The Diamond Chariot

THE FIRST RAY OF SUNLIGHT




Late in the night, closer to the end of that interminable day, Erast Petrovich was sitting in the office of the head of the municipal police. They were waiting for the third member of the investigative group, the Japanese inspector.

In the not so distant past, Sergeant Walter Lockston had served as a guardian of the law in some cattle town in the Wild West of America, and he had retained all the manners of that uncivilised place. The sergeant sat there with his feet up on the table, swaying on his chair; his uniform cap was pushed forward almost as far as his nose, like a cowboy hat, he had a dead cigar protruding from the corner of his mouth and two massive revolvers hanging on his belt.

The policeman never stopped talking for a moment, cracking jokes and doing everything possible to demonstrate that he was a regular down-to-earth fellow, but Fandorin became more and more convinced that Lockston was not as simple as he was pretending to be.

‘The career I’ve had, you wouldn’t believe it,’ he said, stretching out his vowels mercilessly. ‘Normal people get promoted from sergeants to marshals, but with me it’s all backwards. In that dump that had five thousand cows to five hundred people, where the crime of the century was the theft of sixty-five dollars from the local post office, I was called a marshal. And here in Yokohama, where there are almost ten thousand people, not counting the danged hordes of slanty-eyed locals, I’m only a sergeant. And at the same time, my assistant’s a lieutenant. Ain’t that a hoot! That’s the way it’s set up. A sergeant, eh? When I write letters home, I have to lie, I sign them “Captain Lockston”. That’s what I should rightfully be, a captain. This sergeant business is some European contrivance of yours. So tell me, Rusty, do you have sergeants in Russia?’

‘No,’ replied Erast Petrovich, who had already resigned himself to that appalling ‘Rusty’, which was the result, on the one hand, of Lockston’s inability to pronounce the name ‘Erast’ and, on the other, of the grey hair on the titular counsellor’s temples. The only thing that irritated him was the stubbornness with which the office’s incumbent avoided talking about the matter at hand. ‘We don’t have sergeants in the police. Walter, I asked you what you know about that establishment, the “Rakuen”?’

Lockston took the cigar out of his mouth and spat brown saliva into the wastepaper basket. He looked at the Russian with his watery, slightly bulging eyes and seemed to realise that this man would not give up that easily. He screwed up his copper-red face into a wince and said reluctantly:

‘You see, Rusty, the Rakuen is on the other side of the river, and that’s not the Settlement. That’s to say, legally speaking it’s our territory, but white folks don’t live there, only yellowbellies. So we don’t usually stick our noses in there. Sometimes the Jappos stab each other to death, it happens all the time. But until they touch the white folk, I do nothing. That’s something like an unspoken agreement that we have.’

‘But in this case there is a suspicion that a Russian subject has been killed.’

‘So you told me,’ Lockston said with a nod. ‘And you know what I have to say to that? Bullshit, drivel. If your Mr B. kicked the bucket because some drunk happened to catch him on the neck with a finger, the old man must have been on his last legs already. What damned kind of murder is that? Let me tell you what a real murder looks like. This one time at Buffalo Creek …’

‘But what if Blagolepov was murdered?’ the embassy official interrupted after he had listened to several harrowing stories from the criminal history of the cowboy town.

‘Well then …’ The sergeant screwed his eyes up fiercely. ‘Then the slanty-eyes will answer to me for it. If it really is one of their lousy oriental tricks, they’ll regret they ever did the dirt on my territory. The year before last at the Ogon-basi bridge (and that, note, is already outside the bounds of the Settlement) they stabbed a French officer-boy. From behind, sneaky-like. This psychopath, an ex-samurai, turned nasty because his kind had been forbidden to carry swords. Whatever happens here, for them the whites are always to blame. So I called out all my lads and caught the son of a bitch, he hadn’t even washed the blood off his sword yet. How he begged me to let him slice his belly open! Well, screw him. I dragged him round the native quarter on a rope, to let the yellowbellies get a good look, and afterwards I strung him up with the same rope, no messing. Of course, the Jappos made a big scandal of it. Said they ought to have tried the psycho themselves and chopped his head off, the way they do things round here. I don’t think so. I prefer to pay my own debts. And if I come to believe that your compatriot didn’t kick the bucket on his own, but some Jap gave him a hand …’ Lockston didn’t finish what he was saying: he simply slammed his fist down eloquently on the desk.

‘Do you know the inspector who has been assigned to us from the Japanese police? The g-gentleman is called Goemon Asagawa.’

Erast Petrovich deliberately spoke about the Japanese with emphatic correctness, making it clear that he did not like the sergeant’s choice of words. The American seemed to take the hint.

‘I know him. He’s in charge of the station on Wagon Street, that’s in the Native Town. Of all the yellow … Of all the Japanese, Go is the smartest. We’ve worked together a couple of times already, on mixed cases when the mischief-makers were whites and yell … I mean natives. He’s a really young guy, only thirty, but experienced. He’s been in the police about fifteen years.’

‘How is that possible?’ Fandorin asked in surprise.

‘Well, he’s a hereditary yoriki.’

‘Who?’

