He Lover of Death

HOW SENKA WAS NABBED

Even though there wasn’t any treasure in the vault, when Senka came out of the passage, into the cellar with the brick pillars, he pushed the stones back in place anyway. He’d have to come back with an oil lamp and search a bit better – maybe there was something he’d missed?

On the way out, from the spot where the mole had asked which exit he wanted to go to, Senka turned left, so he wouldn’t wind up in the Old Rags Basement. Walk back past that door, with those eyeless corpses behind it? No thank you, that’s a treat we can do without.

Senka felt amazed at his own daring – after a horror like that, how come he didn’t go haring out of the Yerokha, and even went hunting for treasure? It meant one of two things: either he was a pretty hard case after all, or else he was as greedy as they come – and his greed was stronger than his fear.

That was what he was thinking when he walked through the side door into the Tatar Tavern. When he got outside the flophouse, he screwed his eyes up at the bright light. Well, well, it was morning already, and the sun was gleaming on the bell tower of St Nikola of Podkopai. He’d spent the whole night creeping around underground.

Senka walked along Podkolokolny Lane, looking at how pure and joyous the sky was, with its lacy white doilies. He should have been looking around, instead of staring at the clouds.

He walked straight into someone – as solid as cast bronze. Bruised himself, he did, but whoever it was didn’t even budge.

Oh Lord – it was the Chinaman.

After all these goings-on, Senka had forgotten all about him, but the Chinee was dogged – he’d stayed put in that street all night long. And all for seventy kopecks! If those lousy beads were worth even a three-note, he’d probably have had a fit.

Slanty-eyes smiled: ‘Good moruning, Senka-kun.’ And he stretched out his stubby hand to grab Senka’s collar.

Sod that!

Senka smashed him across the arm with the iron stick out of the vault. That made the nifty heathen pull back sharpish.

Oho, off we go again – the old catch-me-if-you-can routine. Senka spun round and sprinted off down the lane.

Only this time he didn’t get very far. As he went running past a fancy gent (what was a dandy like that doing in Khitrovka?), Senka’s pocket caught on the knob of his cane. It was weird – the stroller’s cane wasn’t jerked right out of his hand, like it should have been. Instead, it was Senka who stopped dead in his tracks.

The dandy pulled the cane lightly towards him, and Senka went with it. He looked respectable all right, with a silk stovepipe hat and starched collars. And he had a smooth face too – handsome he was, only not so young any more, his hair was grey at the temples.

‘Unhook me quick, mister!’ Senka yelled, because the Chinaman was getting quite close. He wasn’t running, just strolling towards them in no great hurry.

Suddenly the handsome man laughed, twitched his black moustache and said, with a bit of a stammer: ‘Of c-course, Semyon Spidorov, I’ll let you go, but . . . but not until you return my jade b-beads.’

Senka gaped at him. How come he knew his name?

‘Eh?’ he said. ‘What d’you—? What beads are those?’

‘The ones that you pilfered from my valet Masa eight d-days ago. You’re a smart young man. You’ve c-cost us a lot of time, making us chase after you.’

That was when Senka recognised him: it was the same gent he’d seen from the back on Asheulov Lane. His temples were grey, too, and he stammered.

‘No offence intended,’ the gent went on, taking hold of Senka’s sleeve in a grip like a vice with his finger and thumb, ‘but Masa is t-tired of running after you, he’s not sixteen years old any more. We’ll have to take p-precautions and put you in irons t-temporarily. That rod of yours, if you please.’

The dandy took Senka’s iron stick, gripped both ends tight, wrinkled up his smooth forehead, and then didn’t he just twist that rod round Senka’s wrists! Real easy, too, like it was some kind of wire!

That took incredible strength! Senka was so shaken he couldn’t even do his poor orphan routine.

But the strongman raised his fine eyebrows, as if he was amazed by his own strength, and said: ‘Curious. May I enquire where you g-got this thingummy from?’

Senka gave him the appropriate answer: ‘Where from, where from? From a stroke of luck. If you want to know more, you can go get. . .’

