The Coronation

17 May

Staring out at me from the mirror was a puffy thick-lipped face with the beginnings of a double chin and unnaturally white cheeks. Deprived of its sumptuous drooping moustache and combed sideburns, my face seemed to have emerged out of some cloud or bank of fog to appear before me naked, exposed and defenceless. I was quite shaken by the sight of it – it was like seeing myself for the first time. I had read in some novel that as a man passes through life he gradually creates his own self-portrait, applying a pattern of wrinkles, folds, hollows and protuberances to the smooth canvas of the persona that he inherited at birth. Everyone knows that wrinkles can be intelligent or stupid, genial or spiteful, cheerful or sad. And the effect of this drawing, traced by the hand of life itself, is to make some people more beautiful with the passing years, and some more ugly.

When the initial shock had passed and I looked at the self-portrait a little more closely, I realised that I could not say with any certainty whether I was pleased with the work. I supposed I was pleased with the pleated line of the lips – it testified to experience of life and a quite definite firmness of character. However, the broad lower jaw hinted at moroseness, and the flabby cheeks provoked thoughts of a predisposition to failure. The most astounding thing of all was that the removal of the covering of hair had altered my appearance far more than the ginger beard I had recently worn. I had suddenly ceased to be a grand-ducal butler and become a lump of clay, which could now be moulded into a man of any background or rank.

However, Fandorin, having studied my new face with the air of a connoisseur of painting, seemed to be of a different opinion. Setting aside the razor, he muttered as if to himself: ‘You are hard to disguise. The gravity is still there, the prim fold on the forehead has not disappeared either, or the alignment of the head . . . Hmm, Ziukin, you are not at all like me, not in the least, except that we are about the same height . . . But never mind. Lind knows that I am a master of self-transformation. Such obvious dissimilarity might actually make his men quite certain that you are me. Who shall be we dress you up as? I think we should make you a civil servant, sixth or seventh class. You don’t look at all right for any rank lower than that. You stay here; I’ll g-go to the military and civil uniform shop on Sretenka Street. I’ll look out something for myself at the same time. Here in Russia the easiest way to hide a man is behind a uniform.’

The previous evening Erast Petrovich had found an announcement of an apartment for rent in the same Half-Kopeck News where Doctor Lind had placed his notice:

For rent, for the coronation, a seven-room apartment

with furniture, tableware and telephone.

Close to the Clear Ponds. 5000 roubles.

Use of servants possible for additional charge.

Arkhangelsky Lane, the house of state counsellor’s

widow Sukhorukova. Enquire at porter’s lodge.

The number of rooms appeared excessive to me, and the price – bearing in mind the coronation celebrations were almost over – was quite staggering, but Fandorin would not listen to me. ‘On the other hand, it is close to the post office,’ he said. And before the evening was out we were installed in a fine gentleman’s apartment located on the ground floor of a new stone house. The porter was so pleased to receive payment in advance that he did not even ask to see our passports.

After taking tea in a sumptuously but rather tastelessly furnished dining room, we discussed our plan of further action. Actually, our discussion was more like a monologue by Fandorin, and for the most part I listened. I suspected that for Erast Petrovich a so-called discussion was simply a matter of him thinking aloud, and any requests for my opinion or advice ought be regarded as no more than figures of speech.

It is true, though, that I began the conversation. Lind’s initiative and the acquisition of a roof over our heads had had a most heartening effect on me, and my former despondency had vanished without trace.

‘The business does not seem so very complicated to me,’ I declared. ‘We will send a letter with a statement of the terms of exchange, and occupy an observation post close to the window where they hand out the poste restante correspondence. When the bearer of the treasury note turns up, we shall follow him inconspicuously, and he will lead us to Lind’s new hideout. You said yourself that the doctor has only two helpers left, so we shall manage things ourselves, without the police.’

The plan seemed very extremely practical to me, but Fandorin looked at me as if I were blathering some kind of wild nonsense.

