned the right to show such contempt?” Grushin asked, growing angry as he remembered how impudently and disrespectfully he had been addressed the evening before by his beloved daughter Sasha, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl. The question, however, was largely rhetorical, since a young clerk’s opinion on the matter was of little interest to the venerable superintendent, and he immediately stuck his nose back into the summary report.

In response Erast Fandorin became even more animated. “Ah, that is the very problem I specially wanted to mention. Take a man like Kokorin. Life gives him everything—riches and freedom and education and good looks”—Fandorin threw in good looks simply to round out the phrase, although he had not the slightest idea of the deceased’s appearance—“but he dices with death and eventually kills himself. Do you want to know why? Living in your world makes us young people feel sick—Kokorin wrote that in so many words, only he didn’t expand on it. Your ideals—a career, money, public honors—for many of us they mean absolutely nothing. That’s not the kind of thing we dream about now. Do you think there’s nothing behind the things they write about an epidemic of suicides? The very best of the educated young people are simply giving up on life—they’re suffocated by a lack of spiritual oxygen—and you, the elders of society, fail completely to draw the appropriate conclusions!”

The entire emotional force of this denunciation was apparently directed against Xavier Feofilaktovich Grushin in person, since there were no other ‘elders of society’ to be observed in the vicinity, but not only did Grushin not take offense, he actually nodded his head in evident satisfaction.

“Ah yes,” he said with a derisive chuckle as he glanced into the text of the report. “Here’s something concerning the lack of spiritual oxygen.”

The body of the cobbler Ivan Eremeev Buldygin, twenty-seven years of age, who had hanged himself, was discovered in Chikhachevsky Lane in the third district of the Meshchanskaya Precinct at ten o’clock in the morning. According to the testimony of the yardkeeper Pyotr Silin, the reason for the suicide was lack of funds for drink to relieve a hangover.

“That’s the way all the best ones will leave us. There’ll be no one but us old fools left soon.”

“You may mock,” Erast Fandorin said bitterly, “but in Petersburg and Warsaw not a day goes by without university students, and even school students, poisoning or shooting or drowning themselves.You think it’s funny…”

Repent, Mr. Xavier Grushin, before it’s too late, he thought vengefully, although until that moment the idea of suicide had never entered his head—he was a young man of far too vivacious a character for that. Silence ensued: while Fandorin imagined a modest little grave without a cross outside the fence of the churchyard, Grushin carried on running his finger along the lines of print and turning the rustling pages.

“But, really, this is dreadful nonsense,” he muttered. “Have they all lost their minds or what? Look here, two reports, one from the third district of the Miasnitskaya Precinct, on page eight, another from the first district of the Rogozhskaya Precinct, on page nine. Listen.”

At thirty-five minutes past twelve police inspector Fedoruk was summoned from his station to the building of the Moscow Fire Insurance Company on Podkolokolny Lane at the request of the Kaluga landowner’s wife Avdotya Filippovna Spitsyna (temporarily resident at the Boyar Hotel). Mrs. Spitsyna testified that beside the entrance to the bookshop a certain respectably dressed gentleman, who appeared to be about twenty-five years of age, had attempted to shoot himself. He set a pistol to his temple, but apparently it misfired and the failed suicide fled the scene. Mrs. Spitsyna demanded that the police find the young man and hand him over to the spiritual authorities for the imposition of a religious penance. No search was undertaken because no crime had been committed.

“There you are—isn’t that just what I was saying!” Erast Fandorin cried triumphantly, feeling himself totally vindicated.

“Wait a moment, young man, that’s not all,” Grushin interrupted. “Listen to what comes next. Page nine.”

Report of police officer Semenov (he’s from the Rogozhskaya Precinct). Between ten and eleven he was summoned by the petty bourgeois Nikolai Kukin, the shopkeeper at the grocery store Brykin and Sons, opposite the Malaya Yauza Bridge. Kukin informed him that a few minutes earlier a student had climbed onto one of the stone bollards of the bridge and set a pistol to his head, clearly intending to shoot himself. Kukin heard a metallic click, but there was no shot. After the click the student jumped down onto the road and walked away quickly in the direction of Yauza Street. No other eyewitnesses have been found. Kukin is petitioning for a police post to be set up on the bridge, since last year a girl of loose morals drowned herself there and this is damaging his trade.

“I don’t understand it at all,” Fandorin said with a shrug. “What strange kind of ritual is this? Could it be some secret society of suicides?”

“No…what society?” Xavier Grushin said slowly, then began speaking faster and faster as he gradually became more animated. “There is no society, my fine young gentleman—it’s all much simpler than that. And all that business with the cylinder is clear now—it just never occurred to me before. It’s this student of ours, Kokorin, who’s been playing pranks. Look here.” He got up and strode quickly over to the map hanging on the wall beside the door. “Here’s the Malaya Yauza Bridge. From there he went along Yauza Street, idled away the time for an hour or so until he ended up on Podkolokolny Lane beside the insurance company, gave landowner’s wife Spitsyna a good fright, and then carried on toward the Kremlin. Some time after two he reached the Alexander Gardens, and there, as we know only too well, his journey came to an end.”

“But why? And what does it all mean?” Fandorin asked, gazing hard at the map.

“What it means is not for me to judge. But I have a good idea how things happened. Our pampered student and gilded youth decided to bid the world farewell. But before he died he wanted to give his nerves a bit of a thrill. I read somewhere that it’s called American roulette. It was invented in America, in the goldfields. You put a single shot in the cylinder, give it a twirl, and then—bang! If you’re lucky you break the bank; if not, then it’s good-bye and farewell. So our student deliberately set out on his voyage around Moscow to tempt fate. It’s quite possible that he tried to shoot himself more than three times, but then not every eyewitness will bother to call the police. That landowner’s wife who likes to save souls and Kukin with his private interest were vigilant enough, but God only knows how many attempts Kokorin made altogether. Or perhaps he struck a bargain with himself: I’ll dice with death so many times, and then that’s it. If I live, then so be it. But then, that’s just me fantasizing. That was no stroke of infernal bad luck in the Alexander Gardens. By two o’clock our student had simply run out of chances.”

“Mr. Grushin, you have a genuine analytical talent,” said Erast Fandorin with sincere admiration. “I can just see it all happening in front of my eyes.”

Grushin always enjoyed well-earned praise, even from a young whippersnapper.

“True enough. So there is something to be learned from the old duffers after all,” he said in a didactic tone. “You should have served on investigations as long as I have, not just in these highly cultured times of ours, but back in the Emperor Nicholas’s days. Then it was nobody’s concern what was detective work and what wasn’t. Our department didn’t even exist in Moscow then—there wasn’t even an investigations office. One day you were looking for murderers, the next you were down at the market, reading folks the riot act. The day after that you were doing the rounds of the taverns, rounding up people without passports. But it all developed your powers of observation and knowledge of people and helped you grow a thick skin—and there’s no way you can manage without that in our police work,” Grushin concluded with a broad hint, only to realize that the clerk was no longer listening but frowning instead at some thought of his own that appeared to present him with some difficulty.

“Right, then, what’s that you’re puzzling over? Out with it.”

“There’s something I can’t quite work out…” said Fandorin with a nervous twitch of his handsome half-moon eyebrows. “This Kukin says it was a student on the bridge…”

“Of course a student—who else?”

“But how could Kukin know that Kokorin was a student? He was wearing a frock coat and a hat, and no one in the Alexander Gardens identified him as a student…All the reports say ‘a young man’ or ‘the gentleman.’ It is a puzzle.”

“You’ve got puzzles on the brain,” said Grushin with a wave of his hand. “This Kukin of yours is a fool, and that’s all there is to it. He saw a young gentleman in civilian clothes and just imagined he was a student. Or maybe our shopkeeper has a practiced eye and he was able to recognize a student. After all, he deals with customers from morning till night.”

“Kukin’s never laid eyes on the likes of Kokorin in his dirty little shop,” Erast Fandorin objected quite reasonably.

“So what do you make of that?”

“I think it would be a good idea to question the landowner’s wife Spitsyna and the shopkeeper Kukin a bit more thoroughly. Of course, Mr. Grushin, it would be inappropriate for you to deal with such trifles, but if you will permit me, I could do it…” Erast Fandorin was already halfway out of his chair, so badly did he want Xavier Grushin’s permission.

Xavier Grushin was on the point of taking a strict line, but he thought better of it. Why not let the boy get a whiff of real, live action and learn how to talk to witnesses? Perhaps he might just amount to something after all.

“I don’t forbid it,” he declared impressively, then quickly forestalled the exclamation of joy that was about to burst from the collegiate registrar’s lips. “But first, if you don’t mind, finish the report for His Excellency. And I tell you what, my dear fellow, it’s after three already. I think I’ll be on my way home. You can tell me tomorrow where our shopkeeper got his student from.”

CHAPTER THREE

in which a ‘slouching skewdint’ makes his appearance

FROM MIASNITSKAYA STREET, WHERE THE CRIMINAL Investigation Division had its office, to the Boyar Hotel, where, according to the report, the landowner’s wife Spitsyna had her ‘temporary residence,’ was a walk of only twenty minutes, and despite the impatience that was consuming him, Fandorin decided to stroll there on foot. His tormentor, Lord Byron, who constricted the clerk’s sides so mercilessly, had forced such a substantial breach in his budget that the expense of a cab could well have reflected in a drastic fashion on the adequacy of his diet. Chewing as he walked along on a fish-gristle pie bought at the corner of Gusyatnikov Lane (let us not forget that in the flurry of investigative excitement Erast Fandorin had been left without any lunch), he stepped out along Chistoprudny Boulevard, where antediluvian old women in ancient coats and caps were scattering crumbs for the fat, impudent pigeons. Horse-drawn cabs and phaetons dashed by along the cobbled roadway at a pace Erast Fandorin could not so possibly match, redirecting his thoughts to his offended feelings—the very idea of a detective without a carriage and trotters was simply impossible as a matter of principle. Thank goodness the Boyar Hotel was on Pokrovka Street, but trudging on from there to the shopkeeper Kukin’s place on the Yauza would take half an hour for certain. Any procrastination now could well be fatal, Erast Fandorin tormented himself (with some degree of exaggeration, it must be said), but his lordship the superintendent had begrudged him fifteen kopecks from the state purse. No doubt the Division allocated him eighty rubles every month for his own regular cabby. Those were the bosses’ privileges for you: one rode home in his personal cab, while the other plodded the streets on official business.

But now at last on Erast Fandorin’s left the bell tower of Holy Trinity Church, which stood beside the Boyar Hotel, hove into view above the roof of Souchet’s coffeehouse, and Fandorin quickened his stride in anticipation of important discoveries.

HALF AN HOUR LATER he was wandering with a weary and dejected stride down Pokrovsky Boulevard, where the pigeons—every bit as plump and impudent as on Chistoprudny Boulevard—were fed not by old noblewomen but by merchants’ wives.

His conversation with the witness had proved disappointing. Erast Fandorin had caught the landowner’s wife at the very last moment—she was on the point of getting into her droshky, piled high with various trunks and bundles, in order to leave Russia’s first capital city and set out for the province of Kaluga. Out of considerations of economy, Spitsyna still traveled in the old–fashioned manner, not by railway but with her own horses.

This was undoubtedly a stroke of good fortune for Fandorin, since had the landowner’s wife been hurrying to reach the railway station, no conversation at all would have taken place. But no matter which approach Erast Fandorin adopted in the discussion with his garrulous witness, its essential content remained entirely unaltered: Xavier Grushin was right, it was Kokorin that Spitsyna had seen—she had mentioned his frock coat and his round hat and even his patent leather gaiters with buttons, which had not been mentioned by the witnesses from the Alexander Gardens.

His only hope now was Kukin, and Grushin was very probably right about him as well. The shopkeeper had simply blurted out the first thing that came into his mind, and now he had Fandorin trudging all the way across Moscow and making a laughingstock of himself in front of the superintendent.

The glass door bearing the image of a sugar loaf at the grocery store Brykin and Sons faced directly out onto the embankment, offering a clear view of the bridge. Fandorin noted that immediately. He also noted the fact that the windows of the shop were flung wide open (evidently because of the sweltering heat), so that Kukin might well have been able to hear a ‘metallic click,’ since the distance to the nearest stone bollard of the bridge was certainly only fifteen paces at the most. A man of about forty wearing a red shirt, a black woolen-weave waistcoat, velveteen trousers, and bottle-shaped boots peeped around the door with an intrigued expression.

“Can I be of any help, Your Honor?” he asked. “Perhaps you’ve managed to lose your way?”

“Kukin?” Erast Fandorin inquired in a strict voice, not expecting to derive any consolation from the imminent explanations.

“Indeed, sir,” the shopkeeper replied cautiously, knitting his bushy eyebrows. Then, immediately guessing the truth, “Ah, you must be from the police, Your Honor? I’m most humbly grateful to you. I didn’t expect you would be attending to me so soon. The local officer said his superiors would consider the matter, but I didn’t really expect anything, sir, not really, sir. But why are we standing out here on the doorstep? Please, come into the shop. I’m most grateful to you, sir, most grateful.”

He even bowed and opened the door and made a gesture of invitation as much as to say “after you,” but Fandorin did not budge. He said portentously, “Kukin, I am not from the local station. I am from the Criminal Investigation Division. I have instructions to find the stu…the person you reported to the local inspector of police.”

“The skewdint, you mean?” the shopkeeper prompted him readily. “Of course, sir, I remember his looks most precisely. A terrible thing, may God forgive him. As soon as I saw he’d clambered up on that post and put that gun to his head, I just froze, I did. That’s it, I thought, it’ll be just like it was last year—there’ll be no tempting anyone into this shop, not even for a fancy loaf. And what fault is it of ours? What draws them here like bees to honey to do away with themselves? Stroll on down that way to the Moscow River—it’s deeper there and the bridge is higher and…”

“Be quiet, Kukin,” Erast Fandorin interrupted him. “You’d do better to describe the student. What he was wearing, what he looked like, and why you decided he was a student in the first place.”

“Why, he was a skewdint right enough, he was, a real proper skew-dint, Your Honor,” the shopkeeper said in surprise. “Uniform coat and buttons and little glasses perched on his nose.”

“A uniform coat, you say?” Fandorin exclaimed abruptly. “He was wearing a student coat, then?”

“Why, what else, sir?” asked Kukin with a pitying glance at the dim-witted functionary. “If not for that, how was I to tell as he’s a skewdint or he isn’t? I reckon I can tell a skewdint from a clerk by his coat, so I do.”

Erast Fandorin could not really make any response to that just remark, so he took a neat little notepad with a pencil out of his pocket in order to record the witness’s testimony. The notepad, which Fandorin had bought just before entering service with the Criminal Investigation Division, had lain idle for three weeks, and today was the first time he had had any use for it. In the course of the morning he had already covered several of its small pages with his fine writing.

“Tell me what this man looked like.”

“Just an ordinary sort of person, really. Nothing much to look at, a bit pimply around the face, like. And them little glasses…”

“What kind of glasses—spectacles or a pince-nez?”

“You know, the kind on a ribbon.”

“A pince-nez, then,” said Fandorin, scribbling away with his pencil. “Any other distinctive features?”

“He had this terrible slouch, with his shoulders almost up over the top of his head___A real skewdint, like I told you…”

Kukin gazed in perplexity at the ‘clerk,’ who said nothing for a long time, frowning, rubbing his lips together, and rustling his little notepad. Obviously he was thinking about something.

In the notepad it said: “Uniform coat, pimples, pince-nez, bad slouch.” Well, a few pimples didn’t mean much. The inventory of Kokorin’s possessions didn’t say a word about any pince-nez. Perhaps he had dropped it? It was possible. The witnesses in the Alexander Gardens had not said anything about a pince-nez either, but they had not really been questioned much about the suicide’s appearance. What would have been the point? A slouch? Hm. As he recalled, the Moscow Gazette had described ‘a handsome young fellow,’ but the reporter had not been present at the incident. He had not seen Kokorin, and so he could easily have stuck in the ‘handsome young fellow’ simply for the sake of effect. That only left the student uniform coat, and that was something that could not be discounted. If it had been Kokorin on the bridge, it meant that during the interval between shortly after ten and half past twelve for some reason he had changed into a frock coat. But where, though? From the Yauza to Ostozhenka Street and then back to the Moscow Fire Insurance Company was a long way; you couldn’t possibly cover the distance in an hour and a half.

