Erast Fandorin 04 - The Death of Achilles Read online

“As far as I recall the rules of dueling,” Fandorin said dryly, “the terms of combat are set by the party who is challenged. So be it; I will play this stupid game with you — but later, when I have concluded my investigation. You may send your seconds to me. I am staying in suite number twenty. Good-bye, gentlemen.”

  He was about to turn around and leave, but Erdeli bounded over with a cry of “Then I’ll make you fight!” and attempted to slap him across the face. With amazing agility, Erast Petrovich seized the hand that had been raised to strike and squeezed the prince’s wrist between his finger and thumb — apparently not very hard, but the lieutenant’s face contorted in pain.

  “You scoundr-rel!” the Caucasian shrieked in a high falsetto, flinging out his left hand. Fandorin pushed the overeager prince away and said fastidiously: “Don’t trouble yourself any further. We shall regard the blow as having been struck. I challenge you and I shall make you pay for the insult with your blood.”

  “Ah, excellent,” said the phlegmatic staff officer whom Gukmasov had introduced as Lieutenant Colonel Baranov. It was the first time he had opened his mouth. “Name your terms, Erdeli.” Rubbing his wrist, the lieutenant hissed malevolently: “We fight now. Pistols. Handkerchief terms.”

  “What does that mean — handkerchief terms?” Fandorin inquired curiously. “I’ve heard about this custom, but I must confess that I’m unfamiliar with the details.”

  “It’s very simple,” the lieutenant colonel told him politely. “The opponents take hold of the opposite corners of an ordinary handkerchief with their free hands. Here, you can take mine if you like; it is clean.” Baranov took a large red-and- white-checked handkerchief out of his pocket. “They take their pistols. Gukmasov, where are your Lepages?”

  The captain picked up a long case that had obviously been lying on the table in readiness and opened the lid. The long barrels with inlaid decorations glinted in the light.

  “The opponents draw lots to select a pistol,” Baranov continued, smiling amicably. “They take aim — although what need is there at that distance? On the command, they fire. That is really all there is to it.”

  “Draw lots?” Fandorin inquired. “You mean to say that one pistol is loaded and the other is not?”

  “Naturally,” said the lieutenant colonel with a nod. “That is the whole point. Otherwise it would not be a duel but a double suicide.”

  “Well, then,” said the collegiate assessor with a shrug. “I feel genuinely sorry for the lieutenant. I have never once lost at drawing lots.”

  “All things are in God’s hands, and it is a bad omen to talk like that; it will bring you bad luck,” Baranov admonished him.

  He seems to be the one in charge here, not Gukmasov, thought Erast Petrovich.

  “You need a second,” said the morose Cossack captain. “If you wish, as an old acquaintance, I can offer my services. And you need not doubt that the lots will be drawn honestly.”

  “Indeed I do not doubt it, Prokhor Akhrameevich. But as far as a second is concerned, you will not do. If I should be unlucky, it will appear too much like murder.”

  Baranov nodded.

  “He is quite right. How pleasant it is to deal with a man of intelligence. And you are also right, Prokhor, he is dangerous. What do you propose, Mr. Fandorin?”

  “Will a Japanese citizen suit you as my second? You see, I only arrived in Moscow today and have had no time to make any acquaintances.”

  The collegiate assessor spread his arms in a gesture of apology.

  “A Papuan savage will do,” exclaimed Erdeli. “Only let’s get on with it!”

  “Will there be a doctor?” asked Erast Petrovich.

  “A doctor will not be required,” sighed the lieutenant colonel. “At that distance any shot is fatal.”

  “Very well. I was not actually concerned for myself, but for the prince.”

  Erdeli uttered some indignant exclamation in Georgian and withdrew into the far corner of the room.

  Erast Petrovich expounded the essence of the matter in a short note written in bizarre characters running from the top to the bottom of the page and from right to left, and asked for the note to be taken to suite 20.

  Masa was not quick to come — fifteen minutes passed before he arrived. The officers had begun to feel nervous and appeared to suspect the collegiate assessor of not playing by the rules.