‘A yoriki, it’s like a precinct cop. Under the old regime, the shoguns, the usual thing was for every trade, even every job, to pass from father to son. For instance, if your father was a water-carrier, then you’re going to spend your entire life carting around barrels of water. If your old man was the deputy head of the fire brigade, then you’ll be the deputy head too. That was why everything here fell apart on them – there was no point in straining yourself, you couldn’t jump any higher than your dear old dad anyway. And Go’s from a family of yoriki. When his father was killed by a robber, the lad was only thirteen. But order is order: he hung two swords on his belt, picked up a truncheon and went to work. He told me that the first year he carried the long sword under his arm so that it wouldn’t drag along the ground.’

‘But can a b-boy really maintain order in an entire neighbourhood?’

‘He can here, because the Jappos … the Japanese don’t look at the man so much, they look at the position and the rank. And then, they respect the police here – they’re all samurai to a man. And then, Rusty, bear in mind that guys who were born into yoriki families have been taught the whole body of police science since they were little kids: how to catch a thief, how to disarm robbers and tie them up, and they can handle a truncheon in a fight like our cops have never even dreamed of. I think Go could do plenty when he was thirteen.’

Erast Petrovich listened with great interest.

‘And how is their police organised now?’

‘On the English model. There are out-of-work samurai everywhere you look now, so there’s no shortage of volunteers. If you’re interested in the details, ask Go – here he comes.’

Fandorin looked out of the window at the well-lit square and saw a tall Japanese in a black uniform jacket and white trousers, with a sword hanging at his side. He was walking towards the station, swinging his right arm in military style.

‘You see he has a revolver on his belt,’ said Lockston, pointing. ‘That’s unusual for a native. They prefer to use a stick or, at a pinch, a sword.’

Inspector Asagawa was taciturn and calm, with a still face and quick eyes that were surely highly observant. The titular counsellor liked him. The Japanese began by ceremoniously but quite decisively putting the noisy sergeant in his place.

‘I am glad to see you too, Mr Lockston. Only please, if it is not too difficult for you, call me Goemon and not Go, although we Japanese feel more comfortable when we are addressed by our surnames. No thank you, I won’t have any coffee. Concerning my health and so forth, with your permission, we can talk later about that. My superiors have informed me that I come under the command of the vice-consul. What are your orders, Mr Fandorin?’

In this way the conversation was immediately set on business lines.

Erast Petrovich briefly described their goal.

‘Gentlemen, we have to find three samurai from Satsuma whom the Russian subject Captain Blagolepov carried on his launch last night. We have to ascertain if these men were involved in his sudden death.’

Fandorin didn’t say anything about the political background to the investigation. Asagawa understood and apparently approved – at least, he nodded.

‘Well, and how are we going to find them and ascertain that?’ asked Lockston.

‘These men hired the captain to take them to Tokyo again before dawn today, they even p-paid him an advance. So our first action will be as follows: we will go to the spot where the launch is moored and see if the Satsumans show up at the agreed time or not. If they do not, it means they know that the captain is dead. That will serve to strengthen the suspicion that they are involved in his death. That is one.’

‘What’s the point?’ the sergeant asked with a shrug. ‘So it will strengthen the suspicion. But where do we look for those three, that’s the catch.’

‘The daughter of the deceased told me that most of her father’s clients were supplied by the owner of the Rakuen. I assume that these three also made their arrangements with the owner of the launch and not with the captain. I can’t be completely certain of that, but let us not forget that the suspicious blow to his neck was inflicted inside the Rakuen. Which brings me to the second stage of this investigation: if the Satsumans do not show up, we shall turn our attention to Mr Semushi.’

Lockston chewed on his cigar, thinking over what Fandorin had said, but the Japanese was already on his feet.

‘In my humble judgement, your plan is very good,’ he said briefly. ‘I shall take ten experienced police officers. We shall surround the mooring and wait.’

‘And I’ll take six of the lads, the entire night shift,’ said the sergeant, also getting up.

Erast Petrovich summed up the situation.

‘So, if the Satsumans come, they are no longer under suspicion of the captain’s death. We hand them over to the Japanese police, who can deal with finding out who they are and what their intentions were. If the Satsumans do not come, the investigation remains within the competence of the consulate and the m-municipal police …’

‘And make no mistake, we’ll find those sons of bitches, wherever they are,’ the American put in. ‘We’ll go straight from the mooring to the hunchbacked Jappo’s place and shake the very soul out of him.’

Fandorin couldn’t help it, he shuddered at that ‘Jappo’ and was about to rebuke the sergeant for his intemperate speech, but it turned out that Inspector Asagawa had no intention of letting his nation be insulted.

‘The Japanese soul, Mr Lockston, is hidden deeper than it is in white people. It is not so easy to shake out, especially with a man like Semushi. He is an akunin, of course, but by no means a weakling.’

‘Who is he?’ Fandorin asked, knitting his brows together at the sound of an unfamiliar word.

‘An akunin is like an evil man or a villain,’ Asagawa tried to explain. ‘But not entirely … I don’t think the English language has a precise translation for it. An akunin is an evil man, but he is not petty, he is a strong man. He has his own rules, which he defines for himself. They do not conform to the prescriptions of the law, but an akunin will sacrifice his life for the sake of his rules, and so he inspires respect as well as hate.’

‘There is no word for that in Russian either,’ Fandorin admitted after a moment’s thought. ‘But g-go on.’

