“I believe we have met?” the host asked with an unpleasant smile. “Mr. Fedorin, if I am not mistaken?”
“Fandorin,” Erast Fandorin corrected him, blushing furiously.
“I beg your pardon. Why do you do nothing but stand and stare? This is not a theater we have here. If you’ve come, then play. Please have a seat.” He pointed to the newly vacated chair.
“Choose the decks yourself,” the kind old gentleman hissed in Fandorin’s ear.
Erast Fandorin sat down and, following instructions, he said in an extremely decisive manner, “But if you don’t mind, Your Excellency, I will keep the bank myself. A novice’s privilege. And as for the decks, I would prefer…that one and that one there.” And so saying he took the two bottom packs from the tray of unopened decks.
Zurov smiled still more unpleasantly. “Very well, mister novice, your terms are accepted, but on one condition: if I break the bank, you must not run off. Afterward give me the chance to deal. Well, what’s the pot to be?”
Fandorin faltered, his resolve deserting him as suddenly as it had descended on him.
“A hundred rubles?” he asked timidly.
“Are you joking? This is not one of your taverns.”
“Very well, three hundred.” And Erast Fandorin placed all his money on the table, including the hundred he had won earlier.
“Lejeu ne vautpas la chandelle,”* said the count with a shrug, “but I suppose it will do for a start.”
He drew a card from his deck and carelessly tossed three hundred-ruble notes onto it.
“I’ll go for the lot.”
The ‘forehead’ was to the right, Erast Fandorin remembered, and he carefully set down a lady with little red hearts to the right and to the left the seven of spades.
Hippolyte Alexandrovich Zurov turned his card over with two fingers and gave a slight frown. It was the queen of diamonds.
“Well done, the novice,” someone said with a whistle. “He set up that queen very handily.”
Fandorin clumsily shuffled his deck.
“For the whole pot,” the count said derisively, tossing six notes onto the table. “Dammit, if you don’t place it, you’ll never ace it.”
What was the card on the left called? Erast Fandorin could not remember. This one was the ‘forehead,’ but the second one…damnation. It was embarrassing. What if Zurov asked something? It would look bad if he had to check his crib.
“Bravo!” called out the audience. “Count, c’est un jeu intйressant* do you not think so?”
Erast Fandorin saw that he had won again.
“Be so kind as not to Frenchify. It really is a stupid habit to stick half of a French phrase into Russian speech,” Zurov said irritably, glancing around at the speaker, although he himself interpolated French expressions now and again. “Deal, Fandorin, deal. A card’s not a horse, waiting to take you home in the morning. For the lot.”
To the right, a jack—that’s the ‘forehead’—to the left, an eight, that’s—
Count Hippolyte Zurov turned over a ten. Fandorin killed it at the fourth twist.
People were now pressing around the table on all sides, and Erast Fandorin’s success was worthily acclaimed.
“Fandorin, Fandorin,” Zurov muttered absentmindedly, drumming on the deck of cards with his fingers. Eventually he drew out a card and counted out 2,400 rubles.
The six of spades went straight to the ‘forehead’ from the very first twist.
“What kind of name is that?” exclaimed the count, growing furious. “Fandorin! From the Greek, is it? Fandorakis, Fandoropoulos!”
“Why Greek?” Erast Fandorin asked, taking offense. The memory of how his good-for-nothing classmates had mocked his ancient surname was still fresh in his mind—at the gymnasium Erast Fandorin’s nickname had been Fanny. “Our line, Count, is as Russian as your own. The Fandorins served Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” said the same recent red-nosed old gentleman, Erast Fandorin’s well-wisher, suddenly coming to life. “There was a Fandorin at the time of Catherine the Great who left the most fascinating memoirs.”
“Fascinating, fascinating, today is most exasperating,” Zurov rhymed gloomily, heaping up an entire mound of banknotes. “For the entire bank! Deal a card, devil take you!”
“Le dernier coup, messieurs!”* came a voice from the crowd.
Everyone stared greedily at the two equally huge piles of crumpled notes, one lying in front of the banker, the other in front of the punter.
In absolute silence Fandorin opened up two fresh decks of cards, still thinking about the same thing. Pocketbook? Handbook?
An ace to the right, another ace to the left. Zurov has a king. A queen to the right, a ten to the left. A jack to the right, a queen to the left. Which one was the higher card, after all, jack or queen? A seven to the right, a six to the left.
“Don’t snort down my neck!” the count roared furiously, and the crowd recoiled from him.
An eight to the right, a nine to the left. A king to the right, a ten to the left. A king!
The men standing around were howling with laughter. Count Hip-polyte Zurov sat there as though turned to stone.
Dreambook! Erast Fandorin remembered and smiled in delight. The card to the left was the dreambook. What a strange name it was.
Zurov suddenly bent forward across the table and pinched Fandorin’s lips into a tube with ringers of steel.
“Don’t you dare smirk! If you happen to have won a bundle, then have the decency to behave in a civil manner!” the count hissed furiously, moving very close. His bloodshot eyes were terrible. The next moment he pushed Fandorin’s chin away, leaned back against his chair, and folded his arms on his chest.
“Count, that really is going too far!” exclaimed one of the officers.
“I don’t believe I am running away,” Zurov hissed, without taking his eyes off Fandorin. “If anyone’s feelings are offended, I am prepared to reciprocate.”
A genuinely deadly silence filled the room.
There was a terrible ringing in Erast Fandorin’s ears, and there was only one thing he was afraid of now—he must not turn coward. But then, he was also afraid that his voice would betray him by trembling.
“You are a dishonorable scoundrel. You simply do not wish to pay,” said Fandorin, and his voice did tremble, but that no longer mattered. “I challenge you.”
“Playing the hero for the audience?” sneered Zurov. “We’ll see how you sing looking down the barrel of a gun. Tomorrow. At twenty paces, with barriers. Either party can fire when he wishes, but afterward you must stand at the barrier. Are you not afraid?”
I am afraid, thought Erast Fandorin. Akhtyrtsev said he can hit a five-kopeck coin at twenty paces, let alone a forehead. Or even worse, a stomach. Fandorin shuddered. He had never even held a dueling pistol in his hand. Xavier Grushin had once taken him to the police shooting range to fire a Colt, but that was entirely different. Zurov would kill him, he would kill him over a worthless trifle. And he would get clean away with it. There would be no way to catch him out. There were plenty of witnesses. It was a quarrel over cards, a common enough business. The count would spend a month in the guardhouse and then be released; he had influential relatives, and Erast Fandorin had no one. They would lay the collegiate registrar in a rough plank coffin and bury him in the ground and no one would come to the funeral. Except perhaps Grushin and Agrafena Kondratievna. And Lizanka would read about it in the newspaper and think in passing: what a shame, he was such a well-mannered policeman, and so very young. But, no, she would not read it—Emma probably did not give her the newspapers. And, of course, his chief would say: I believed in him, the fool, and he got himself killed like some idiotic greenhorn. Decided to fight a duel, dabble in idiotic gentry sentiment. And then he would spit.