Lying on the small table in the drawing room was a useful brochure entitled ‘Alphabetical List of Yokohama Residents for the Year 1878’. By the light of a match, it took Erast Petrovich only a moment to locate the address of ‘His Right Honourable A.-F.-C. Bullcox, Senior Adviser to the Imperial Government’ – 129, The Bluff. And there was a plan of the Settlement on the table too. House number 129 was located at the very edge of the fashionable district, at the foot of Hara Hill. Erast Petrovich lit another match and ran a pencil along the route from the consulate to his destination. He whispered, committing it to memory:
‘Across Yatobashi Bridge, past the customs post, past Yatozaka Street on the right, through the Hatacho Qu-quarter, then take the second turn to the left…’
He put on the broad-brimmed hat he had worn for taking turns around the deck during the evenings of his long voyage. And he swathed himself in a black cloak.
His carried his means of transport – the tricycle – out on to the porch very carefully, but even so, at the very last moment he caught the large wheel on the door handle. The doorbell trilled treacherously, but there was no catching Fandorin now.
He pulled the hat down over his eyes, leapt up on to the saddle at a run and started pressing hard on the pedals.
The moon was shining brightly in the sky – as round and buttery as the lucky lover Masa’s face.
On the promenade the titular counsellor encountered only two living souls: a French sailor wrapped in the arms of a Japanese tart. The sailor opened his mouth and pushed his beret with a pom-pom to the back of his head: the Japanese girl squealed.
And with good reason. Someone black, in a flapping cloak, came hurtling at the couple out of the darkness, then went rustling by on rubber tyres and instantly dissolved into the gloom.
At night the Bluff, with its Gothic bell towers, dignified villas and neatly manicured lawns, seemed unreal, like some enchanted little town that had been spirited away from Old Mother Europe at the behest of some capricious wizard and dumped somewhere at the very end of the world.
Here there were no tipsy sailors or women of easy virtue, everything was sleeping, and the only sound was the gentle pealing of the chimes in the clock tower.
The titular counsellor burst into this Victorian paradise in a monstrously indecent fashion. His ‘Royal Crescent’ tricycle startled a pack of homeless dogs sleeping peacefully on the bridge. In the first second or so they scattered, squealing, but, emboldened by seeing the monster of the night fleeing from them, they set off in pursuit, barking loudly.
And there was nothing that could be done about it.
Erast Petrovich waved his arm at them and even kicked one of them with the toe of his low boot, but the dratted curs simply wouldn’t leave him alone – they chased after the vice-consul, sticking to his heels and barking even more loudly.
He pressed harder on the pedals, which was not easy, because the street ran uphill, but Fandorin had muscles of steel and, after another couple of minutes in pursuit, the dogs started falling behind.
The young man arrived at house number 129 soaked in sweat. However, he was not feeling tired at all – he cared nothing for any trials or tribulations now.
The right honourable patron of the most precious woman in all the world resided in a two-storey mansion of red brick, constructed in accordance with the canons of the glorious Georgian style. Despite the late hour, the house was not sleeping – the windows were bright both downstairs and upstairs.
As he studied the local terrain, Erast Petrovich was surprised to realise that he had been here before. Nearby he could see tall railings with fancy lacework gates and, beyond them, a familiar white palazzo with columns – Don Tsurumaki’s estate, where Erast Petrovich had seen O-Yumi for the first time.
Bullcox’s domain was both smaller and less grandiose than his neighbour’s – and that was very opportune: to scale the ten-foot-high railings of the nouveau-riche Japanese magnate’s estate would have required a ladder, while hopping over the Englishman’s wooden fence was no problem at all.
Without pausing long for thought, Erast Petrovich hopped over. But he had barely even taken a few steps before he saw three swift shadows hurtling towards him across the lawn – they were huge, silent mastiffs, with eyes that glinted an ominous phosphorus-green in the moonlight.
He was obliged to beat a rapid retreat to the fence, and he only just made it in time.
Perched on the narrow top with his feet pulled up, gazing at those gaping jaws, the titular counsellor instantly conceived the appropriate headline for this scene: HAPLESS LOVER CHASED BY MASTIFFS.
What a disgrace, what puerile tomfoolery, the vice-consul told himself, but he didn’t come to his senses, he merely bit his lip – he was so furious at his own helplessness.
O-Yumi was so very close, behind one of those windows, but what could he do about these damned dogs?
The titular counsellor was fond of dogs, he respected them, but right now he could have shot these accursed English brutes with his trusty Herstal, without the slightest compunction. Ah, why had progress not yet invented silent gunpowder?
The mastiffs didn’t budge from the spot. They gazed upwards, scraping their clawed feet on the wooden boards. They didn’t actually bark – these aristocratic canines had been well trained – but they growled.
Erast Petrovich suddenly heard rollicking plebeian barking from the end of the street. Looking round, he saw his recent acquaintances – the homeless dogs from the Yatobashi Bridge. Surely they couldn’t have followed my scent, he thought to himself, but then he saw that the mongrels were chasing after a running man.
The man was waving his arm about – there was a pitiful yelp. He swung his arm in the other direction – another yelp, and the pack dropped back.
Masa, it was Fandorin’s faithful vassal, Masa! He had a wooden club in his hand, with another, identical, one attached to it by a chain. Fandorin already knew that this unprepossessing but effective weapon was called a nunchaku, and Masa could handle it very well.
The valet ran up and bowed to his master sitting on the fence.
‘How did you find me?’ Erast Petrovich asked, and tried to say the same thing in Japanese: Do-o… vatasi… sagasu?
His Japanese lessons had not been a waste of time – Masa understood! He took a sheet of paper, folded into four, out of his pocket, and opened it out.
Ah yes, the plan of the Settlement, with a pencil line leading from the consulate to house number 129.
‘This is not work. Sigoto iie. Go, go,’ said the titular counsellor, waving his hand at Masa. ‘There’s no danger, do you understand? Kiken – iie. Wakaru?’
‘Wakarimas,’ the servant said with a bow. ‘Mochiron wakarimas. O-Yumisan.’
Erast Petrovich was so surprised that he swayed and almost went crashing down off the fence – on the wrong side. Somehow he recovered his balance. Oh, servants, servants! It was an old truism that they knew more far more about their masters than the masters suspected. But how? Where from?
‘How d-do you know? Do-o wakaru?’
The Japanese folded his short-fingered hands together and pressed them to his cheek – as if he were sleeping. He murmured:
‘O-Yumi, O-Yumi… Darring…’
Darring?
Had he really been repeating her name in his sleep?
The titular counsellor lowered his head, sorely oppressed by a feeling of humiliation. But Masa jumped up and glanced over the fence. Having ascertained the reason for the vice-consul’s strange position, he started turning his head left and right.
‘Hai,’ he said. ‘Shosho o-machi kudasai.’
He ran over to the pack of dogs that was barking feebly at the fence of the next house. He picked up one canine, turned it over, sniffed it and tossed it away. He did the same with another. But he kept hold of the third one, tucked it under his arm and walked back to his master. The mongrels bore this high-handed treatment in silence – they clearly respected strength: only the captive whined pitifully.