It was like his hands really were in shackles, there was no way he could pull them from the iron loops, no matter how he wriggled.

‘Well, indeed, you’re quite right,’ the man with the moustache agreed calmly. ‘My question is indiscreet. You have every right not to answer it. So where are my beads?’

Then the Chinaman joined them. Senka screwed up his eyes and winced – old Yellow-face would hit him now, like he did Mikheika and the lads.

The words just burst out on their own: ‘Tashka’s got them! I gave them to her.’

‘Who this Taska?’ asked the Chinee that the dandy had called Masa.

‘My moll.’

The handsome gent sighed: ‘I understand. It’s unpleasant and improper to t-take a present back from a l-lady but please understand me, Semyon Spidorov I’ve had those b-beads for fifteen years. One grows accustomed to things, you know. And furthermore, they are associated with a certain rather special m-memory. Let us go to see Mademoiselle Tashka.’

Now, Senka took offence at that. How did he know Senka’s moll was a mamselle? Well, of course, Tashka was a mamselle, but he hadn’t said anything of the sort about her. She could have been a respectable girl. Senka was all set to spring to the defence of Tashka’s honour, shout some coarse insult, but he took a closer look at those calm blue eyes and thought better of it.

‘All right,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s go.’

They set off back along Podkolokolny, Masa holding one end of the twisted rod. The other tormentor walked on his own, tapping his cane on the cobbles.

Senka felt ashamed, being led along like a little dog on a lead. If any of the lads saw him, he’d be disgraced. So he tried to walk as close as he could to the Chinaman, like they were friends, or they were doing a job together. The Chinee understood Senka’s suffering: he took off his jacket and threw it over Senka’s shackled hands. He was human too, even if he wasn’t Russian.

A crowd of people was jostling around the way into the Yerokha. And over their heads, Senka could see a cap with a badge. A constable! Standing there looking all stern and haughty, not letting anyone in. Senka knew right off what was going on – they’d found the Siniukhins! But in the crowd they were saying all sorts.

Someone, who looked like a ragman (they collected old rags from rubbish tips), was explaining loudly: ‘It’s this order as was just issued by the orforities. Close down the Yerokha and spray it with infection, ’cause it’s spreading bacilluses right across Moscow.’

‘What’s it spreading?’ a woman with a broken nose asked in a frightened voice.

‘Bacilluses. Well, to put it simply, that’s a mouse or a rat. And you gets cholera from them, ’cause some of them as live in the Yerokha eats these bacilluses when they’re hungry, and they swell right up from the rat meat. Well, the orforities have found out about it.’

‘Don’t tell lies, sir, you’re only confusing the good people,’ a man emaciated from drink rebuked the ragman. Wearing a tattered frock coat, he was, must have been, one of the pen-pushers, like the late deceased Siniukhin, God rest his soul. ‘There’s been a murder in there. They’re waiting for the superintendent and the investigator.’

‘Hah, they wouldn’t make all this fuss over a trifle like that,’ the ragman said suspiciously. ‘Only today two men were stabbed to death across there in the Labour, as if anyone cares.’

The pen-pusher lowered his voice. ‘My neighbour told me what happened was horrible. Supposedly they did away with countless numbers of little children.’

The people around him gasped and crossed themselves, and the gent who owned the beads pricked up his ears and stopped.

‘Children have b-been killed?’ he asked.

The pen-pusher turned round, saw the important-looking gent and whipped off his cap. ‘Yes indeed, sir. I did not witness it myself, but Ivan Serafimovich from the Old Rags Basement heard the constable who ran to the station saying to himself: “Didn’t even spare the children, the vicious brutes”. And something else, about eyes being put out. My neighbour is an extremely honest man, he would never lie. He used to work in the excise office, a victim of fate, like myself. Obliged to waste his life away in such an appalling place because—’

‘The eyes were p-put out?’ Senka’s captor interrupted and handed the pen-pusher a coin. ‘Here, take this. All right, Masa, let’s go in and t-take a look at what’s happened here.’

