The Diamond Chariot

INSANE HAPPINESS




‘So, that night you rejected me only because you wanted to separate from “poor Algie” according to all the r-rules?’ asked Erast Petrovich, looking at her mistrustfully. ‘That was the only reason?’

‘Not the only one. I really am afraid of him. Did you notice his left earlobe?’

‘What?’ Fandorin thought he must have misheard.

‘From the shape, length and colour of his earlobe, it’s clear that he is a very dangerous man.’

‘There you go with your ninso again! You’re just laughing at me!’

‘I counted ten dead bodies on his face,’ she said quietly. ‘And those are only the ones he killed with his own hands.’

Fandorin didn’t know whether she was being serious or playing the fool. Or rather, he wasn’t absolutely certain that she was playing the fool. And so he asked with a laugh:

‘Can you see dead bodies on my face?’

‘Of course. Every time one man takes the life of another, it leaves a scar on his soul. And everything that happens in the soul is reflected on the face. You have those traces as well. Do you want me to tell you how many people you have killed?’ She held out her hand and touched his cheekbones with her fingers. ‘One, two, three …’

‘St-stop it!’ he said, pulling away. ‘Better tell me more about Bullcox instead.’

‘He doesn’t know how to forgive. Apart from the ten that he killed himself, I saw other traces, people for whose deaths he was responsible. There are a lot of them. Far more than there are of the first kind.’

The titular counsellor leaned forward despite himself.

‘You mean you can see that too?’

‘Yes, it’s not hard to read a killer’s face, it’s moulded so starkly, with sharp contrasts of colour.’

‘Positively Lombroso,’ murmured Erast Petrovich, touching himself on the cheekbone. ‘No, no, it’s nothing, go on.’

‘The people with the most marks on their faces are front-line generals, artillery officers and, of course, executioners. But the most terrible scars I have ever seen, quite invisible to ordinary people, were on a very peaceable, wonderful man, the doctor in a brothel where I used to work.’

O-Yumi said it as calmly as if she were talking about a perfectly ordinary job – as a seamstress or milliner.

Fandorin felt his insides cringe and he went on hastily, so that she wouldn’t notice anything.

‘A doctor? How strange.’

‘It’s not strange at all. Over the years he had helped thousands of girls get rid of their fetuses. Only the doctor had fine, light marks, like ripples on water, but Algie’s are deep and bloody. How could I not be afraid of him?’

‘He won’t do anything to you,’ the titular counsellor said sombrely but firmly. ‘He won’t have time. Bullcox is finished.’

She looked at him in fearful admiration.

‘You’re going to kill him first, are you?’

‘No,’ replied Erast Petrovich, opening the blind and peering cautiously at Doronin’s windows. ‘Any day now Bullcox will be expelled from Japan. In disgrace. Or perhaps even put in prison.’

In was lunchtime. Shirota, as usual, must have taken his ‘captain’s daughter’ to the table d’hôte at the Grand Hotel, but – dammit! – there was a familiar figure hovering in the window of the consul’s apartment. Vsevolod Vitalievich was standing there with his arms folded, looking straight at the carriage stuck there at the gates.

The very idea of leading O-Yumi across the yard, in a state of undress, and with only one shoe, was quite unthinkable.

‘What are we waiting for?’ she asked. ‘Let’s go! I want to settle into my new home as quickly as possible. Your place is so uncomfortable as it is!’

But they couldn’t sneak in like thieves either. O-Yumi was a proud woman, she would feel insulted. And wouldn’t he cut a fine figure, embarrassed of the woman he loved!

I’m not embarrassed, Erast Petrovich told himself. It’s just that I need to prepare myself. That is one. And she is not dressed. That is two.

‘Wait here for now,’ he told her. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

He walked across the yard with a brisk, businesslike stride, but he squinted sideways at Doronin’s window anyway. He saw Vsevolod Vitalievich turn away with a certain deliberate emphasis. What could that mean?

Clearly he must already know about Suga, and he realised that Fandorin had been involved in some way; waiting at the window was a way of reminding the vice-consul about himself and showing how impatient he was to hear a few explanations; his demonstrative indifference made it clear that he did not intend to demand these explanations – the titular counsellor would decide when the time was right.

Very subtle, very noble and most apposite.

Masa was standing outside the cupboard, as motionless as a Chinese stone idol.

‘Well, what has he been like?’ Erast Petrovich asked, gesturing to clarify the meaning of the gesture.