‘You underestimate Lind. The trick with the bearer of the note has a completely different meaning. The doctor of course expects me to trail his messenger. Lind must already know that I am playing my own game and the authorities are no longer helping me but on the contrary trying to hunt me down. Anything that is known to the entire municipal police is no longer a secret. So Lind thinks that I am acting alone. If I wait at the post office trying to spot the doctor’s courier, someone else will spot me. The hunter caught in his own trap.’

‘What are we to do?’ I asked, perplexed.

‘Fall into the trap. There is no other way. I have a trump card that Lind does not even suspect exists. And that trump card is you.’

I squared my shoulders because, I must admit, it was pleasing to hear something like that from the smug Fandorin.

‘Lind does not know that I have a helper. I shall disguise you very cunningly, not so that you will look like Fandorin, but so that you will look like a disguised Fandorin. You and I are almost the same height, and that is the most important thing. You are substantially more corpulent, but that can be concealed by means of loose-fitting garments. Anyone who spends too long hanging around that little window will arouse Lind’s suspicions of it being me in disguise.’

‘But at the same time it will not be hard to recognise Lind’s man, for surely he will “hang around”, as you put it, somewhere close by.’

‘Not necessarily, by any means. Lind’s men might work in rotation. We know that the doctor has at least two helpers left. They are almost as interesting to me as Lind himself. Who are they? What do they look like? What do we know about them?’

I shrugged.

‘Nothing.’

‘Unfortunately, that is actually the case. When I jumped down into the underground vault at the tomb, I had no time to see anything. As you no doubt recall, that bulky gentleman whose carotid artery I was obliged to crush threw himself on me straightaway. While I was busy with him, Lind was able to withdraw and maintain his complete anonymity. What was it that Emilie tried to tell us about him? “He’s . . .” He’s what?’

Fandorin frowned discontentedly.

‘There is no point in trying to guess. There is only one thing that we can say about his helpers. One of them is Russian, or at least has lived in Russia for many years and speaks the language absolutely fluently.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘The text of the notice, Ziukin. Do you think that a foreigner would have written about a “diamond-precious love”?’

He stood up and started walking round the room. He took a set of jade beads out of his pocket and started clicking the small green spheres. I did not know where these beads had come from – probably out of the travelling bag. That was undoubtedly the source of the white shirt with the fold-down collar and the light-cream jacket. And the bottle of whisky, Mr Freyby’s present, had migrated from the travelling bag to the sideboard.

‘Tomorrow, or rather, t-today, Lind and I shall fight our decisive battle. He and I both understand this. A tie is not possible. Such is the peculiar nature of our barter: both parties are determined to take everything, and without trading anything for it. What would a tie signify in our case? You and I save the hostages but lose the Orlov.’ Fandorin nodded towards the travelling bag, where he had concealed the stone the previous day. ‘Lind remains alive, and so do I. And that does not suit either him or me. No, Ziukin, there will be no tie.’

‘But what if Mademoiselle and Mikhail Georgievich are already dead?’ I asked, giving voice to my greatest fear.

‘No, they are alive,’ Fandorin declared confidently. ‘Lind knows quite well that I am no fool. I will not hand over the stone until I am convinced that the hostages are alive.’ He clicked his beads once again and put them away in his pocket. ‘So this is what we shall do. You, in the role of the false Fandorin, keep an eye on the window. Lind’s men keep an eye on you. The real Fandorin keeps an eye on them. All very simple really, is it not?’

His self-assurance inspired me with hope, but infuriated me at the same time. That was the very moment at which the agonising doubt that had been tormenting me since the previous evening was finally resolved. I would not tell him what Xenia Georgievna had said. Mr Fandorin already had too high an opinion of himself without that.

He sat down at the table and, after a moment’s thought, jotted down a few lines in French. I looked over his shoulder.

