Nonarikin decided to proceed in exactly the same way with Fandorin after he picked up the trail – only using a poisoned sword instead of wine. What a great directorial innovation these striking interludes with a fatal outcome must have seemed to Georges! But Erast Petrovich’s perennial good luck did not let him down. The hunter almost fell into his own trap, but he managed to scramble out of it – thanks to the remarkable ingenuity and false testimony of Comedina, the woman who was in love with him and was certain (he had no doubt) to shield him.
This risky episode did not bring the ‘artist of Evil’ to his senses. The morbid idea of a benefit performance had taken too strong a hold of his inflamed brain. It was easier to abandon his faith in Fate. ‘Fate is blind,’ said Nonarikin, as we recall. ‘Only the artist is sighted.’
He was undoubtedly a very gifted artist. Stern underestimated this ‘player of third-level roles’. Georges played the part of a stupid but noble blockhead with great talent.
The Sokolniki operation was quite dangerous for him. His entire, painstakingly constructed story could have collapsed if Fandorin had backed the Tsar up against the wall and forced him to talk frankly. Probably, as he walked through the park with Erast Petrovich that night, the maniac had hesitated – would it not be safer to shoot the overzealous investigator in the back? However, intuition whispered to the schemer that it would be best not to do that. Fandorin’s very gait (the tiger’s stride of a sinobi keyed up for action) indicated that it was impossible to take a man like this by surprise.
Nonarikin acted more cunningly than that. He led the pinschers away from the house and came back himself in order to eavesdrop. As soon as the conversation with the Tsar took an undesirable turn, Georges put in an appearance – once again displaying a total lack of fear in the face of danger. Like a total blockhead, Erast Petrovich raced halfway across Europe, following a false trail. It was a good thing that he didn’t go sailing off to America. On the day after his arrival, the twelfth of November, he would have read in the New York Times about a mysterious explosion in the theatre.
In killing Shustrov, yet another pretender to the hand of the Bride, Nonarikin did not try very hard to disguise his work. He permitted himself the incautious artistic gesture of decorating the throat of his rival with eleven 1s. But even with this hint, Fandorin failed to guess the criminal’s concept in time and avert the psychopathological ‘benefit performance’. Because of the conflict between his reason and feelings, Erast Petrovich very nearly allowed the theatre company, this molecular model of humankind, to be annihilated.
When he reread The Apocalypse, Fandorin often paused over the line that speaks of how ‘those watching over the house will tremble’, and he thought that those who watch over a house have no right to tremble. They must be firm, keep their eyes wide open to avert danger in good time. All his life he had numbered himself as a member of this army. And now look – he had trembled, manifested weakness. In the house that he had undertaken to protect, the apocalypse had very nearly come about. No more trembling, Erast Petrovich told himself, when the sick man was led away by the orderlies and the hysterical tension in the hall dissipated somewhat. I am a mature individual. I am a man. No more playing the child.
He lowered himself into a chair beside Eliza, who was the only one not screaming or waving her arms about in terror, but was simply sitting there, looking dully straight ahead.
‘That’s it, the nightmare is over, the chimera has been dissipated. I have a suggestion.’ He took hold of her cold, feeble fingers. ‘Let us not play at life, but live.’
She did not seem to have heard his concluding words.
‘Over?’ Eliza repeated, and shook her head. ‘Only not for me. My personal nightmare has not gone away.’
‘You mean your ex-husband? Khan Altairsky? It is him that you call Genghis Khan, is it not?’
She shuddered and looked at him in horror.
‘My God, Erast Petrovich, you promised to forget… It is my psychosis, you said so yourself… I didn’t mean at all…’
‘Now then. You got it into your head that Emeraldov, Limbach and Shustrov were murdered by your ex-husband, out of jealousy. And they certainly were murdered. Only it was not Altairsky who did it, but Nonarikin. He is no longer dangerous. So don’t worry any further.’
Erast Petrovich wanted to move on as quickly as possible to the most important thing – to the reason why he had sat down beside Eliza. To talk to her at long last without leaving anything unspoken, without any stupidities, in a manner that befitted adults.
But Eliza did not believe him. He could still read only fear in her eyes.
‘Very well,’ Fandorin said with a gentle smile. ‘I shall meet with your husband and have a talk with him. I shall get him to leave you alone.’
‘No! Don’t even think of doing that!’
The others turned round at her shout.
‘It’s all over and done with,’ Stern said nervously. ‘Get a grip on yourself, Eliza. The other ladies have already calmed down, don’t start up all over again.’
‘I implore you, I implore you,’ she whispered, holding Fandorin’s hand. ‘Don’t get involved with him. He’s not like poor, crazy Georges. The khan is a fiend from hell! You are mistaken if you think that Nonarikin killed everyone. Of course, after the “benefit performance”, it is possible to believe absolutely anything, but it is coincidence! Georges is not capable of cold-blooded murder. Since I have let it slip, you may as well know everything! Genghis Khan is the most dangerous man in the world!’
Erast Petrovich could see that she was on the verge of breaking down, so he tried to talk to her as judiciously as possible.
‘Believe me, the most dangerous people in the world are madmen with the ambitions of an artist.’
‘The khan is absolutely insane! He lost his mind from jealousy!’
‘And does he have any artistic ambitions?’
Eliza was flustered slightly by that.
‘No…’
‘So he and I will c-come to some sort of arrangement,’ Fandorin concluded, getting to his feet.
The conversation about the most important thing would in any case have to be postponed until a later time, when Eliza had stopped worrying about her Caucasian Othello.
‘My God, aren’t you even listening to me? Emeraldov was killed in exactly the same way as Furshtatsky! Shustrov’s throat was slit with a razor – just like Astralov’s. All of it was done by Genghis Khan. He told me: “The wife of the Khan Altairsky cannot have lovers and cannot marry anyone else!” What has Nonarikin got to do with anything? When Furshtatsky was killed (he was an entrepreneur, he got engaged to me in St Petersburg), I wasn’t acting with the Ark yet and I didn’t even know Georges!’
‘Astralov, the tenor?’ Erast Petrovich asked with a frown, recalling that the famous St Petersburg singer really had slit his throat with a razor several months earlier.
‘Yes, yes! When Furshtatsky died, the khan telephoned me and confessed that he had done it. And at Astralov’s funeral, he did this!’
She ran one finger across her throat and started shuddering.