His servant reported with the help of mime and gesture: first he cried, then he sang, then he fell asleep, he had to be given the chamber pot once.

‘Well done,’ the vice-consul said approvingly. ‘Kansisuru. Itte kuru.’

That meant: ‘Guard. I go away.’

He looked into his room for a second and went back quickly to the carriage. He opened the door slightly.

‘You are not dressed and have no shoes,’ he said to the charming passenger, setting down a sack of Mexican silver on the seat beside her. ‘Buy yourself some clothes. And, in general, everything that you think you need. And these are my cards with the address. If you need to have something taken in or whatever, I don’t know, leave one with the shop assistant, they’ll deliver it. When you get back, you can settle in. You are the mistress of the house.’

O-Yumi touched the jingling sack with a smile, but without any great interest, thrust out a little bare foot and stroked Erast Petrovich on the chest with it.

‘Ah, what a dunce I am!’ he exclaimed. ‘You can’t even go into a shop in that state!’

He glanced furtively over his shoulder at the consulate and squeezed her slim ankle.

‘Why would I go inside?’ O-Yumi laughed. ‘They’ll bring everything I need to the carriage.’

The anti-Bullcox coalition, assembled at full strength, held its meeting in the office of the head of the municipal police. Somehow it turned out that the role of chairman had passed to Asagawa, although he had not been appointed by anyone. The Russian vice-consul, previously acknowledged by all as the leader, ceded his primacy quite willingly. First, having abandoned his brothers-in-arms for the sake of a private matter, Erast Petrovich had, as it were, forfeited his moral right to lead them. And secondly, he knew that his mind and heart were preoccupied with a quite different matter just at the moment. And that matter happened to be a most serious one, which could not be dealt with half-heartedly.

In any case, Asagawa conducted the analytical work surpassingly well without any help from Fandorin.

‘So, gentlemen, we have a witness who is prepared to testify. But he is an unreliable individual of dubious character and what he says is of little value without documentary confirmation. We have the Satsuman warriors’ oath, signed in blood, but this evidence incriminates only the late Intendant Suga. We also have the police reports confiscated by Suga, but again, they cannot be used against Bullcox. The only unquestionable piece of evidence is a coded diagram of the conspiracy in which the central figure is the senior foreign counsellor of the British imperial government. But in order for this diagram to become proof, we must first decipher it completely. We cannot hand the document over to the authorities before that – we might be making a fatal mistake for, after all, we do not know which other officials are involved in the conspiracy. Since the intendant of police himself was one …’

‘That’s right,’ said Lockston, who was puffing on his cigar on the windowsill, beside the open window – in order to spare Dr Twigs’ sensitive nose. ‘I basically don’t trust any of the Jappos … Apart from you, of course, my good friend Go. Let the doc try to figure out what the squiggles mean. We’ll identify all the bad guys and then smash them all at once. Right, Rusty?’

Erast Petrovich nodded in reply to the sergeant, but he looked only at the inspector.

‘All this is c-correct, but we don’t have much time. Bullcox is a clever man, and he has powerful allies who will stop at nothing. I have no doubt that Bullcox will pay particular attention to my person [the vice-consul cleared his throat in embarrassment at this point] and to you, since it is known that we were working together on investigating the case of the Satsuma trio.’

At this point Erast Petrovich allowed himself to deviate from the truth somewhat, but only in the details. Even if the Englishman had not had personal reasons to hate him, the members of the conspiracy, frightened by the intendant’s strange death, would certainly have taken an interest in the vice-consul. He and Suga had been actively involved in the investigation of the conspiracy against Okubo – that was one. The blow struck against the intendant was in the interests of the Russian Empire – that was two. And there was also a three: in his recent confrontation with Bullcox, the titular counsellor had been incautious – his actions had intimated his suspicion that the Briton was intending to burn certain compromising documents. In the emotional heat of the moment, the Right Honourable had probably not paid any attention to this, but later, of course, he would call it to mind. And there could certainly be no doubt that at present he was thinking unceasingly of the Russian diplomat, and with quite exceptional intensity.

It was getting stuffy in the office. Asagawa walked over to the window and stood beside the sergeant in order to take a breath of fresh air, but instead he choked on the ferocious tobacco fumes and started coughing. He waved his hand, scattering the cloud of smoke, and turned his back to the window.