Fandorin realized with a hollow, sinking feeling that only one alternative remained open to him: to take the shopkeeper Kukin by the collar and drag him down to the station on Mokhovaya Street, where the suicide’s body was still lying in the mortuary, packed in ice, and arrange an identification. Erast Fandorin imagined the gaping skull with the crust of dried blood and brains, and an entirely natural association brought back the memory of the merchant’s wife Krupnova with her throat cut, who still continued to visit him in his nightmares. No, he definitely did not wish to make the trip to the ‘cold room.’ But there was some connection between the student from the Malaya Yauza Bridge and the suicide from the Alexander Gardens that absolutely had to be cleared up. Who could tell him whether Kokorin had pimples and a slouch and whether he wore a pince-nez?

Well, first, there was the landowner’s wife Spitsyna, but she was probably driving up to the Kaluga Gate by now. Second, there was the deceased’s valet. What was his name, now? Not that it mattered in any case. The investigator had thrown him out of the apartment; trying to find him now would be a complete waste of time. That left the witnesses from the Alexander Gardens, and above all the two ladies with whom Kokorin had been in conversation during the final minute of his life. They at least must have got a good look at the details of his appearance. Here it was written in his notepad: “Daughter of full privy counselor Eliz. Alexandrovna Evert-Kolokoltseva, 17, spinster Emma Gottliebovna Pfьhl, 48, Malaya Nikitskaya Street, private residence.”

He would be obliged to go to the expense of a cab after all.

THE DAY WAS TURNING out to be a long one. The cheerful sun of May, still by no means weary of illuminating the golden-domed city, was reluctantly slipping down the sky toward the line of the roofs when Erast Fandorin, now two twenty-kopeck coins the poorer, descended from his cab in front of the smart mansion with the Doric columns, molded-stucco facade, and marble porch. Seeing his fare halt in hesitation, the cabman said, “That’s the one, all right, the general’s house—don’t you worry about that. This ain’t my first year driving ‘round Moscow.”

What if they won’t let me in? Erast Fandorin thought with a sudden twinge of fear at the possible humiliation. He took a firm grasp of the gleaming brass hammer and knocked twice. The massive door with bronze lion masks immediately swung open, and a doorman dressed in rich livery with gold braid stuck his head out.

“To see the baron? From the office?” he asked briskly. “Reporting or just delivering some document? Come on in, do.”

Finding himself in a spacious entrance hall brightly illuminated by both a chandelier and gaslights, the visitor was deserted by his final shred of courage.

“Actually, I’m here to see Elizaveta Alexandrovna,” he explained. “Erast Petrovich Fandorin, from the Criminal Investigation Division. On an urgent matter.”

“The Criminal Investigation Division,” the guardian of the portal repeated with a frown of disdain. “Would that be in connection with yesterday’s events? Out of the question. The young lady spent very nearly half the day in tears, and she slept badly last night as well. I won’t admit you and I won’t announce you. His Excellency has already threatened your people from the precinct with dire consequences for tormenting Elizaveta Alexandrovna with their interrogations yesterday. Outside with you, if you please, outside.” And the scoundrel actually began nudging Fandorin toward the exit with his fat belly.

“But what about the spinster Pfьhl?” Erast Fandorin cried out despairingly. “Emma Gottliebovna, forty-eight years of age? I would like at least to have a few words with her. This is important state business!”

The doorman smacked his lips pompously. “Very well, I will admit you to her. Go through that way, under the stairs. Third door on the right along the corridor. That is where the madam governess resides.”

The door was opened in response to Fandorin’s knock by a gaunt individual who stared, unspeaking, at her visitor out of round brown eyes.

“I am from the police. My name is Fandorin. Are you Miss Pfьhl?” Erast Fandorin inquired uncertainly, then repeated the question in German just to be sure: “Polizeiamt. Sind Sie Freilein Pfьhl? Guten Abend.”

“Good efening,” the gaunt individual replied severely in Russian. “Yes, I am Emma Pfьhl. Come in. Zit down zere on zat shair.”

Fandorin sat where he had been ordered, on a Viennese chair with a curved back standing beside a writing desk on which some textbooks and stacks of writing paper were laid out in an extremely tidy fashion. It was a pleasant room with good light but completely uninteresting, lacking in life. The only spot of bright color throughout its entire extent was provided by a trio of exuberant geraniums standing in pots on the window.

“Are you here about zat shtupid young man who shot himzelf?” Miss Pfьhl inquired. “I answered all of ze policeman’s kvestions yesterday, but if you vish to ask again, you may ask. I understand vat ze vork of ze police is—it is very important. My uncle Gьnter zerved as an Oberwachtmeister in ze Zaxon police.”

“I am a collegiate registrar,” Erast Fandorin explained, not wishing himself to be taken for a sergeant major, “a civil servant, fourteenth class.”

“Yes, I know how to understand rank,” the German woman said with a nod, pointing to the lapel of his uniform jacket. “Zo, mister collegiate registrar, I am listening.”

At that moment the door swung open without a knock and a fair-haired young lady with an enchanting flush on her cheeks darted into the room.

“Frдulein Pfьhl! Morgenfahren wir nach Kuntsevo!* Honestly. Papa has given his permission!” she babbled rapidly from the doorway. Then, noticing the stranger, she stopped short and lapsed into a confused silence, but the gaze of her gray eyes nonetheless remained fixed on the young official in an expression of the most lively curiosity.

“Veil brought-up young baronesses do not run, zey valk,” her governess told her with feigned strictness. “Ezpecially ven zey are all of zeventeen years old. If you do not run but valk, zen you haf time to notice a stranger and greet him properly.”

“Good day, sir,” the miraculous vision whispered.

Fandorin leapt to his feet and bowed, his nerves jangling quite appallingly. The poor clerk was so overwhelmed by the girl’s appearance that he was afraid he might fall in love with her at first sight, and that was something he simply could not do. Even in his dear papa’s more prosperous days, a princess like this would have been well beyond his reach, and now the idea was even more ridiculous.

“How do you do,” he said very dryly with a grave frown, thinking to himself: Cast me in the role of a pitiful supplicant, would you?

General was her father’s rank and designation,

A mere titular counselor was he, and poor,

So when he made his timid declaration,

She quickly had him put out of the door.

Oh no, you don’t, my dear lady! I still have a long way to go before I even reach titular counselor.

“Collegiate Registrar Erast Petrovich Fandorin, of the Criminal Investigation Division,” he said, introducing himself in an official tone. “I am pursuing an investigation into yesterday’s unfortunate incident in the Alexander Gardens. The need has arisen to ask a few more questions. But if you find it unpleasant—I quite understand how upset you must have been—it will be enough for me to have a word with Miss Pfьhl alone.”

“Yes, it was quite horrible.” The young lady’s eyes, already very large, widened still further. “To be honest, I squeezed my eyes tight shut and saw almost nothing at all, and afterward I fainted…But it is all so fascinating! Frдulein Pfьhl, may I stay for a while, too? Oh, please! You know, I am really just as much a witness as you are!”

“For my part, in the interests of the investigation, I would also prefer it if the baroness were present,” said Fandorin, like a coward.

“Order is order,” said Emma Pfьhl with a nod. “I have told you over and over again, Lischen: Ordnung muss sein* Ze law must be obeyed. You may stay.”

Lizanka (the affectionate name by which Fandorin, now hopelessly lost, was already thinking of Elizaveta Evert-Kolokoltseva) seated herself eagerly on the leather divan, gazing wide-eyed at our hero.

He took a grip on himself, turned to Frдulein Pfьhl, and asked, “Can you please describe the gentleman’s appearance for me?”

“Ze zhentleman who shot himzelf?” she asked. “Naja* Brown eyes, razer tall, no mustache or beard, zideburns none eizer, a fery young face, but not a fery good von. Now ze clothes—”

“We’ll come to the clothes later,” Erast Fandorin interrupted her. “You say it was not a good face? Why? Because of his pimples?”

“Pickeln”, Lizanka translated, blushing.

“Ahja, ze pimples.” The governess repeated the slightly unfamiliar word with relish. “No, zat zhentleman did not haf pimples. He had good, healthy skin. But his face vas not fery good.”

“Why?”

“It vas nasty. He looked as zough he did not vish to kill himzelf, but zomeone altogether different. Oh, it vas a nightmare!” exclaimed Emma Pfьhl, becoming excited at her recollection of events. “Spring, zuch zunny veather, all ze ladies and gentlemen out valking in ze vonderful garden covered vith flowers!”

At these words Erast Fandorin cast a sidelong glance at Lizanka, but she had evidently long ago become quite accustomed to her companion’s distinctive mode of speech and she was gazing at him as trustingly and radiantly as ever.

“And did he have a pince-nez? Perhaps not on his nose but protruding from a pocket? On a silk ribbon?” Fandorin threw out questions one after another. “And did it not perhaps seem to you that he slouched? And another thing. I know he was wearing a frock coat, but was there not anything about him to suggest he was a student—uniform trousers, perhaps? Did you notice anything?”

“Alvays haf I noticed eferyzing,” the German woman replied with dignity. “Ze trousers vere check pantaloons of expensive vool. Zere vas no pince-nez at all. No slouching eizer. Zat zhentleman had good posture.” She began thinking and suddenly asked him, “Slouching, pince-nez, and a shtudent? Vy did you say zat?”

“Why do you ask?” Erast Fandorin said cautiously.

“It is strange. Zere vas von zhentleman zere. A shtudent with a slouch vearing a pince-nez.”

“What? Where?” gasped Fandorin.

“I zaw zuch a gentleman…jenseits*…on ze ozer side of ze railings, in ze street. He vas standing zere and looking at us. I even sought zis shtudent vas going to help us get rid of zat dreadful man. And he vas slouching very badly. I saw zat afterward, after ze ozer zhentleman had already killed himzelf. Ze shtudent turned and valked avay qvickly qvickly. And I saw zat he had a bad slouch. Zat happens ven children are not taught to sit correctly in childhood. Sitting correctly is very important. My vards alvays sit correctly. Look at ze Frдulein Baroness. See how she holds her back? It is very beautiful!”

At that Elizaveta Evert-Kolokoltseva blushed, and so prettily that for a moment Fandorin lost the thread of the conversation, although Frдulein Pfьhl’s statement was undoubtedly of the utmost importance.

CHAPTER FOUR

which tells of the ruinous power of beauty

SHORTLY AFTER TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING the following day, Erast Fandorin, endowed not only with his chief’s blessing but also with three rubles for exceptional expenses, arrived at the yellow university building on Mokhovaya Street. His mission was simple enough in principle but would require a certain degree of luck: to locate a rather ordinary-looking, somewhat pimply student with a slouch and a pince-nez on a silk ribbon. It was entirely possible that this suspicious individual did not study at the premises on Mokhovaya Street at all but in the Higher Technical College or the Forestry Academy or some other institute of learning, but Xavier Grushin (regarding his young assistant with a mixture of astonishment and joy) had concurred wholeheartedly in Fandorin’s surmise that in all probability the ‘sloucher,’ like the deceased Kokorin, pursued his studies at the university, and there was a very good chance that he did so in the self-same Faculty of Law.

Dressed in his civilian clothes, Fandorin dashed headlong up the cast-iron steps of the front porch, rushed past the bearded attendant in green livery, and took up a convenient position in the semicircular window embrasure—a vantage point that afforded an excellent view of the vestibule, with its cloakroom, and the courtyard, and even the entrances to both wings of the building. For the first time since his father had died and the young man’s life had been diverted from the clear road straight ahead, Erast Fandorin beheld the venerable yellow walls of the university without an aching in his heart for what might have been. Who could say which mode of existence was the more fascinating and more useful for society: the book learning of a student or the grueling life of a detective pursuing an investigation into an important and dangerous case? (Well, perhaps not dangerous, exactly, but certainly crucially important and highly mysterious.)

Approximately one out of every four students who hove into this attentive observer’s field of view was wearing a pince-nez, and in many cases it hung precisely on a silk ribbon. Approximately one student out of every five was sporting a certain quantity of pimples about his face. Nor was there any shortage of students with a slouch. However, all three of these features seemed stubbornly disinclined to combine together in the person of a single individual.

When it was already after one o’clock, Erast Fandorin extracted a salami sandwich from his pocket and fortified himself without leaving his post. By this time he had succeeded in establishing thoroughly amicable relations with the bearded doorkeeper, who told Fandorin to call him Mitrich and had already imparted to the young man several extremely valuable pieces of advice concerning entry to the ‘nuversity.’ Fandorin, who had represented himself to the garrulous old man as a young provincial cherishing fond dreams of buttons adorned with the university crest, was already wondering whether or not he ought to change his story and interrogate Mitrich directly about the pimpled sloucher, when the doorman suddenly became animated, grabbing the peaked cap off his head and pulling open the door—this was Mitrich’s regular procedure whenever one of the professors or rich students passed by, for which he would every now and again receive a kopeck or perhaps even a five-kopeck piece. Glancing around, Erast Fandorin noticed a student approaching the exit, clad in a sumptuous velvet cloak newly retrieved from the cloakroom, with clasps in the form of lion’s feet. Gleaming on the bridge of the fop’s nose was a pince-nez, and adorning his forehead was a scattering of pink pimples. Fandorin strained hard in order to diagnose the condition of this student’s posture, but the confounded cape of the cloak and its raised collar thwarted his efforts.

“Good evening, Nikolai Stepanovich. Would you like me to call you a cab?” the doorkeeper said with a bow.

“Tell me, Mitrich, has it stopped raining yet?” the pimply student inquired in a high-pitched voice. “Then I’ll take a stroll. I’m tired of sitting.” And he dropped a coin into the outstretched palm from between the finger and thumb of his white-gloved hand.

“Who’s that?” Fandorin asked in a whisper, straining his eyes to follow the dandy’s receding back. “Doesn’t he have a bit of a slouch?”

“Nikolai Stepanich Akhtyrtsev. Rich as they come, royal blood,” Mitrich declared reverentially. “Doles out at least fifteen kopecks every time.”

Fandorin suddenly felt feverish. Akhtyrtsev! Surely he was the one who had been named as executor in Kokorin’s will!

Mitrich bowed respectfully to yet another teacher, the long-haired lecturer in physics, and on turning back discovered to his surprise that the respectable young provincial gentleman had vanished into thin air.

THE BLACK VELVET CLOAK was easily visible from a distance, and Fandorin had overtaken his suspect in a trice but he hesitated to hail him by name. What accusation could he actually put to him? Even supposing he were to be identified by the shopkeeper Kukin and the spinster Pfьhl (at this point Erast Fandorin sighed heavily as he recalled Lizanka yet again for the umpteenth time), then what of it? Would it not be better to follow the guidance of the great Fouchй,* that incomparable luminary of criminal investigation, and shadow the object of his interest?

No sooner said than done. Especially as shadowing the student proved to be quite easy: Akhtyrtsev was strolling at a leisurely pace in the direction of Tverskaya Street, without looking around, merely glancing after the pretty young milliners every now and then. Several times Erast Fandorin boldly stole up very close to the student and even heard him carelessly whistling Smith’s serenade from The Fair Maid of Perth. The failed suicide (if, indeed, this were he) was clearly in the most cheerful of moods. The student halted outside Korf’s tobacco shop and spent a long time surveying the boxes of cigars in the window, but he did not go in.

Fandorin was beginning to feel convinced that his mark was idling away the minutes until some appointed time. This conviction was reinforced when Akhtyrtsev took out a gold pocket watch and nicked open its lid, then increased his pace as he set off up the sidewalk, switching into a rendition of the more decisive ‘Boys’ Chorus’ from the new-style opera Carmen.

Turning into Kamergersky Lane, the student stopped whistling and stepped out so briskly that Erast Fandorin was obliged to drop back a little, otherwise it would have looked too suspicious. Fortunately, before he reached the fashionable ladies’ salon of Darzans, the mark slowed his pace and shortly thereafter came to a complete halt. Fandorin crossed over to the opposite side of the street and took up his post beside a bakery that breathed out the fragrant aromas of fancy pastries.

For about fifteen minutes, perhaps even twenty, Akhtyrtsev, displaying ever more obvious signs of nervousness, strode to and fro in front of the decorative oak doors of the shop, into which from time to time busy-looking ladies disappeared and from which deliverymen emerged bearing elegantly wrapped bundles and boxes. Waiting in a line along the pavement were several carriages, some even with coats of arms on their lacquered doors. At seventeen minutes past two (Erast Fandorin noted the time from a clock in the shop window) the student suddenly roused himself and dashed over to a slim, elegant lady wearing a short veil, who had emerged from the shop. Doffing his peaked cap, he began saying something, gesturing with his arms. Fandorin crossed the road with an expression of boredom on his face—after all, why should he not also wish to drop into Darzans?

