‘And… what, in your opinion, does my service consist of?’ Fandorin asked cautiously, recalling that only a quarter of an hour ago he had been thinking about those who ‘watch over the house’.
The Japanese shrugged nonchalantly.
‘I have no idea. That is all the same to me. It is enough that you have some idea and you serve it. But my idea is you, and I serve you. It is all very simple and harmonious. Of course, to love with all your heart is a very great risk. But if you wish to know the opinion of a man who knows women well, one like Eliza-san would suit us best of all.’
‘Us?’
Erast Petrovich gave his servant a severe look, but Masa’s expression was clear and open. And it was immediately obvious that there had never been anything between Eliza and the Japanese, that there never could have been. Only with his reason clouded could Fandorin have imagined that Masa was capable of regarding his master’s chosen one as an ordinary woman.
‘Surely you don’t want a jealous woman to come between us, who will hate me because you and I are bound together by so many things? That is the way any normal wife would act. But an actress is a different matter. In addition to her husband, she has the theatre. She doesn’t need a hundred per cent of your shares, she’s happy with forty-nine.’
The automobile crossed the Garden Ring Road, skipping over the tramlines.
‘Have you seriously decided to marry me off?’ Fandorin asked. ‘But what f-for?’
‘So there will be chirdren and I will teach them,’ Masa replied. After a moment’s thought he added: ‘I probably can’t teach a little girl anything useful.’
‘And what would you teach my son?’
‘The most important thing. What you cannot teach him, master.’
‘Interesting. What is that I can’t teach my own son?’
‘How to be happy.’
Fandorin was so terribly surprised, he couldn’t think of anything to say at first; he had never thought that from the outside his life could seem unhappy. Surely happiness was the absence of unhappiness?
‘There is no happiness, but there is peace and freedom,’ he said, recalling Pushkin’s famous formula, which he had always liked so much.
Masa thought for a few moments and disagreed.
‘That is the mistaken reasoning of a man who is afraid to be happy,’ he said, switching back to his own language. ‘It is probably the only thing that you are afraid of, master.’
His condescending tone of voice infuriated Fandorin. ‘Go to hell, you home-grown philosopher! That’s a line from Pushkin, and the poet is always right!’
‘Pushkin? Oooo!’
Masa put on a reverential face and even bowed. He respected the opinions of authorities.
In the reception room of the university clinic, as the Japanese was being led away for examination, he suddenly looked at Erast Petrovich with his piercing little eyes.
‘Master, I can see from your face that you are going out on business again without me. Please do not punish me like this. My ears are ringing and my thoughts are a little confused, but that does not make any difference. You will do the thinking, and I will only act. For a genuine samurai, a concussion is a mere trifle.’
Fandorin prodded him in the back.
‘Go on, go on, let the professor-sensei cure you. A genuine samurai should be yellow, and not green. And anyway, my business is quite trivial, there’s nothing to talk about.’
However, Erast Petrovich did not set out on his business immediately. First he called into the telegraph office, and the long-distance telephone station. It was twilight before the Isotta drove up to Abrikosov’s tenement building on Kuznetsky Most Street.
Khan Altairsky lived in the bel étage, occupying the entire left half of it.
‘How shall I announce you?’ Fandorin was asked by the doorman, a sturdy black-haired young fellow with a black moustache wearing a long-waisted Circassian coat with a massive dagger in the belt. He looked Fandorin up and down suspiciously and announced: ‘His High Dignity is busy. He is dining.’
‘I’ll announce m-myself,’ Erast Petrovich replied good-naturedly.
He took the young fellow by the neck, pressed simultaneously on the sui point with his thumb and the min point with his index finger and supported the limp body so that it wouldn’t make too much noise. This manipulation guaranteed an unhealthy but deep sleep lasting from fifteen to thirty minutes, depending on the strength of the organism.
Fandorin left his top hat and coat in the entrance hall, and checked in the mirror to make sure that his parting was straight. Then he set off along the corridor towards the melodic jingling of silver.
His High Dignity was indeed dining.
A balding man with dark hair and bushy eyebrows, with puffy facial features that seemed vaguely familiar to Fandorin, was chewing food and sipping on red wine. To judge from the beverage, and also from the carved piglet and Dutch ham, the khan did not adhere to the sharia law in his diet.
At the sight of the stranger the khan forgot to close his mouth and froze with a piece of the bread that he had just bitten off between his teeth. A manservant, who looked like the twin brother of the sleeping doorman, also froze, holding a jug in his hands.
‘Who are you? Why did they let you in?’ the khan rumbled menacingly, spitting the bread out onto the tablecloth. ‘Musa, fling him out!’
Fandorin shook his head. How was it possible to marry a crude oaf like his, even if only for a short while? This woman quite definitely had to be saved – not from her enemies, but from herself.
The servant put down the wine and dashed at Fandorin, hissing like a goose. The visitor gave Musa the same treatment as his presumptive brother: he put him to sleep and gently laid him out on the floor.
The blood drained away from the abandoned husband’s bald patch. Expecting the uninvited guest to be bundled out immediately, the khan had taken a gulp of wine, but had not yet swallowed it, and now it flowed down over his chin onto his starched napkin. It was an appalling sight – as if the man had suffered a stroke with haemhorraging from the throat.
‘Who are you?’ he repeated, but in a quite different tone of voice. Not with outrage, but in fear.
‘My name is Fandorin. But perhaps for you I shall be Azrail,’ said Erast Petrovich, naming the Muslim archangel of death. ‘Everything will depend on the outcome of our c-conversation.’
‘Fandorin? Then I know who you are. You’re the author of that idiotic play and also an amateur detective with big contacts. I have made enquiries about you.’
The khan tore off his stained napkin and grandly folded his hands, glittering with rings, together on his chest.
‘I see you have calmed down a little.’ Fandorin sat down beside him and toyed absent-mindedly with a dessert fork. ‘That’s a mistake. I’ll be b-brief… You stop persecuting Madam Lointaine. That is one. You immediately grant her a divorce. That is two. Otherwise something nasty will happen to you.’ Erast Petrovich considered it unnecessary to specify the meaning of the threat. His opponent was clearly not worthy of having pearls scattered before him, and the tone of the voice and glance of the eye are always more eloquent than words.
The khan was mortally afraid, that was clear. A little more of this and he would keel over in a faint.
‘I have already decided that I shall never go near that madwoman again,’ His Most High Dignity exclaimed. ‘She tried to shoot me with a pistol!’
This was the first time Fandorin had heard about the pistol, but the news did not surprise him. It is dangerous to drive a woman of artistic temperament to extremes.