The Diamond Chariot (54 page)

‘Is that all you came for?’ she asked with a smile, holding him by the shoulders.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I believe you. You can go back now.’

Erast Petrovich did not feel like going back.

He thought for a moment and said:

‘Let me in.’

O-Yumi glanced behind her.

‘For one minute. No longer.’

Fandorin didn’t try to argue.

He clambered over the windowsill (how many times had he already done that tonight?) and reached his arms out for her, but O-Yumi backed away.

‘Oh no. Or a minute won’t be long enough.’

The vice-consul hid his hands behind his back, but he declared:

‘I want to take you with me!’

She shook her head and her smile faded away.

‘Why? Do you love him?’ he asked in a trembling voice.

‘Not any more.’

‘Th-then why?’

She glanced behind her again – apparently at the door. Erast Petrovich himself had not looked round even once, he hadn’t even noticed what room this was – a boudoir or a dressing room. To tear his gaze away from O-Yumi’s face for even a second seemed blasphemous to him.

‘Go quickly. Please,’ she said nervously. ‘If he sees you here, he’ll kill you.’

Fandorin shrugged one shoulder nonchalantly.

‘He won’t kill me. Europeans don’t do that. He’ll challenge me to a d-duel.’

Then she started pushing him towards the window with her fists.

‘He won’t challenge you. You don’t know this man. He will definitely kill you. If not today, then tomorrow or the next day. And not with his own hands.’

‘Let him,’ Fandorin murmured, not listening, and tried to pull her towards him. ‘I’m not afraid of him.’

‘… But before that he’ll kill me. It will be easy for him to do that – like swatting a moth. Go. I’ll come to you. As soon as I can …’

But he didn’t let her out of his arms. He pressed his lips against her little mouth and started trembling, only coming to his senses when she whispered:

‘Do you want me to be killed?’

He staggered back, gritted his teeth and jumped up on to the windowsill. He would probably have jumped down just as lightly, but O-Yumi suddenly called out:

‘No, wait!’ – and she held out her arms.

They dashed to each other as precipitately and inexorably as two trains that a fatal chance has set on the same line, hurtling towards each other. What follows is obvious enough: a shattering impact, billows of smoke and flashes of flame, everything thrown head over heels and topsy-turvy, and God only knows who will be left alive in this bacchanalian orgy of fire.

The lovers clung tightly to each other. Their fingers did not caress, they tore, their mouths did not kiss, they bit.

They fell on the floor, and this time there was no heavenly music, no art – only growling, the sound of clothes tearing, the taste of blood on lips.

Suddenly a small but strong hand pressed against Fandorin’s chest and pushed him away.

A whisper right in his ear.

‘Run!’

He raised his head and glanced at the door with misty eyes. He heard footsteps and absentminded whistling. Someone was coming, moving up from below – no doubt climbing the stairs.

‘No!’ groaned Erast Petrovich. ‘Let him come! I don’t care!’

But she was no longer there beside him – she was standing up, rapidly straightening her dishevelled nightgown.

She said:

‘You’ll get me killed!’

He tumbled over the windowsill, not in the least concerned about how he would fall, although, incredibly enough, he made a better landing than he had earlier on, at the Grand Hotel, and didn’t hurt himself at all.

His frock coat then came flying out of the window after him, followed by his left shoe – the titular counsellor hadn’t even noticed when he lost it.

He buttoned himself up somehow or other and tucked in his shirt, listening to hear what was happening now up above him.

But there was a loud slam as someone closed the window; after that there were no more sounds.

Erast Petrovich walked round the side of the house and started off across the lawn in the reverse direction – Masa was waiting there, outside the open gate. The vice-consul took only ten steps and then froze as three long, low shadows came tearing in from the street.

The mastiffs!

They had either concluded their male business or, like the ill-fated titular counsellor, withdrawn disappointed, but either way the dogs were back, and they had cut off his only line of retreat.

Fandorin swung round and dashed back into the garden, hurtling along, unable to make out the path, with branches lashing at his face.

The damned dogs were running a lot faster, and their snuffling was getting closer and closer.

The garden came to an end, and there was a fence of iron ahead. Too high to scramble over. And there was nothing to get a grip on.