  The appearance of the offended party’s second created a considerable impression. Masa was a great enthusiast of duels, and for the sake of this one he had decked himself out in his formal kimono with tall starched shoulders, put on white socks, and girded himself with his finest belt, decorated with a pattern of bamboo shoots.

  “What kind of gaudy parrot is this?” Erdeli asked with impolite astonishment. “But who gives a damn, anyway? Let’s get down to business!”

  Masa bowed ceremonially to the assembled company and held out that accursed official sword at arm’s length to his master.

  “Here is your sword, my lord.”

  “How sick I am of you and your sword,” sighed Erast Petrovich. “I’m fighting a duel with pistols. With that gentleman there.”

  “Pistols again?” Masa asked disappointedly. “What a barbaric custom. And who are you going to kill? That hairy man? He looks just like a monkey.”

  The witnesses to the duel stood along the walls, and Gukmasov, having turned away and juggled with the pistols for a moment, offered the opponents a choice. Erast Petrovich waited as Erdeli crossed himself and took a pistol, then casually picked up the second pistol with his finger and thumb.

  Following the captain’s instructions, the duelists took hold of the corners of the handkerchief and moved as far away as possible from each other, which even with fully outstretched arms was a distance of no more than three paces. The prince raised his pistol to shoulder level and aimed directly at his opponent’s forehead. Fandorin held his weapon by his hip and did not aim at all, since at that distance it was entirely unnecessary.

  “One, two, three!” the captain counted quickly and stepped back.

  The hammer of the prince’s pistol gave a dry click, but Fandorin’s weapon belched out a vicious tongue of flame. The lieutenant fell and began rolling around on the carpet, clutching at his right hand, which had been shot through, and swearing desperate obscenities.

  When his howling had subsided to dull groans, Erast Petrovich chided him: “You will never again be able to slap anyone’s face with that hand.”

  There was a clamor in the corridor, where people were shouting. Gukmasov opened the door slightly and told someone that there had been an unfortunate accident — Lieutenant Erdeli had been unloading a pistol and had shot himself in the hand. The wounded man was sent to be bandaged up by Professor Welling, who fortunately had not yet left to collect his embalming equipment, and then everyone returned to Guk-masov’s suite.

  “Now what?” asked Fandorin. “Are you satisfied?”

  Gukmasov shook his head.

  “Now you will fight a duel with me. On the same terms.”

  “And then?”

  “And then — if you’re lucky again — with everyone else in turn. Until you are killed. Erast Petrovich, spare me and my comrades this ordeal.” The captain looked almost imploringly into the young man’s eyes. “Give us your word of honor that you will not take part in the investigation, and we shall part friends.”

  “I should count it an honor to be your friend, but what you demand is impossible,” Fandorin declared sadly.

  Masa whispered in his ear: “Master, I do not understand what this man with the red mustache is saying to you, but I sense danger. Would it not be wiser to attack first and kill all these samurai while they are still unprepared? I have your little pistol in my sleeve, and those brass knuckles that I bought for myself in Paris. I would really like to try them out.”

  “Masa, forget these bandit habits of yours,” Erast Petrovich told his servant. “I am going to fight these gentlemen honestly, one by one.”
r />   “Ah, then that will take a long time,” the Japanese said, drawing out the words. He moved away to the wall and sat down on the floor.

  “Gentlemen,” said Fandorin, attempting to make the officers see reason, “believe me, you will achieve nothing. You will simply be wasting your time.”

  “Enough idle talk,” Gukmasov interrupted him. “Does your Japanese know how to load dueling pistols? No? Then you load them, Eich-golz.”

  Once again the opponents took their pistols and stretched the handkerchief out between them. The captain was morose and determined, but if anything Fandorin seemed rather embarrassed. On the command (Baranov was counting this time), Gukmasov’s pistol misfired with a dry click, but Erast Petrovich did not fire at all. The captain, deadly pale now, hissed through his teeth: “Shoot, Fandorin, and be damned. And you, gentlemen, decide who is next. And barricade the door so that no one can get in! Don’t let him out of here alive.”