For me, unlike you, people are more important than precious stones. You will get your diamond. At four a.m. bring the boy and the woman to the open ground where the Petersburg Chaussée turns towards the Petrovsky Palace. We shall conduct the exchange there. I shall be alone. It does not matter to me how many people you have with you.

Fandorin

‘Why precisely there, and why at such a strange time?’ I asked.

‘Lind will like it: the dead hour before dawn, a deserted spot. In essence it makes no difference whatsoever, but things will be decided all the sooner . . . Go to bed, Ziukin. Tomorrow will be an interesting day for us. And I shall go and post the letter in the box at the Central Post Office. Correspondence that arrives in the morning is handed out beginning from three in the afternoon. That is when you will take up your position. But first we shall transform you beyond all recognition.’

I cringed at those words. And, as it turned out, I was right to do so.

The Moscow Central Post Office seemed a poor place to me, no comparison at all with the post office in St Petersburg. It was dark and cramped with no facilities whatever for the customers. In my view a city of a million people ought to acquire a somewhat more presentable central post office. For my purposes, however, the squalidness of this state institution actually proved most opportune. The congestion and poor lighting made my aimless wandering around the hall less obvious. Fandorin had dressed me up as a collegiate counsellor of the Ministry of Agriculture and State Lands, and so I looked very impressive. Why would such a staid gentleman with clean-shaven chops spend so many hours at a stretch sauntering around between the battered counters? Several times I halted as if by chance in front of a chipped mirror in order to observe the people coming in less conspicuously. And, why not admit it? I also wanted to get a better look at myself.

I fancied that the appearance of an individual of the sixth rank suited me very well indeed. It was as if I had been born with those velvet buttonholes decorated with gold braid and the Order of St Vladimir hanging round my neck. (The order had come out of that same travelling bag.) Nobody stared at me in amazement or disbelief – I was a perfectly regular official. Except perhaps for the attendant in the poste restante window, who from time to time cast attentive glances in my direction. And quite naturally too – I had been marching past him since three o’clock in the afternoon. And business hours at the post office during the coronation celebrations had been extended right up to nine, owing to the large volume of mailings, so I was stepping out for quite a long time.

But never mind the attendant at the window. The worst thing of all was that time was going to waste. None of the people who approached the little window presented treasury bills. No one loitered nearby for a suspiciously long time. I did not even notice something that Fandorin had warned me about: someone who left the hall and returned repeatedly.

As the end of the day approached, despair began to take a grip of me. Could Lind really have worked out our plan? Had everything gone wrong?

But at five minutes to nine, when the post office was already preparing to close, a portly sailor with a grey moustache wearing a dark-blue pea jacket and a cap with no cockade came striding in briskly through the doors. He was clearly a retired boatswain or pilot. Without bothering to look round, he walked straight across to the little window with the poste restante sign and rumbled in a voice rendered hoarse by drink: ‘There’s supposed to be a little letter here for me. For the bearer of a banknote with the number . . .’ He rummaged in his pocket for a while and took out a note, held it out as far as possible from his long-sighted eyes and read: ‘One three seven zero seven eight eight five nine. Got anything?’

I moved closer without making a sound, vainly struggling to control the trembling in my knees.

The post office attendant gaped at the sailor. ‘There hasn’t been any such letter,’ he said eventually after a lengthy pause. ‘Nothing of the kind has come in today.’

It hasn’t come in? I groaned inwardly. There where on earth had it got to? It looked as if I had just spent the best part of six hours hanging about here in vain!

The boatswain started grumbling too: ‘Oh that’s good, getting an old man running round the place, and all for nothing. Aaagh!’

He wiggled his thick eyebrows angrily, rubbed his sleeve over his luxurious moustache and walked towards the door.

Only one thing was clear – I had to follow him. There was no reason to stay in the post office any longer, and the working day was already over.

I slipped out into the street and followed the old man, maintaining a substantial distance. However, the sailor never looked round even once. He kept his hands in his pockets and walked as if he were in no hurry, waddling along but at the same time moving remarkably fast. I was barely able to keep up with him.