Erast Petrovich swung round and thrust one hand into the holster behind his back to take out his Herstal, but he couldn’t fire – it would rouse the entire house.

The first mastiff growled, preparing to spring.

‘RUSSIAN VICE-CONSUL TORN TO PIECES’ – the headline flashed through the doomed man’s mind. He put his hands over his face and throat, and instinctively pushed his back against the fence. Suddenly there was a strange metallic clang, the fence gave way, and the titular counsellor fell, sprawling flat on his back.

When evening time comes,
In the mystical silence
The garden gate creaks

THE SCIENCE OF
JOJUTSU

Still not understanding what had happened, Erast Petrovich rose to a squatting position, ready for the hopeless skirmish with three bloodthirsty monsters, but the amazing fence (no, gate!) slammed shut with a squeak of springs.

On the other side a heavy carcass slammed into the iron bars at full pelt. He heard an angry yelp and snarling. Three pairs of furiously glinting eyes gazed at their inaccessible prey.

‘Not your day, folks!’ shouted the titular counsellor, whose English speech had clearly been vulgarised somewhat by associating with Sergeant Lockston.

He drew in a deep breath, filling his lungs with air, and breathed out again, trying to calm his heartbeat. He looked around: who had opened the gate that saved him?

There was not a soul to be seen.

He saw Don Tsurumaki’s palace in the distance and, much closer, a pond overgrown with water lilies, glinting in the moonlight – it was inexpressibly beautiful, with a tiny island, little toy bridges and spiky rushes growing along its banks. He could hear the melancholy croaking of frogs from that direction. The black surface seemed to be embroidered with silver threads – the reflections of the stars.

The vice-consul thought that the dark pavilion by the water’s edge looked particularly fine, with the edges of its roof turned up like wings, as if it were preparing to take flight. A weather vane in the form of a fantastic bird crowned a weightless tower.

Erast Petrovich set off along the bank of the pond, gazing around. He was still stupefied. What kind of miracles were these? Someone must have opened the gate, and then closed it. Someone had rescued the nocturnal adventurer from certain death.

Not until the pavilion and the pond had been left behind did Fandorin think to look at the palace.

An elegant building, constructed in the style of the mansions on the Champs Élysées, with a terrace that faced in the direction of the little lake, and on the first floor someone standing behind the elegant balustrade was waving to the uninvited visitor – someone in a long robe and a fez with a tassel.

Erast Petrovich recognised him from the fez: it was the owner of the estate in person. Seeing that he had finally been spotted, Don Tsurumaki gestured invitingly in welcome.

There was nothing to be done. Fandorin could hardly take to his heels. Cursing under his breath, the titular counsellor bowed politely and set off towards the steps of the porch. His supple mind started functioning again, trying to invent some at least vaguely credible explanation for his scandalous behaviour.

‘Welcome, young assistant of my friend Doronin!’ a rich male voice said above his head. ‘The door is open. Come in and join me up here!’

‘Th-thank you,’ Fandorin replied drearily.

Erast Petrovich walked through the dark hallway, where the orchestra had thundered and skirts had been lifted above kicking legs in the cancan during the Bachelors’ Ball, and then up the stairs, as if he were mounting the scaffold.

What should he do? Repent? Lie? What good would it do if he did lie? The Russian vice-consul, fleeing from the British agent’s garden. The situation was quite unambiguous: one spy spying on another …

But Fandorin had still not realised just how wretched his situation really was.

Walking out on to the stone terrace, he saw a table laid with a magnificent spread of various kinds of ham, salami, fruits, cakes and sweets, as well as an array of sweet liqueurs; candles protruded from candelabra, but they had not been lit – evidently because of the bright moon. But the table was not the problem – there was a powerful telescope on an iron stand beside the balustrade, and its seeing eye was not pointed up at the heavens, but towards Bullcox’s house!

