‘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.’
‘What about the disgrace?’ said Asagawa. ‘You, a scion of an ancient and glorious line, are involved in a dirty little scandal. Your patrons may perhaps get you released, but then they will break off all relations with you. Society will shun you, as if you had the plague. No more protection, no more charity from relatives.’
Onokoji narrowed his eyes. This man was clearly far from stupid.
‘What do you want from me? I can see that you’re leading up to something. Tell me straight out. If the price is fair, we’ll strike a deal.’
Asagawa and Fandorin exchanged glances.
‘Suga,’ the inspector said in a quiet voice. ‘We want Suga. Tell us everything you know about his part in the assassination of Minister Okubo, and we will let you go.’
The prince’s face blenched as rapidly as if he had daubed a paintbrush dunked in lead white across his forehead and cheeks.
‘I know nothing about that…’ he babbled.
‘A week ago you told Algernon Bullcox about the reward in store for Suga for doing the job so neatly,’ said Fandorin, joining the game. ‘Don’t deny it, there’s no point.’
The prince gaped at the vice-consul in horror – he evidently had not been expecting an attack from this quarter.
‘How do you…? We were alone in the room, just the two of us!’ Onokoji batted his eyelids in confusion.
Erast Petrovich was certain that this puny playboy would flinch and falter now. But instead it was the titular counsellor who flinched.
‘Ah!’ the prisoner exclaimed. ‘It’s his concubine, isn’t it? She’s spying for the Russians? But of course! There weren’t any servants in the house, only her!’
‘What concubine? Who are you talking about?’ Fandorin asked hastily (perhaps rather too hastily). His heart shrank in horror. The very last thing he wanted was to get O-Yumi into trouble! ‘You shouldn’t chat b-beside open windows where anybody at all might overhear you.’
It was hard to tell whether he had succeeded in diverting Onokoji from his dangerous suspicion with this retort. But the prince refused to speak openly.