‘Do you know what true patriotism is?’ he asked, then raised one finger and declared: ‘To act for the good of the Homeland, even if it means going against the will of one’s superiors.’
The titular counsellor considered this adventurous maxim. He nodded in agreement.
‘Thank you for the aphorism, I f-feel it will prove useful to me in life on more than one occasion. And that being the case, I think I shall not tell you anything more. I shall act like a true patriot, that is, without the sanction of my superiors, at my own discretion. If anything goes wrong, I shall answer for everything. For the time being, let us consider that this conversation of ours never took place.’
Doronin flushed, jumped up off his chair and tore the net off his hair.
‘Just what sort of minor role do you think you are assigning to me, my dear sir! Equal shares in the profit, but if the venture makes a loss, please don’t be concerned about that? I’m a Russian diplomat, not a stock market speculator!’
Poor Obayasi, frightened by the sudden shouting, froze on the spot and put her hand over her mouth.
Erast Petrovich also got up off his chair.
‘Precisely,’ he said drily, piqued by that ‘my dear sir’. ‘You are a diplomat, the consul of the Russian Empire, and you must not think of your own role, but the good of the Fatherland.’
The conversation with Lockston was much simpler, with no highbrow introspection.
‘So if His Yellow-Bellied Excellency’s protectors grab us by the ass, I blame you for everything,’ the American summed up. ‘My job’s a cinch: there was a request from the Russian consulate, and I was obliged to comply. All the notes and protests are your department, Rusty.’
‘Precisely so.’
‘Then I’m in.’ The sergeant chuckled. ‘Stick a genuine daimyo in the slammer – I like the idea. That’ll teach them to go defiling our little girls! And if you can take that skunk Suga down a peg or two, I owe you a crate of genuine bourbon, one dollar ninety-nine a bottle. Why that ape, thinking he could give white men the run around! There I was with my men, guarding that swamp, while he was pulling his dirty little tricks. Walter Lockston won’t let anyone get away with that, especially some lousy, slanty-eyed aboriginal!’
The titular counsellor winced at the American manner of scorning other races and repeated the essential points.
‘You wait for the signal. The next time Onokoji shows up at “Number Nine”, the owner will plant the young Polish girl on him. Asagawa lets us know immediately. You hurry to the brothel and make an arrest at the scene of the c-crime. Then you summon the Russian vice-consul and the head of the Japanese police.’
They didn’t have to wait long for ‘the next time’.
That evening a courier arrived at the consulate, bearing an official note from Sergeant Lockston: an underage female, very probably a Russian subject, had been subjected to abuse.
Erast Petrovich responded to the summons immediately, taking the secretary Shirota with him to add greater formality to the proceedings.
The scene that greeted the representatives of Russia in the office of the head of the municipal police was perfectly scandalous. Two people were sitting facing the sergeant, whose visage was set in a predatory smile; Prince Onokoji and a skinny little girl – gaudily made up, but with her hair in plaits, tied with bows. Both arrestees were in a state of complete undress. Lockston had evidently escorted the fornicators to the station in the same condition in which they were caught.
The infuriated daimyo’s apparel consisted of two sheets (one round his loins, the other thrown across his shoulders) and a pair of silk socks with elastic suspenders.
The presumptive Russian subject was wrapped in a sheet, but by no means tightly, and unlike her accomplice, she gave no sign of being particularly agitated – she kept turning her bright little face this way and that, sniffing all the time, and at the sight of the vice-consul she crossed one leg over the other and toyed coquettishly with her sandal. The knee of this victim of molestation was as skinny as a frog’s paw.
‘Who is this?’ Onokoji squealed in English. ‘I demanded the presence of the Japanese authorities! You will answer for this! My cousin is a minister of court!’
‘These are representatives of the injured party’s state,’ Lockston declared solemnly. ‘Here you are, Mr Vice-Consul, I relinquish this unfortunate child into your custody.’
Fandorin cast a glance of disgust at the child molester and spoke compassionately to the young girl in Russian.
‘What is your name?’
She flirted with her heavily painted eyes, stuck the end of one plait into her mouth and drawled:
‘Baska. Baska Zaionchek.’
‘How old are you?’
After a moment’s thought, the unfortunate child replied:
‘Twenty.’
And in an entirely superfluous gesture, she showed him ten outstretched digits twice.
‘She says she is twenty years old?’ asked the prince, brightening up. ‘That is what she told you, right?’
Taking no notice of him, Erast Petrovich said slowly:
‘That is a great pity. If you were a juvenile, that is, underage, the Russian Empire, in my person, would have defended you. And then you could count on substantial c-compensation. Do you know what compensation is?’
Baska clearly did know what compensation was. She wrinkled up her forehead and examined the titular counsellor curiously. She jerked her leg, throwing off the sandal, scratched her foot and replied, swallowing her hard Polish ‘l’:
‘I wied to the gentewman. I’m fourteen.’ She thought for a little longer. ‘I wiw be soon. I’m stiw thirteen.’
This time she put up ten fingers first, then three.
‘She is thirteen,’ the vice-consul translated for Lockston.
The prince groaned.
‘My child, I can only protect your interests if you have Russian citizenship. So tell me, are you a subject of the empire?’
‘Tak,’ Baska said with a nod, crossing herself with three fingers, Orthodox-style, to prove the point – although she did it from left to right, as Catholics did. ‘Pan, the compensation – how much is it?
‘She is a Russian subject, we’ll take care of her,’ Erast Petrovich told the sergeant, and he reassured the girclass="underline" ‘You’ll b-be quite satisfied.’
Her presence was no longer required.
‘Why didn’t you let the poor creature get dressed?’ the vice-consul asked Lockston reproachfully. ‘The little child is frozen through. Mr Shirota will take her to her apartment.’
Baska didn’t really look chilly at all. On the contrary, keeping her eyes on the interesting man with the dark hair, she opened the sheet as if by accident and Fandorin blinked: the juvenile Zaionchek’s breasts were developed well beyond her age. Although the devil only knew how old she really was.
So Shirota led the injured party away and Erast Petrovich stayed to attend to the drawing up of the minutes. And soon after that the representative of the Japanese side turned up – Inspector Asagawa, the head of the indigenous police.
The prince threw himself at the inspector, waving his arms in the air and jabbering something in Japanese.
‘Quiet!’ Lockston roared. ‘I demand that all conversations be conducted in a language comprehensible to the injured party.’
The injured party – in this case Erast Petrovich – nodded sombrely.
‘The individual styling himself Prince Onokoji has said he can obtain a promotion for me if I hush this case up,’ Asagawa announced imperturbably.
The arrested man gazed round at all three of them with a hunted look and his eyes glinted, as if the realisation was dawning that he had not ended up in the police station by chance. But even so, he drew the wrong conclusion.
‘All right, all right.’ He chuckled, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. ‘I can see I’ve been caught. You arranged it all very neatly. But you are in for a disappointment, gentlemen. Did you think that because I am a prince I have pockets full of money? I am afraid not. I am as poor as a shrine turtle. You won’t make much out of me. I’ll tell you how all this will end. I’ll spend the night in your lock-up and tomorrow someone from the ministry will come and collect me. You’ll wind up with nothing.’