‘Intimidating a woman is ignoble and unworthy of a gentleman! But then, what kind of gentleman are you? Out of my way, I’m going to her!’
He tried to walk past, but Bullcox blocked his way and grabbed him by the lapels.
‘I’ll kill you like a mad dog,’ hissed the Englishman, whose own eyes had turned quite rabid.
Erast Petrovich replied in an equally predatory hiss:
‘Kill me? Yourself? Oh, hardly. You wouldn’t have the courage. You’re more likely to send the “Stealthy Ones”.’
And he pushed his rival with his uncommonly well-trained arms – so hard that the Right Honourable went flying away and knocked over a chair.
The footman looked in at the crash, and his long English features stretched out even longer.
‘What “Stealthy Ones”?’ the Briton exclaimed, stunned. ‘You’re a raving lunatic! I’ll file a note of complaint with your government!’
‘Go right ahead!’ Fandorin growled in Russian.
He tried to run up the stairs, but Bullcox darted after him. He grabbed the Russian by his coat-tail and pulled him back down.
The vice-consul swung round and saw that the senior governmental adviser had assumed a boxer’s stance.
Well, boxing was not jujitsu, Erast Petrovich had no cause to be shy here.
He readied himself too: left fist forward, right fist covering the chin.
The first skirmish ended in a draw, with all the blows struck being parried.
In the second clash the vice-consul took a strong poke to the body, but replied with a rather good left hook.
Here the fight was interrupted by a female voice that exclaimed:
‘Algie? What’s going on?’
O-Yumi was standing on the landing of the staircase in her nightshirt, with a silk shawl on top. Her loose hair was scattered across her shoulders and the sunlight was shining through it.
Erast Petrovich choked.
‘It’s the Russian!’ Bullcoxs exclaimed excitedly. ‘He’s gone insane! He claims that I’m keeping you here by force. I decided to bring the blockhead to his senses.’
O-Yumi started moving down the steps.
‘What’s wrong with your ear, Algie? It’s all puffy and red. You need to put some ice on it.’
The familial, domestic tone in which these words were spoken, the name ‘Algie’, spoken twice, and – above all – the fact that she hadn’t even looked at him, made Erast Petrovich feel as if he had tumbled impetuously over a precipice.
It was hard to breathe, let alone to speak, but Fandorin turned to O-Yumi and forced out a few hoarse words:
‘Just one word. Only one. Me – or – him?’
Bullcox apparently also wanted to say something, but his voice failed him.
Both boxers stood and watched as the black-haired woman walked down the stairs in her light outfit with the sun shining through it.
She reached the bottom and glanced upwards reproachfully at Erast Petrovich. And said with a sigh:
‘What a question. You, of course… Forgive me, Algie. I was hoping everything would end differently for us, but clearly it was not to be.’
The Briton was absolutely crushed. He started blinking, looking from O-Yumi to Fandorin and back again. The Right Honourable’s lips trembled, but he still couldn’t find any words.
Suddenly Bullcox shouted something inarticulate and went dashing up the steps.
‘Let’s run!’ said O-Yumi, grabbing the titular counsellor by the hand and pulling him after her towards the door.
‘What f-for?’
‘His armoury room is upstairs!’
‘I’m not afraid!’ Erast Petrovich declared, but the slim hand jerked him with such surprising strength that he barely managed to stay on his feet.
‘Let’s run!’
She dragged the titular counsellor along, and he kept looking back, across the lawn. The beautiful woman’s hair fluttered in the wind, the hem of her nightdress flapped and ballooned, the backs of her velvet slippers slapped loudly.
‘Yumi! For God’s sake!’ a voice called from somewhere high up.
Bullcox leaned out of a first-floor window, waving a hunting carbine.
Fandorin tried, as far as he could, to cover the woman running in front of him with his own body. A shot rang out, but the bullet missed by a wide margin, he didn’t hear it whine.
Looking back again, the titular counsellor saw the Englishman settling his eye to the carbine again, but even at this distance he could see the barrel wobbling – the gunman’s hands were shaking wildly.
He didn’t need to shout to the driver to set off. He had already set off, in fact, immediately after the first shot – without bothering to wait for his passengers. He just lashed the horses, pulled his head down into his shoulders and didn’t look back.
Erast Petrovich opened the door on the run, grabbed his companion round the waist and threw her inside. Then he jumped up on to the seat himself.
‘I dropped my shawl and lost one slipper!’ O-Yumi exclaimed. ‘Ah, how interesting!’ Her eyes were wide open and glittering brightly. ‘Where are we going, my darling?’
‘To my place at the consulate!’
She whispered:
‘That means we have an entire ten minutes. Close the blind.’
Fandorin did not notice how they reached the Bund. He was brought round by a knock at the window. Apparently someone had been knocking for a while, but he hadn’t heard them straight away.
‘Sir, sir,’ said a voice outside, ‘we’re here… You might add on a bit, for a fright like that.’
The titular counsellor opened the door slightly and thrust a silver dollar out through the crack.
‘Here you are. And wait.’
He managed more or less to tidy up his suit.
‘Poor Algie,’ O-Yumi said with a sigh. ‘I wanted so much to leave him according to all the rules. You’ve gone and spoilt the whole thing. Now his heart will be filled with bitterness and hate. But never mind. I swear that for us everything will end beautifully, in proper jojutsufashion. You’ll have very, very good memories of me, we’ll separate in the “Autumn Leaf” style.’
The loveliest gift.
A tree gives is its last one -
A gold autumn leaf
INSANE HAPPINESS
‘So, that night you rejected me only because you wanted to separate from “poor Algie” according to all the r-rules?’ asked Erast Petrovich, looking at her mistrustfully. ‘That was the only reason?’
‘Not the only one. I really am afraid of him. Did you notice his left earlobe?’
‘What?’ Fandorin thought he must have misheard.
‘From the shape, length and colour of his earlobe, it’s clear that he is a very dangerous man.’
‘There you go with your ninso again! You’re just laughing at me!’
‘I counted ten dead bodies on his face,’ she said quietly. ‘And those are only the ones he killed with his own hands.’
Fandorin didn’t know whether she was being serious or playing the fool. Or rather, he wasn’t absolutely certain that she was playing the fool. And so he asked with a laugh:
‘Can you see dead bodies on my face?’
‘Of course. Every time one man takes the life of another, it leaves a scar on his soul. And everything that happens in the soul is reflected on the face. You have those traces as well. Do you want me to tell you how many people you have killed?’ She held out her hand and touched his cheekbones with her fingers. ‘One, two, three…’
‘St-stop it!’ he said, pulling away. ‘Better tell me more about Bullcox instead.’
‘He doesn’t know how to forgive. Apart from the ten that he killed himself, I saw other traces, people for whose deaths he was responsible. There are a lot of them. Far more than there are of the first kind.’