Don’t give in, don’t give in! his mind signalled desperately to his crazily beating heart. But in defiance of reason, his arms embraced the lithe body of the one who had put the poor vice-consul’s soul through such torment.
O-Yumi tore at his collar – the buttons scattered on to the carpet. Covering his exposed neck with rapid kisses and gasping impatiently in her passion, she tugged Fandorin’s frock coat off his shoulders.
And then something happened that should have been called a genuine triumph of reason over unbridled, elemental passion.
Gathering all his willpower (a quality with which he was well endowed), the titular counsellor took hold of O-Yumi’s wrists and moved them away from him – gently, but uncompromisingly.
There were two reasons for this, both of them weighty.
Erast Petrovich hastily formulated the first of them in this way: What does she take me for, a boy? She disappears when she pleases, whistles for me when she pleases, and I come running? For all its vagueness, this reason was extremely important. In the skirmish between two worlds that is called ‘love’, there is always monarch and subject, victor and vanquished. And that was the crucial question being decided at that very moment.
The second reason lay outside love’s domain. There was a whiff of mystery here, and a very disturbing kind of mystery at that.
‘How did you find out that Asagawa and I had agreed to communicate by notes?’ Erast Petrovich asked sternly, trying to make out the expression on her face in the darkness. ‘And so quickly too. Have you been following us? Eavesdropping on us? Exactly what is your part in this whole business?’
She looked up at him without speaking or moving or trying to free herself, but the touch of her skin scorched the young man’s fingers. He suddenly recalled a definition from the grammar school physics textbook: ‘The electricity contained in a body gives that body a special property, the ability to attract another body…’
Fandorin shook his head and said firmly:
‘Last time you slipped away without explaining anything to me. But today you will have to answer my qu-questions. Speak, will you!’
And O-Yumi did speak.
‘Who is Asagawa?’ she asked, tearing her wrists free of his grasp – the electric circuit was broken. ‘Did you think someone else sent you the note? And you came straight away? All this time I have been thinking of nothing but him, and he… What a fool I am!’
He wanted to hold her back, but he could not. She ducked, slipped under his arm and dashed out into the corridor. The door slammed in Erast Petrovich’s face. He grabbed hold of the handle, but the key had already turned in the lock.
‘Wait!’ the titular counsellor called out in horror. ‘Don’t go!’
Catch her, stop her, apologise.
But no – he heard subdued sobbing in the corridor, and then the sound of light footsteps moving rapidly away.
His reason cringed and shrank, cowering back into the farthest corner of his mind. The only feelings in Fandorin’s heart now were passion, horror and despair. The most powerful of all was the feeling of irreparable loss. And what a loss! As if he had lost everything in the world and had nobody to blame for it but himself.
‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ the miserable vice-consul exclaimed through clenched teeth, and he slammed his fist into the doorpost.
Curses on his police training! A woman of reckless passion, who lived by her heart – the most precious woman in the whole world – had thrown herself into his embraces. She must have taken great risks to do it, perhaps she could even have risked her life. And he had interrogated her: ‘Have you been following?’ – ‘Have you been eavesdropping?’ – ‘What’s your part in all this?’
Oh, God, how horrible, how shameful!
A groan burst from the titular counsellor’s chest. He staggered across to the bed (the very same bed on which heavenly bliss could have been his!) and collapsed on it face down.
For a while Erast Petrovich lay there without moving, but trembling all over. If he could have sobbed, then he certainly would have, but Fandorin had been denied that kind of emotional release for ever.
It had been a long time, a very long time, since he had felt such intense agitation – and it seemed so completely out of proportion with what had happened. As if his soul, fettered for so long by a shell of ice, had suddenly started aching as it revived, oozing thawing blood.
‘What is this? What is happening to me?’ he kept repeating at first – but his thoughts were about her, not himself.
When his numbed brain started recovering slightly, the next question, far more urgent, arose of its own accord.
‘What do I do now?’
Erast Petrovich jerked upright on the bed. The trembling had passed off, his heart was beating rapidly, but steadily.
What should he do? Find her. Immediately. Come what may.
Anything else would mean brain fever, heart failure, the death of his very soul.
The titular counsellor dashed to the locked door, ran his hands over it rapidly and forced his shoulder against it.
Although the door was solid, it could probably be broken out. But then there would be a crash and the hotel staff would come running. He pictured the headline in bold type in the next day’s Japan Gazette: RUSSIAN VICE-CONSUL FOUND DEBAUCHING IN GRAND HOTEL.
Erast Petrovich glanced out of the window. The first floor was high up, and in the darkness he couldn’t see where he was jumping. What if there was a heap of stones, or a rake forgotten by some gardener?
These misgivings, however, did not deter the crazed titular counsellor. Deciding that it was obviously his fate for the day to climb over windowsills and jump out into the night, he dangled by his hands from the window and then opened his fingers.
His was lucky with his landing – he came down on a lawn. He brushed off his soiled knees and looked around.
It was an enclosed garden, surrounded on all sides by a high fence. But a little thing like that did not bother Fandorin. He took a run up, grabbed hold of the top of the fence, pulled himself up nimbly and sat there.
He tried to jump down into the side street, but couldn’t. His coat-tail had snagged on a nail. He tugged and tugged, but it was no good. It was fine, strong fabric – the coat had been made in Paris.
‘RUSSIAN VICE-CONSUL STUCK ON TOP OF FENCE,’ Erast Petrovich muttered to himself. He tugged harder, and the frock coat tore with a sharp crack.
Oops-a-daisy!
In ten paces Fandorin was on the Bund, which was brightly lit by street lamps, even though it was deserted.
He had to call back home.
In order to find Bullcox’s address – that was one. And to collect his means of transport – that was two. It would take too long to walk there, and even if he compromised his principles, there was no way he could take a kuruma – he didn’t want any witnesses to this business.
Thank God, he managed to avoid the most serious obstacle, by the name of ‘Masa’: there was no light in the window of the small room where the meddlesome valet had his lodgings. He was asleep, the bandit.
The vice-consul tiptoed into the hallway and listened.
No, Masa wasn’t asleep. There were strange sounds coming from his room – either sobs or muffled groans.
Alarmed, Fandorin crept over to the Japanese-style sliding door. Masa did not care for European comfort and he had arranged his dwelling to suit his own taste: he had covered the floor with straw mats, removed the bed and bedside locker and hung bright-coloured pictures of ferocious bandits and elephantine sumo wrestlers on the walls.
On closer investigation, the sounds coming through the open door proved to be entirely unambiguous, and in addition, the titular counsellor discovered two pairs of sandals on the floor: one larger pair and one smaller pair.
That made the vice-consul feel even more bitter. He heaved a sigh and consoled himself: Well, let him. At least he won’t latch on to me.