‘Perhaps Fandorin-san is right. In any case, extra caution will do no harm. Let’s divide up the evidence, so that it is not all kept in the same place. Twigs-sensei will take the diagram – that is obvious. You are our only hope now, Doctor. For God’s sake, do not leave your house. No visits, no patients. Say that you are unwell.’

Twigs nodded solemnly and stroked his pocket – obviously that was where the crucial clue was.

‘I shall take the police reports, especially since three of them were written by me. That leaves the oaths for you, Sergeant.’

The American took the three sheets of paper covered with brown hieroglyphs and examined them curiously.

‘You can count on me. I’ll keep the papers with me, and I won’t set foot outside the station. I’ll even spend the night here.’

‘Excellent, that’s the best thing to do.’

‘And what will I get?’ asked Erast Petrovich.

‘You have custody of the only witness. That is quite enough.’

That left Fandorin feeling at a loss.

‘Gentlemen … I was about to ask you to take the prince off my hands. My domestic circumstances have changed somewhat, you see. I can’t possibly keep him now … I’ll exchange him for any of the clues. And please, as soon as possible.’

The inspector gave the vice-consul a curious glance, but he didn’t ask any questions.

‘All right, but it can’t be done in daylight – he’ll be seen. I tell you what. I know where we can accommodate the prince, there’s a good place that he won’t escape from. Tonight, just before dawn, bring him to pier number thirty-seven, it’s beside the Fujimi bridge.’

‘Th-thank you. And what if the doctor doesn’t manage to decipher the diagram? What then?’

The Japanese had an answer ready for this eventuality.

‘If the sensei does not decipher the diagram, we shall have to act in an unofficial manner. We shall give everything that we know, together with the material evidence and witnesses’ testimony, to one of the foreign newspapers. Only not a British one, of course. To the editors of L’Echo du Japon, for instance. The French will be absolutely delighted by a sensational story like this. Let Bullcox try to explain everything and demand a retraction. Then all the secrets will come out.’

On the way home Erast Petrovich’s eye was caught by the fashion shop ‘Madame Bêtise’ or, rather, by a huge advertising poster covered with roses and cupids: ‘The novelty of the Paris season! Fine and coarse fishnet stockings in all sizes, with moiré ties!’ The vice-consul blushed as he recalled a certain ankle. He went into the shop.

The Parisian stockings proved to be wonderfully fine, and on the aforementioned lower limb they ought to look absolutely breathtaking.

Fandorin choose half a dozen pairs: black, lilac, red, white, maroon and a colour called ‘Sunrise over the Sea’.

‘Which size would you like?’ the scented salesman asked.

The titular counsellor was on the brink of confusion – he hadn’t thought about the size, but the owner of the shop, Madame Bêtise herself, came to his assistance.

‘Henri, the monsieur requires size one. The very smallest,’ she cooed, examining the customer curiously (or at least, so it seemed to him).

Yes, indeed, the very smallest, Erast Petrovich realised, picturing O-Yumi’s tiny foot. But how did this woman know? Was it some kind of Parisian ninso?

The owner turned her face away slightly, still looking at Fandorin, then suddenly lowered her eyes and turned to look at the shelves of merchandise.

She made eyes at me, the titular counsellor deduced, and, even though he was not attracted to Madame Bêtise in the slightest, he squinted at himself in the mirror. And he found that, despite his rather exhausted appearance and creased suit, he was quite positively good-looking.

‘So glad to see you, do call more often, Monsieur Diplomat,’ a voice called from behind him on his way out.

He was surprised, but only very slightly. Yokahama was a small town. No doubt a tall young man with dark hair and blue eyes and a wonderfully curled moustache, who was always (well, almost always) impeccably dressed, had simply been noticed.

Although there was a fine rain falling (still the same kind, plum rain), Erast Petrovich was in a totally blissful state of mind. People walking towards him seemed to look at him with genuine interest and even, perhaps, gaze after him when he had walked by, the smell of the sea was wonderful and the sight of the ships at the anchorage was worthy of the brush of Mr Aivazovsky. The titular counsellor even tried to sing, something that he would not usually have allowed himself to do. The tune was distinctly bravura, the words entirely frivolous.

Yokohama, little town,

See me strolling up and down;

The town is really very small,

No need to take a cab at all.

But the little town of Yokohama was even smaller than Fandorin had imagined – as he was soon to discover.

No sooner had Erast Petrovich set foot in the yard of the consulate than someone called his name.