‘Semushi undoubtedly breaks the law. He is a cruel and cunning bandit. But he is not a coward, otherwise he could not hold on to his position. I have been working my way towards him for a long time. I have arrested him twice: for smuggling and on suspicion of murder. But Semushi is one of a new breed. He does not act like the bandits of former times. And most importantly of all, he has protectors in high places …’

Asagawa hesitated and stopped, as if realising that he had said too much.

He doesn’t want to hang out his dirty laundry in front of foreigners, Fandorin guessed, and decided to leave any questions for later, when he got to know the inspector better

‘Know what I have to say to you guys?’ said Lockston, narrowing his eyes sceptically. ‘We’re not going to get anywhere. We won’t prove the old dope-smoker was bumped off. With just a finger. It’s not possible.’

‘And is it possible for the touch of a finger to leave a burn mark on the neck, through a celluloid collar?’ Fandorin countered. ‘All right, it’s too early to argue about that. Let’s go to the mooring and wait for the samurai. If they don’t come, we’ll work on the owner of the Rakuen. But Mr Asagawa is right – we can’t go at this like a bull at a gate. Tell me, Inspector, do you have agents in civilian dress … that is, I mean, not in uniforms, but in kimonos?’

The Japanese smiled gently.

‘The kimono is formal wear. But I understand your question, Mr Vice-Consul. I have very good agents – in Japanese clothing and in European frock coats. We will put Semushi under secret surveillance.’

‘And from what my servant can tell me, I shall compose a verbal p-portrait of the man who touched Blagolepov’s neck. But let us not get ahead of ourselves. Perhaps the Satsumans will show up after all?’

The deceased Captain Blagolepov’s launch was tied up among fishing boats at a berth a long way from the Settlement.

The ambush was already in place two hours before the dawn. The Japanese police were ensconced under the decking of the jetty, on the launch itself and on the boats beside it. Lockston and his constables were posted on the shore, in a warehouse.

It was very dark and very quiet;, the only sound was the breathing of the bay, and every now and then the moon peeped out for a short while from behind the clouds. Erast Petrovich had found the prospect of sitting in the warehouse with the white policeman uninteresting. He wanted to be with Asagawa and his men in the immediate vicinity of the launch. The titular counsellor and four of the Japanese policemen had taken up a post under the pier, up to their knees in water. After a quarter of an hour Fandorin started feeling cold, and half an hour after that his teeth were chattering wildly, but he had to put up with it in order not to disgrace himself in front of the locals.

When there was moonlight filtering through between the boards of the pier, the young man examined his silent companions. Not one of them had a firearm, or even cold steel – only long staffs. But during the fight at the Rakuen, Erast Petrovich had seen how effective this weapon was in the hands of a master, so he contemplated the Japanese men’s unimpressive equipment with respect.

What surprised the titular counsellor most of all was that four of the ten men brought by Asagawa were wearing spectacles. It was absolutely impossible to imagine a Russian constable in glasses – the very idea was enough to make a cat laugh. But for the Japanese officers it seemed to be in the accepted order of things. Unable to quell his curiosity, Fandorin quietly asked the inspector what was the reason for this phenomenon – was it perhaps a national disposition to short-sightedness?

The inspector replied seriously and comprehensively. He explained that from the day they were born men of the samurai class had a predilection for reading and self-education. And the pursuit of book-learning was particularly well developed in the police – which was good for the job, but bad for the eyesight. Nonetheless, this activity was enthusiastically encouraged by the high command, for now, in these times of progress, the representatives of authority should be educated individuals – otherwise the public would lose all respect for them, and contempt for the representatives of authority was detrimental to society.

So there was Erast Petrovich with his teeth chattering, up to his knees in water, pondering the terrible mistake that the government of his homeland had made by not involving the landed gentry in socially useful activity following the liberation of the peasantry. If only at that point they had disbanded the appalling Russian police – illiterate, corrupt through and through – and started taking young men from the nobility as police constables in the cities and rural districts. What a wonderful idea – a police force that is more educated and more high-minded that its fellow citizens, a police force that is a model for emulation! Russia had so many starry-eyed idlers with a grammar-school education! And now they were living totally useless lives, or else youthful idealism and the energy of unspent passion drove them to join the revolutionaries. What a loss for the state and society!

When he hit his forehead against a rough beam of timber, Erast Petrovich realised that his mind had slipped imperceptibly into the drowsy realm of daydreams. Noble police constables – what an absurd fantasy!

He shook his head to drive sleep away and took his watch out of his pocket. Three minutes after four. The gloom was starting to brighten.

And when the first, hesitant ray of sunlight stretched out across the dark-blue waters of the bay, it finally became clear that the Satsumans would not come.

It seemed like the end,

No hope left. But suddenly –

The first ray of sun.





A MAMUSI’S HEART




While his master was sleeping, Masa managed to do many important jobs. A thoughtful, responsible approach was what was required here – after all, it’s not every day that a man starts a new life.

Masa did not know much about gaijins, and he knew almost nothing at all about his master, and, naturally, that made him feel a bit timid – he didn’t want to make a mess of things, but his spirit was filled with the zeal of devotion, and that was the most important thing.

Shirota-san had explained Masa’s duties to him the day before: do the housekeeping, buy provisions, prepare food, clean clothes – in short, do everything to meet his master’s every need. Masa had been given twenty yen to cover outgoings and also his salary for a month in advance.