Absorbed in the chase, I did not remember at first that the plan had allocated a quite different role to me – that of decoy. I had to check to see if there was anyone following me. Obeying the instructions I had been given, I took out of my waistcoat pocket a fob watch in which Fandorin had installed a little round mirror, and pretended to be studying the dial.

There he was! Walking twenty paces behind me, a suspicious-looking character: tall, stooped, wearing a wide-peaked cap, with his coat collar raised. He clearly had his eyes fixed on me. Just to make sure, I turned the watch slightly to examine the far side of the street and discovered another man who looked equally suspicious – the same kind of burly thug, demonstrating the same kind of unambiguous interest in my person. Had they taken the bait?

Two of them at once! And perhaps Doctor Lind himself was not far away?

Could Fandorin see all this? I had played the role of the bait faithfully; now it was up to him.

The boatswain turned into a side street. I followed him. The other two followed me. There was no doubt at all left: those two charmers were the doctor’s helpers!

Suddenly the sailor turned into a narrow entrance. I slowed down, struck by an understandable concern. If those two followed me, and Fandorin had fallen behind or gone off somewhere else altogether, it was very probable that I would not get out of this dark crevice alive. And now the old man did not seem as simple as he had at the beginning. Ought I really to walk straight into a trap?

Unable to stop myself, I looked round quite openly. Apart from the two bandits the side street was completely deserted. One pretended to read the sign of a grocery shop; the other turned away with a bored air. And there was no sign of Erast Petrovich!

There was nothing else for it – I walked through the narrow entranceway then into a courtyard, then another archway, and another, and another. It was already dusk out in the street, and in here it was dark in any case, but I could still have made out the boatswain’s silhouette. The only problem was that the old man had disappeared, simply vanished into thin air! He could not possibly have got through this sequence of passages so quickly, not unless he had broken into a run, but in that case I would have heard the echoes of his steps. Or had he turned off at the first courtyard?

I froze.

Then suddenly, from out of the darkness on one side, I heard Fandorin’s voice: ‘Don’t just hang about like that, Ziukin. Walk without hurrying and stay in the light, so that they can see you.’

No longer understanding anything that was going on, I obediently walked on. Where had Fandorin come from? And where had the boatswain got to? Had Erast Petrovich really had enough time to stun him and hide him away?

I heard steps clattering behind me, echoing under the low vaulted ceiling. They started clattering faster and moving closer. Apparently my pursuers had decided to overtake me. Then I heard a dry click that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I had heard more than my share of clicks like that, when I was loading revolvers and cocking firing hammers for Pavel Georgievich – His Highness loves to fire his guns at the shooting range.

I turned round, expecting a roar and a flash, but there was no shot after all.

I saw two silhouettes, and then a third, against the background of a bright rectangle. The third one detached itself from the wall and threw out one foot with indescribable speed, and one of my pursuers doubled over. The other pursuer swung round smartly, and I quite clearly glimpsed the barrel of a pistol, but the fast-moving shadow swung one hand through the air – upwards, at an oblique angle – and a tongue of flame shot up towards the stone vault, while the man who had fired the gun went flying back against the wall, slid down it to the ground and sat there without moving.

‘Ziukin, come here!’

I ran across muttering: ‘Purge us of all defilement and save our souls.’ I could not say myself what had come over me – it must have been the shock.

Erast Petrovich leaned down over the seated man and struck a match, and it was not Erast Petrovich at all, but my acquaintance the boatswain with the grey moustache. I started blinking very rapidly.

‘Curses,’ said the boatswain. ‘I miscalculated the blow. And all because it’s so damn dark in here. The nasal septum has fractured and the bone has entered the brain. Killed outright. Well then, what about the other one?’

He moved across to the first bandit, who was struggling to get up off the ground.

‘Excellent, this one’s fresh as a cucumber. Give me some light on him, Afanasii Stepanovich.’

I struck a match. The feeble flame lit up a pair of vacant eyes and lips gasping for air.