Doronin was loitering in the same window as on the recent previous occasion, but this time he did not turn away or show any signs of tact.

‘Mr Vice-Consul!’ he shouted in a menacing voice. ‘Please be so kind as to call into my office. Immediately, without going round to your apartment!’

And he disappeared, no doubt on his way to the office area.

Fandorin had never seen the highly cultured and restrained Vsevolod Vitalievich in such a fury.

‘I didn’t ask you about anything! I didn’t oblige you to attend the office! I put my trust in you!’ the consul seethed rather than shouted, goggling over his blue lenses with his inflamed eyes. ‘I assumed that you were occupied with state business, but it appears that you … you were engaged in amorous adventures! You burst into the house of the official representative of the British Empire! You abducted his mistress! You provoked an affray! Why are you so surprised? Yokohama is a small town. News, especially the spicy kind, spreads instantaneously here!’

The driver, thought Erast Petrovich. He blabbed to his comrades from ‘Archibald Griffin’ and they spread it round the town in no time at all. And Bullcox’s own servants, too. The kitchen telegraph was the fastest medium of communication.

‘Are you at least aware that Intendant Suga has committed suicide? How could you be! And I thought that … Ah, you heroic lover!’ The consul waved his hand despairingly. ‘All sorts of rumours are circulating. Suga didn’t shoot himself, he didn’t even commit hara-kiri. He chose an ancient, monstrously savage way of leaving this life, one that samurai used if they were captured or suffering severe guilt. Everyone is convinced that the intendant could not forgive himself for Okubo’s death, and his undeserved promotion was the final blow. He did not dare to disobey his monarch’s will, but felt that he had to expiate his guilt by accepting a martyr’s death … Well, why don’t you say something, Fandorin? Explain yourself, damn you! Say something!’

‘I shall speak tomorrow. But for now, please permit me to remind you of the promise that you made me, not to interfere in anything and not to ask any questions. If I fail, I shall answer for everything at once. I have no time to explain now.’

It was well said, with restraint and dignity, but it failed to produce the desired effect.

‘That is quite obvious,’ the consul hissed, looking not into the other man’s eyes, but down and to one side. He waved his hand, this time in disgust, and walked out.

Erast Petrovich also looked down. And there, dangling from the pink paper bag decorated with a ribbon, which he had been handed in the shop, he saw a ‘Sunrise over the Sea’ fishnet stocking.

The vice-consul returned to his quarters feeling dismal. He opened the door and froze on the spot, barely able to recognise his own hallway.

Hanging on the wall was a large mirror in a lacquered and painted mother-of-pearl frame. There were white and purple irises standing in a vase on a flirtatious little chest and perfuming the air with their scent. The coat stand on which Masa used to keep his master’s hats and outer garments was gone – standing in its place was a closed cupboard with doors of woven straw. Above it a large kerosene lamp in a paper shade radiated a soft pink light.

Astounded, Fandorin glanced into the drawing room. There were even more changes there – it was quite impossible to make out all the details, he just got a general impression of something bright, colourful and festive.

In the dining room the titular counsellor saw a table laid in a way that immediately made him feel terribly hungry (something that had not happened to Erast Petrovich at all in the last few days). There were fruits, cheeses, rice balls with red and white fish, pies and cakes, sweets, champagne in an ice bucket.

The vice-consul discovered the fairy who had cast such a miraculous spell on the official government residence in the bedroom. But no, this room could no longer be referred to in such a prosaic, everyday fashion. The broad but simple bed that had been quite adequate for Erast Petrovich was now decorated with a muslin canopy, curtains had appeared at the windows and there was a bright-coloured, fluffy rug on the floor. O-Yumi herself, clad only in her nightshirt (the same one in which she had fled from Bullcox’s lair), was standing on a chair, fastening a long scroll with some kind of hieroglyphic inscription to the wall.

‘Darling, are you back?’ she said, tossing a lock of hair off her forehead. ‘I’m so tired! You have a very strange servant. He refused to help me. I had to do everything myself. It’s a good thing I learned so much at the tea house. In that place, until you win respect, you do everything yourself – wash, iron, mend … But he really is strange! He stands in the corridor all the time and he wouldn’t let me look into the cupboard. What have you got in there? I heard some very odd sounds.’

‘That’s a secret room. Nothing very interesting, just all sorts of boring diplomatic d-documents,’ Fandorin lied. ‘I’ll order them to be removed tomorrow. But why didn’t you buy yourself any clothes?’