The salary was generous, and he spent it as befitted a devoted retainer, that is, on acquiring an appearance worthy of his position.

The Yakuza known as Badger had died with the Chobei-gumi gang. Now the same body was inhabited by a man called Sibata-san – no, better ‘Mister Masa’ – who had to live up to his calling.

The first thing Masa did was pay a visit to the barber and have his lacquered pigtail shaved off. Of course, the result was not very beautiful to see: white on top and black at the sides, like an old gaijin’s bald patch. But Masa’s hair grew with remarkable speed: in two days the back of his head would be covered with stubble and in a month he would have a wonderful stiff brush. It would be clear straight away that the owner of a head like that was a modern individual, a man of European culture. Like in that song everyone was singing in Tokyo:

Tap a lacquer-pigtailed head

For full elucidation.

Hear the dull and obtuse thud

Of musty, crass stagnation.

Tap a trim and tidy head

For full elucidation.

Hear the clear, progressive note

Of bright illumination.

Masa knocked on the freshly trimmed crown of his own head and was pleased with the sound. And while his hair was growing, he could wear a hat – he bought a fine felt bowler, only very slightly frayed, for just thirty sen in a second-hand clothes shop.

He bought his outfit in the same place: jacket, shirt-front and cuffs, check trousers. He tried on a heap of shoes, boots and half-boots, but decided to wait for a while with the gaijin footwear – it was very stupid and uncomfortable, and took such a long time to put on and take off. He kept his wooden geta.

Having transformed himself into a genuine foreigner, he visited one of his former girlfriends, who had taken a job with the family of an American missionary: first, to show off his newly acquired chic and, secondly, to ask about the habits and customs of gaijins. He obtained a great deal of surprising and very useful information, although not without some difficulty, because the brainless girl pestered him with her amorous advances and slobbered all over him. But he had come on serious business, after all, not just to fool about.

Now Masa felt sufficiently prepared to set to work.

It was a real stroke of luck that his master didn’t come back until dawn and slept almost until midday – there was enough time to prepare everything properly.

Masa put together an elegant breakfast: he brewed some wonderful barley tea, then took a wooden plate and set out on it pieces of sea centipede, yellow sea-urchin caviar and transparent slices of squid; he arranged the marinated plums and salted radish beautifully; he boiled the most expensive rice and sprinkled it with crushed seaweed; and he could feel especially proud of the absolutely fresh, snow-white tofu and fragrant tender-brown natto paste of fermented soybeans. The tray was decorated according to the season with small yellow chrysanthemums.

He carried this beautiful display into the bedroom, where he sat down on the floor without making a sound and started waiting for his master to wake up at last. But his master didn’t open his eyes; he was breathing calmly and quietly, and the only movement was the trembling of his long eyelashes.

Ai, this was not good! The rice would get cold! The tea would stand for too long!

Masa thought and thought about what to do, and a brilliant idea occurred to him.

He filled his lungs right up with air and gave a great sneeze.

A-tishoo!

His master jerked upright on the bed, opened his strange-coloured eyes and gazed in amazement at his seated retainer.

Masa bowed low, begged forgiveness for the noise he had made and held out one hand spattered with saliva, as if to say: It couldn’t be helped, an impulse of nature.

And then straight away, with a broad smile, immediately held out to his master the magnificent earthenware chamber pot that he had bought for ninety sen. Masa had learned from his former girlfriend that foreigners put this object under the bed for the night and did their gaijin business in it.

But his master did not seem pleased to see the chamber pot and waved his hand, as if to say: Take it away, take it away. Evidently Masa should have bought the white one, not the pink one with beautiful flowers.

Then Masa helped his master get washed, examining his white skin and firm muscles as he did so. He wanted very much to take a look at how a gaijin’s male parts were arranged, but for some reason the master sent his faithful servant out of the room before he washed the lower part of his body,

The breakfast was a magnificent success.

Of course, he had to spend some time teaching his master to use the chopsticks, but gaijins had nimble fingers. That was because they were descended from monkeys – they admitted that themselves, and they weren’t ashamed of it at all.

Masa’s master delighted him with his excellent appetite, and he had an interesting way of swallowing his food. First he bit off a small piece of centipede, then he wrinkled his face right up (no doubt in delight) and finished it off very quickly, washing it down greedily with barley tea. He gagged on the tea and started coughing, his mouth opened wide and his eyes gaped. That was like the Koreans – they belched when they wanted to show how delicious something was. Masa made a mental note that he must prepare twice as much next time.

After breakfast there was a language lesson. Shirota-san had said that the master wanted to learn Japanese – not like the other foreigners, who forced their servants to learn their language.

The lesson went like this.

The master pointed at various parts of his face and Masa told him their Japanese names: eye – meh, forehead – hitai, mouth – kuti, eyebrow – mayu. His pupil wrote these down in a notebook and repeated them diligently. His pronunciation was funny, but of course Masa didn’t permit himself even a tiny little smile.

The master drew a human face on a separate page and indicated its various parts with little arrows. That was clear enough. But then he started asking about something that Masa didn’t understand.

He could make out some words: ‘Rakuen’ and satsumajin – but what they referred to remained a mystery. His master pretended to be sitting there with his eyes closed, then he jumped up, staggered, waved one arm about and prodded Masa in the neck, then pointed to the face he had drawn and said, as if he was asking a question:

‘Meh? Kuti?’