“I have no time for you just at present,” he heard the lady declare in a clear voice. She was dressed in the latest Parisian fashion, in a dress of lilac watered silk with a train. “Later. Come after seven, as usual. Everything will be decided there.”

Paying no more attention to the agitated Akhtyrtsev, she walked off toward a two-seater phaeton with an open roof.

“But, Amalia! Amalia Kazimirovna, by your leave!” the student called out after her. “I was rather counting on a discussion in private.”

“Later, later!” the lady flung back at him. “I’m in a hurry at the moment!”

A faint breath of wind lifted the light, gauzy veil from her face, and Erast Fandorin froze in astonishment. He had seen those languid, night-black eyes, that Egyptian oval face, those capriciously curving lips before, and once seen, such a face can never be forgotten. It was she, the mysterious A.B., who had bidden the unfortunate Kokorin never to forswear his love! Now the case was certainly assuming a completely different complexion.

Akhtyrtsev halted in dismay on the pavement, his head drawn back gracelessly into his shoulders (a slouch, a quite distinct slouch, Erast Fandorin noted conclusively), and meanwhile the phaeton unhurriedly bore the Egyptian queen away in the direction of Petrovka Street. Fandorin had to make a decision, and judging that the student would be easy enough to locate again, he abandoned him to his fate and set off at a run toward the corner of Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street, where a line of taxi-cabs was standing.

“Police,” he hissed at the drowsy Ivan in a peaked cap and padded caftan. “Quick, follow that carriage! And get a move on! Don’t worry, you’ll be paid the full fare.”

His Ivan drew himself up, pushed back his sleeves with exaggerated zeal, shook the reins, gave a bark, and his dappled nag set off, its hoofs clip-clopping loudly against the cobbles of the road.

At the corner of Rozhdestvenka Street a dray carrying a load of planks swung out across the roadway, blocking it completely. In extreme agitation Erast Fandorin leapt to his feet and even rose up on the tips of his toes, gazing after the phaeton, which had slipped through ahead of the obstruction. He was fortunate in just managing to catch a glimpse of it as it turned onto Bolshaya Lubyanka Street.

Never mind, God was merciful. They caught up with the phaeton at Sretenka Street, just as it plunged into a narrow and hunchbacked side street. The wheels of the cab began bouncing over potholes. Fandorin saw the phaeton halt, and he prodded his cabby in the back to tell him to drive on and not give the game away. He deliberately turned to face the opposite direction, but out of the very corner of his eye he saw the lilac lady being greeted with a bow from some tall, liveried servant at the entrance to a neat little stone mansion. Around the first corner Erast Fandorin let his cab go and set off slowly in the direction from which he had come, as if he were out for a stroll. This time as he approached the neat little mansion he was able to take a good look at it: a mezzanine with a green roof, curtains covering the windows, a front porch with a projecting roof. But he was unable to discern any brass plaque on the door.

There was, however, a yardkeeper in an apron and a battered peaked cap sitting in idle boredom on a bench by the wall. It was toward him that Erast Fandorin directed his steps.

“Tell me, my friend,” he began as he approached, extracting twenty kopecks of state funds from his pocket, “whose house is this?”

“That’s no secret,” the yardkeeper replied vaguely, following the movement of Fandorin’s fingers with interest.

“Take that. Who was that lady who arrived not long ago?”

The yardkeeper took the money and replied gravely, “The house belongs to General Maslov’s wife, only she doesn’t live here—she rents it out. And the lady is the tenant, Miss Bezhetskaya, Amalia Kazimirovna Bezhetskaya.”

“And who is she?” Erast Fandorin pressed him. “Has she been living here long? Does she have many visitors?”

The yardkeeper stared at him in silence, chewing on his lips. Some incomprehensible process was working itself out in his brain.

“I’ll tell you what, boss,” he said, rising to his feet and suddenly seizing tight hold of Fandorin’s sleeve. “You just hang on a moment.”

He dragged the vainly resisting Fandorin across to the porch and gave a tug on the clapper of a small bronze bell.

“What are you doing?” the horrified sleuth exclaimed, making futile attempts to free himself. “I’ll show you…Have you any idea who…”

The door opened and the doorway was filled by a tall servant in livery with immense, sandy-colored side-whiskers and a clean-shaven chin. It was clear at a glance that he was no Russian.

“He’s been snooping around asking questions about Amalia Kazimirovna,” the villainous yardkeeper reported in a sugary voice. “And offering money, too, sir. I didn’t take it, sir. So what I thought, John Karlich, was…”

The butler (for a butler is what he was, since he was an Englishman) ran the impassive gaze of his small, sharp eyes over the prisoner, handed the Judas a silver fifty-kopeck piece, and moved aside slightly to make way.

“Really, this is all nothing but a misunderstanding!” said Fandorin, still struggling to collect his wits. He switched into English: “It’s ridiculous, a complete misunderstanding!”

“Oh, no, please do go in, sir, please do,” the yardkeeper droned from behind him, and to make quite sure he grabbed hold of Fandorin’s other sleeve and shoved him in through the door.

Erast Fandorin found himself in a rather wide hallway opposite a stuffed bear holding a silver tray for receiving visiting cards. The shaggy beast’s small glass eyes contemplated the collegiate registrar’s predicament without the slightest trace of sympathy.

“Who? What for?” the butler asked succinctly in strongly accented Russian, entirely ignoring Fandorin’s perfectly good English.

Erast Fandorin said nothing, under no circumstances wishing to reveal the secret of his identity.

“What’s the matter, John?” Fandorin heard a clear voice that was already familiar to him ask in English. Standing on the carpeted stairs that must lead to the mezzanine was the mistress of the house, who had already removed her hat and veil.

“Aha, the young brunet!” she exclaimed in a mocking tone, turning toward Fandorin, who was devouring her with his eyes. “I spotted you back there on Kamergersky Lane. One really should not glare at strange ladies in that way! Clever, though I must say, you managed to follow me! Are you a student or just another idle ne’er-do-well?”

“Fandorin, Erast Petrovich,” he introduced himself, uncertain what else to add, but Cleopatra had apparently already found a satisfactory explanation for his appearance.

“I do like the bold ones,” she said with a laugh, “especially when they’re so good-looking. But it’s not nice to spy on people. If you find my person so very interesting, then come this evening—all sorts of people come visiting here. You will be quite able to satisfy your curiosity then. But wear tails. The manners in my house are free, but men who are not in the military must wear tails—that’s the law.”

WHEN EVENING ARRIVED it found Erast Fandorin fully equipped. It was true, certainly, that his father’s tailcoat had proved to be a little broad for him in the shoulders, but the splendid Agrafena Kondratievna, the provincial secretary’s wife from whom Fandorin rented his little room, had pinned it in along the seams and it had really turned out quite respectable, especially if he did not button it. An extensive wardrobe, containing five pairs of white gloves alone, was the only property that the failed bank investor had bequeathed to his son. The items that looked best on him were the silk waistcoat from Burgess and the patent leather shoes from Pironet. The almost new top hat from Blanc was not too bad either, except that it tended to creep down over his eyes. But that was all right—hand it to the servant at the door and the problem was solved. Erast Fandorin decided not to take a cane; he felt that would be in rather bad taste. He rotated in front of the chipped mirror in the dark hallway and was pleased by what he saw, above all by the waistline that was maintained so ideally by the strict Lord Byron. In his waistcoat pocket lay a silver ruble, provided by Xavier Grushin for a bouquet (“a decent one, but nothing too fancy”). What kind of fancy bouquet would a ruble get you? Erast Fandorin sighed to himself, and he decided to add fifty kopecks of his own—then he could afford Parma violets.

The bouquet meant that he had to go without a cab, and Erast Fandorin did not arrive at the palace of Cleopatra (the sobriquet which suited Amalia Kazimirovna Bezhetskaya best of all) until a quarter past eight.

The guests were already assembled. While he was still in the front hall after being admitted by the maid, Fandorin heard the droning of a large number of men’s voices, punctuated every now and again by that voice, with its magical, silver-and-crystal tones. Lingering for a second at the threshold, Erast Fandorin gathered his courage and strode in with a distinct nonchalance, hoping to produce the impression of an experienced man of the world. He need not have bothered—no one even turned to look at the new arrival.

Fandorin’s gaze encountered a hall furnished with comfortable morocco leather divans, velvet chairs, and elegant little tables—it was all very stylish and modern. At the center, her feet planted on a tiger-skin rug, stood the mistress of the house, dressed in Spanish costume—a scarlet dress with a corsage and a crimson camellia set in her hair. She looked so lovely that Fandorin caught his breath. He did not immediately examine the guests, merely registering the fact that they were all men and that Akhtyrtsev was there, sitting somewhat apart from the others and looking terribly pale.

“Ah, here is the new admirer,” Bezhetskaya announced, glancing with an ironic smile in Fandorin’s direction. “That makes it a perfect baker’s dozen. I shan’t introduce everybody—it would take too long. You must tell us your name. I recall that you are a student, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Fandorin,” Erast Fandorin squeaked in a voice that trembled treacherously, then repeated the name again, more firmly, “Fandorin.”

Everybody glanced across at him but only cursorily; it was evident that the newly arrived young fellow did not really interest them. It quite soon became clear that in this company there was only one center of interest. The guests scarcely spoke to one another at all, addressing themselves predominantly to their hostess. Each of them, even a grave-looking old man wearing a diamond star, vied with the others to achieve a single goal—to attract her attention and eclipse the others, if only for an instant. There were only two who behaved differently—the taciturn Akhtyrtsev, who swigged incessantly from a bottle of champagne, and an officer of the hussars, a well-set-up young fellow with a slight slant to his eyes and a smile that was all white teeth and black mustache. He gave the appearance of being rather bored and hardly even looked at Amalia Bezhetskaya, contemplating the other guests with a wry grin of contempt. Cleopatra clearly favored this rascal, calling him simply ‘Hippolyte,’ and on a couple of occasions she cast him a glance that sent a melancholy pang through Erast Fandorin’s heart.

Suddenly he roused himself. A certain plump gentleman with a white cross hanging around his neck had just taken advantage of a pause to interpose his word. “Amalia Kazimirovna, you recently forbade us to gossip about Kokorin, but I have learned something rather curious.”

He stopped for a moment, pleased by the effect this had produced, and everyone turned to look at him.

“Don’t be so tiresome, Anton Ivanovich, tell us,” said a fat man with a high forehead who looked like a prosperous lawyer.

“Yes, don’t be tiresome.” The others took up the refrain.

“He didn’t simply shoot himself, it was a case of American roulette, or so the governor-general whispered to me today in the chancellery,” the plump gentleman informed them in a meaningful tone of voice. “Do you know what that is?”

“It’s common knowledge,” said Hippolyte, shrugging his shoulders.

“You take a revolver and put in one cartridge. It’s stupid but exciting. A shame the Americans thought of it before we did.”

“But what has that to do with roulette, Count?” the old man with the diamond star asked, mystified.

“Odds or evens, red or black, anything but zero!” Akhtyrtsev cried out and burst into loud, unnatural laughter, gazing challengingly at Amalia Bezhetskaya (or at least so it seemed to Fandorin).

“I warned you that I would throw out anyone who mentioned that,” said their hostess, now angry in earnest, “and banish them from my house forever! A fine subject for gossip!”

An awkward silence fell.

“But you won’t dare banish me from the house,” Akhtyrtsev declared in the same familiar tone. “I would say I have earned the right to speak my mind freely.”

“And how exactly, may I inquire?” interjected a stocky captain in a guards uniform.

“By getting plastered, the snot-nosed pup,” said Hippolyte (whom the old man had addressed as ‘count’), deliberately attempting to provoke a scandal. “With your permission, Amelia, I’ll take him outside for a breath of fresh air.”

“When I require your intervention, Hippolyte Alexandrovich, you may be sure that I shall request it,” Cleopatra replied with a hint of malice, and the confrontation was nipped in the bud. “I’ll tell you what, gentlemen. Since there is no interesting conversation to be got out of you, let’s play a game of forfeits. Last time when Frol Lukich lost, it was quite amusing to see him embroidering that flower and pricking his poor fingers so badly with the needle!”

Everyone laughed merrily, apart from one bearded gentleman with a bobbed haircut whose tailcoat sat on him slightly askew.

“Well, my dear Amalia Kazimirovna, you’ve had your fun at the old merchant’s expense…Serves me right for being such a fool,” he said humbly, with a northern provincial accent. “But honest traders always pay their debts. The other day we risked our dignity in front of you, so today why don’t you take the risk?”

“Why, the commercial counselor is quite right!” exclaimed the lawyer. “A fine mind! Let Amalia Kazimirovna show some courage. Gentlemen, a proposal! Whichever one of us draws the forfeit will ask our radiant one to…well…to do something quite extraordinary.”

“Quite right! Bravo!” The cries came from all sides.

“Could this be rebellion? Pugachev’s revolt?” Their dazzling hostess laughed. “What on earth do you want from me?”

“I know!” put in Akhtyrtsev. “A candid answer to any question. No prevaricating, no playing cat and mouse. And it must be tкte—а—tкte.”

“Why tкte—а—tкte?” protested the captain. “Everybody will be curious to hear.”

“If ‘everybody’ is to hear, then it won’t be candid,” said Bezhetskaya with a twinkle in her eye. “Very well, then, let us play at being candid—have it your way. But will the lucky winner not be afraid to hear the truth from me? The truth could prove rather unpalatable.”

Rolling his r like a true Parisian, the count interjected: “J’en ai le frisson d’y penser.* To hell with the truth, gentlemen. Who needs it? Why don’t we have a game of American roulette instead? Well—not tempted?”

“Hippolyte, I believe I warned you!” The goddess hurled her thunderbolt at him. “I shall not say it again! Not a single word about that!”

Hippolyte instantly fell silent and even spread his arms wide as if to show that his lips were sealed.

Meanwhile, the adroit captain was already collecting forfeits in his cap. Erast Fandorin put in his father’s cambric handkerchief with the monogram P.F.

Plump Anton Ivanovich was entrusted with making the draw.

First he drew out of the cap the cigar that he himself had placed there and asked ingratiatingly, “What am I bid for this fine thing?”

“The hole from a doughnut,” replied Cleopatra, with her face turned toward the wall, and everyone except the plump gentleman laughed in malicious delight.

“And for this?” Anton Ivanovich indifferently drew out the captain’s silver pencil.

“Last year’s snow.”

Then came a medallion watch (‘a fish’s ears’), a playing card (‘mes condolйances), some phosphorous matches (‘Napoleon’s right eye’), an amber cigarette holder (‘much ado about nothing’), a hundred-ruble banknote (‘three times nothing’), a tortoiseshell comb (‘four times nothing’), a grape (‘Orest Kirillovich’s thick locks’—prolonged laughter at the expense of an absolutely bald gentleman wearing the order of St. Vladimir in his buttonhole), a carnation (‘to that one—never, not for anything’). Only two forfeits remained in the cap: Erast Fandorin’s handkerchief and Akhtyrtsev’s gold ring. When the ring gleamed and sparkled in the caller’s fingers, the student leaned forward urgently, and Fandorin saw beads of sweat stand out on the pimply forehead.

“Shall I give it to this one, then?” drawled Amalia Bezhetskaya, who was clearly a little bored with amusing her public. Akhtyrtsev rose halfway to his feet, unable to believe his luck, and lifted the pince-nez off his nose. “But, no, I don’t think so—not this one, the final one,” their tormentress concluded.

Everyone turned toward Erast Fandorin, paying serious attention to him for the first time. During the preceding minutes, as his chances had improved, his mind had been working ever more frantically to decide what he should do if he won. Now his doubts had been settled. It must be fate.

And then Akhtyrtsev jumped to his feet, came running over to him, and whispered fervently, “Let me have it, I implore you. What is it to you…you’re here for the first time, but my fate depends on it…Sell it to me, at least. How much? Do you want five hundred? A thousand? More?”

With a calm decisiveness that surprised even him, Erast Fandorin pushed the whispering student aside, walked over to their hostess, and asked with a bow, “Where shall we go?”