And he walked up to the door of the flophouse, the Chinaman pulling Senka along behind. But the Old Rags Basement was the last place on God’s earth Senka wanted to go.

‘Why, what’s there to see in there?’ he whined, digging his heels in. ‘People talk all sorts of rubbish.’

But the gent had already gone up to the constable and given him a nod – the constable didn’t dare stop an imposing individual like that, he just saluted.

After they had walked down the steps to the cellars, the dandy murmured thoughtfully: ‘The Old Rags Basement? I think. . . that’s l-left and then right.’

What an amazing gent, where would he know that from? He walked along the dark corridors quickly, confidently too. Senka was astonished. But he still whined as he was dragged behind: ‘Mr Chinaman, why don’t we wait here, eh? What do you say to that?’

The Chinee stopped, turned round and gave Senka a light flick on the forehead.

‘I not Chinese, I Japanese. Awright?’

Then he went back to towing Senka.

Well, well! And Senka thought Japanese and Chinese were all the same yellow-faced slanty-eyes, but apparently they thought they were different, and they even took offence.

‘Mr Jappo,’ said Senka, correcting his mistake, ‘I’m exhausted, I can’t go on.’

And he tried to sit down, like he’d collapsed, but Masa waved a fist at him very persuasively, so Senka stopped talking and accepted his fate.

When they reached Siniukhin’s apartment, who was at the door but Boxman himself? As straight and tall as the Kremlin’s bell tower. And there was a lit paraffin lamp on the ground.

‘Boxman?’ the gent said in surprise. ‘So you’re still in Khitrovka. Well, well, well.’

And Boxman was even more astounded. He gaped at the dandy, wide-eyed and blinking.

‘Erast Petrovich,’ he said. ‘Your Honour!’ And he stood to attention. ‘I was informed you had changed your Russian domicile for a foreign residence!’

‘I have, I have. But I come to visit my native city on occasion, in private. How are you, Boxman, still up to your old tricks, or have you settled down? Oh, I never dealt with you, did I? Didn’t have the time.’

Boxman smiled, not very broadly, though, just a bit, civilly.

‘I’m too old to be getting up to any tricks. It’s time I was thinking about my old age. And my soul.’

Well, would you believe it! This gent wasn’t any old body – even Ivan Fedotich Boxman paid him respect. Senka had never seen the policeman carry himself so straight for anyone, not even the superintendent.

Boxman squinted at Senka and knitted his shaggy eyebrows together.

‘What’s he doing here? Has he done the dirt on you some way? Just say the word and I’ll grind him to dust.’

The one who was called Erast Petrovich said: ‘No need, we’ve already resolved our conflict. Haven’t we, Senya?’ Senka started nodding, but the interesting gent wasn’t looking at him, he was looking at the door. ‘What’s happened here?’

‘This piece of villainy is a criminological atrocity, the like of which I have never laid eyes on before, not even in Khitrovka,’ Boxman reported glumly. ‘They’ve knifed a pen-pusher, and his entire family with him, and in the most fiendish fashion, too. But you’d better be leaving, Erast Petrovich. Back then the order went out that if any policeman saw you, he should report it to the top brass straightaway. The superintendent and the gentleman investigator might find you here . . . They’re due any minute.’

Well, now, Senka thought, this gent must be a businessman, only not an ordinary one, some kind of super-special one, and all Moscow’s businessmen are just lousy punks next to him. The devil himself must have tempted me into filching an important souvenir from a bandit-general prince like that! That’s an orphan’s luck for you!

And then Boxman said this: ‘The superintendent here nowadays is Innokentii Romanovich Solntsev, the gentleman you wanted to put on trial. And he’s spiteful, not one to forget a grudge.’

If he could drag a man like the superintendent to court, than what kind of bandit must he be? Senka was bewildered now.

Erast Petrovich wasn’t at all put out by the warning. ‘It’s all right, Boxman. If God doesn’t tell, the pig won’t know. We’ll make it quick, be out in a flash.’

Boxman didn’t try to argue, just moved aside: ‘If I whistle, get out quick, don’t drop me in it.’