Eventually, having reduced Masa to a state of complete bewilderment, he sighed, ruffled up his hair and sat down.

And then the most unusual part began.

The master ordered Masa to stand facing him, held out his clenched fists and started gesturing, as if he was inviting Masa to kick him.

Masa was horrified and for a long time he refused: how could he possibly kick his onjin? But then he remembered an interesting detail about the gaijins’ intimate life, something that his former girlfriend had told him. She had spied on what the missionary and his wife did when they were in the bedroom and seen her mistress, wearing nothing but a black bodice (apart from her riding boots), beating the sensei with a whip on his bare o-siri, and him asking her to hit him again and again.

That must be how the gaijins did things, Masa guessed. He bowed respectfully and struck his master in the chest with his foot, not very hard – right between absurdly extended fists.

The master fell over on to his back, but jumped up straight away. He clearly liked it and asked Masa to do it again.

This time he started springing about and following Masa’s every movement closely, so Masa couldn’t hit him straight away. The secret of ju-jitsu, or ‘the art of soft combat’, is to follow your opponent’s breathing. Everyone knows that strength enters into you with the air, and it leaves you with the air too; breathing in and out is the alternation of strength and weakness, fullness and emptiness. So Masa waited until his in-breath coincided with his master’s out-breath and repeated the attack.

His master fell down again, and this time he was really pleased. Gaijins truly were different from normal people, after all.

Having received what he wanted, the master put on a beautiful uniform and went to the central part of the building, to serve the Russian emperor. Masa did a bit of tidying and took up a position at the window, with a view of the garden and the opposite wing, where the consul lived (how could servants work for a man with such a shameful name?).

In the morning Masa’s eye had been caught by the consul’s maid, a girl by the name of Natsuko. His instinct told him it would be worthwhile spending a bit of time on her – it could lead to something.

He could see the girl doing the cleaning, moving from room to room, but she didn’t look out of the window.

Masa opened the curtains a bit wider, put a mirror on the windowsill and started pretending to shave – exactly the way his master did. Masa’s cheeks were round and remarkably smooth, no beard grew on them, the Buddha be praised, but why shouldn’t he lather them up with fragrant foam?

Working away gravely with the brush, Masa moved the mirror about a bit, trying to direct a spot of sunlight into Natsuko’s eyes.

He had to break off for a while, because Shirota-san and the dead captain’s yellow-haired daughter came out into the garden. They sat down on a bench under a young gingko tree and the interpreter began reading something out loud from a book, waving his hand about at the same time. Every now and then he cast a sideways glance at the young lady, but she sat with her eyes lowered and didn’t look at him at all. Such a learned man, but he had no idea how to court women, Masa thought, feeling sorry for Shirota-san. He ought to turn away from her completely and be casual, uttering only an occasional word. Then she wouldn’t turn her nose up, she’d start worrying that perhaps she wasn’t attractive enough.

They sat there for about a quarter of an hour, and when they left they forgot the book, leaving it on the bench. It was lying there with the front cover facing upwards. Standing up on tiptoe, Masa was able to make out the cover – it showed a gaijin with frizzy hair and curly hair on his cheeks at both sides, exactly like the orang-utan Masa had seen in the Asakusa park last week. There were lots of curiosities on show there: a performance by a master of passing wind, and a woman who smoked with her navel, and a spider-man with an old man’s head and the body of a five-year-old child.

He started fiddling with the mirror again, turned it this way and that, and eventually, after about half an hour, he was successful. Natsuko started showing interest in the ray of light that kept getting in her eyes. She turned her head right and left, glanced out of the window and saw the vice-consul’s servant. By that time, of course, Masa had already set the mirror on the windowsill and was making wild eyes as he waved a sharp razor about in front of his face.

The girl froze with her mouth open – he saw that very clearly out of the corner of his eye. He knitted his eyebrows together, because women appreciate sternness in a man; he pushed his cheek out with his tongue, as his master had done earlier, and turned sideways on to Natsuko, so she wouldn’t feel shy about examining her new neighbour more closely.

In about an hour’s time he should go out into the garden. As if he needed to clean his master’s sword (the narrow one in a beautiful scabbard with a gilded hilt). He could be sure Natsuko would also find herself something to do out there.

The maid stared at him for about a minute and then disappeared.

Masa stuck his head out of the window: it was important to understand why she had gone away – whether her mistress had called her or he had failed to make a strong enough impression.

There was a faint rustling sound behind him.

Erast Petrovich’s valet tried to turn round, but he was suddenly overcome by an irresistible urge to sleep. Masa yawned, stretched and slid down on to the floor. He started snoring.

Roused from sleep by a deafening sound of uncertain origin, Erast Petrovich jerked upright on the bed and for a brief moment felt frightened: there was an outlandish Oriental sitting on the floor, dressed in check trousers, a white shirt-front and a black bowler hat. The Oriental was watching the titular counsellor intently, and when he saw that Erast Petrovich had woken up, he swayed forward, like a bobbling Chinese doll.

And then Fandorin recognised his new servant. What was his name? Ah, yes, Masa.