The boatswain, who was, after all, none other than Fandorin himself, squatted down on his haunches and slapped the stunned man resoundingly across the cheeks.

‘Where is Lind?’

No reply. Nothing but heavy breathing.

‘Où est Lind? Wo ist Lind? Where is Lind?’ Erast Petrovich repeated, pausing between the different languages.

The eyes of the man lying on the ground were no longer vacant but animate with a fierce spite. His lips came together, twitched, stretched out, and a gob of spittle went flying into Fandorin’s face.

‘Du, Scheissdreck! Küss mich auf—’¹

The hoarse screeching broke off as Fandorin jabbed the bandit in the throat with the edge of his open hand. The spiteful glow in the man’s eyes faded and the back of his head struck the ground with a dull thud.

‘You killed him!’ I exclaimed in horror. ‘Why?’

‘He wouldn’t have told us anything anyway, and we have v-very little time left.’

Erast Petrovich wiped the spittle off his cheek and pulled off the dead man’s jacket. He dropped something small and white onto his chest – I could not really see it properly.

‘Quick, Ziukin! Get that uniform off. Leave it here. Put this on.’

He pulled off his grey moustache and eyebrows and threw the boatswain’s pea jacket on the ground, leaving himself in a short frock coat with narrow shoulder straps. He attached a cockade to his cap, and I suddenly realised that it was a police cap, not a navy one.

‘You don’t have a sabre,’ I remarked. ‘A police officer has to have a sabre.’

‘I’ll get a sabre, don’t worry. In a little while,’ said Fandorin, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me after him. ‘Quick, Ziukin, quick!’

It was a shame simply to fling a good-quality uniform on the ground, and so I hung it on the handle of a gate – it would come in useful for someone.

Erast Petrovich looked round as he ran.

‘The order!’

I took the Order of St Vladimir off my neck and put it in my pocket.

‘Where are we going in such a hurry?’ I shouted, dashing after him.

There was no answer.

We ran out of the side street back on to Myasnitskaya Street, but turned into a gateway just before the post office. It led into a narrow stone courtyard with only a few service doors in the walls. Fandorin dragged me into a corner behind some large rubbish containers stuffed to the brim with brown wrapping paper and scraps of string. Then he took out his watch.

‘Ten minutes past nine. We dealt with that quickly. He probably hasn’t come out yet?’

‘Who is he?’ I asked, breathing hard.

‘Lind?’ Fandorin stuck his hand straight into a rubbish container and extracted a long narrow bundle. Inside it there was a sword belt and a police sabre.

‘Our acquaintance from the poste restante. He’s the one, didn’t you realise?’

‘He is Doctor Lind?’ I said, astounded.

‘No, he is Lind’s man. It all turned out to be very simple, much simpler than I expected. And it explains the mystery of the letters. Now we know how they reached the Hermitage without a stamp. A post office counter attendant working for Lind – let us call this individual the Postman for brevity’s sake – simply put them into the sack with the post for the Kaluzhskaya district.

‘And the letter we sent today also fell straight into his hands. He noticed you cruising up and down near the window and informed Lind, who sent his men. They waited patiently for you outside in the street. Or rather they waited for Fandorin, since they thought it was me.’

‘But . . . But how did you manage to guess all this?’

He smiled smugly. ‘I was sitting in the tea room opposite the post office, waiting for you to come out and follow the man who collected the letter. Time went by, and you still didn’t come out. It seemed strange to me for Lind to act so slowly. After all, he is no less interested in this encounter than I am. Of all the people going into the post office, no one stayed inside for long, and I didn’t spot anyone suspicious. Things began to get interesting with the arrival of the two gentlemen known to you, who appeared at about a quarter to four. They actually arrived together and then separated. One took a seat in my tea room, two tables away from me, after asking in German for a place at the window. He kept his eyes fixed on the doors of the post office and never looked around him at all. The second went into the building for a moment and then came back out to join the first. That meant you had been discovered, but for some reason Lind’s people were not showing any interest in the contents of the letter. I thought about that for a long time and eventually formed a hypothesis. Just before the post office closed I set out to test it. You saw the way the Postman gaped at me when I claimed to be the bearer of the treasury bill? It was a total surprise to him, since there could not be any bearer – he knew that quite definitely. The Postman could not control his facial expression and gave himself away. We must assume that he is the doctor’s Russian assistant who drew up the playful announcement for the newspaper. The Postman is the one who can lead us back to Lind.’

