The titular counsellor leaned forward despite himself.
‘You mean you can see that too?’
‘Yes, it’s not hard to read a killer’s face, it’s moulded so starkly, with sharp contrasts of colour.’
‘Positively Lombroso,’ murmured Erast Petrovich, touching himself on the cheekbone. ‘No, no, it’s nothing, go on.’
‘The people with the most marks on their faces are front-line generals, artillery officers and, of course, executioners. But the most terrible scars I have ever seen, quite invisible to ordinary people, were on a very peaceable, wonderful man, the doctor in a brothel where I used to work.’
O-Yumi said it as calmly as if she were talking about a perfectly ordinary job – as a seamstress or milliner.
Fandorin felt his insides cringe and he went on hastily, so that she wouldn’t notice anything.
‘A doctor? How strange.’
‘It’s not strange at all. Over the years he had helped thousands of girls get rid of their fetuses. Only the doctor had fine, light marks, like ripples on water, but Algie’s are deep and bloody. How could I not be afraid of him?’
‘He won’t do anything to you,’ the titular counsellor said sombrely but firmly. ‘He won’t have time. Bullcox is finished.’
She looked at him in fearful admiration.
‘You’re going to kill him first, are you?’
‘No,’ replied Erast Petrovich, opening the blind and peering cautiously at Doronin’s windows. ‘Any day now Bullcox will be expelled from Japan. In disgrace. Or perhaps even put in prison.’
In was lunchtime. Shirota, as usual, must have taken his ‘captain’s daughter’ to the table d’hфte at the Grand Hotel, but – dammit! – there was a familiar figure hovering in the window of the consul’s apartment. Vsevolod Vitalievich was standing there with his arms folded, looking straight at the carriage stuck there at the gates.
The very idea of leading O-Yumi across the yard, in a state of undress, and with only one shoe, was quite unthinkable.
‘What are we waiting for?’ she asked. ‘Let’s go! I want to settle into my new home as quickly as possible. Your place is so uncomfortable as it is!’
But they couldn’t sneak in like thieves either. O-Yumi was a proud woman, she would feel insulted. And wouldn’t he cut a fine figure, embarrassed of the woman he loved!
I’m not embarrassed, Erast Petrovich told himself. It’s just that I need to prepare myself. That is one. And she is not dressed. That is two.
‘Wait here for now,’ he told her. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’
He walked across the yard with a brisk, businesslike stride, but he squinted sideways at Doronin’s window anyway. He saw Vsevolod Vitalievich turn away with a certain deliberate emphasis. What could that mean?
Clearly he must already know about Suga, and he realised that Fandorin had been involved in some way; waiting at the window was a way of reminding the vice-consul about himself and showing how impatient he was to hear a few explanations; his demonstrative indifference made it clear that he did not intend to demand these explanations – the titular counsellor would decide when the time was right.
Very subtle, very noble and most apposite.
Masa was standing outside the cupboard, as motionless as a Chinese stone idol.
‘Well, what has he been like?’ Erast Petrovich asked, gesturing to clarify the meaning of the gesture.
His servant reported with the help of mime and gesture: first he cried, then he sang, then he fell asleep, he had to be given the chamber pot once.
‘Well done,’ the vice-consul said approvingly. ‘Kansisuru. Itte kuru.’
That meant: ‘Guard. I go away.’
He looked into his room for a second and went back quickly to the carriage. He opened the door slightly.
‘You are not dressed and have no shoes,’ he said to the charming passenger, setting down a sack of Mexican silver on the seat beside her. ‘Buy yourself some clothes. And, in general, everything that you think you need. And these are my cards with the address. If you need to have something taken in or whatever, I don’t know, leave one with the shop assistant, they’ll deliver it. When you get back, you can settle in. You are the mistress of the house.’
O-Yumi touched the jingling sack with a smile, but without any great interest, thrust out a little bare foot and stroked Erast Petrovich on the chest with it.
‘Ah, what a dunce I am!’ he exclaimed. ‘You can’t even go into a shop in that state!’
He glanced furtively over his shoulder at the consulate and squeezed her slim ankle.
‘Why would I go inside?’ O-Yumi laughed. ‘They’ll bring everything I need to the carriage.’
The anti-Bullcox coalition, assembled at full strength, held its meeting in the office of the head of the municipal police. Somehow it turned out that the role of chairman had passed to Asagawa, although he had not been appointed by anyone. The Russian vice-consul, previously acknowledged by all as the leader, ceded his primacy quite willingly. First, having abandoned his brothers-in-arms for the sake of a private matter, Erast Petrovich had, as it were, forfeited his moral right to lead them. And secondly, he knew that his mind and heart were preoccupied with a quite different matter just at the moment. And that matter happened to be a most serious one, which could not be dealt with half-heartedly.
In any case, Asagawa conducted the analytical work surpassingly well without any help from Fandorin.
‘So, gentlemen, we have a witness who is prepared to testify. But he is an unreliable individual of dubious character and what he says is of little value without documentary confirmation. We have the Satsuman warriors’ oath, signed in blood, but this evidence incriminates only the late Intendant Suga. We also have the police reports confiscated by Suga, but again, they cannot be used against Bullcox. The only unquestionable piece of evidence is a coded diagram of the conspiracy in which the central figure is the senior foreign counsellor of the British imperial government. But in order for this diagram to become proof, we must first decipher it completely. We cannot hand the document over to the authorities before that – we might be making a fatal mistake for, after all, we do not know which other officials are involved in the conspiracy. Since the intendant of police himself was one…’
‘That’s right,’ said Lockston, who was puffing on his cigar on the windowsill, beside the open window – in order to spare Dr Twigs’ sensitive nose. ‘I basically don’t trust any of the Jappos… Apart from you, of course, my good friend Go. Let the doc try to figure out what the squiggles mean. We’ll identify all the bad guys and then smash them all at once. Right, Rusty?’
Erast Petrovich nodded in reply to the sergeant, but he looked only at the inspector.
‘All this is c-correct, but we don’t have much time. Bullcox is a clever man, and he has powerful allies who will stop at nothing. I have no doubt that Bullcox will pay particular attention to my person [the vice-consul cleared his throat in embarrassment at this point] and to you, since it is known that we were working together on investigating the case of the Satsuma trio.’
At this point Erast Petrovich allowed himself to deviate from the truth somewhat, but only in the details. Even if the Englishman had not had personal reasons to hate him, the members of the conspiracy, frightened by the intendant’s strange death, would certainly have taken an interest in the vice-consul. He and Suga had been actively involved in the investigation of the conspiracy against Okubo – that was one. The blow struck against the intendant was in the interests of the Russian Empire – that was two. And there was also a three: in his recent confrontation with Bullcox, the titular counsellor had been incautious – his actions had intimated his suspicion that the Briton was intending to burn certain compromising documents. In the emotional heat of the moment, the Right Honourable had probably not paid any attention to this, but later, of course, he would call it to mind. And there could certainly be no doubt that at present he was thinking unceasingly of the Russian diplomat, and with quite exceptional intensity.