The breakfast prepared by this native Sancho Panza was a nightmare. How could they eat that slimy, smelly, cold stuff? And raw fish! And gooey rice that stuck to the roof of your mouth! And it was better not even to think about what that sticky diarrhoea-coloured glue was made of. Not wishing to offend the Japanese, Fandorin quickly swallowed all this poison and washed it down with tea, but the tea seemed to have been brewed out of fish scales.

The attempt to compose a verbal portrait of the suspicious old man from the Rakuen ended in failure – it couldn’t be done without an interpreter, and the titular counsellor had not yet decided whether it was appropriate to let Shirota know all the details of the investigation.

But on the other hand, the introductory lesson on Japanese pugilism was a tremendous success. English boxing proved to be quite powerless against it. Masa moved with incredible speed and he struck with strength and precision. How right it was to fight with the legs instead of the arms! The lower limbs were so much stronger and longer! This was a skill well worth learning.

Then Erast Petrovich put on his uniform with the red cuffs and went to the consular premises to present himself to his superior with all due ceremony – for after all, this was his first day in his new position.

Doronin was sitting in his office, dressed in a frivolous shantung two-piece suit, and he gestured at the uniform as if it were a piece of silly nonsense.

‘Tell me, quickly!’ he exclaimed. ‘I know you got back early in the morning, and I’ve been waiting impatiently for you to wake up. Naturally, I understand that you came back empty-handed, otherwise you would have come to report straight away, but I want to know all the details.’

Fandorin briefly expounded the meagre results of the investigation’s first operation and announced that he was ready to perform his routine duties, since he had nothing else to deal with for the time being – until information was received from the Japanese agents who were following the hunchback.

The consul pondered that for a moment.

‘So, what do we have? The instigators didn’t show up, thereby only deepening our suspicions. The Japanese police are searching for three men who speak the Satsuma dialect and have swords. And the hilt of one man’s sword, the one who has a withered arm, is covered with glasspaper (if the captain didn’t imagine it). At the same time your group has focused its attention on the owner of the Rakuen and the mysterious old man whom your servant saw near Blagolepov. We’ll get a verbal portrait – I’ll have a word with Masa myself. I tell you what, Fandorin. Forget your vice-consular duties for the present, Shirota will manage on his own. You need to study the Settlement and its surroundings as soon as possible. It will make your detective work easier. Let’s take a pedestrian excursion around Yokohama. Only get changed first.’

‘With great pleasure,’ Erast Petrovich said, and bowed. ‘But first, if you will p-permit me, I shall take a quarter of an hour to show Miss Blagolepova the principles of the typewriter.’

‘Very well. I shall call for you at your quarters in half an hour.’

In the corridor he met Sophia Diogenovna – she seemed to have been waiting for the young man. When she saw him, she blushed and pressed the book she was holding tight against her chest.

‘There, I left it behind in the garden,’ she whispered, as if she were making excuses for something. ‘Kanji Mitsuovich, Mr Shirota, gave me it to read …’

‘Do you like Pushkin?’ asked Fandorin, glancing at the cover and wondering whether he ought to offer the young spinster his condolences on the occasion of her father’s demise once again, or whether enough had been said already. He decided it would be better not to – she might burst into floods of tears again.

‘He writes quite well, but it’s very long-winded,’ Sophia Diogenovna replied. ‘We were reading Tatyana’s letter to the object of her passion. Some girls are really so daring. I would never have dared … but I really love poetry. Before Papa took to smoking, sailor gentlemen often used to visit us, they wrote things in my album. One conductor from the St Pafnutii composed very soulful poems.’

‘And what did you like best?’ Erast Petrovich asked absentmindedly.

The young lady lowered her eyes and whispered:

‘I can’t recite it … I’m too embarrassed. I’ll write it out for you and send it later, all right?’

At this point ‘Kanjii Mitsuovich’ glanced out of the door leading to the office. He gave the vice-consul a strange look, bowed politely and announced that the writing machine had been unpacked and installed.

The titular counsellor led the new operator off to introduce her to this great achievement of progress.

Half an hour later, exhausted by his pupil’s inept diligence, Erast Petrovich went to get changed for the proposed excursion. He took his boots off in the entrance hall and unbuttoned his short undercoat and shirt, in order not to delay Vsevolod Vitalievich, who was due to appear at any minute.

‘Masa!’ the titular counsellor called as he walked into the bedroom. He spotted his servant immediately. He was sleeping peacefully on the floor under the open window, and hovering over him was a little old Japanese man in worker’s clothes: grey jacket, narrow cotton trousers, straw sandals over black stockings.

‘What’s g-going on here? And who are you, anyway?’ Fandorin began, but broke off, first because he realised that the native man was hardly likely to understand English and, secondly, because he was astounded by the little old man’s behaviour.

The old man smiled imperturbably, transforming his face into a radiant mass of wrinkles, slipped his hands into his broad sleeves and bowed – he was wearing a close-fitting cap on his head.

‘What’s wrong with Masa?’ Fandorin asked, unable to resist uttering further pointless words. He dashed across to his sweetly snuffling valet and leaned down over him – Masa really was asleep.

What kind of nonsense was this!

‘Hey, wait!’ the titular counsellor shouted to the old man, who was ambling towards the door.

When the little old man didn’t stop, the vice-consul overtook him in two bounds and grabbed him by the shoulder. Or rather, he tried to. Without even turning round, the Japanese swayed imperceptibly to one side, and the vice-consul’s figures clutched at empty air.