‘But what if he was alarmed by the appearance of the mysterious boatswain and has already gone running to warn the doctor?’

‘Tell me, Ziukin, have you ever had occasion to receive letters via the poste restante? No? It shows. The post office keeps the letter or package for three days free of charge and then starts charging a daily penalty.’

I thought hard but failed to discover any connection between this circumstance and the apprehension that I had expressed.

‘Well, what of it?’

‘This,’ Erast Petrovich said with a patient sigh. ‘Wherever payments are taken there is financial accounting. Our friend cannot leave until he has cashed up and handed over the takings – it would look far too suspicious. That door over there is the service entrance. In about five minutes, or ten at the most, the Postman will come out of it and set off very quickly straight to Lind, and we shall follow along. I hope very much that the doctor has no more helpers left. I am really sick of them.’

‘Why did you kill that German?’ I asked, remembering the incident. ‘Just because he spat at you? He was stunned, helpless!’

Fandorin was surprised. ‘I see, Ziukin, that you think I am a worse monster than Lind. Why should I want to kill him? Not to mention the fact that he is a valuable witness. I only put him to sleep, and not for long, about four hours. I expect that will be long enough for the police to find our two friends. An interesting discovery, is it not – a corpse and beside it a man with a revolver in his pocket. And I also left my visiting card with a note: “This is one of Lind’s men.”’

I recalled the white thing that Fandorin had dropped onto the bandit’s chest.

‘Perhaps Karnovich and Lasovsky will be able to shake something out of him. Although it is not very likely. There are no traitors among Lind’s helpers. But at least the police will start to question whether you and I are thieves, and that in itself is no bad thing.’

This final consideration sounded most reasonable, and I was about to tell Fandorin so, but he placed his hand over my mouth in an outrageously cavalier fashion.

‘Quiet!’

A narrow door swung open violently and the familiar counter attendant came out almost at a run, now wearing a peaked uniform cap and carrying a file under his arm. Taking short strides, he strutted past the rubbish containers and headed out through the gateway.

‘He’s in a hurry,’ Erast Petrovich whispered. ‘That’s very good. It means he was not able to telephone or has nowhere to phone to. I wonder how he informed Lind about your arrival? By note? That would mean that the doctor’s lair is somewhere quite close. All right. Time to go.’

We walked out quickly into the street. I started looking around, trying to spot a free cab – after all, if the Postman was in a hurry, he was sure to take a carriage. But no, the hurrying figure in the black post office uniform crossed the boulevard and disappeared into a narrow little street. So Erast Petrovich had guessed right, and Lind was somewhere not far away.

Without stopping, Fandorin told me: ‘Drop back about ten sazhens behind me and keep your distance. But d-do not run!’

It was easy for him to say ‘Do not run!’ Erast Petrovich himself has a miraculous way of striding along rapidly but without any visible signs of haste, and so I was obliged to move in the manner of a wounded hare: I walked for about twenty steps, and then ran for a brief stretch, walked and ran, walked and ran. Otherwise I would have fallen behind. It was already completely dark, which was most opportune since otherwise I fear that my strange manoeuvres would have attracted the attention of the occasional passer-by. The Postman wound his way through the side streets for a little while and suddenly stopped in front of a small detached wooden house with a door that opened straight onto the pavement. There was light at one of the curtained windows – someone was at home – but the Postman did not ring the doorbell; he opened the door with a key and slipped inside.