She looked at Fandorin with amused curiosity. Her stare set his head spinning.

“Over there will do—in the corner. I should be afraid to go somewhere alone with anyone as bold as you.”

Disregarding the mocking laughter of the others, Erast Fandorin followed her to the far corner of the hall and lowered himself onto a divan with a carved wooden back. Amalia Kazimirovna set apakhitosa in a silver cigarette holder, lit it from a candle, and inhaled deliriously.

“Well, and how much did Nikolai Stepanich offer you for me? I could tell what he was whispering to you.”

“A thousand rubles,” Fandorin replied honestly, “and then he offered more.”

Cleopatra’s agate eyes glinted maliciously. “Oho, how very impatient he is! So you must be a millionaire?”

“No, I’m not rich,” Erast Fandorin said modestly. “But I consider it dishonorable to sell my luck.”

The other guests grew weary of trying to eavesdrop on their conversation—they could not hear anything in any case—and they broke up into small groups and struck up conversations of their own, although from time to time every one of them kept glancing over at the far corner.

Meanwhile, Cleopatra surveyed her temporary lord and sovereign with frank derision. “What do you wish to ask about?”

Erast Fandorin hesitated. “Will the answer be honest?”

“Honesty is for the honest, and in our games there is but little honesty.” Bezhetskaya laughed with a barely perceptible hint of bitterness. “I can promise candor, though. But please don’t disappoint me by asking anything stupid. I regard you as an interesting specimen.”

Fandorin hurled himself recklessly into the attack. “What do you know about the death of Pyotr Alexandrovich Kokorin?”

His hostess was not frightened—she did not flinch—but Erast Fandorin imagined that he saw her eyes narrow for an instant. “Why do you want to know that?”

“I will explain afterward. First answer the question.”

“All right, I will. Kokorin was killed by a certain very cruel lady.” Bezhetskaya lowered her thick black lashes for a moment and from beneath them darted a rapid, scorching glance at him, like a rapier thrust. “And that lady goes by the name of love.”

“Love for you? Did he used to come here?”

“He did. And apart from me I believe there is no one here with whom to fall in love. Except perhaps Orest Kirillovich.” She laughed.

“And do you feel no pity at all for Kokorin?” asked Fandorin, amazed at such callousness.

The queen of Egypt shrugged her shoulders indifferently. “Everyone is master of his own fate. But is that not enough questions for you?”

“No,” Erast Fandorin said hurriedly. “How was Akhtyrtsev involved? And what is the significance of the bequest to Lady Astair?”

The buzz of voices suddenly grew louder, and Fandorin glanced around in annoyance.

“You don’t care for my tone?” Hippolyte asked in a thunderous voice, harassing the drunken Akhtyrtsev. “Then how do you care for this, my dear fellow?” And he shoved the student’s forehead with the palm of his hand, apparently without any great strength, but the miserable Akhtyrtsev went flying back against an armchair, plumped down into it, and stayed sitting there, blinking his eyes in bewilderment.

“By your leave, Count, but this will not do!” said Erast Fandorin, dashing across. “You may be stronger, but that does not give you any right…”

However, his faltering speech, at which the count had scarcely even glanced around, was drowned out by the resounding tones of the mistress of the house.

“Hippolyte! Get out! And do not dare set foot in here again until you are sober!”

The count swore and stomped off toward the door. The other guests gazed curiously at the wretchedly abject, limp form of Akhtyrtsev, who was not making the slightest effort to rise to his feet.

“You are the only one here who is anything like a man,” Amalia Kazimirovna whispered to Fandorin, as she set off toward the corridor. “Take him away. And be sure to stay with him.”

Almost immediately the lanky butler John appeared, having exchanged his livery for a black frock coat and starched shirtfront. He helped to get Akhtyrtsev as far as the door and then rammed his top hat onto his head. Bezhetskaya did not come out to take her leave, and a glance at the butler’s dour face told Erast Fandorin that he had best be on his way.

CHAPTER FIVE

in which serious unpleasantness lies in wait for our hero

OUT IN THE STREET, ONCE HE HAD TAKEN A a breath of fresh air, Akhtyrtsev appeared to revive somewhat. He was standing firmly on his own two feet without swaying, and Erast Petrovich decided that it was no longer necessary to support him by the elbow.

“Let’s take a stroll as far as Sretenka Street,” he said, “and I’ll put you in a cab there. Do you have a long journey home?”

“Home?” In the flickering light of the kerosene streetlamp the student’s pale face appeared like a mask. “Oh, no, I’m not going home, not for the world! Let’s take a drive somewhere, shall we? I feel in the mood for a talk. You saw…the way they treat me. What’s your name? I remember—Fandorin, a funny name that. And I’m Akhtyrtsev, Nikolai Akhtyrtsev.”

Erast Petrovich gave a gentle bow as he attempted to resolve a complex moral dilemma: would it offend against decency if he were to take advantage of Akhtyrtsev’s weakened condition in order to worm out of him the information he required, since the ‘sloucher’ himself seemed rather inclined to a little candid conversation?

He decided that it would not. The investigative passion had indeed taken a tight grip on him.

“The Crimea’s not far from here,” Akhtyrtsev recalled. “And there’s no need for a cab—we can walk. It’s a filthy dive, of course, but they do have decent wines. Let’s go, eh? I invite you.”

Fandorin raised no objections, and they set off slowly (the student was just a little unsteady on his feet, after all) along the side street toward the lights of Sretenka Street shining in the distance.

“Tell me, Fandorin, I suppose you think I’m a coward?” Akhtyrtsev asked, slurring his words slightly. “For not calling the count out, for enduring the insult and pretending to be drunk? I’m no coward, and perhaps I’ll tell you something that will convince you of that…He was deliberately trying to provoke me. I daresay she was the one who put him up to it, in order to be rid of me and not pay her debt…Oh, you’ve no idea what kind of a woman she is! And for Zurov killing a man means no more than swatting a fly. He practices shooting with a pistol every morning for an hour. They say he can put a bullet into a five-kopeck piece at twenty paces. Call that a duel? There’s absolutely no risk in it for him at all. It’s simply murder called by a fancy name. And the main thing is, he won’t pay for it—he’ll squirm his way out of it somehow. He already has done so more than once. Well, he might go traveling abroad for a while. But now I want to live—I’ve earned the right.”

They turned off Sretenka Street into another side street, rather seedy looking, but even so it had not mere kerosene lamps but gas lamps. Now ahead of them there loomed up a three-story building with brightly lit windows. It had to be the Crimea, Erast Fandorin thought with a sinking heart—he had heard a great deal about this iniquitous establishment that was famous throughout Moscow.

No one met them at the high porch with its bright lamps. Akhtyrtsev pushed against the tall, decoratively carved door with a habitual gesture, and it yielded easily, breathing out warmth and a smell compounded of cooking and alcohol. There was a sudden din of voices and squeaking of violins.

After leaving their top hats in the cloakroom, the young men fell into the clutches of an animated fellow in a scarlet shirt, who addressed Akhtyrtsev as ‘Your Excellency’ and promised him the very best table that had been specially kept for him. The table proved to be by the wall and, thank God, it was a long way from the stage, where the Gypsy choir was keening loudly and rattling its tambourines. Erast Fandorin, who found himself in a genuine den of debauchery for the first time, twisted his head first one way, then the other. The clientele here was extremely varied, but there did not appear to be a single sober person among them. The tone was set by young merchants and stockbrokers with pomaded partings in their hair—everybody knew who had the money nowadays—but there were also gentlemen of a decidedly aristocratic appearance, and somewhere he even caught the golden gleam of monogrammed initials on an aide-de-camp’s epaulet. The collegiate registrar’s interest was aroused most strongly, however, by the girls who came to sit at the tables as soon as they were beckoned. He blushed at the low-necked dresses they were wearing, and their skirts had slits through which round knees in net stockings protruded shamelessly.

“What, girls caught your eye, have they?” Akhtyrtsev laughed, ordering wine and a main course from a waiter. “After Amalia I don’t even think of them as creatures of the female sex. How old are you, Fandorin?”

“Twenty-one,” said Fandorin, adding a year to his age.

“Well, I’m twenty-three, and I’ve already seen a lot. Don’t gawp at the whores—they’re a complete waste of time and money. And it leaves you feeling disgusted afterward. If you must love, then love a queen! But then, why am I telling you that? You didn’t end up at Amalia’s by sheer chance, after all. Has she bewitched you? She likes doing that—adding to her collection—and the exhibits have to be continually renewed. How does that song in the operetta go, ‘Elle nepense qu’а exciter les kommes’*? But everything has its price, and I’ve already paid mine. Would you like me to tell you a story? Somehow I like you. You’re remarkably good at keeping quiet. And it will be useful for you to know what kind of woman she is. Maybe you’ll come to your senses before you get swallowed up like me. Or have you already been swallowed up, eh, Fandorin? What were you whispering to her back there?”

Erast Fandorin lowered his eyes.

“Then listen,” said Akhtyrtsev, launching into his story. “Not long since you suspected me of cowardice, because I let Hippolyte off and didn’t call him out. But I’ve fought a duel the likes of which your Hippolyte has never even dreamed of. Did you hear the way she forbade us to talk about Kokorin? I should think so! His blood’s on her conscience—on hers. And on mine, too, of course. Only I’ve redeemed my mortal sin by fear. Kokorin and I were in the same year at the university—he used to go to Amalia’s place too. We used to be friends once, but because of her we became enemies. Kokorin was a bit more free and easy than me, with a cute kind of face, but entre nous,* once a merchant always a merchant, a plebeian, even if you have studied at the university. Amalia had her fill of amusement out of us—first she would favor one of us, then the other. Called me Nicolas, and spoke to me familiarly, as if I were one of her favorites, and then for some stupid trifle or other she’d consign me to disgrace. She’d forbid me to show my face for a week, and then she was back to formal terms—Mr. Akhtyrtsev, Nikolai Stepanich. Her policy is to never ever let anyone off the hook.”

“And what is this Hippolyte to her?” Fandorin asked cautiously.

“Count Zurov? I can’t say exactly, but there’s something special between them…Either he has some hold over her, or she has over him…but he’s not jealous—he’s not the problem. A woman like that would never allow anyone to be jealous of her. In a word, she’s a queen!”

He fell silent, because at the next table a company of tipsy businessmen had begun kicking up a racket—as they were getting ready to leave an argument had broken out about who was going to pay. In a trice the waiters had carried off the dirty tablecloth and spread out a new one, and a minute later the free table was already occupied by an extremely drunken functionary with whitish, almost transparent, eyes (no doubt the result of hard drinking). Flitting across to him, a pudgy girl with brown hair put her arm around his shoulder and theatrically flung one of her legs over the other. Erast Fandorin gazed admiringly at a knee clad in tight red de Perse.

Meanwhile, Akhtyrtsev drained a full glass of Rhine wine, prodded at a bloody beefsteak with his fork, and continued. “D’you think, Fandorin, that it was the misery of love that made him lay hands on himself? Not a bit of it! I was the one who killed him.”

“What?” Fandorin could not believe his ears.

“You heard me,” Akhtyrtsev said with a nod, looking proud. “I’ll tell you all about it. Just sit quietly and don’t go interrupting me with questions.”

“Yes, I killed him, and I don’t regret it in the least. I killed him, fair and square in a duel. Yes, fair and square! Because no duel since time immemorial has ever been fairer than ours. When two men face up to each other, there’s almost always some deception in it—one is a better shot and the other a worse, or else one is fat and makes an easier target, or else one spent a sleepless night and his hands are shaking. But Pierre and I did everything without any deception. She said—it was in Sokolniki, on the round alley, the three of us were out for a drive in the carriage—she said: “I’m fed up with the pair of you rich, spoiled little brats. Why don’t you kill each other or something?” And Kokorin, the swine, said to her, “I will kill him, too, if only it will earn me a reward from you.” I said, “And for a reward I would kill. Such a reward as can’t be divided between two. So it’s a quick road to a damp grave for one of us if he doesn’t back down.” Things had already gone that far between Kokorin and me. “What, do you really love me so much, then?” she asked. “More than life itself,” he said. And I said the same. “Very well,” says she, “the only thing I value in people is courage—everything else can be counterfeited. Hear my will. If one of you really does kill the other he shall have a reward for his bravery, and you know what it shall be.” And she laughs. “Only you are idle boasters,” she says, “both of you. You won’t kill anybody. The only interesting thing about you is your fathers’ capital.” I flew into a rage. “I cannot speak,” I said, “for Kokorin, but for the sake of such a reward I will not begrudge either my own life or another man’s.” And she says, angry now, “I’ll tell you what. I’m sick and tired of all your crowing. It’s decided: you shall shoot at each other but not in a duel or else we shall never be rid of the scandal. And a duel is too uncertain. One of you will shoot a hole in the other’s hand and turn up at my house as the victor. No, let it be death for one and love for the other. Let fate decide. Cast lots. And the one the lot falls to—let him shoot himself. And let him write a note so that no one will think that it might be because of me. Have you turned coward now? If you have turned coward, then at least out of shame you will stop visiting me—at least then some good will come of it.” Pierre looked at me and said, “I don’t know about Akhtyrt-sev, but I won’t funk it.”…And so we decided…”

Akhtyrtsev fell silent and hung his head. Then he shook himself, filled his glass up to the brim, and gulped it down. At the next table the girl in the red stockings broke into peals of laughter. The white-eyed fellow was whispering something in her ear.

“But what about the will?” Erast Fandorin asked, then bit his tongue, since he was not, after all, supposed to know anything about it. However, Akhtyrtsev, absorbed in his reminiscences, merely nodded listlessly.

“Ah, the will…” She thought of that. “Didn’t you want to buy me with money?” she said. “Very well, then, let there be money, only not the hundred thousand that Nikolai Stepanich promised” (it’s true, I did make her an offer once—she almost threw me out). “And not two hundred thousand. Let it be everything you have. Whichever one of you must die, let him go to the next world naked. Only I,” she says, “have no need of your money. I can endow anyone you like myself. Let the money go to some good cause—a holy monastery or something of the sort. For prayers for forgiveness of the mortal sin. Well, Petrusha,” she said, “your million should make a good thick candle, don’t you think?” But Kokorin was an atheist, a militant. He was outraged. “Anybody but the priests,” he said. “I’d rather leave it to all the fallen women—let each of them buy herself a sewing machine and change her trade. If there’s not a single woman of the street left in all Moscow, that’ll be something to remember Pyotr Kokorin by.” But then Amalia objected, “Once a woman’s become debauched, you can never reform her. It should have been done earlier, when she was young and innocent.” So Kokorin gave up on that and said, “Then let it go to children, to some orphans or other, to the Foundling Hospital.” She lit up immediately at that. “For that, Petrusha, you would be forgiven a great deal. Come here and let me kiss you.” I was furious. “They’ll embezzle all your millions in the Foundling Hospital,” I said. “Haven’t you read what they write about the state orphanages in the newspapers? And, anyway, it’s way too much for them to have. Better give it all to the Englishwoman Baroness Astair—she won’t steal it.” Amalia kissed me as well then. “Let’s show our Russian patriots a thing or two,” she said. That was on the eleventh, on Saturday. On Sunday Kokorin and I met and talked everything over. It was an odd kind of conversation. He kept blustering and swaggering, and I mostly just kept quiet, and we didn’t look into each other’s eyes. I felt as though I were in some kind of daze…We called out an attorney and drew up our wills in due form, Pierre as my witness and executor and I as his. We each gave the attorney five thousand to make him keep his mouth shut. It wouldn’t have been worth his while to blab about it, anyway. And Pierre and I agreed on our arrangement—he was the one who suggested it. We meet at ten o’clock at my place in the Taganka district (I live on Goncharnaya Street). Each of us has a six-chamber revolver in his pocket with one round in the cylinder. We walk separately, but so that we can see each other. Whoever the dice choose goes first. Kokorin had read somewhere about American roulette and he liked the idea. He said, “Because of you and me, Kolya, they’ll rename it Russian roulette—just you wait and see.” And he said, “It’s a bore to shoot yourself at home—let’s wind things up with a stroll and a few amusements.” I agreed—it was all the same to me. I confess I’d lost heart, I thought I would lose. And it was hammering away in my brain—Monday the thirteenth, Monday the thirteenth. That night I didn’t sleep at all. I felt like leaving the country, but when I thought of him left behind with her and laughing at me…Anyway, I stayed.