‘Dear man, I d-demand an explanation,’ said Erast Petrovich, growing angry. ‘Who are you? And what are you doing here?’

His tone of voice, and the situation in general, should have rendered these questions comprehensible without any translation.

Realising that he would not be allowed to leave, the old man turned to face the vice-consul. He wasn’t smiling any more. The black eyes, glittering like two blazing coals, observed Fandorin calmly and attentively, as if they were deciding some complicated but not particularly important problem. This cool gaze finally drove Fandorin into a fury.

This Oriental was damned suspicious! He had clearly sneaked into the building with some criminal intent!

The titular counsellor reached out his hand to grab the thief (or, perhaps, spy) by the collar. This time the old man didn’t dodge; without taking his hands out of his sleeves, he simply struck Fandorin on the wrist with his elbow.

The blow was extremely light, almost insubstantial, but the titular counsellor’s arm went completely numb and dangled uselessly at his side – the elbow must have hit some kind of nerve centre.

‘Why, damn you!’ Erast Petrovich exclaimed.

He delivered a superb left hook, which should have flattened the obnoxious old man against the wall, but his fist merely described a powerful arc through the empty air. The inertia spun Fandorin round his own axis and left him standing with his back to the Japanese.

The villainous intruder immediately took advantage of this and struck him on the neck with his other elbow, again very lightly, but the young man’s knees buckled. He collapsed flat on his back and was horrified to feel that he couldn’t move any part of his body.

It was like a nightmare!

The most terrifying thing of all was the searing, blazing gaze of the old man’s eyes; it seemed to penetrate into the prostrate vice-consul’s very brain.

The old man leaned down, and that was when the most incredible thing of all happened.

He finally took his hands out of his sleeves.

In his right hand he was clutching a greyish-brown snake with small, beady, glittering eyes. Gripped tight by the neck, it was straining its jaws open.

The prone man groaned – that was all he had the strength for.

The snake slithered smoothly out of the sleeve and fell on to Fandorin’s chest in a springy coil. He felt its touch on his skin, at the spot where his collar was unbuttoned – a cold, rough sensation.

The diamond-shaped head swayed very close, only a few inches away from his face. Erast Petrovich heard the quiet, fitful hissing, he saw the sharp little fangs, the forked tongue, but he couldn’t even stir a finger. Ice-cold sweat trickled down off his forehead.

He heard a strange clicking sound – it was made by the old man, who seemed to be urging the reptile to hurry.

The jaws swayed towards Fandorin’s throat and he squeezed his eyes shut, with the thought that nothing could possibly be more terrible than this horror. Even death would be a blessed release.

Erast Petrovich opened his eyes again – and didn’t see the snake.

But it had been here, he had felt its movements.

The reptile had apparently decided to settle down more comfortably on his chest – it curled up into a ball and its tail crept in under his shirt and slithered ticklishly across his ribs.

With a struggle, Fandorin focused his eyes on the old man – he was still gazing directly at his paralysed victim, but something in his eyes had changed. Now, if anything, they were filled with surprise. Or was it curiosity?

‘Erast Petrovich!’ a voice called from somewhere far away. ‘Fandorin! Is it all right if I come in?’

What happened after that took less than a second.

In two absolutely silent leaps the old Japanese was by the window; he jumped up, somersaulted in the air, propping one hand against the windowsill as he flew over it, and disappeared.

And then Vsevolod Vitalievich appeared in the doorway – in a panama hat and carrying a cane, ready for their pedestrian excursion.

A prickling sensation ran across Fandorin’s neck, and he discovered that he could turn his head.

He turned it, but he couldn’t see the old man any more – just the curtain swaying at the window.

‘Now, what’s this I see? An adder!’ Doronin shouted. ‘Don’t move!’

The startled snake darted off Erast Petrovich’s chest and made for the corner of the room.

The consul dashed after it and started beating it with his cane – so furiously that the stick broke in half at the third blow.

The titular counsellor raised the back of his head off the carpet – the paralysis seemed to be gradually passing off.

‘Am I asleep?’ he babbled, barely able to control his tongue. ‘I dreamed I saw a snake …’

‘It was no dream,’ said Doronin, wrapping his handkerchief round his fingers and squeamishly lifting the reptile up by its tail.

He examined it, shifting his spectacles down to the end of his nose, then carried it to the window and threw it out. He cast a disapproving glance at Masa and heaved a sigh.

Then he took a chair, sat down facing his feebly stirring assistant and fixed him with a severe stare.

‘Now then, my dear,’ the consul began sternly. ‘Let’s have no nonsense, everything out in the open. What an angel he made himself out to be yesterday! Doesn’t go to brothels, has never even heard of opium addicts …’ Doronin drew a deep breath in through his nose. ‘Not a whiff of opium here, though. So you prefer injections? Do you know what they call what has happened to you? Narcotic swoon. Don’t shake your head, I wasn’t born yesterday! Shirota told me about your heroics yesterday in the gambling den. A fine servant you’ve picked up for yourself! Did he procure the drug for you! Of course, who else! He took some himself, and obliged his master at the same time. Tell me one thing, Fandorin. Only honestly now! How long have you been addicted to drugs?’

Erast Fandorin groaned and shook his head.