‘What are we going to do?’ I asked, catching up with Fandorin. He took hold of my elbow and led me away from the little house.

‘I don’t know. Let’s t-try to work that out.’ By the light of a street lamp, I saw the smooth forehead below the lacquered peak of the police cap gather into wrinkles. ‘There are several possibilities. The first: Doctor Lind and the hostages are here. Then we need to keep watch on the windows and wait. If they try to leave, then we strike. The second possibility: only Lind is here and Emilie and the boy are somewhere else. We still have to wait until the doctor comes out and follow him until he leads us to the hostages. The third possibility: neither Lind nor the p-prisoners are here, only the postman and his family. After all, there was someone in the house, was there not? In that case, someone has to come to the Postman from Lind. There is hardly likely to be a telephone connection in this little house. So once again we need to wait. We can see who comes, and then act according to the circumstances. So, there are three alternatives, and in every case we have to wait. Let’s m-make ourselves comfortable – the wait might drag on for a while.’ Erast Petrovich looked around. ‘I tell you what, Ziukin, get a cabby from the boulevard. Don’t tell him where he’s going. Just say that you’re hiring him for a long time, and he’ll be generously paid. And meanwhile I’ll look for a comfortable spot.’

When I drove back to the corner in a cab a quarter of an hour later, Fandorin emerged from the dense shadows to meet us. Straightening his sword belt, he said in a stern commanding voice: ‘Badge number 345?You’ll be with us all night long. Secret business. You’ll be paid twenty-five roubles for your work. Drive into that entranceway and wait. And no sleeping now, Vologda. Understand?’

‘I understand, what’s so hard to understand?’ the cabby replied briskly. He was a young peasant with a clever snub-nosed face. I didn’t understand how Fandorin guessed from his appearance that he was from Vologda, but the cabby certainly did stretch his vowels to the limit.

‘Let’s go, Afanasii Petrovich. I’ve found a most comfortable spot.’

Opposite the little wooden house was a more impressive detached property surrounded by a trellis fence. Erast Petrovich bounded over the fence in an instant and beckoned for me to follow his example. Compared with the railings at the Neskuchny Park it was simple.

‘Well, not bad, is it?’ Fandorin asked proudly, pointing to the other side of the street.

The view of the Postman’s house from there really was ideal, but our observation point could only have been called ‘most comfortable’ by a masochistic (I believe I have remembered the word correctly) habitué of the chamber at the Elysium club. Right behind the fence there were thick prickly bushes that immediately started catching at my clothes and scratching my forehead. I groaned as I tried to free my elbow. Would I really have to sit here all night?

‘Never mind,’ Fandorin whispered cheerfully. ‘The Chinese say: “The noble man does not strive for comfort.” Let’s watch the windows.’

We started watching the windows.

To tell the truth, I failed to spot anything remarkable – just a vague shadow that flitted across the curtains a couple of times. In all the other houses the windows had gone dark a long time ago, while the inhabitants of our house seemed to have no intention of going to sleep at all – but that was the only thing that might have seemed suspicious.

‘And what if there is a fourth?’ I asked after about two hours.

‘A fourth what?’

‘Alternative.’

‘Which is what?’

‘What if you were mistaken and the post office employee has nothing to do with Lind?’

‘Out of the question,’ Fandorin hissed rather too angrily. ‘He definitely does. And he is bound to lead us to the d-doctor himself.’

Oh, to taste the honey that your lips drink, I thought, recalling the old folk saying, but I said nothing.

Another half-hour went by. I started thinking that probably for the first time in my life I had lost track of the days. Was today Friday or Saturday, the seventeenth or the eighteenth? It was not really all that important, but for some reason the question gave me no peace. Finally I could stand it no longer, and I asked in a whisper: ‘Is today the seventeenth?’

Fandorin took out his Breguet, and the phosphorescent hands flashed in the darkness.

‘It has been the eighteenth for five minutes.’

¹You, shit! Kiss me on—