“And then in the morning Pierre turned up dressed like a dandy, in a white waistcoat, terribly cheerful. He was a lucky sort, and obviously he was hoping his luck would hold in this, too. We threw the dice in my study. He got nine and I got three. I was prepared for that. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I’d rather die here.” I spun the cylinder and put the barrel to my heart. “Stop!” he said to me. “Don’t fire at your heart. If the bullet goes crooked you’ll be in agony for ages. Shoot yourself in the temple or the mouth instead.” “Thank you for your concern,” I said, and at that moment I hated him so much I could easily have shot him without any duel. But I took his advice. I’ll never forget that click, the very first one. It clanged so loudly right in my ear, like…”

Akhtyrtsev shuddered convulsively and poured himself another glass. The singer, a fat Gypsy woman in a shimmering golden shawl, began crooning some heartrending melody in a low voice.

“I heard Pierre’s voice say, ‘Right, now it’s my turn. Let’s go out into the air.’ Only then did I realize I was alive. We went to Shvivaya Hill, where there’s a view over the city, Kokorin walking in front with me about twenty paces behind. He stood for a while on the edge of the cliff—I couldn’t see his face—then he raised the hand holding the gun so that I could see it, spun the cylinder, and quickly set it against his head—click. But I knew nothing would happen to him, I hadn’t even been hoping it would. We threw the dice again. And I lost again. I went down to the Yauza—there wasn’t a single soul around. I climbed up on a bollard by the bridge, in order to fall straight into the water…Again I was spared. We went off to one side, and Pierre said to me, ‘This is becoming a bit of a bore. Let’s give the philistines a fright, shall we?’ He was putting a brave face on it, I must give him that. We came out on a side street, and there were people there and carriages driving along. I stood on the far side of the road. Kokorin doffed his hat, bowed to the right and the left, raised his hand, gave the cylinder a spin—and nothing. Well, we had to scoot out of there quickly. There was uproar and screaming and ladies squealing. We turned into a gateway, down on Maroseika Street already. We threw the dice, and what do you think? My turn again! He had two sixes, and I threw a two, I swear it. That’s it, I thought, finite, nothing could be more symbolic than that. One gets everything, the other gets nothing. I tried to shoot myself for the third time outside the church of Kosma and Damian—that’s where I was christened. I stood up on the porch, where the beggars are, gave them each a ruble, then took off my cap…When I opened my eyes I was alive. And one holy fool there said to me, ‘If the soul itches—the Lord will forgive.’ If the soul itches—the Lord will forgive; I remembered that. Right, so we ran away from there. Kokorin chose a rather grander place, right beside the Galofteevsky Passage. He went into a confectioner’s on Neglinny Lane and sat down—I stood outside the window. He said something to the lady at the next table and she smiled. He took out his revolver and pressed the trigger—I saw it. The lady laughed even more. He put the revolver away, chatted with her for a bit about something or other, and had a cup of coffee. I was already in a daze—I couldn’t feel a thing. There was only one thought in my mind: now we have to throw the dice again.”

“We threw them on Okhotny Ryad, beside the Hotel Loskutnaya, and this time the first turn fell to him. I threw seven and he threw six. Seven and six, only one point in the difference. We walked together as far as Gurov’s inn, and there, where they’re building the Historical Museum, we separated. He went into the Alexander Gardens, walking along the alley, and I walked along the pavement outside the fence. The last thing he said to me was, “We’re a pair of stupid fools, Kolya. If nothing happens this time, to hell with the whole damn business.” I wanted to stop him, I swear to God, but I didn’t. Why, I don’t know myself. But that’s a lie, I do know…I had a mean thought—let him twirl the cylinder one more time, and we’ll see what happens. Maybe we’ll be finished up then…I’m only telling you this, Fandorin. This is like a confessional…”

Akhtyrtsev took another drink. Behind the pince-nez his eyes were dull and red. Fandorin waited with bated breath, even though the general course of subsequent events was already known to him. Akhtyrtsev took a cigar out of his pocket and struck a match with a trembling hand. The long thick cigar looked remarkably out of place with his unattractive, puerile face. Wafting the cloud of smoke away from his eyes, Akhtyrtsev rose sharply to his feet.

“Waiter, our bill! I can’t stay here any longer. Too noisy, too stuffy.” He tugged at the silk tie around his throat. “Let’s take a cab somewhere. Or just take a stroll.”

Out on the porch they halted. The lane was dismal and deserted; in all the buildings except the Crimea the windows were dark. The gas flame in the nearest streetlamp fluttered and flickered.

“Or perhapsh I will go home?” Akhtyrtsev slurred, with the cigar clasped in his teeth. “There should be cabs jusht ‘round the corner.”

The door opened and their recent neighbor, the white-eyed functionary, emerged onto the porch with a peaked cap tilted to one side of his head. Hiccuping loudly, he reached into the pocket of his uniform jacket and took out a cigar.

“Would you mind giving me a light?” he asked, moving closer to the young men. Fandorin detected a slight accent—possibly Baltic German, possibly Finnish.

Akhtyrtsev slapped first one pocket, then another, and there was a rattle of matches. Erast Fandorin waited patiently. Suddenly the appearance of the white-eyed man underwent an incomprehensible transformation. He seemed to become slightly shorter in height and he slumped over a little to one side. The next instant a broad, short blade seemed to appear out of nowhere in his left hand, and with an economical, elastic movement the functionary thrust the blade into Akhtyrtsev’s right side.

The subsequent events occurred very quickly, taking no more than two or three seconds, but to Erast Fandorin time seemed to be standing still. He had time to notice many things, time to think about many things, but he was quite unable to move, as if the glint of light on steel had hypnotized him.

Erast Fandorin’s first thought was, He’s stabbed him in the liver, and from somewhere or other his memory cast up a sentence from the gymnasium textbook on biology—“Liver—an organ in the body of an animal that separates blood from bile.” Then he saw Akhtyrtsev die. Erast Fandorin had never seen anyone die before, but somehow he knew immediately that Akhtyrtsev had died. His eyes seemed to turn to glass, his lips distended spasmodically, and from between them there erupted a jet of dark, cherry-red blood. Very slowly and even, it seemed to Fandorin, elegantly, the white-eyed man pulled out the knife, which was no longer gleaming, and turned calmly and slowly toward Erast Fandorin so that his face was very close: luminous eyes with black dots for pupils, thin bloodless lips. The lips moved, distinctly articulating a word: “Azazel.” And then time’s expansion came to an end. Time contracted like a spring, then straightened out and struck Erast Fandorin in the right side with a force so great that he fell backward and banged the back of his head painfully against the edge of the porch’s parapet. What is this? What is this ‘azazel’?—wondered Fandorin. Am I asleep, then? And he also thought, His knife must have hit the Lord Byron. Whalebone. An inch-thin waist.

The doors burst open and a jolly company came tumbling out, laughing, onto the porch.

“Oho, gentlemen, we have an entire battle of Borodino here,” a drunken merchant’s voice cried out merrily. “Weren’t up to it, poor chaps! Can’t take their drink!”

Erast Fandorin raised himself up a little, pressing one hand against his hot, wet side, to take a look at the man with the white eyes.

But strange to tell, there was no man with white eyes. Akhtyrtsev was lying where he had fallen—facedown across the steps—and his top hat lay where it had rolled a little further away, but the functionary had disappeared without trace, vanished into thin air. And there was not a single soul to be seen anywhere in the street. Nothing but the dull glow of the streetlamps.

Then suddenly the streetlamps did the oddest thing—they began turning and then spinning around and around, faster and faster. First everything became very bright, and then it went absolutely dark.

CHAPTER SIX

in which the man of the future makes his appearance

“LIE DOWN, LIE DOWN, THERE’S A GOOD CHAP.” said Xavier Grushin from the doorway when the embarrassed Erast Fandorin lowered his legs from the hard divan. “What did the doctor tell you to do? I know all about it—I made inquiries: two weeks in bed after discharge, so that the cut can heal up properly and your concussed brain can settle back into place, and you haven’t even been lying down for ten days yet.”

He sat down and mopped his crimson bald spot with a checkered handkerchief.

“O-oh, that sun’s really warm today, really warm. Here, I’ve brought you some marzipan and fresh cherries—help yourself. Where shall I put them?”

Grushin surveyed the dark, narrow box of a room in which Fandorin lodged. There was nowhere to put his bundle of presents: the host was lying on the divan, Xavier Grushin himself was sitting on the chair, and the table was cluttered with heaps of books. The room contained no other furniture, not even a cupboard, and the numerous items of the tenant’s wardrobe were hanging on nails hammered into the walls.

“Does it ache a bit?”

“Not at all,” Erast Fandorin said, not entirely truthfully. “The stitches could come out tomorrow. It just scraped my ribs a bit, but otherwise it’s fine. And my head is in perfectly good order.”

“You might as well be sick for a while anyway—your salary’s going through.” Xavier Grushin gave a little frown of guilt. “Don’t be angry with me, my dear fellow, for not popping ‘round to see you for so long. I dare say you were thinking badly of the old man—when he needed to get his report written he was ‘round to the hospital in a flash, but since then he has no more use for me, doesn’t even show his face. I sent someone to the doctor to inquire, but I just couldn’t get away to see you myself. The things that are going on in our department—we’re in there all day and all night, too, and that’s the honest truth.” Grushin shook his head and lowered his voice confidentially. “That Akhtyrtsev of yours wasn’t just anybody: he was the grandson of His Highness Chancellor Korchakov, no less.”

“You don’t say!” Fandorin gasped.

“His father’s the ambassador in Holland, married for the second time, and your acquaintance here in Moscow used to live with his aunt, the Princess Korchakova, in a private palace on Goncharnaya Street. The princess passed away last year and left her entire estate to him, and he already had plenty from his deceased mother. It’s pandemonium down in the office now, let me tell you. First of all they demanded that the case should be personally supervised by the governor-general, Prince Dolgoruky himself. But there is no case, and no leads to make a start on. Apart from you, nobody saw the killer. As I told you last time, Bezhetskaya has vanished into thin air. The house is empty. No servants and no papers. It’s a wild-goose chase. Who she is, is a mystery; where she came from no one knows. According to her passport she’s a noblewoman from Vilnius. They sent an inquiry to Vilnius, and there’s no such person registered there. All right. His Excellency called me in to see him a week ago. “Don’t take this amiss, Xavier,” he said. “I’ve known you for a long time and I respect you as a conscientious officer, but this affair is just too big for you to handle. There’s a special investigator coming from St. Petersburg, a special assignments officer attached to the chief of gendarmes and head of the Third Section, His Excellency Adjutant General Lavrenty Arkadievich Mizinov.” You get the idea—a really big noise. One of the new men, a man of the people, a man of the future. Does everything scientifically. An expert in all sorts of clever business—we’re no match for him.” Xavier Grushin snorted angrily. “So he’s a man of the future, and Grushin is a man of the past. All right. He got here three days ago, in the morning. That would make it Wednesday the twenty-second. He’s called Ivan Franzevich Brilling, a state counselor. At thirty years of age! The whole office has been set on its ear! It’s Saturday today, and I was in from nine o’clock this morning. And last night till eleven o’clock everyone was in meetings, drawing charts. Remember the refreshment room, where we used to drink tea. Well, now where the samovar used to stand there’s a telegraph apparatus and a telegrapher on duty ‘round the clock. You can send a telegram to Vladivostok, even to Berlin if you like, and the answer comes back straightaway. He’s kicked out half the agents and brought down half of his own from Peter, and they obey only his orders. He questioned me meticulously about everything and listened to what I said very carefully. I thought he would retire me, but, no, apparently Superintendent Grushin still has his uses. Actually, my dear chap, that’s the reason I came to see you,” Xavier Feofi-laktovich Grushin suddenly recalled. “I wanted to warn you. He was intending to come here himself today. He wants to question you in person. Don’t you be upset—there’s no blame attached to you. You were even wounded in the course of carrying out your duty. But be sure not to put the old man on the spot, will you? Who could have known that the case would take a turn like this?”

Erast Fandorin cast a miserable glance around his wretched abode. A fine impression the big man from St. Petersburg would get of him.

“Maybe I’d better come in to the department? Honestly, I’m feeling perfectly all right now.”

“Don’t you even think about it!” said Grushin with a flurry of his arms. “Do you want to give me away for coming to warn you? You lie down. He made a note of your address. He’ll definitely be here today.”

The ‘man of the future’ arrived that evening after six o’clock, by which time Erast Fandorin had managed to make thorough preparations. He told Agrafena Kondratievna that a general would be coming, so Malashka should wash the floor in the hallway, remove the rotten old trunk, and not even dare to think of boiling up any cabbage soup. In his own room the injured man carried out a major cleanup: he hung the clothes to greater advantage on the nails and hid the books under the bed, leaving on the table only a French novel, the Philosophical Essaysof David Hume in English, and Jean Debret’s Memoirs of a Paris Detective. Then he hid Debret away and replaced him with Instructions for Correct Breathing from the True Indian Brahmin Chandra Johnson, from which he took the fortifying respiratory gymnastics that he performed every morning. Let this master of clever business see that the man who lives here might be poor, but he had not allowed himself to go to seed. In order to emphasize the graveness of his injury, Erast Fandorin stood a bottle containing some mixture or other (he borrowed it from Agrafena Kondratievna) on the chair, then he lay down and wrapped a white scarf around his head. He thought it created the appropriate effect—manly courage in the face of affliction.

At long last, when he was already thoroughly tired of lying there, there came a short, sharp knock at the door. Then immediately, without waiting for any reply, an energetic gentleman entered the room, wearing a light, comfortable jacket with light-colored pantaloons and no hat at all. The precisely combed brown hair revealed a tall forehead; two sardonic creases lay at the corners of the strong-willed mouth, and the cleanshaven, dimpled chin positively exuded self-confidence. The penetrating gray eyes surveyed the room in an instant and came to rest on Fandorin.

“I see there is no need to introduce myself,” the visitor said merrily. “You already have the basic facts about me but presented in a rather unflattering light. Did Grushin complain about the telegraph?”

Erast Fandorin fluttered his eyelids and said nothing in reply.

“It’s the deductive method, my dear Fandorin. Building up the over all picture from a few small details. The main thing is not to rush things, not to jump to the wrong conclusion, if the available evidence allows for different interpretations. But we can talk about that later—we’ll have plenty of time. And as far as Grushin is concerned, it’s very simple. Your landlady bowed to me almost down to the floor and called me Excellency—that’s one. As you can see, I do not even remotely resemble an Excellency, nor am I one yet, since the level of my rank only merits Your Worship—that’s two. Apart from Grushin I told no one that I was intending to visit you—that’s three. It is also perfectly clear that the only opinion the detective superintendent can express of my activities is an unflattering one—that’s four. Well, and as for the telegraph, without which, you must admit, modern detective work is quite impossible, it produced a genuinely indelible impression on the whole of your department, and our drowsy Xavier Grushin simply could not have failed to mention it—that’s five. Well, am I right?”

“Yes,” said the astounded Fandorin, ignominiously betraying the kindhearted Grushin.

“What’s this—have you got hemorrhoids already at your age?” the astute visitor asked, transferring the mixture to the table and taking a seat.

“No!” said Fandorin, blushing furiously and at the same time breaking faith with Agrafena Kondratievna too. “It’s—it’s—my landlady got things mixed up. She’s always getting things mixed up, Your Worship. Such a stupid woman…”

“I see. Call me Ivan Franzevich or, better still, simply chief, since we’re going to be working together. I read your report,” Brilling continued without marking the transition with the slightest pause. “Intelligent. Observant. Efficient. I’m pleasantly surprised by your intuition—that’s the most valuable thing of all in our profession. When you don’t yet know how a situation is likely to develop, but instinct prompts you to take precautionary measures. How did you guess that the visit to Bezhetskaya’s might be dangerous? Why did you think it necessary to wear a protective corset? Bravo!”

Erast Fandorin turned an even darker shade of crimson.

“Yes, it was a splendid idea. It wouldn’t save you from a bullet, of course, but against cold steel it serves pretty well. I’ll give instructions for a batch of such corsets to be bought for agents assigned to dangerous missions. What make is it?”

Fandorin replied bashfully, “Lord Byron.”

“Lord Byron,” Brilling repeated, making a note in a little leather-bound book. “And now tell me, when could you come back to work? I have something special in mind for you.”

“Good Lord, tomorrow, if you like,” Fandorin exclaimed fervently, gazing lovingly at his new boss, or rather new chief. “I’ll dash over to the doctor’s in the morning, get the stitches taken out, and then I’m at your disposal.”