Senka wanted to stay outside, but that lousy Jap Masa wouldn’t let him, even though Boxman was there to keep an eye on him. He said: ‘You too agire. An’ you run fast.’

When they went inside, Senka didn’t look at the dead bodies (he’d seen enough of them already, thank you very much). He stared at the ceiling instead.

It was brighter in the room than before – there was another paraffin lamp, like the one in the collidor, burning on the table.

Erast Petrovich walked round the room, leaning down sometimes and jingling something. It was as though he was turning the bodies over and touching their faces, but Senka turned away – he could do without that abomination.

The Japanese was doing some rummaging of his own. He dragged Senka after him, bending down over the cadavers and muttering something Senka couldn’t understand.

This went on for about five minutes.

The smell of freshly slaughtered meat was making Senka queasy. And there was a whiff of dung too – that must be from the bellies being slashed open.

‘What do you think?’ Erast Petrovich asked his Jap, and he answered in his own tongue, not in Russian.

‘You think it’s a maniac? Hmmm.’ The gentleman bandit rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Reasons?’

And the Jap switched back to Russian.

‘Kirring for money out of question. This famiry extremerry poor. That one. Insane cruerty of it – he didn’t even spare the ritter boy. That two. An’ eyes. You terr me yourserf, master, sign of a maniac murder is rituar. Why gouge out eyes? It crear – an insane rituar. That three. Maniac kirred them, that certain. Like Decorator other time.’

Senka didn’t know who Maniac and Decorator were (from the names they sounded like Yids or Germans) – he didn’t understand very much at all really – but he could see the Jap was very proud of his speech.

Only he didn’t seem to have convinced the gent.

Erast Petrovich squatted down by the bed where Siniukhin was lying and started going through the dead man’s pockets. And him such a decent-looking gent! But then, God only knew who he really was. Senka gazed at the icon hanging in the corner. He thought: The Saviour saw the horrible things Deadeye did to the pen-pusher, and he didn’t interfere. And then he remembered the way the Jack flung his little knife straight into the icons’ eyes, and he sighed. At least the fiend didn’t put this icon’s eyes out.

‘What do we have here?’ he heard Erast Petrovich’s voice ask.

Senka couldn’t resist it, he peeped round Masa’s shoulder, and saw a little scale in the gent’s hand – just like the ones in Senka’s pocket!

‘Who knows what this is?’ Erast Petrovich asked, turning round. ‘Masa? Or perhaps you, Spidorov?’

Masa shook his head. Senka shrugged and gaped like a fool to make it clear he’d never laid eyes on such an odd-looking item. He even said out loud: ‘How would I know?’

The gent looked at him.

‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘This is a seventeenth-century kopeck, m-minted in the reign of Tsar Alexei. How d-did it come to be in the home of a pauper, a drunken “pen-pusher”?’

When he heard it was a kopeck, Senka felt rotten. Some treasure that was! A handful of kopecks from some mouldy old tsar.

The door from the collidor opened and Boxman stuck his head in: ‘Your Honour, they’re coming!’

Erast Petrovich put the scale on the bed, where it could easily be seen.

‘That’s all, we’re going.’

‘Go that way, so you don’t bump into the superintendent,’ said Boxman, pointing. ‘You’ll come out into the Tatar Tavern.’

The gent waited for Masa and Senka to come out – he didn’t seem in any great hurry to scarper from the superintendent. But then, why bother running? If they heard steps, they could just dodge into the darkness and disappear.

‘I don’t think it’s a m-maniac,’ Erast Petrovich said to his servant. ‘And I wouldn’t exclude greed as a motive for the c-crime. Tell me, what do you think, were the eyes p-put out when the victims were alive or dead?’

Masa thought for a moment and smacked his lips.

‘Woman and chirdren, after they dead, and man whire he stirr arive.’

‘I came to the same c-conclusion.’

Senka shuddered. How could they have known Siniukhin was still alive at first? Were they magicians or what?

Erast Petrovich turned towards Boxman. Tell me, Boxman, have there been any similar c-crimes in Khitrovka, with the victims’ eyes being put out?’