‘I believe you. You’re still so young, don’t destroy yourself! I warned you: the drug is deadly dangerous if you’re not capable of keeping yourself in hand. You were very nearly killed just now – by an absurd coincidence! A mamusi crept into the room while both of you were in a narcotic trance – that is, in a completely helpless state!’

‘Who?’ the titular counsellor asked in a weak voice. ‘Who c-crept in?’

‘A mamusi. A Japanese adder. It’s a gentle-sounding name, but in May, after the winter hibernation, mamusis are extremely dangerous. If one bites you on the arm or leg, that’s not too bad, but a bite on the neck is certain death. Sometimes mamusis swim into the Settlement along the canals from the paddy fields and they get into courtyards, or even houses. Last year one of those reptiles bit the son of a Belgian businessman and they couldn’t save him. Well, why don’t you say something?’

Erast Petrovich didn’t say anything, because he didn’t have the strength for any explanations. And what could he have said? That there was an old man in the room, with eyes like blazing coals, and then he just flew out of the window? That would only have reinforced the consul’s certainty that his assistant was an inveterate drug addict who suffered from hallucinations. Better postpone the fantastic story until later, when his head stopped spinning and his speech was articulate again.

And in all honesty, the young man himself was no longer absolutely sure that it had all been real. Did things like that actually happen?

‘But I didn’t imagine the little old man with the snake in his sleeve who can jump so high. And I have reliable p-proof of that. I’ll present it to you a little later,’ Fandorin concluded, and glanced round at his listeners: Sergeant Lockston, Inspector Asagawa and Dr Twigs.

The titular counsellor had spent the entire previous day flat on his back, slowly recovering, and his strength had been completely restored only after ten hours of deep sleep.

And now here, in the police station, he was telling the members of the investigative group the incredible story of what had happened to him.

Asagawa asked:

‘Mr Vice-Consul, are you quite certain that it was the same old man who struck the captain in the Rakuen?’

‘Yes. Masa didn’t see him in the bedroom, but when, with the help of an interpreter, I asked him to describe the man from the Rakuen, the descriptions matched: height, age and even that special, piercing gaze. It’s him, no doubt about it. After having made this interesting g-gentleman’s acquaintance, I am quite prepared to believe that he inflicted a fatal injury on Blagolepov with a single touch. “Dim-mak”, I think it’s called – isn’t that right, Doctor?’

‘But why did he want to kill you?’ asked Twigs.

‘Not me. Masa. The old conjuror had somehow found out that the investigation had a witness who could identify the killer. The plan, obviously, was to put my valet to sleep and set the mamusi on him, so that it would look like an unfortunate accident – especially since the same thing had already happened in the Settlement before. My sudden appearance prevented the plan from being carried through. The visitor was obliged to deal with me, and he did it so deftly that I was unable to offer the slightest resistance. I can’t understand why I’m still alive … there’s a whole host of questions – enough to set my head spinning. But the most important one is: how did the old man know that there was a witness?’

The sergeant, who had not uttered a single word so far, but merely sucked on his cigar, declared:

‘We’re talking too much. In front of outsiders, too. For instance, what’s this Englishman doing here?’

‘Mr Twigs, did you bring it?’ Fandorin asked the doctor instead of answering the sergeant’s question.

The doctor nodded and took some long, flat object, wrapped in a piece of cloth, out of his briefcase.

‘Here, I kept it. And I sacrificed my own starched collar, so the dead man wouldn’t have to lie in the grave with a bare neck,’ said Twigs as he unwrapped a celluloid collar.

‘Can you c-compare the prints?’ asked the titular counsellor, unwrapping a little bundle of his own and taking out a mirror. ‘It was lying on the windowsill. My m-mysterious guest touched the surface with his hand as he turned his somersault.’

‘What kind of nonsense is this?’ muttered Lockston, watching as Twigs examined the impressions through a magnifying glass.

‘The thumb is the same!’ the doctor announced triumphantly. ‘This print is exactly like the one on the celluloid collar. The delta pattern, the whorl, the forks – it all matches!’

‘What’s this? What’s this?’ Asagawa asked quickly, moving closer. ‘Some innovation in police science?’

Twigs was delighted to explain.

‘It’s only a hypothesis as yet, but a well-tested one. My colleague Dr Folds from the Tsukiji Hospital describes it in a learned article. You see, gentlemen, the patterns on the cushions of our fingers and thumbs are absolutely unique. You can meet two people who are as alike as two peas, but it’s impossible to find two perfectly identical fingerprints. They already knew this in medieval China. Instead of signing a contract, workers applied their thumbprint – the impression cannot be forged …’

The sergeant and the inspector listened open-mouthed as the doctor went into greater historical and anatomical detail.

‘What a great thing progress is!’ exclaimed Asagawa, who was normally so restrained. ‘There are no mysteries that it cannot solve!’

Fandorin sighed.

‘Yes there are. How do we explain, from the viewpoint of science, what our sp-sprightly old man can do? Delayed killing, induced lethargy, temporary paralysis, an adder in his sleeve … Mystery upon mystery!’

‘Shinobi,’ said the inspector.

The doctor nodded:

‘I thought of them too, when I heard about the mamusi in his sleeve.’

So much wisdom there,

And so many mysteries –

A mamusi’s heart