“That’s splendid. How would you characterize Bezhetskaya?”

Erast Fandorin became flustered, and he made a rather awkward start, supporting his words with lavish gesticulations.

“She’s—she’s an exceptional woman. A Cleopatra. A Carmen…Indescribably beautiful, but it’s not even a matter of her beauty…has a magnetic gaze…No, the gaze isn’t the thing, either…The main thing is—you can sense an immense power in her. A power so strong that she seems to be toying with everyone. Playing a game with some incomprehensible rules, but a cruel game. That woman, in my view, is highly depraved and at the same time…absolutely innocent. As if she were taught wrongly when she was a child. I don’t know how to explain it…” Fandorin turned pink, realizing that he was spouting nonsense, but he finished what he was saying nonetheless. “It seems to me she is not as bad as she wishes to appear.”

The state counselor scrutinized him curiously and gave a mischievous whistle.

“So that’s how it is…I thought as much. Now I can see that Amalia Bezhetskaya is a genuinely dangerous individual…especially for young romantics during the period of puberty.”

Pleased with the effect that this joke produced on Erast Fandorin, Ivan Brilling stood up and looked around again.

“How much do you pay for this kennel—ten rubles?”

“Twelve,” Erast Fandorin replied with dignity.

“The style of decor is familiar. I used to live like this myself at one time. When I attended the gymnasium in the splendid city of Kharkov. You see, like you I lost my parents at an early age. Well, for building character it’s actually quite beneficial. Is your salary thirty-five rubles, according to the official table?” asked Brilling, once again switching subjects without the slightest pause.

“Plus a quarterly bonus for overtime.”

“I’ll give instructions for you to be paid a bonus of five hundred out of the special fund. For devotion to duty in the face of danger. And so, until tomorrow. Come in, and we’ll work on the various scenarios.”

And the door closed behind the astonishing visitor.

THE CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION Division really was quite unrecognizable. There were unfamiliar gentlemen with files under their arms trotting along the corridors, and even his old colleagues no longer waddled along but walked smartly, with an upright bearing.

In the smoking room—miracle of miracles—there was not a soul to be seen. Out of curiosity Erast Fandorin glanced into the former refreshment room, and, true enough, standing there on the table in place of the samovar and the cups was a Baudot apparatus, and a telegrapher in a double-breasted uniform jacket glanced up at the intruder with a strict, interrogatory glance.

The investigation headquarters was located in the office of the head of division, for the superintendent had been relieved of his duties as of the previous day. Erast Fandorin, still rather pale after the painful procedure of having the stitches removed, knocked on the door and glanced inside. This office had also changed: the comfortable leather armchairs had disappeared and their place had been taken by three rows of simple chairs. Standing against the wall were two school blackboards, completely covered with charts of some kind. It looked as though a meeting had only just ended—Brilling was wiping his chalk-dusted hands with a rag, and the officers and agents, talking intently among themselves, were moving toward the exit.

“Come in, Fandorin, come in. Don’t hang about in the doorway,” Brilling said, hurrying along Erast Fandorin, who was suddenly overcome by timidity. “All patched up? That’s splendid. You’ll be working directly with me. I’m not allocating you a desk. You’ll have no time for sitting down anyway…It’s a pity you arrived late. We’ve just had a most interesting discussion concerning the ‘Azazel’ in your report.”

“So there is such a thing? I wasn’t mistaken?” said Erast Fandorin, pricking up his ears. “I was afraid it was my imagination.”

“It wasn’t your imagination. Azazel is a fallen angel. What mark did you get for Scripture studies? You remember about the scapegoats? Well, then, in case you’ve forgotten, there were two of them. One was intended for God, for the expiation of sins, and the other was for Azazel, so that he wouldn’t be angered. In the Jewish Book of Enoch, Azazel teaches people all sorts of nastiness: he teaches the men to make war and make weapons and the women to paint their faces and abort their young. In a word, he’s a rebellious demon, the spirit of exile.”

“But what can it mean?”

“One of your Moscow collegiate assessors expounded an entire detailed hypothesis about a secret Judaic organization…He told us all about the Jewish Sanhedrin and about the blood of Christian infants. He presented Bezhetskaya as a daughter of Israel, and Akhtyrtsev as a lamb slaughtered on the sacrificial altar of the Jewish God. Such a load of nonsense. I’ve heard enough of those anti-Semitic ravings already in St. Petersburg. When disaster strikes and the causes are not clear, they immediately start talking about the Sanhedrin.”

“And what is your hypothesis…chief?” Fandorin asked, pronouncing the unaccustomed form of address with a certain trepidation.

“If you’d be so kind as to look this way.” Brilling walked across to one of the blackboards. “These four circles at the top are the four scenarios. The first circle, as you see, has a question mark. This is the least likely scenario: the killer acted alone and you and Akhtyrtsev were his random victims. Possibly some maniac obsessed with demoniacism. That leaves us at a dead end until further similar crimes are committed. I’ve sent off requests by telegram to all the provinces, asking if there have been any similar murders. I doubt they will produce any result—if such a maniac had shown his hand earlier, I should have known about it. The second circle with the initials AB is Amalia Bezhetskaya. She is undoubtedly suspect. You and Akhtyrtsev could easily have been followed from her home to the Crimea. And then she has fled. However, the motive for the killing is not clear.”

“If she has fled, it means she’s involved,” Erast Fandorin said heatedly. “And that means the white-eyed man is no solitary killer.”

“That’s not a fact, not a fact by any means. We know that Bezhetskaya is an impostress and she was using a false passport. She is probably an adventuress. She was probably living at the expense of rich patrons. But as for murder, especially by the hand of such an adroit gentleman…Judging from your report, this was no dilettante but an entirely professional killer. A blow like that to the liver is exquisitely precise work. I’ve been to the morgue, you know, and examined Akhtyrtsev. If not for the corset, you’d be lying there beside him, and the police would believe it was a robbery or a drunken brawl. But let’s get back to Bezhetskaya. She could have learned about the incident from one of her menials—the Crimea is only a few minutes’ walk away from her house. There was a lot of commotion—police, idle onlookers woken from their sleep. One of the servants or the yardkeeper, say, recognized the dead man as one of Bezhetskaya’s guests and told her. She, being quite reasonably afraid of a police inquiry and inevitable exposure, immediately goes into hiding. She has more than enough time to do so—your good Mr. Grushin only turned up with a warrant in the afternoon of the following day. I know, I know. You were concussed—you didn’t recover consciousness immediately. It took time for you to dictate the report, for the boss to scratch his head…Anyway, I have placed Bezhetskaya on the wanted persons list. She’s probably no longer in Moscow. I think she’s not even in Russia—that wouldn’t be too hard, after ten whole days. We’re drawing up a list of those who used to visit her house, but for the most part they are highly respectable individuals and tact is required. Only one of them rouses any serious suspicion in me.”

Ivan Franzevich jabbed the pointer at the third circle, which contained the initials CZ.

“Count Zurov, Hippolyte Alexandrovich by name. Evidently Bezhetskaya’s lover. A man entirely devoid of moral principles, a gambler, a rabid duelist, and general madcap. A Tolstoy-the-American type. There is some circumstantial evidence. He left in a state of extreme annoyance after a quarrel with the dead man—that’s one. He could have waited and shadowed you and sent the killer—that’s two. The yardkeeper testified that Zurov came home just before dawn—that’s three. And there’s a motive, too, although it’s a weak one: jealousy or morbid vindictiveness. Possibly there was something else. The main point of doubt is that Zurov is not the kind of man who would use someone else to kill for him. However, information from our agents indicates that he is constantly surrounded by all sorts of shady characters, so this scenario actually appears quite promising. And this is the one that you, Fandorin, will follow up. Zurov is being investigated by a whole group of agents, but you will operate alone—you do that well. We’ll discuss the details of the assignment later, but now let’s move on to the final circle. This is the one that I am following up.”

Erast Fandorin wrinkled up his brow as he struggled to imagine what the initials NO might represent.

“Nihilist organization,” his chief explained. “There are certain signs of a conspiracy here, only not a Jewish one, something more serious than that. That’s really the reason I was sent in. That is, of course Prince Korchakov asked me as well—as you are aware, Nikolai Akhtyrtsev was the son of his deceased daughter. But this whole business could turn out to be far from simple. Our Russian revolutionaries are on the verge of schism. The most determined and impatient of these Robespierres have grown weary of educating the peasants—a job so long and tedious that an entire lifetime is not time enough. The bomb, the dagger, and the revolver are far more interesting. I am expecting large-scale bloodshed in the very near future. What we have seen so far is nothing compared with what is to come. The terror against the ruling class could assume mass proportions. For some time now in the Third Section I have been handling the cases of the most extreme and conspiratorial terrorist groups. My patron, Lavrentii; Arkadievich Mizinov, who is head of the corps of gendarmes and the Third Section, instructed me to investigate this Azazel that has turned up in Moscow. A demon is an extremely revolutionary symbol. You see, Fandorin, the very fate of Russia hangs in the balance.” Not a trace was left of Brilling’s usual sardonic humor, and a note of fierce determination had appeared in his voice. “If the tumor is not surgically removed in the embryonic stage, then these romantics will give us a revolution that will make the French guillotine seem no more than a charming piece of idle mischief. You and I will not be allowed to grow old in peace, mark my words. Have you read Mr. Dostoevsky’s novel The Possessed? You should. It’s a most eloquent prognosis.”

“So are there only four scenarios?” Erast Fandorin asked hesitantly.

“Not enough? Are we overlooking something? Speak up, speak up! I recognize no differences of rank where work is concerned,” said his chief, encouraging him. “And don’t be afraid of appearing ridiculous—that’s just because you are so young in years. Better to say something stupid than miss something important.”

Shy at first, Fandorin spoke with increasing fervor. “It seems to me, Your Wor…that is, chief, that you are wrong to leave Lady Astair out of the picture. She is, of course, a most venerable and respected individual, but—but, after all, the bequest is worth a million! Bezhetskaya gains nothing from it, neither does Count Zurov or the nihilists—except perhaps in the sense of the good of society…I don’t know how Lady Astair is involved—perhaps she has nothing at all to do with all this, but for form’s sake she really ought to be…After all, the investigatory principle says cuiprodest—“seek the one who benefits.” ”

“Thanks for the translation,” Ivan Franzevich said with a bow, making Fandorin feel embarrassed. “A perfectly fair comment, except that in Akhtyrtsev’s story, which is included in your report, everything is comprehensively explained. The baroness’s name came up by chance. I have not included her in the list of subjects, first because time is precious, and second because I myself am slightly acquainted with the lady. I have had the honor of meeting her.” Brilling smiled amicably. “However, Fandorin, formally speaking you are correct. I do not wish to impose my own conclusions on you. Always think for yourself and never take anybody’s word for anything. Pay a visit to the baroness and question her on any subject you feel necessary. I am sure that apart from anything else you will find it a pleasure to make her acquaintance. The municipal duty office will inform you of Lady Astair’s Moscow address. And another thing, before you go, call in to the costume section and have your measurements taken. Don’t come to work in your uniform again. My greetings to the baroness, and when you come back a little wiser, we’ll get down to work—that is to say, to dealing with Count Zurov.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

in which it is asserted that pedagogy is the most important of all the sciences

ON ARRIVING AT THE ADDRESS HE HAD BEEN given by the duty officer, Erast Fandorin discovered a substantial three-story building that at first glance somewhat resembled a barracks, but it was surrounded by a garden, the gates of which were standing invitingly open. This was the English baroness’s newly opened Astair House. A servant in a smart, light blue frock coat emerged from his striped booth and gladly explained that her ladyship did not reside here but in the wing, and the entrance was from the side street, around the corner to the right.

Fandorin saw a gaggle of young boys in blue uniforms come running out of the doors of the building and begin galloping about the lawn with wild cries in a game of tag. The servant did not even attempt to call the young scamps to order. Catching Fandorin’s glance of surprise, he explained, “It’s not against the rules. During the break you can turn cartwheels and somersaults if you like, as long as you don’t damage the property. That’s the rule.”

Well, the orphans here certainly seemed happy and carefree, not like the pupils at the provincial gymnasium, among whom our collegiate registrar had himself been numbered until quite recently. Rejoicing at the poor souls’ good fortune, Erast Fandorin set off along the fence in the direction indicated to him.

Around the corner began one of those shady side streets of which the Khamovniki district possesses such an immense number: a dusty roadway, drowsy little mansions with little front gardens, spreading poplars that would soon release their downy white fluff into the air. The two-story wing in which Lady Astair was staying was connected to the main building by a long gallery. Beside the marble plaque bearing the inscription FIRST MOSCOW ASTAIR HOUSE. MANAGEMENT, a grave-looking door-keeper with sleekly combed side-whiskers was basking in the sunshine. Fandorin had never before seen such an imposing doorkeeper, in white stockings and a three-cornered hat, not even in front of the governor-general’s residence.

“No visitors today,” said this janissary, extending his arm like a boom to block the way. “Come tomorrow. On official business from ten to twelve, on personal matters from two to four.”

No, Erast Fandorin’s encounters with the doorkeeping tribe were definitely not going well. Either his appearance was not impressive enough or something about his face was not quite right.

“Detective police. To see Lady Astair on urgent business,” he muttered through clenched teeth in vengeful anticipation of seeing the dummy with the golden galloon bow.

But the dummy did not even bat an eyelid.

“There’s no point trying to see Her Excellency—I won’t let you in. If you wish, I can announce you to Mr. Cunningham.”

“I don’t wish to see any Mr. Cunningham,” Erast Fandorin snapped. “Announce me to the baroness immediately, or you’ll be spending the night in the police station! And tell her I’m from the Criminal Investigation Division on urgent state business!”

The doorkeeper sized up the irate official with a glance full of doubt, but nonetheless he disappeared inside the door. The scoundrel did not, however, invite Erast Fandorin in.

Having been made to wait for rather a long time, Fandorin was on the point of bursting in without being invited, when the dour face in the side-whiskers glanced out again from the door.

“Her ladyship will receive you, all right, but she doesn’t have much Russian, and Mr. Cunningham has no time to translate—he’s too busy. Unless perhaps you can explain yourself in French…” It was clear from his voice that the doorkeeper had little faith in such a possibility.

“I can even explain myself in English,” Erast Fandorin threw out casually. “Which way shall I go?”

“I’ll show you. Follow me.”

Fandorin followed the janissary through a spotless entrance hall upholstered with damask and along a corridor flooded with sunlight from a row of tall Dutch windows to a white and gold door.

Erast Fandorin was not afraid of conversing in English. He had grown up in the charge of Nanny Lizbet (at moments of strictness Mrs. Johnson), a genuine English nanny. She was a warmhearted and considerate but extremely prim and proper old maid, who was nonetheless supposed to be addressed not as ‘miss’ but as ‘missus,’ out of respect for her venerable profession. Lizbet had taught her charge to rise at half past six in summer and half past seven in winter, to perform calisthenic exercises until he just began to sweat and then sponge himself down with cold water, to count to two hundred as he cleaned his teeth, never to eat his fill, and all sorts of other things absolutely essential for a gentleman to know.

A gentle woman’s voice responded to his knock at the door. “Come in! Entrez.”

Erast Fandorin handed the doorkeeper his peaked cap and went in.

He found himself in a spacious, richly furnished study, in which pride of place was given to an extremely wide mahogany desk. Seated behind the desk was a gray-haired lady with an appearance that was not merely pleasant but extremely agreeable. Behind the gold pince-nez her light blue eyes sparkled with lively intelligence and affability. Fandorin took an immediate liking to the mobile features of the plain face, the duckbill nose, and broad, smiling mouth.

He introduced himself in English but did not immediately mention the purpose of his visit.

“Your pronunciation is splendid, sir,” Lady Astair praised him in the same language. “I trust our formidable Timoth…Timofei did not give you too bad a fright? I confess I am a little bit afraid of him myself, but officials often call at the office, and then Timofei is quite invaluable, better than an English manservant. But take a seat, young man. Better sit over there in the armchair—you’ll be more comfortable. So you are in the criminal police? That must be very interesting work. And what does your father do?”

“He is dead.”

“I am very sorry to hear it, sir. And your mother?”

“Also dead,” Fandorin blurted out, unhappy with the direction the conversation had taken.

“My poor boy. I know how lonely you must be. For forty years I have been helping unfortunate boys like you escape their loneliness and find their path.”