She jumped down off the chair without a sound.

‘I did. I just took them off so I wouldn’t get them dirty. Look, this will be enough for a start.’

She opened the door of the wardrobe, and Erast Petrovich saw that his frock coats and trousers had been squeezed right into the very corner, and four-fifths of the space was occupied by brightly coloured silk, velvet and satin. There were hatboxes on the upper shelf and shoeboxes down below.

‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ asked O-Yumi, reaching for the pink bag. ‘From Madame Bêtise? For me?’

She took out the stockings, turned them over in her hands and wrinkled up her nose.

‘Shumiwarui.’

‘What?’

‘How vulgar! You haven’t got a clue about ladies’ outfits. I’ll probably keep the black ones. But I’ll give the others to Sophie. She’s certain to like them.’

‘T-to whom?’ asked poor Erast Petrovich, unable to keep up with the news.

‘The yellow-haired fool who taps on that big iron machine.’

‘Have you already m-made her acquaintance?’

‘Yes, I made friends with her. I gave her a hat, and she gave me a shawl with big red flowers. And I got to know Obayasi-san, your boss’s mistress, even better. A sweet woman. I made friends with her too.’

‘What else have you managed to do in the three hours since we last saw each other?’

‘Nothing else. I bought a few things, started putting the apartment in order and met the neighbours.’

It could not be said that Fandorin was particularly good at counting money, but it seemed to him that there were an awful lot of purchases.

‘How did you stretch the money to all this?’ he asked admiringly when he spotted a little suede box with a delightful pearl brooch on a small table.

‘The money? I spent that in the first two shops.’

‘And … and how did you pay after that?’

O-Yumi shrugged one bare shoulder.

‘The same way as before, when I lived with Algie. I left your cards everywhere.’

‘And they gave you c-credit?’

‘Of course. By the time I reached the third shop, everybody knew that I was living with you now. Madame Bêtise (I was in her shop too, only I didn’t buy these terrible stockings) congratulated me, she said you were very handsome, far more handsome than Bullcox. He’s richer, of course, but that’s not very important if a man’s as handsome as you. I rode back with the blinds open. How everyone stared at me!’

And at me too, thought Erast Petrovich, recalling how people on the street had looked round at him.

Lord, oh Lord …

Late in the evening the two of them sat together, drinking tea. Erast Petrovich was teaching her to drink like a Russian cab driver: from the saucer, through a lump of sugar clutched in the teeth, blowing and puffing noisily. O-Yumi, wearing the Russian shawl, with her face glowing red, puffed out her cheeks, gnawed at the sugar with her white teeth and laughed. There was nothing exotic or Japanese about her at that moment, and it seemed to Fandorin that they had lived together in perfect harmony for many years; God grant that they would be together for as many again.

‘What is your jojutsu good for?’ he asked. ‘Why did you take it into your head to study that filth that turns something living, passionate and natural into m-mathematics?’

‘But isn’t that the essence of any art? To break down the natural into its component parts and reassemble them in a new way? I have studied the art of love since I was fourteen.’

‘Since you were f-fourteen? Surely that wasn’t your own decision?’

‘No. My father ordered me to study jojutsu. He said: “If you were my son, I would send you to develop your ability to think, your strength and cunning, because these are a man’s greatest weapons. But you are a woman, and your greatest weapon is love. If you can completely master this difficult art, the most intelligent, strongest and most cunning men will be like putty in your hands.” My father knew what he was talking about. He is the cleverest, strongest and most cunning man I know. I was fourteen years old, I was stupid and I really didn’t want to go to study with a mistress of jojutsu, but I loved my father, so I obeyed him. And of course, as always, he was right.’

Erast Petrovich frowned, thinking that in any civilised country a loving father who sold his juvenile daughter into a brothel would be packed off to serve hard labour.

‘Where is he now, your father? Do you see each other often?’

O-Yumi’s face suddenly darkened and her lips clamped firmly together, as if from suppressed pain.

He’s dead, the titular counsellor guessed, and, regretting that he had made his beloved suffer, he hastened to make amends for his blunder by gently stroking the hollow at the base of her neck (he had been wanting to do that for a long time anyway).

Much later, lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling, O-Yumi said with a sigh:

‘Jojutsu is a wonderful science. It is the only thing capable of making a woman stronger than a man. But only until the woman loses her head. I’m afraid that is exactly what is happening to me. How shameful!’