  “You refuse to listen to me, and that is a mistake,” said the collegiate assessor, waving his loaded pistol in the air. “I told you that you will achieve nothing by drawing lots. I possess a rare gift, gentlemen — I am uncannily lucky at games of chance. An inexplicable phenomenon. I resigned myself to it a long time ago. Evidently it is all due to the fact that my dear departed father was unlucky to an equally exceptional degree. I always win at every kind of game, which is why I cannot stand them.” He ran his clear-eyed gaze over the officers’ sullen faces. “You don’t believe me? Do you see this imperial?” Erast Petrovich took a gold coin out of his pocket and handed it to Eichgolz. “Toss it and I will guess, heads or tails.”

  After glancing around at Gukmasov and Baranov, the baron, a young officer with the first vague intimations of a mustache, shrugged and tossed the coin.

  It was still spinning in the air when Fandorin said: “I don’t know… Let’s say, heads.”

  “Heads,” Eichgolz confirmed, and tossed it again.

  “Heads again,” the collegiate assessor declared in a bored voice.

  “Heads!” exclaimed the baron. “Good Lord, gentlemen, just look at that!”

  “Right, Mitya, again,” Gukmasov told him.

  “Tails,” said Erast Petrovich, looking away.

  A deadly silence filled the room. Fandorin did not even glance at the baron’s outstretched palm.

  “I told you. Masa, ikoo. Owari da.* Good-bye, gentlemen.”

  The officers watched in superstitious terror as the functionary and his Japanese servant walked to the door.

  As they were leaving, the pale-faced Gukmasov appealed to Erast Petrovich: “Fandorin, promise me that you will not employ your talent as a detective to the detriment of the fatherland. The honor of Russia is hanging by a thread.”

  Erast Petrovich paused before answering.

  “I promise, Gukmasov, that I will do nothing against my own honor, and that, I think, is sufficient.”

  The collegiate assessor walked out of the suite, but before following him Masa turned in the doorway and bowed ceremonially, from the waist.

  “Let’s go, Masa. It’s over.”

  * * *

  FOUR

  In which the usefulness of architectural extravagance is demonstrated

  The suites in the hotel Anglia were a match for the respectable Dusseaux in the FOUR magnificence of their appointments, while in terms of architectural fantasy they actually surpassed it, although the presence of a somewhat dubious, or at least frivolous, quality might possibly be detected in the sumptuous gilded ceilings and marble volutes. On the other hand, however, the entrance was radiant with bright electric light; one could ride up to the top three floors in an elevator, and from time to time the foyer resounded with the shrill jangling of that fashionable marvel of technology, the telephone.

  After taking a stroll around the grand foyer with its mirrors and morocco-leather divans, Erast Petrovich halted in front of the board with the names of the guests. The people who stayed here were a more varied bunch than at the Dusseaux: foreign businessmen, stockbrokers, actors from fashionable theaters. However, there was no songstress named Wanda to be found on the list.

  Fandorin cast a keen eye over the hotel staff darting back and forth between the reception desk and the elevator and selected one particularly brisk and efficient waiter with mobile features suggestive of intelligence.

  “Tell me, does Miss Wanda n-no longer reside here?” the collegiate assessor asked, feigning slight embarrassment.

  “While certainly the lady does,” the fellow responded eagerly and, following the handsome gentleman’s gaze, he pointed to the board. “Right there, sir: Miss Helga Ivanovna Tolle, that’s the lady in question. Uses the name Wanda because it sounds better. She lives in the annex. You just go out through that door there, sir, into the yard. Miss Wanda has a suite there with a separate entrance. Only the lady’s not usually in at this time, sir.” The waiter was about to slip away, but Erast Petrovich rustled a banknote in his pocket, and the good fellow suddenly froze as if he were rooted to the spot.

  “Is there some little errand you’d like done, sir?” he asked, giving the young gentleman a look of affectionate devotion.

  “When does she get back?”

  “It varies, sir. The lady sings at the Alpine Rose. Every day but Mondays. I’ll tell you what, sir — you take a seat for a while in the buffet, have a drink of tea or whatever, and I’ll make sure to let you know when the mam’selle shows up.”

  “And what is she like?” asked Erast Petrovich, twirling his fingers vaguely in the air. “To look at? Is she really so very pretty?”