“Find their path, my lady?” Erast Fandorin did not quite follow.

“Oh, yes,” said Lady Astair, becoming animated as she quite clearly mounted her pet hobbyhorse. “Finding one’s own path is the most important thing for anyone. I am profoundly convinced that every individual possesses a unique talent—everyone is endowed with a divine gift. The tragedy of mankind is that we do not seek to discover this gift in the child and nurture it—we do not know how. A genius is a rare event among us, even a miracle, but what is a genius? It is simply a person who has been lucky. Fate has decreed that the circumstances of life themselves nudge the individual toward the correct choice of path. The classical example is Mozart. He was born into the family of a musician, and from an early age he found himself in an environment that ideally nurtured the talent with which nature had endowed him. But just try to imagine, my dear sir, that Wolfgang Amadeus was born into the family of a peasant. He would have become a crude rustic herdsman, amusing his cows by the magic trilling of his reed flute. If he had been born into the family of a rough military man, he would have become a mediocre officer with a love of military marches. Believe me, young man, within every child, every single one without exception, there lies a hidden treasure. One simply needs to know how to reach that treasure! There is a very nice North American writer by the name of Mark Twain. I suggested to him the idea for a story in which people are judged not according to their actual achievements but according to the potential and the talent with which nature has endowed them. And then it will turn out that the very greatest general of all time was some unknown tailor who never served in the army and the very greatest artist of all never held a brush in his hand because he worked as a cobbler all his life. The basis of my system of education is to ensure that the great general is certain to find his way into the army and the great artist will be provided with paints in good time. My teachers patiently and persistently probe the mental constitution of each of their wards, searching in him for the spark of God, and in nine cases out of ten they find it!”

“Aha, then it is not there in everyone!” said Fandorin, raising his finger in triumph.

“In everyone, my dear young man, in absolutely everyone. It is simply that we pedagogues are not sufficiently skillful, or else the child is endowed with a talent for which the modern world has no use. Perhaps this person was needed in primordial society, or his genius will be required in the distant future—in a sphere that we today cannot even imagine.”

“Concerning the future—all right, I cannot undertake to judge,” Fandorin prefaced his argument, enthralled by the conversation despite himself. “But concerning primordial society the issue is not quite clear. Exactly what talents did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know that myself, my boy,” said Lady Astair with a disarming smile. “Well, let us suppose the gift of guessing where there is water under the ground. Or the gift of sensing game in the woods. Perhaps the ability to distinguish edible roots from nonedible ones. I know only one thing: in those distant times precisely such people were the main geniuses, and Mr. Darwin or Herr Schopenhauer, had they been born in a cave, would have found themselves relegated to the position of tribal idiots. As a matter of fact, those children who today are regarded as mentally backward also possess a gift. It is, of course, not a gift of a rational nature but is nonetheless precious for all that. In Sheffield I have a special Astair House for those whom traditional pedagogy has rejected. My God, what miracles of genius those boys demonstrate! There is a child there, who at the age of thirteen has barely learned to talk, but he cures any migraine with the touch of his hand. Another, who is entirely incapable of verbal communication, can hold his breath for an entire four and a half minutes. A third can heat a glass of water simply by looking at it—can you imagine?”

“Incredible! But why only boys? What about girls?”

Lady Astair sighed and spread her hands. “You are right, my friend. Of course, one should work with girls as well. However, experience has taught me that the talents with which the female nature is endowed are often such that modern society is not yet ready to understand them appropriately. We live in the age of men, and we are obliged to take that into consideration. In a society where men are the bosses, an exceptionally talented woman arouses suspicion and hostility. I would not wish my foster daughters to feel unhappy.”

“But then how is your system arranged? How is the sorting, so to speak, of the children accomplished?” Erast Fandorin inquired with keen curiosity.

“Do you really find it interesting?” the baroness asked in delight. “Let us go to the teaching building and you will see for yourself.”

Rising to her feet with an agility quite amazing for her age, she was ready to take him there and show him immediately.

Fandorin bowed, and her ladyship led the young man at first along the corridor, and then through the long gallery to the main building.

Along the way she told him about her work. “Our institution here is quite new. It is only three weeks since it opened, and the work is still in its earliest stage. My people have taken from the orphanages, and some times directly from the street, a hundred and twenty orphan boys aged from four to twelve years. If a child is older than that, it is hard to do anything with him—his personality is already formed. To begin with, the boys were divided into groups by age, each with its own teacher, a specialist in that particular age. The teacher’s main responsibility is to observe the children closely and gradually begin setting them various simple assignments. These are like a game, but by using them it is easy to determine the general tendency of a child’s character. At the initial stage one has to divine where a particular child’s greatest talent lies—in the body, the head, or the intuition. After that, the children will be divided into groups, not according to age but according to type: rationalists, artistes, craftsmen, leaders, sportsmen, and so on. Gradually the profile of the type is narrowed more and more, and the oldest boys are quite often tutored individually. I have been working with children for forty years, and you cannot imagine how much my alumni have achieved, in the most varied of spheres.”

“Why, that is quite magnificent, my lady,” Erast Fandorin exclaimed in delight. “But where can one find so many expert teachers?”

“I pay my teachers very well, because pedagogy is the most important of all the sciences,” the baroness said with profound conviction. “And apart from that, many of my former pupils express a desire to remain in the Astair Houses as teachers. This is really quite natural—after all, the Astair House is the only family they have ever known.”

They entered a wide recreation hall onto which the doors of several classrooms opened.

“Now, where should I take you?” Lady Astair pondered. “I think at least to the physics laboratory. My splendid Dr. Blank, an alumnus of the Zurich Astair House and a physicist of genius, is giving a demonstration lesson there at the moment. I lured him here to Moscow by setting up a laboratory for his experiments with electricity. And while he is here he has to show the children all sorts of clever physics tricks in order to stimulate their interest in that science.”

The baroness knocked on one of the doors, and they stepped into the classroom. Sitting at the desks were about fifteen boys aged eleven and twelve wearing blue uniforms with a golden letter A on the jacket collar. All of them were watching with bated breath as a sullen young gentleman with immense side-whiskers, dressed in a rather untidy frock coat and a shirt that was none too fresh, spun some kind of glass wheel that was sputtering out bright blue sparks.

’Ich bin sehr beschдftigt, milady!”. Blank shouted angrily. “Spдter, spдter!’* Then he began speaking in broken Russian, addressing the children. “Und now, zhentlemen, you vill zee a zhenuine little rainbow! It’s name is Blank Regenbogen, “Blank’s rainbow.” I invent it ven I vas young as you are now.”

Suddenly a small, unusually bright rainbow arced across from the strange wheel to the table that was crammed with all sorts of physics apparatus, and the boys began buzzing with delight.

“Just a little bit crazy, but a genuine genius,” Lady Astair whispered to Fandorin.

At that moment a child screamed loudly in the next classroom.

“Good Lord!” said her ladyship, clutching at her heart. “That’s from the gymnastics room! Let’s go, quickly!”

She ran out into the corridor with Fandorin following her. Together they burst into an empty, bright auditorium in which the floor was laid with leather mats and the most varied pieces of equipment were set along the walls, including wall bars, rings, thick ropes, and trampolines. Rapiers and fencing masks lay cheek by jowl with boxing gloves and dumbbells. A small group of seven- and eight-year-old boys was clustered around one of the mats. Pushing his way through the children, Erast Fandorin saw a boy writhing in pain and, bending over him, a young man about thirty years of age dressed in gymnast’s tights. The man had fiery ginger curls, green eyes, and a determined-looking face covered with freckles.

“All right, my dear chap,” he said in Russian with a slight accent. “Show me your leg—don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you. Be a man and bear it. Fell from the rings, m’lady,” he explained to the baroness in English. “Weak hands. I am afraid the ankle is broken. Would you please tell Mr. Izyumoff?”

Her ladyship nodded without speaking and, gesturing to Erast Fandorin to follow her, walked quickly out of the hall.

“I’ll go for the doctor, Mr. Izyumov,” she told him, speaking rapidly. “This kind of thing happens frequently. Boys will always be boys…That was Gerald Cunningham, my right-hand man. An alumnus of the London Astair House. A brilliant teacher. He is in charge of the entire Russian branch. In six months he has mastered your difficult language, which is quite beyond me. Last autumn Gerald opened the Astair House in St. Petersburg and now he is here temporarily, helping to get things going. Without him I am like a woman with no hands.”

She stopped in front of a door bearing the inscription DOCTOR.

“I do beg your pardon, sir, but I shall have to cut short our conversation. Some other time, perhaps? Come tomorrow and we’ll talk. You have some business to discuss with me?”

“Nothing of any importance, my lady,” said Fandorin, blushing. “Indeed I really…some other time. I wish you success in your noble profession.”

Erast Fandorin bowed awkwardly and walked quickly away. He felt very ashamed.

“WELL, DID YOU CATCH the villainess red-handed?” Fandorin’s chief greeted his shamefaced subordinate merrily, raising his head from some complicated diagrams. The curtains in the office were closed and the lamp on the desk was lit, for it had already begun to grow dark outside. “Let me guess. Her ladyship had never even heard of Mr. Kokorin, let alone Miss Bezhetskaya, and the news of the suicide’s bequest upset her terribly. Is that right?”

Erast Fandorin merely sighed.

“I met the lady in St. Petersburg. In the Third Section we considered her request to be allowed to conduct teaching activities in Russia. Did she tell you about the morons who are geniuses? Right, then, let’s get to work. Take a seat at the desk,” said Fandorin’s chief with a wave of his hand. “You have a fascinating night ahead.”

Erast Fandorin felt a pleasant tingling sensation of anxious anticipation in his breast—such was the effect produced on him by his dealings with State Counselor Brilling.

“Your target is Zurov. You have already seen him, so you have a certain notion of the man. Getting into the count’s house is easy enough—no recommendations are required. He runs something in the nature of a gambling den in his home, none too well disguised. The accepted style is all hussars and guards, but all sorts of good-for-nothing riffraff turn up as well. Zurov maintained a house of a precisely similar kind in St. Petersburg, but after a visit from our police he moved to Moscow. He is entirely his own master, listed at his regiment as being on indefinite leave for more than two years now. Let me state your task: try to get as close to him as possible and get a good look at his entourage. Perhaps you might come across your white-eyed acquaintance there? But no amateur heroics—you can’t possibly deal with a type like that on your own. Anyway, he is hardly likely to be there. I do not exclude the possibility that the count may himself take an interest in you. After all, you did meet at Bezhetskaya’s house, and he is evidently not indifferent to her. Act in accordance with the situation. But don’t get carried away. This gentleman is not to be trifled with. He cheats at cards, or as they say in that company, he ‘fixes the odds,’ and if he is caught in the act he deliberately provokes a scandal. He has a dozen or so duels to his account, and there are others we know nothing about. And he can crack your skull open without the excuse of a duel. For instance, in seventy-two at the Nizhni Novgorod Fair Zurov got into an argument over cards with a merchant, Svyshchov, and threw that bearded gentleman out of a window. From the second floor. The merchant was badly smashed up and couldn’t speak for a month—he could only mumble. But nothing happened to the count. He squirmed his way out of it. He has influential relatives in high places. What are these?” asked Ivan Brilling, as usual without any transition as he placed a deck of playing cards on the desk.

“Cards,” Fandorin answered in surprise.

“Do you play?”

“I don’t play at all. Papa forbade me even to touch cards. He said he’d already played enough for himself and me, and for the next three generations of Fandorins.”

“A pity,” said Brilling, concerned. “Without that you’ll get nowhere at Zurov’s. All right, take a piece of paper and make notes.”

A quarter of an hour later Erast Fandorin could already distinguish the suits without hesitation and he knew which card was higher and which was lower, except that he still confused the picture cards a little. He kept forgetting which was higher, the queen or the jack.

“You’re hopeless,” his chief summed up. “But that’s nothing to worry about. At the count’s house they don’t play preference and other such intellectual games. The more primitive the better for them—they want as much money as possible as quickly as possible. Our agents report that Zurov prefers stoss, and the simplified version at that. I’ll explain the rules. The one who deals the cards is called the banker. The other player is the punter. Each has his own deck of cards. The punter selects a card from his deck, let’s say a nine. He puts it facedown in front of him.”

“The face—is that the side with the numbers on?” Fandorin inquired.

“Yes. Now the punter places a bet—let’s say, ten rubles. The banker begins dealing. He lays the top card from his deck faceup to the right (that’s called the ‘forehead’) and the next card to the left (that’s called the ‘dreambook’).”

Forehead—R., dreambook—L., Erast Fandorin wrote down diligently in his notepad.

“Now the punter reveals his nine. If the forehead also happens to be a nine, no matter what the suit, then the banker takes the stake. That’s called ‘killing the nine.’ Then the bank, that’s the sum of money that is being played for, increases. If the dreambook turns out to be a nine, then that’s a win for the punter, he’s ‘found the nine.”

“What if there’s no nine in the pair?”

“If there doesn’t happen to be a nine in the first pair, the banker lays out the following pair of cards. And so on until a nine does show up. That’s all there is to the game. Elementary, but you can lose your shirt on it, especially if you’re the punter and you keep doubling up. So get it into your head, Fandorin, that you must only play as the banker. It’s simple: you deal a card to the right, a card to the left; a card to the right, a card to the left. The banker will never lose more than the first stake. Don’t play as the punter, and if you have to because you’ve drawn lots, then set a low stake. In stoss you can’t have more than five rounds, and then the remainder of the bank goes to the banker. Now you can go and collect two hundred rubles from the cashier’s office to cover your losses.”

“A whole two hundred?” gasped Fandorin.

“Not a ‘whole two hundred’ but a ‘mere two hundred.’ Do your best to make that amount last you all night, if you lose everything quickly, you don’t have to leave immediately—you can hang about for a while. But don’t arouse any suspicion. Is that clear? You’ll be playing every evening until you come up with a result. Even if it becomes clear that Zurov is not involved—well, that’s a result, too. One scenario less.”

Erast Fandorin moved his lips as he stared at his crib.

“Hearts—are they the red ones?”

“Yes, sometimes they’re called cors, from coeur* Get along to the costume section—they’ve made an outfit in your size, and by lunchtime tomorrow they’ll run you up an entire wardrobe for every possible occasion. Quick march, Fandorin. I’ve got enough to do without talking to you. Come straight back here from Zurov’s place. I’m spending the night in the department today.”

And Brilling stuck his nose back into his papers.

CHAPTER EIGHT

which the jack of spades turns up most inopportunely

IN THE SMOKE-FILLED HALL THE PLAYERS WERE seated at six green card tables—in some places in compact groups, in others in fours or twos. There were also observers loitering beside each table: fewer around games where the stakes were low and rather more where the excitement of the spiel was spiraling upward. Wine and hors d’oeuvres were not served at the count’s establishment. Those who wished could go into the drawing room and send a servant out to a tavern, but the gamblers only ever sent out for champagne to celebrate some special run of luck. On all sides there resounded abrupt exclamations incomprehensible to the non-gambler:

“Je coupe.”*

“Je passe.”

“Second deal.”

“Retournez la carte.”**

“Well, gentleman, the hands are dealt!”—and so forth.

The largest crowd was standing around the table where a high-stakes game was taking place, one against one. The host himself was dealing and a sweaty gentleman in a fashionable, overtight frock coat was punting. The punter’s luck was clearly not running. He repeatedly bit his lips and became excited, while the count was the very image of composure, merely smiling sweetly from under his black mustache as he drew in the smoke from a curving Turkish chibouque. The well-tended, strong fingers with their glittering rings dealt the cards adroitly—one to the right, one to the left.

Among the observers, standing demurely at the back, was a young man with black hair whose face bore no resemblance to that of a gambler. It was immediately obvious to a man of experience that the youth came from a good family, had wandered into a gaming hall for the first time, and felt entirely out of place. Several times old stagers with brilliantined partings in their hair had proposed that he might like to ‘turn a card,’ but they had been disappointed. The youth never staked more than five rubles and positively refused to be ‘wound up.’ The experienced card master Gromov, a man known to the whole of gambling Moscow, even threw the boy some bait by losing a hundred rubles to him, but the money was simply wasted. The rosy-cheeked youth’s eyes did not light up and his hands did not begin to tremble. This was an unpromising mark, a genuine ‘louser.’

