Then she began behaving very strangely. She went up to a frivolous wall lamp in the form of a Cupid and pressed the god of love’s bronze navel. The engraving hanging beside it (it appeared to be a hunting scene of some kind) slid soundlessly to one side, revealing a small copper door with a round handle. Bezhetskaya freed a slim, naked hand from its gauzy sleeve, turned the handle this way and that, and the door opened with a melodic thrumming sound. Erast Fandorin pressed his nose against the windowpane, afraid of missing the most important part of the action.
Amalia Bezhetskaya, looking more than ever like an Egyptian queen, reached gracefully into the safe, took something out of it, and turned around. She was holding a light blue velvet attachй case.
She sat down at the bureau, extracted a large yellow envelope from the attachй case, and from the envelope she extracted a sheet of paper covered in fine writing. She slit open the newly received letters with a knife and copied something from them onto the paper. It all took no longer than two minutes. Then, having replaced the letters and the sheet of paper in the attachй case, Bezhetskaya lit a pakhitoskaand inhaled deeply several times, gazing pensively into space.
The hand with which Erast Fandorin was gripping the vegetation had gone numb, the handle of his Colt was sticking painfully into his side, and his feet had begun to ache from being so unnaturally splayed. He could not continue standing in that position for long.
Eventually Cleopatra extinguished her pakhitoska, stood up, and withdrew into the dimly lit far corner of the room, where a low door opened then closed again, and then there was the sound of running water. Evidently that was where the bathroom was located.
The blue attachй case remained lying enticingly on the writing desk, and women, as everyone knows, spend a long time over their evening toilette…Fandorin pushed against the window frame, set his knee on the windowsill, and in an instant was inside the room. Glancing now and again in the direction of the bathroom, from where he could still hear the sound of running water, he set about relieving the attachй case of its contents.
It proved to contain a large bundle of letters and the envelope he had already seen. Written on the envelope was an address:
MR. NICHOLAS M. CROOG, POSTS RESTANTE
L’HOTEL DES POSTES, S.-PETERSBOURG, RUSSIE
This was already progress. Inside the envelope there were sheets of paper divided into columns and squares containing English writing in the slanting hand now so familiar to Erast Fandorin. The first column contained some kind of number, the second the name of a country, the third a rank or title, the fourth a date, and the fifth another date—different dates in June in ascending numerical order. For instance, the last three entries, which to judge from the ink had only just been made, appeared as follows:
N°1053F
Brazil head of the emperor’s personal bodyguard
sent 30 May
received 28 June 1876
N°825F
United States of America deputy chairman of a Senate committee
sent 10 June
received 28 June 1876
N°354F
Germany chairman of the district court
sent 25 June
received 28 June 1876
Wait! The letters that had arrived at the hotel for Miss Olsen today had been from Rio de Janeiro, Washington, and Stuttgart. Erast Fan-dorin rummaged through the bundle of letters and found the one from Brazil. It contained a sheet of paper with no salutation or signature, nothing but a single line of writing:
30 May, head of the emperor’s personal bodyguard, N°1053F.
So for some reason Bezhetskaya was copying the contents of the letters she received onto sheets of paper that she then sent to a certain Nikolai Croog in St. Petersburg, or rather Mr. Nicholas Croog. To what end? And why to St. Petersburg? What could it all mean?
The questions came thick and fast, jostling each other for space in his mind, but he had no time to deal with them—the water had stopped running in the bathroom. Fandorin hastily stuffed the papers back into the attachй case, but it was too late to retreat to the window. A slim white figure was already standing motionless in the doorway.
Erast Fandorin tugged the revolver out of his belt and commanded in a whisper, “Miss Bezhetskaya, one sound and I’ll shoot you! Come over here and sit down! Quickly now!”
She approached him without speaking, gazing spellbound at him with those unfathomable, gleaming eyes, and sat down beside the writing desk.
“You weren’t expecting me, I suppose?” Erast Fandorin inquired sarcastically. “Took me for a stupid little fool?”
Amalia Bezhetskaya said nothing. Her gaze seemed thoughtful and slightly surprised, as if she were seeing Fandorin for the first time.
“What is the meaning of these lists?” he demanded, brandishing his Colt. “What has Brazil got to do with all this? Who is concealed behind the numbers? Well, answer me!”
“You’ve matured,” Bezhetskaya said unexpectedly in a quiet, pensive voice. “And you seem a bit braver, too.”
She dropped her hand and the peignoir slipped from a rounded shoulder so white that Erast Fandorin swallowed hard.
“Brave, impetuous little fool,” she went on in the same quiet voice, looking him straight in the eyes. “And so very good-looking.”
“If you’re thinking of seducing me, you’re wasting your time,” Erast Fandorin mumbled, blushing. “I am not such a little fool as you imagine.”
Amalia Bezhetskaya said sadly, “You are a poor little boy who doesn’t even understand what he has got mixed up in. A poor, handsome little boy. And now there is nothing I can do to save you…”
“You’d do better to think about saving yourself!” said Erast Fandorin, trying hard not to look at that accursed shoulder, which had become even more exposed. Could skin really be such a glowing, milky white?
Bezhetskaya rose abruptly to her feet, and he started back, holding his gun out in front of him…
“Sit down.”
“Don’t be afraid, silly boy. What rosy cheeks you have. May I touch them?”
She reached out a hand and gently brushed his cheek with her fingers.
“You’re hot…What am I going to do with you?”
She set her other hand gently on his fingers that clutched the revolver. The matte-black, unblinking eyes were so close that Fandorin could see two little pink reflections of the lamp in them. A strange list-lessness came over the young man and he remembered Hippolyte’s warning about the moth, but the memory was strangely abstract—it had nothing to do with him.
Then events moved very rapidly. With her left hand Bezhetskaya pushed the Colt aside. With her right hand she seized Erast Fandorin by the collar and jerked him toward her, simultaneously butting his nose with her forehead. Fandorin was blinded by the sharp pain, but he would not have been able to see anything in any case, because the lamp went crashing to the floor and the room was plunged into darkness. At the next blow—a knee to the groin—he doubled up, his fingers contracted spasmodically, the room was lit by a bright flash, and there was the deafening roar of a shot. Amalia took a convulsive breath, half sobbed and half screamed, and then there was no longer anyone beating Erast Fandorin, no one squeezing his wrist. He heard the sound of a falling body. There was a loud ringing in his ears, twin streams of blood were flowing over his chin, tears were pouring from his eyes, and his lower belly ached so sickeningly that all he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and wait for the agony to pass, groan until the unbearable pain went away. But he had no time for bellowing. He could hear loud voices and the sound of heavy footsteps from downstairs.