  “The picture of beauty, sir,” said the waiter, smacking his plump red lips. “Highly respected in these parts. Pays three hundred rubles a month for her suite and very generous with tips, sir.”

  At this point he paused with practiced psychological precision and Fandorin slowly took out two one-ruble notes — but then thrust them into his breast pocket with a distracted air.

  “Miss Wanda doesn’t receive just anybody in her rooms; she’s very strict about that, sir,” the waiter declared significantly, his gaze boring into the gentleman’s frock coat. “But I can announce you, seeing as I am in her special confidence.”

  “Take that, then,” said Erast Petrovich, holding out one of the notes. “You’ll g- get the other when Mademoiselle Wanda comes back. Meanwhile, I’ll go and read a newspaper. Where did you say your buffet was? ”

  On 25 june 1882 the Moscow Gazette wrote as follows:

  A Telegram from Singapore

  The renowned explorer N. N. Miklukha-Maklai intends to return to Russia on the clipper ‘Marksman’. Mr. Miklukha-Maklai’s health has been seriously undermined; he is extremely thin and suffering from constant fevers and chronic neuralgia. For the most part his state of mind is also morose. The traveler informed our correspondent that he is sick and tired of wandering and dreams of reaching his native shores as soon as possible.

  Erast Petrovich shook his head, vividly picturing to himself the emaciated, twitching face of the martyr of ethnography. He turned over the page.

  The Blasphemy of American Advertising An inscription in letters half the height of a man recently appeared above Broadway, the main street of New York — “the president is certain to die.” Dumbfounded passersby halted, transfixed, and only then were they able to read what was written below in smaller letters: “… in our treacherous climate if he does not wear warm woolen underwear from Garland and Co.” A representative of the White House has taken the firm to court for exploiting the presidential title for base commercial ends.

  Thank God, things have not reached that state here and are never likely to, the collegiate assessor thought with some satisfaction. After all, His Majesty the Emperor is more than some mere president.

  As a man with a certain interest in belles lettres, he was naturally drawn to the following headline:

  Literary Talks

  A large number of listeners were attracted to the spacious hall at the hom
e of Princess Trubetskaya for a talk on contemporary literature given by Professor I. N. Pavlov, which was devoted to an analysis of the recent works of Ivan Turgenev. With the help of illustrative examples, Mr. Pavlov demonstrated the depths to which this great talent has sunk in the pursuit of a tendentious and spurious reality. The next reading will be devoted to analyzing the works of Shchedrin as the leading representative of the crudest and most fallacious form of realism.

  Fandorin was dismayed to read that. Among the Russian diplomats in Japan it was considered good tone to praise Turgenev and Shchedrin. How very far he had fallen behind the literary scene in Russia during his absence of almost six years! But what was new in the field of technology?

  Tunnel Under the English Channel

  The length of the railway tunnel under the English Channel is already approaching 1,200 meters. The engineer Brunton is excavating the galleries with a ram-drill powered by compressed air. According to the plans, the total length of the underground passage should be a little over thirty versts. The initial design envisaged that the English and French digs would link up after five years, but skeptics claim that the labor-intensive work of facing the walls and laying the rails will delay the opening of the line until at least 1890…

  With his keen sensitivity to progress, Fandorin found the digging of the Anglo- French tunnel quite fascinating, but something prevented him from reading this interesting article to the end. A certain gentleman in a gray two-piece suit, whom Fandorin had only recently spotted beside the head porter in the vestibule, had now been hovering around the buffet counter for several minutes. The isolated words that reached the collegiate assessor’s ears (and his hearing was quite excellent) seemed to Fandorin so curious that he immediately stopped reading, although he continued to hold the newspaper in front of his face.

  “Don’t you try putting one over on me,” the gray-suited gentleman pressed the man behind the counter. “Were you on duty last night or not?”

  “I was asleep, Yer Onner,” droned the man, a fat-faced, rosy-cheeked hulk with a greasy beard combed to both sides. “The only one here from the night shift is Senka.” He jerked his beard in the direction of a boy serving cakes and tea.