And in the meantime Fandorin—for of course it was he—believed that he had been slipping through the hall like an invisible shadow without attracting anyone’s attention. In all honesty, he had not yet done a great deal of this ‘slipping.’ Once he had noticed an extremely respectable-looking gentleman slyly appropriate a gold half imperial from a table and walk off with a highly dignified air. Then there were the two young officers who had been arguing in loud whispers in the corridor, but Erast Fandorin had not understood a word of their conversation: the lieutenant of dragoons was heatedly asserting that he was not some ‘top spinner’ or other and he did not ‘play the Arab’ with his friends, while the cornet of hussars was upbraiding him for being some kind of ‘fixer.’

Zurov, beside whom Fandorin had found himself every now and then, was clearly in his native element in this society, by far the biggest fish in the pond. A single word from him was enough to nip a nascent scandal in the bud. Once at a mere gesture from their master two thug-gish lackeys took hold of the elbows of a gentleman who refused to stop shouting and had carried him out the door in an instant. The count definitely did not recognize Erast Fandorin, although Fandorin did catch his quick, unfriendly gaze on himself several times.

“Fifth round, sir,” Zurov declared, and for some reason this announcement drove the punter to a paroxysm of excitement.

“I mark the duck!” he shouted out in a trembling voice and bent over two corners on his card.

A low whisper ran through the watching crowd as the sweaty gentleman tossed back a lock of hair from his forehead and cast a whole bundle of rainbow-colored bills onto the table.

“What is a ‘duck’?” Erast Fandorin inquired in a bashful whisper of a red-nosed gentleman who seemed to him to be the most good-humored.

“That signifies the quadrupling of the stake,” his neighbor gladly explained. “The gentleman desires to take his revenge in full in the following round.”

The count indifferently released a small cloud of smoke and exposed a king to the right and a six to the left.

The punter revealed the ace of hearts.

Zurov nodded and instantly tossed a black ace to the right and a red king to the left.

From somewhere Fandorin heard a whisper of admiration: “Exquisitely done!”

The sweaty gentleman was a pitiful sight. His glance followed the heap of banknotes as it migrated to a position beside the count’s elbow and inquired timidly, “Would you perhaps care to continue against an IOU?”

“I would not,” Zurov replied lazily. “Who else wishes to play, gentlemen?”

His gaze unexpectedly came to rest on Erast Fandorin.

“I believe we have met?” the host asked with an unpleasant smile. “Mr. Fedorin, if I am not mistaken?”

“Fandorin,” Erast Fandorin corrected him, blushing furiously.

“I beg your pardon. Why do you do nothing but stand and stare? This is not a theater we have here. If you’ve come, then play. Please have a seat.” He pointed to the newly vacated chair.

“Choose the decks yourself,” the kind old gentleman hissed in Fandorin’s ear.

Erast Fandorin sat down and, following instructions, he said in an extremely decisive manner, “But if you don’t mind, Your Excellency, I will keep the bank myself. A novice’s privilege. And as for the decks, I would prefer…that one and that one there.” And so saying he took the two bottom packs from the tray of unopened decks.

Zurov smiled still more unpleasantly. “Very well, mister novice, your terms are accepted, but on one condition: if I break the bank, you must not run off. Afterward give me the chance to deal. Well, what’s the pot to be?”

Fandorin faltered, his resolve deserting him as suddenly as it had descended on him.

“A hundred rubles?” he asked timidly.

“Are you joking? This is not one of your taverns.”

“Very well, three hundred.” And Erast Fandorin placed all his money on the table, including the hundred he had won earlier.

“Lejeu ne vautpas la chandelle,”* said the count with a shrug, “but I suppose it will do for a start.”

He drew a card from his deck and carelessly tossed three hundred-ruble notes onto it.

“I’ll go for the lot.”

The ‘forehead’ was to the right, Erast Fandorin remembered, and he carefully set down a lady with little red hearts to the right and to the left the seven of spades.

Hippolyte Alexandrovich Zurov turned his card over with two fingers and gave a slight frown. It was the queen of diamonds.

“Well done, the novice,” someone said with a whistle. “He set up that queen very handily.”

Fandorin clumsily shuffled his deck.

“For the whole pot,” the count said derisively, tossing six notes onto the table. “Dammit, if you don’t place it, you’ll never ace it.”

What was the card on the left called? Erast Fandorin could not remember. This one was the ‘forehead,’ but the second one…damnation. It was embarrassing. What if Zurov asked something? It would look bad if he had to check his crib.

“Bravo!” called out the audience. “Count, c’est un jeu intйressant* do you not think so?”

Erast Fandorin saw that he had won again.

“Be so kind as not to Frenchify. It really is a stupid habit to stick half of a French phrase into Russian speech,” Zurov said irritably, glancing around at the speaker, although he himself interpolated French expressions now and again. “Deal, Fandorin, deal. A card’s not a horse, waiting to take you home in the morning. For the lot.”

To the right, a jack—that’s the ‘forehead’—to the left, an eight, that’s—

Count Hippolyte Zurov turned over a ten. Fandorin killed it at the fourth twist.

People were now pressing around the table on all sides, and Erast Fandorin’s success was worthily acclaimed.

“Fandorin, Fandorin,” Zurov muttered absentmindedly, drumming on the deck of cards with his fingers. Eventually he drew out a card and counted out 2,400 rubles.

The six of spades went straight to the ‘forehead’ from the very first twist.

“What kind of name is that?” exclaimed the count, growing furious. “Fandorin! From the Greek, is it? Fandorakis, Fandoropoulos!”

“Why Greek?” Erast Fandorin asked, taking offense. The memory of how his good-for-nothing classmates had mocked his ancient surname was still fresh in his mind—at the gymnasium Erast Fandorin’s nickname had been Fanny. “Our line, Count, is as Russian as your own. The Fandorins served Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.”

“Yes, indeed, sir,” said the same recent red-nosed old gentleman, Erast Fandorin’s well-wisher, suddenly coming to life. “There was a Fandorin at the time of Catherine the Great who left the most fascinating memoirs.”

“Fascinating, fascinating, today is most exasperating,” Zurov rhymed gloomily, heaping up an entire mound of banknotes. “For the entire bank! Deal a card, devil take you!”

“Le dernier coup, messieurs!”* came a voice from the crowd.

Everyone stared greedily at the two equally huge piles of crumpled notes, one lying in front of the banker, the other in front of the punter.

In absolute silence Fandorin opened up two fresh decks of cards, still thinking about the same thing. Pocketbook? Handbook?

An ace to the right, another ace to the left. Zurov has a king. A queen to the right, a ten to the left. A jack to the right, a queen to the left. Which one was the higher card, after all, jack or queen? A seven to the right, a six to the left.

“Don’t snort down my neck!” the count roared furiously, and the crowd recoiled from him.

An eight to the right, a nine to the left. A king to the right, a ten to the left. A king!

The men standing around were howling with laughter. Count Hip-polyte Zurov sat there as though turned to stone.

Dreambook! Erast Fandorin remembered and smiled in delight. The card to the left was the dreambook. What a strange name it was.

Zurov suddenly bent forward across the table and pinched Fandorin’s lips into a tube with ringers of steel.

“Don’t you dare smirk! If you happen to have won a bundle, then have the decency to behave in a civil manner!” the count hissed furiously, moving very close. His bloodshot eyes were terrible. The next moment he pushed Fandorin’s chin away, leaned back against his chair, and folded his arms on his chest.

“Count, that really is going too far!” exclaimed one of the officers.

“I don’t believe I am running away,” Zurov hissed, without taking his eyes off Fandorin. “If anyone’s feelings are offended, I am prepared to reciprocate.”

A genuinely deadly silence filled the room.

There was a terrible ringing in Erast Fandorin’s ears, and there was only one thing he was afraid of now—he must not turn coward. But then, he was also afraid that his voice would betray him by trembling.

“You are a dishonorable scoundrel. You simply do not wish to pay,” said Fandorin, and his voice did tremble, but that no longer mattered. “I challenge you.”

“Playing the hero for the audience?” sneered Zurov. “We’ll see how you sing looking down the barrel of a gun. Tomorrow. At twenty paces, with barriers. Either party can fire when he wishes, but afterward you must stand at the barrier. Are you not afraid?”

I am afraid, thought Erast Fandorin. Akhtyrtsev said he can hit a five-kopeck coin at twenty paces, let alone a forehead. Or even worse, a stomach. Fandorin shuddered. He had never even held a dueling pistol in his hand. Xavier Grushin had once taken him to the police shooting range to fire a Colt, but that was entirely different. Zurov would kill him, he would kill him over a worthless trifle. And he would get clean away with it. There would be no way to catch him out. There were plenty of witnesses. It was a quarrel over cards, a common enough business. The count would spend a month in the guardhouse and then be released; he had influential relatives, and Erast Fandorin had no one. They would lay the collegiate registrar in a rough plank coffin and bury him in the ground and no one would come to the funeral. Except perhaps Grushin and Agrafena Kondratievna. And Lizanka would read about it in the newspaper and think in passing: what a shame, he was such a well-mannered policeman, and so very young. But, no, she would not read it—Emma probably did not give her the newspapers. And, of course, his chief would say: I believed in him, the fool, and he got himself killed like some idiotic greenhorn. Decided to fight a duel, dabble in idiotic gentry sentiment. And then he would spit.

“Why don’t you say something?” Zurov asked with a cruel smile. “Or have you changed your mind about going shooting?”

But just then Erast Fandorin had a positively lifesaving idea. He would not have to fight the duel straightaway—at the very earliest it would be the following morning. Of course, to go running to his chief to complain would be mean and despicable, but Ivan Brilling had said there were other agents working on Zurov. It was entirely possible that one of the chief’s people was here in the hall right now. He could accept the challenge and maintain his honor, but if, for example, tomorrow at dawn the police were suddenly to raid the house and arrest Count Zurov for running a gambling den, then Fandorin would not be to blame for it. In fact, he would not know a thing about it. Ivan Brilling would know perfectly well how to act without consulting him.

His salvation, one might say, was as good as in the bag, but Erast Fandorin’s voice suddenly acquired a life of its own, independent of its owner’s will, and began uttering the most incredible nonsense and, amazingly enough, it was no longer trembling.

“No, I haven’t changed my mind. But why wait until tomorrow? Let’s do it right now. They tell me, Count, that you practice from morning to night with five-kopeck pieces, and at precisely twenty paces?” Zurov turned crimson. “I think we ought to go about things differently, as long as you don’t funk it.” Now hadn’t Akhtyrtsev’s story come in very handy! There was no need to invent a thing. It had all been invented already. “Let us draw lots and the one who loses will go out in the yard and shoot himself, without any barriers. And afterward there will be the very minimum of unpleasantness. A man lost and he put a bullet through his forehead—it’s a common story. And the gentlemen will give their word of honor that everything will remain a secret. Will you not, gentlemen?”

The gentlemen began talking and their opinion proved to be divided: some expressed immediate willingness to give their word of honor, but others suggested forgetting the quarrel altogether and drinking the cup of peace. Then one major with luxuriant mustaches exclaimed, “But the boy is putting up a good show,” and that increased Erast Fandorin’s fervor.

“Well then, Count?” he exclaimed with desperate insolence, finally slipping his reins. “Can it really be easier to hit a five-kopeck piece than your own forehead? Or are you afraid of missing?”

Zurov said nothing, staring curiously at the plucky youngster, and his expression suggested that he was figuring something out. “Very well,” he said at last with exceptional coolness. “The terms are accepted. Jean.”

A lackey promptly flew over to Zurov. The count said to him, “A revolver, a fresh deck, and a bottle of champagne.” And he whispered something else in his ear.

Two minutes later Jean returned with a tray. He had to squeeze his way through the crowd, for now every last one of the visitors had gathered around the table.

With a deft, lightning-swift movement Zurov swung out the cylinder of the revolver to show that all the bullets were in place.

“Here’s the deck.” His fingers split open the taut wrapper with a crisp crackling sound. “Now it’s my turn to deal.” He laughed, seeming to be in an excellent frame of mind. “The rules are simple: the first to draw a card from a black suit is the one to put a bullet through his forehead. Agreed?”

Fandorin nodded without speaking, already beginning to realize that he had been cheated, monstrously duped by his adversary, killed even more surely than at twenty paces. The cunning Hippolyte had outplayed him, outsmarted him finally and absolutely! A card master like him would never fail to draw the card he needed—certainly not from his own deck! No doubt he had an entire stack of marked cards.

Meanwhile Zurov, after demonstratively crossing himself, dealt the top card. It was the queen of diamonds.

“That’s Venus,” the count said with a insolent smile. “She always comes to my rescue. Your turn, Fandorin.”

To protest or haggle would be humiliating. It was too late now to demand another deck. And it was shameful to delay.

Erast Fandorin reached out his hand and turned over the jack of spades.

CHAPTER NINE

which Fandorin’s career prospects appear to improve

“AND THAT’S MOMUS, THE FOOL,” HIPPOLYTE explained, stretching luxuriously. “But it’s getting rather late. Will you take some champagne for courage or go straight outside?”

Erast Fandorin sat there, bright red. He was choking with fury not at the count but at himself for being such a total idiot. There was no point in such an idiot staying alive.

“I’ll do it right here,” he growled in his anger, deciding that he could at least play one last dirty trick on his host. “Your flunky can wash the floor. And spare me the champagne—it gives me a headache.”

In the same angry fashion, trying not to think about anything, Fandorin grabbed the heavy revolver and cocked the hammer. Then, after hesitating for a moment over where to shoot himself and deciding that it made no difference, he set the barrel in his mouth, started counting in his mind—three, two, one—and pressed the trigger so hard that he pinched his tongue painfully with the barrel. However, no shot ensued. There was nothing but a dry click. Totally bemused, Erast Fandorin squeezed the trigger again. There was another click, but this time the metal merely rasped repulsively against a tooth.

“That’ll do, that’ll do!” Zurov took the gun away from him and slapped him on the shoulder. “Good fellow! Even tried to shoot yourself without taking Dutch courage, without any hysterics. A fine younger generation we have growing up, eh, gentlemen? Jean, pour the champagne. Mr. Fandorin and I will drink to bruderschaft.”

Erast Fandorin, overcome by a strange apathy, did as he was bid. He listlessly drained his glass of the bubbly beverage and listlessly exchanged kisses with the count, who ordered him henceforth to address him simply as Hippolyte. Everyone around was laughing loudly and making a racket, but when the sound of their voices reached Fandorin’s ears it was strangely muffled. The champagne prickled his nose, and tears welled up in his eyes.

“How do you like that Jean.” The count laughed. “It only took him a minute to remove all the pins. Very adroit, Fandorin, you must admit!”

“Yes, adroit,” Erast Fandorin agreed indifferently.

“I’d say so. What’s your first name?”

“Erast.”

“Come on then, Erastus of Rotterdam. Let’s go and sit in my study and drink a little brandy. I’m fed up with all these ugly mugs.”

“Erasmus,” Fandorin automatically corrected him.

“What?”

“Not Erastus but Erasmus.”

“I beg your pardon. I misheard. Let’s go, Erasmus.”

Fandorin obediently stood up and followed his host. They walked through a dark enfilade of rooms and found themselves in a round chamber where a quite remarkable disorder prevailed—pipes and empty bottles were scattered around, a pair of silver spurs were flaunting themselves on the table, and for some reason a stylish English saddle was lying in the corner. Why this chamber should be called a study, Erast Fandorin could not understand, since there were neither books nor writing instruments anywhere in sight.

“Splendid little saddle, isn’t it?” Zurov boasted. “Won it yesterday in a wager.”

He poured some brown-colored beverage into glasses from a round-bellied bottle, seated himself beside Erast Fandorin, and said very seriously, even soulfully, “Forgive me for my joke, brute that I am. I am bored, Erasmus. Plenty of folk around, but no real people. I’m twenty-eight, Fandorin, but I feel sixty, especially in the morning when I wake up. In the evening or at night it’s not too bad. I kick up a rumpus, play the fool. Only it’s disgusting. It used to be all right before, but nowadays somehow it gets more and more disgusting. Would you believe that just now when we were drawing lots, I suddenly thought: why not really shoot myself? And, you know, I felt tempted…Why don’t you say anything? Come on now, Fandorin. Don’t be angry. I very much want you not to bear a grudge. Tell me, what can I do to make you forgive me, eh, Erasmus?”

And then Erast Fandorin said in a squeaky but perfectly clear voice, “Tell me about her. About Bezhetskaya.”