Fandorin closed his eyes tight, feeling himself brimming over with an unbearable, insane happiness.

A stupid question,

This ‘to be or not to be’,

Once you’ve been happy





TICKLISH




It was by no means the first time Walter Lockston had spent the night in the office. Under the terms of his contract with the city of Yokohama, the head of the municipal police was provided with an official house, and even furniture, but the sergeant had never got used to those palatial halls. The sofas and chairs stood in their dust covers, the large glass chandelier was never lit up even once, the family bed gathered dust for lack of use – the former inhabitant of the prairies felt more at home on a canvas campbed. It was dreary and depressing to be all alone in a two-storey house, the walls and the ceiling oppressed him. The office was a better place. The familiar cramped space there was all his own, every inch of it: the desk, the safe, the gun shelf. It didn’t smell of the emptiness that filled the house. And he slept better here. Walter was always glad to spend the night in the office, and today’s excuse couldn’t possibly have been more legitimate.

He let the duty constable go home – he was a family man. It was so quiet and peaceful in the station. The lock-up was empty – no sailors on a spree, no drunk clients from ‘Number Nine’. Bliss!

He hummed a song about the glorious year of sixty-five as he washed out his shirt. He sniffed his socks and put them back on – he could wear them for one more day. He brewed some strong coffee and smoked a cigar, and then it was time to settle down for the night.

He made himself comfortable on the armchair, took his boots off and put his feet up on a chair. There was a blanket in the office, worn into holes here and there, but it was his favourite blanket, he always had splendid dreams under it.

The sergeant yawned and looked round the room, just to make sure everything was right. Of course, it was hard to imagine English spies or slanty-eyed Jappos trying to creep in and poke around in a police station, but it never hurt to be careful.

The door of the office was locked. So were the window frame and the bars on the window. Only the small windowpane was slightly open, otherwise you could suffocate in here. The distance between the bars was so narrow, a cat could barely get through it.

The rain that had been falling since midday stopped and the moon started shining in the sky, so bright that he had to pull the peak of his cap down over his eyes.

Walter squirmed about, settling down. The sheets of paper with the oaths written in blood crackled inside his shirt. All the weird freaks who live in this world, he thought with a shake of his head.

Lockston always fell asleep quickly, but first (and this was the part he always liked best), coloured pictures of the past flickered through his head, or maybe pictures of things that had never really happened at all. They swirled around, jostling each other for a place in the queue and gradually merged into his first dream, which was the sweetest.

All of this happened now. He saw a horse’s head with its pointed ears quivering, dashing hell-for-leather towards a stretch of land overgrown with brownish grass; then a great, high sky with white clouds, the kind you only get over huge open spaces; then a woman who had loved him (or maybe she was pretending) in Lucyville back in sixty-nine; then from somewhere or other a dwarf in a bright-coloured body stocking, whirling around and jumping through a hoop. And this, the final vision to surface out of the depths of his totally forgotten past, maybe even out of his childhood, merged imperceptibly into a dream.

The sergeant murmured wordlessly as he marvelled at the little circus artist, who turned out to be able to fly and blow tongues of flame out of his mouth.

Then a less pleasant dream began, about a house fire – that was because the sleeping man felt hot under the blanket. He started squirming about, the blanket slipped off on to the floor and once again all was well in the realm of dreams.

Walter woke up long after midnight. Not of his own volition, though – he heard a ringing sound somewhere in the distance. Still groggy with sleep, he didn’t realise straight away that it was the doorbell, the one that had been hung at the entrance to be used during the night.

The agreement with Asagawa and the Russian vice-consul was this: no matter what happened, the sergeant was not to leave the station. To hell with it if there was a fight, or a knifing, or a murder. It could wait until morning.

And so Lockston turned over on to his side and tried to carry on sleeping, but the jangling continued as loud as ever.

Should he go and take a look? Without going outside, of course – who knew what was out there? It could be a trap. Maybe the bad men had come to get their pieces of paper?

He picked up his revolver and walked silently out into the corridor.

There was a cunning little window made of dark glass in the front door. You could see out of it, but you couldn’t see in.

Lockston glanced out and saw a Japanese whore on the porch, wearing a striped kimono, the kind that the staff in the International Hotel had.

The native woman reached up to the bell pull and jerked it with all her might. And then at last she started screeching too.