There have, and very recently indeed. A young merchant who was stupid enough to wander into Khitrovka after dark was done away with. They robbed him, smashed his head in, took his wallet and his gold watch. And for some reason they put his eyes out, the fiends. And before that, about two weeks back, a gentleman reporter from the Voice was done to death. He wanted to write about the slums in his newspaper. He didn’t bring any money or his watch with him – he was an experienced man, it wasn’t his first time in Khitrovka. But he had a gold ring, with a diamond in it, and it wouldn’t come off his finger. So the vicious beasts did for him. Cut the finger off for the ring and put his eyes out too. That’s folks round here for you.’

‘You see, Masa,’ said the handsome gent, raising one finger. ‘And you say m-money’s out of the question as a motive. This is no maniac, this is a very p-prudent criminal. He has clearly heard the fairy tale about the last thing a p-person sees before he dies being imprinted on his retina. So he’s being careful. He c-cuts out all his victims’ eyes, even the children’s.’

The Japanese hissed and started jabbering away in his own language – cursing the murderer, no doubt. But Senka thought: You’ve got a very high opinion of yourself, Your Honour, or whoever you are. You guessed wrong, there’s nothing cautious about Deadeye, he’s just in a fury ’cause of all that candy cane.

‘A picture on their eyes?’ Boxman gasped. ‘Whatever next?’

‘A fairy tare mean it not true, yes?’ asked Masa. ‘Tamoebanasi ?’

Erast Petrovich said he was right: ‘Of course, it’s n-nonsense. There was such a hypothesis, but it was never c-confirmed. The interesting thing here is . . .’

‘They’re coming!’ Boxman interrupted, straining to see. ‘Hear that? Sidorenko – he’s standing at the door – just barked: “Good health to you, Your Worship” – I told him not to spare his lungs. They’ll be here in a minute, two at most. What’s this murder to you, Erast Petrovich? Or are you going to investigate?’

‘No, I can’t.’ The gent shrugged and spread his hands. ‘I’m here in Moscow on entirely different business. Tell Solntsev and the investigator what I said. Say you worked it out yourself.’

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Boxman, pulling a wry face. ‘Let Inno-kentii Romanich bend his own wits to the job. There’s enough people already trying to ride into heaven on someone else’s back. Never you mind, Your Honour, I’ll find out who it is that’s up to mischief in Khitrovka, and take his life with my own bare hands, as sure as God’s holy.’

Erast Petrovich just shook his head: ‘Oh, Boxman, Boxman. I see you’re still the same as ever.’

Well, thank God, they finally left that cursed basement. They came into the light of day through the Tatar Tavern, then set off to find Tashka.

Her and her mum lodged on Khokhlovsky Lane. A one-window room with its own entrance – for the trade of a mamselle. Lots of tarts lived like that, but only Tashka’s place had fresh flowers on the windowsill every day – to suit the mood of the lady of the house. Senka knew by now that if there were buttercups on the left and forget-me-nots on the right, then Tashka was doing fine, she was singing her songs and setting out her flowers. But if, say, it was stocks and willowherb, then Tashka had had a scrap with her mum, or got landed with a really awful client, and she was feeling sad.

Today happened to be one of those days – there was a sprig of juniper hanging down over the curtain too (in the language of flowers that meant ‘guests not welcome’).

Welcome or not, what could he do? He’d been dragged there.

They knocked and went in.

Tashka was sitting on the bed, looking darker than a thundercloud. She was chewing sunflower seeds and spitting the husks into her hand – no ‘hello’ or ‘how’s things’ or anything of the sort.

‘What do you want?’ she said. ‘And what gulls are these you’ve brought? What for? I’ve got enough trouble with this trollop.’

She nodded to the corner, where her mum was sprawled out on the floor. It looked like she’d got as tight as a newt again then coughed up blood, and that was why Tashka was in such a rage.

