Fandorin listened to this colourful story and thought: Live ten years with cramped lungs? No thank you.
But to be honest, another thought also occurred to him: What if vengeance doesn’t help?
This question went unanswered. Erast Petrovich asked a different one out loud.
‘Did you see Shirota in your spyglass?’
‘Yes, many times. Both outside and in a window of the house.’
‘And a white woman? Tall, with yellow hair woven into a long plait?’
‘There are no women in the house. There are only men.’ The jonin was looking at Fandorin with ever greater interest.
‘Just as I thought. In planning the defence, Shirota sent his fiancйe to some s-safe place…’ Erast Petrovich said with a nod of satisfaction. ‘We don’t have to wait for ten years. And a shark’s bladder will not be required either.’
‘And what will we require?’ Tamba asked in a very, very quiet voice, as if afraid of frightening away the prey.
His nephew leaned forward eagerly, with his eyes fixed on the gaijin. But Fandorin turned away and looked out at the street through the open window. His attention seemed to have been caught by a blue box hanging on a pillar. There were two crossed post horns on it.
His answer consisted of only two words:
‘A postman.’
Uncle and nephew exchanged glances.
‘A man who delivers letters?’ the jonin asked, to make quite certain.
‘Yes, a man who d-delivers letters.’
Letter-bag brimful
Of love and joy and sorrow -
Here comes a postman
THE REAL AKUNIN
The municipal express post, one of the greatest conveniences produced by the nineteenth century, had made its appearance in the Settlement only recently, and therefore the local inhabitants had recourse to its services more frequently than genuine necessity required. The postmen delivered not only official letters addressed, say, from a trading firm on Main Street to the customs office on the Bund, but also invitations to five o’clock tea, advertisement leaflets, intimate missives and even notes from a wife to a husband, informing him that it was time to go to lunch.
After Fandorin dropped the envelope with the five-cent ‘lightning’ stamp on it into the slit above the crossed post horns, less than half an hour went by before a fine young fellow in a dandified blue uniform rode up on a pony, checked the contents of the box and went clopping off over the cobblestones up the slope – to deliver the correspondence to the addressee at Number 130, the Bluff.
‘What is in the envelope?’ Tamba asked for the fourth time.
The first three attempts had produced no response. Fandorin’s feverish agitation as he addressed the envelope had given way to apathy. The gaijin didn’t hear any questions that he was asked – he sat there, gazing blankly at the street, every now and then beginning to gulp in air through his mouth and rub his chest, as if his waistcoat was too tight for him.
But old Tamba was patient. He waited and waited – and then asked again. And then again.
Eventually he got an answer.
‘Eh?’ Erast Petrovich asked with a start. ‘In the envelope? A poem. The moment Shirota reads it, he’ll lose control and come running. And he’ll pass along this street, over the b-bridge. Alone.’
Tamba didn’t understand about the poem, but he didn’t ask any questions – it wasn’t important.
‘Alone? Very good. We’ll grab him, it won’t be hard.’
He leaned across to Dan and started speaking rapidly in Japanese. The nephew kept nodding and repeating:
‘Hai, hai, hai…’
‘There’s no need to grab him,’ said Fandorin, interrupting their planning. ‘It will be enough if you simply bring him here. Can you do that?’
Shirota appeared very soon – Tamba had barely finished his preparations.
There was the sound of rapid hoof beats and a horseman in a panama hat and a light, sandy-coloured suit came riding round the bend. The former secretary was unrecognisable, so elegant, indeed dashing, did he look. He had the black brush of a moustache sprouting under his flattish nose, and instead of the little steel-rimmed spectacles, his face was adorned with a brand new gold pince-nez.
The native gentleman’s flushed features and the furious gait of his mount suggested that Shirota was in a terrible hurry, but he was obliged to pull back on the reins just before the bridge, when a hunchbacked beggar in a dusty kimono threw himself across the horseman’s path.
He grabbed hold of the bridle and started begging in a repulsive, plaintively false descant whine.
Restraining his overheated horse, Shirota abused the mendicant furiously and jerked on the reins, but the tramp had clutched them in a grip of iron.
Erast Petrovich observed this little incident from the window of the tea parlour, trying to stay in the shadow. Two or three passers-by, attracted for a brief moment by the shouting, had already turned away from such an uninteresting scene and gone about their business.
For half a minute the horseman tried in vain to free himself. Then, at last, he realised there was a quicker way. Muttering curses, he rummaged in his pocket, fished out a coin and tossed it to the old man.
And it worked – the beggar immediately let go of the reins. In a sudden impulse of gratitude, he seized his benefactor’s hand and pressed his lips against it (he must have seen gaijins doing that somewhere). Then he jumped back, gave a low bow and scurried away.
Amazingly enough, though, Shirota seemed to have forgotten that he was in a hurry; he shook his head, then rubbed his temple, as if he were trying to remember something. Then suddenly he swayed drunkenly and slumped sideways.
He would quite certainly have fallen, and probably bruised himself cruelly on the cobblestones, if a young native man of a most respectable appearance had not been walking by. The youth managed to catch the fainting horseman in his arms and the proprietor of the tea parlour came running out to help, together with the pastor, who had abandoned his numerous family.
‘Drunk?’ shouted the proprietor.
‘Dead?’ shouted the pastor.
The young man felt Shirota’s pulse and said:
‘Fainted. I’m a doctor… That is, I soon will be a doctor.’ He turned to the proprietor. ‘If you would allow us to carry this man into your establishment, I could help him.’
The three of them lugged the insensible body into the tea parlour and, since there was nowhere to put the sick man down in the English half, they carried him through into the Japanese half with its tatami – to the very spot where Erast Petrovich was finishing his tea.
It took a few minutes to get rid of the proprietor, and especially the pastor, who was very keen to comfort the martyr in his final minutes. The medical student explained that it was an ordinary fainting fit, there was no danger and the patient merely needed to lie down for a little while.