Had Don Tsurumaki seen or hadn’t he? Erast Petrovich froze on the spot when the thought hit him. But no, the real point was: What exactly had he seen – just a man running away through the garden or …

‘Well, don’t just stand there!’ said the Don, puffing on his black briar pipe as he moved towards Fandorin. ‘Would you like something to eat? I love eating alone at night. With no forks and no chopsticks – with just my bare hands.’ He held up his palms, gleaming with grease and smeared with chocolate. ‘Sheer piggishness, of course, but so help me, it’s my favourite time of the day. I regale my soul with the sight of the stars and my body with all sorts of delicacies. Take a quail, they were still soaring over the meadow this morning. And there are oysters, absolutely fresh. Would you like some?’

The fat man spoke with such mouth-watering enthusiasm that Erast immediately realised just how hungry he was, and wanted the quail and the oysters. But he had to find out a few things first.

Since his host was in no hurry to interrogate him, the vice-consul decided to seize the initiative.

‘Tell me, why do you need a gate leading into the next garden?’ he asked, feverishly trying to think of how to approach the most important question.

‘Algernon and I are friends …’ (the name came out as ‘Arudzenon’ on his Japanese lips) ‘… we pay each other neighbourly calls, with no formalities. It’s more convenient to go through the garden than round by the street.’

And it’s also more convenient for your lodger to sell his secrets, the vice-consul thought, but, naturally, he didn’t tell tales on Prince Onokoji. Fandorin recalled that, unlike the other guests, Bullcox and his consort had arrived at the Bachelors’ Ball on foot, and they had appeared from somewhere off to one side, not from the direction of the front gates. So they must have used that gate …

‘But … but how did you open it?’ Erast Petrovich asked, still avoiding the most important point.

The Don became excited.

‘O-oh, I have everything here running on electric power. I’m a great admirer of that remarkable invention! Here, look.’

He took the vice-consul by the elbow and half-led, half-dragged him to a kind of lectern standing beside the telescope. Erast Petrovich saw a bundle of wires running down to the floor and disappearing into a covered channel. On the lectern itself there were several rows of small, gleaming switches. Tsurumaki clicked one of them and the palace came to life, with yellowish-white light streaming out of all its windows. He clicked the switch again, and the house went dark.

‘And this here is our gate. Look through the telescope, the telescope.’

Fandorin pressed his eye to the end of the tube and saw the metal railings very close up, only an arm’s length away, with three canine silhouettes beyond them. A green spark glinted once again in a bulging eye. What patient brutes they were.

‘One, two!’ the Don exclaimed, and the gate swung open with a lively jerk, as if it were alive. One of the dogs bounded forward.

‘Three, four!’

The gate slammed shut again just as quickly, and the mastiff was flung back into the garden. And serve the son of a bitch right!

Pretending to adjust the focus, Erast Petrovich raised the aim of the telescope slightly. First the wall of the house appeared in the circle of vision, and then the drainpipe, and then the window – and all very close indeed.

‘That’s enough, enough!’ said the lover of electricity, tugging impatiently on his sleeve. ‘Now I’ll show you something that will really make you gasp. Nobody has seen it yet, I’m saving it for a big social event … The pond, watch the pond!’

Click! An emerald glow appeared above the black, shimmering patch of water as the tiny island was flooded with light from electric lamps, and the tiny stone pagoda standing on it was also lit up – but pink, not green.

‘European science!’ the millionaire exclaimed, with his eyes glittering. ‘The wires are laid along the bottom, in a special telegraph cable. And the bulbs have coloured glass, that’s the whole trick. How do you like that?’

‘Astounding!’ Fandorin exclaimed with genuine delight. ‘You’re a genuine inventor.’

‘Oh no, I’m not an inventor. Making discoveries is what you
gaijins
are good at. The Japanese are not inventors, our element is Order, but pioneers are always children of Chaos. But we are really clever at finding good uses for others’ inventions, and you can never keep up with us there. Give us time, Mr Fandorin: we’ll learn all your tricks, and then we’ll show you how clumsily you have used them.’

The Don laughed, and the titular counsellor thought: It doesn’t look to me as if your element is Order.

‘Are you interested in astronomy?’ Erast Petrovich enquired, clearing his throat and nodding at the telescope.

Tsurumaki understood the hidden meaning of the question quite clearly. His laughter rumbled even more freely and his fat cheeks crept upwards, transforming his jolly, sparkling eyes into two narrow slits.