Senka started to explain, but then the Jappo’s jacket slipped off and fell on the floor. When Tashka saw Senka’s shackled hands, she fairly bounded off the bed, straight at Masa. Sank her nails into his plump cheeks and started yelling:

‘Let him go, you fat-faced bastard! I’ll scratch your slanty eyes out!’ – and then a whole heap of other curses, Tashka had quite a mouth on her. Even Senka winced, and the spruce gent stood there just blinking.

While the Jap used his free hand to fight off the mamselle’s assault on his handsome yellow features, Erast Petrovich stepped aside. He answered Tashka’s swearing in a respectful voice: ‘Well, yes indeed, far from the m-motherland, one becomes unaccustomed to the v-vigour of the Russian tongue.’

Senka had to come to the Jap’s defence. ‘Stop it, will you, Tashka? Calm down. Leave the man alone! Remember those beads I gave you, the green ones? Are they safe? Give them to these gents, the beads belong to them. Or I’ll be for it.’ And then suddenly he took fright. ‘You haven’t sold them, have you?’

‘Who do you think I am, some floozie from Zamoskvorechie? As if I’d sell a present that was given to me! Maybe no one’s ever given me a present before. The clients don’t count. I’ve got your beads put away somewhere safe.’

Senka knew that ‘safe place’ of hers – in the cupboard under the bed, where Tashka kept her treasures: the book about flowers, a cut-glass scent bottle, a tortoiseshell comb.

‘Give them back, will you? I’ll give you another present, anything you like.’

Tashka let go of the Japanese and her face lit up. ‘Honest? What I want, Senka, is a little dog, a white poodle. I saw them at the market. Have you ever seen a poodle? They can dance the waltz on their back paws, Senka, they can skip over a rope and give you their paw.’

‘I’ll give you one, honest to God I will. Just hand the beads back!’

‘Don’t bother, no need,’ Tashka told him. ‘It was just talk. A poodle like that costs thirty roubles, even as a puppy. I checked the price.’

She sighed. But it wasn’t that sad a sigh.

Then she climbed under the bed, sticking her skinny backside up in the air – and she was wearing only a short little shirt. Senka felt ashamed in front of the others. She was a real harum-scarum. He walked over and pulled her shirt down.

Tashka scrabbled about down there for a while (she obviously didn’t want to get her treasures out in front of strangers), then clambered back out and flung the beads at Masa: ‘There, you miser, I hope you choke on them.’

The Jap caught the string of beads and handed them to his master with a bow. The gent flicked through the little stones, stroked one, then put them in his pocket.

‘Right then, all’s well that ends well. You, m-mademoiselle, have done nothing to offend me.’ He reached into his pocket, took out a wallet, and extracted three banknotes. ‘Here is thirty roubles for you. B-buy yourself a poodle.’

Tashka asked in a matter-of-fact voice: ‘So what way is it you’re planning to horse me, then, for three red ones? If,’ she continued, ‘you want it this way or that, I’m agreeable, but if you want it that way or this, I’m a decent girl and I don’t let anyone do dirty things like that to me.’

The smooth-faced gent shrank back and flung his hands up in the air: ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘I don’t want anything like that from you. It’s a p-present.’

He didn’t know Tashka! She put her hands on her hips. ‘You clear out of here with your paper money. I takes presents from a client or a mate. If you don’t want to horse around, you ain’t a client, and I’ve already got a mate – Senka.’

‘Well, mademoiselle,’ Erast Petrovich said to her with a bow. ‘Anyone should be honoured to have a m-mate like you.’

Then Tashka suddenly shouted out: ‘Scarper, Senka.’

She flung herself at Masa and sank her teeth into his left hand, the one holding the end of the bar. The Japanese was taken by surprise and opened his fingers, so Senka made a dash for the door.

The gent shouted after him: ‘Wait, I’ll f-free your hands!’

Pull the other one. We’ll get ourselves free without help from the likes of you.You still haven’t made us pay for thieving. How do we know if you’re going to give us a bashing? And anyway you can’t be far enough away from some freak that even Boxman’s afraid of – that’s what ran through Senka’s mind.

But Tashka, that Tashka! What a girl she was – pure gold!