‘Poriceman-san! Me Kumiko, Hoter Intanasyanaru! Troubur! Sairor kirred! Kirred entirery! Birriard room! Fight stick! Howr in head!’

Clear enough. Some sailors had had a fight with the cues in the billiard room and someone had got his skull stove in. The usual stuff.

‘Tomorrow morning!’ Lockston shouted. ‘Tell the boss I’ll send a constable in the morning!’

‘Impossibur morning! Need now! Sairor die!’

‘What am I supposed to do, glue his head back together? Get away, girl, get away. I told you, tomorrow.’

She started ringing again, but the sergeant, reassured, was already walking back along the corridor. No way was the head of police dashing out in the middle of the night for some stupid nonsense like that. Even without the important papers tucked under his shirt, he still wouldn’t have gone.

When the bell finally stopped sounding, it was really quiet. Walter couldn’t even hear his own footsteps – in the socks his feet moved across the wooden floor without making the slightest sound. If it wasn’t for that absolute silence, the sergeant would never have heard the faintest of faint rustling sounds behind the door of the office.

Someone was in there!

Lockston froze and his heart set off at a gallop. He put his ear to the crack of the door – sure thing! Someone was going through the desk, pulling out the drawers.

Why, the sons of bitches, coming up with something like that! Deliberately luring him out of the room, and then … But how had they got in? When he went out into the corridor, he locked the door behind him!

Now you’ll get yours, you low snakes!

Holding the revolver in his left hand, he slipped the key into the keyhole without making a sound, then turned it, jerked the handle towards him and burst into the room.

‘Don’t move! I’ll kill you!’

And the sergeant would have blasted away, too, but there was a surprise waiting for him, in the form of a tiny figure, about three feet tall, standing by the desk. Just for a moment Walter imagined he was still asleep and dreaming about the dwarf.

But when he clicked the lamp switch and the gas flared up, it wasn’t a dwarf at all, but a little Japanese boy, entirely naked.

‘Who are you?’ Lockston blurted out. ‘Where are you from? How did you get in?’

The little imp darted nimbly towards the window, jumped up like a monkey, squeezed sideways through the bars, squirmed into the opening of the small windowpane and would surely have got clean away, but the sergeant was up to the challenge – he dashed across the room just in time to grab him by the foot and drag him back inside.

At least now he had the answer to his third question. The naked urchin had climbed in through the window. Even for him it was a tight fit, as the bruises on his thighs testified. And that was why he was naked – he couldn’t have squeezed through in clothes.

Well, how about that! He’d been expecting absolutely anyone – spies, assassins, wily ninja – but instead this little runt had shown up.

‘Right, now answer me.’ He took hold of the kid’s skinny little shoulders and shook him. ‘Kataru! Dareh da? Dareh okutta?’1 The little rat gazed unblinkingly at the huge red-faced American. The little upward-turned face – narrow, with a pointed nose – was impassive, inscrutable. A ferret, a genuine ferret, the sergeant thought.

‘So, going to keep mum, are you?’ he asked menacingly. ‘I’ll loosen your tongue for you. Mita ka?’2 He unbuckled his belt and pulled it out of his trousers.

The little lad (he was only about eight, he couldn’t possibly have been any older) carried on looking at Lockston with the same indifferent, even weary air, like a little old man.

‘Well?’ the sergeant roared at him in a terrible voice.

But the strange child wasn’t frightened, in fact he seemed to brighten up a bit. In any case, his lips crept out to the sides, as if he was unable to restrain a smile. A little black tube stuck out of his mouth. There was a whistling sound, and the sergeant thought he had been stung on the chest by a wasp.

He looked down in surprise. There was something that glittered sticking out of his shirt, where his heart was. Was that really a needle? But where had it come from?

He wanted to pull it out, but somehow he couldn’t raise his hands.

Then suddenly his ears were filled with a low droning and rumbling, and Walter discovered that he was lying on the floor. And now the little boy he had just been looking down on was towering over him – a huge figure, blocking out the entire ceiling.

A massive hand of unbelievable size reached downwards, getting closer and closer. Then everything went dark and all the sounds disappeared. Light fingers ferreted about on his chest, and it felt ticklish.

Vision is the first.

The last sense of all to die

Is the sense of touch.

1 ‘Speak! Who are you? Who sent you?’ (distorted Japanese)

2 ‘See this?’ (Japanese)