‘What does it say here?’
‘Tokyo Provincial Government,’ Asagawa said after a swift glance. ‘But that’s nothing! There are ministers and members of the State Council here, even – you won’t believe it – members of the imperial family! Nothing is sacred to this man!’
‘And what does he have there about the empress?’ Fandorin asked curiously, glancing over the inspector’s shoulder.
He couldn’t see anything interesting on the page – just some note in the same old hieroglyphic scrawl – but the inspector nudged him away impolitely with his elbow.
‘I haven’t read it and I won’t allow you to! How infamous!’
He tore up the note and a few other pieces of paper in the file with trembling fingers.
‘Listen, it’s two minutes past two,’ the titular counsellor told him, pointing to his watch. ‘This isn’t what we came here for. Where’s the file with the conspirators?’
Owing to his hieroglyphic illiteracy, Erast Petrovich had nothing to occupy himself with. While Asagawa rummaged through the shelves, the young man shone his torch in all directions. He failed to discover anything of interest. There didn’t seem to be any lever inside the secret room, it could be opened and closed only from the outside. There were gas burners protruding from the ceiling – evidently the lighting could be switched on from the office, but there was no need for that, the torch and the lamp were quite adequate.
‘I have it!’ the inspector gasped. ‘It says “Okubo” on the spine.’ He started leafing feverishly through the pages. ‘Here are my missing reports, all three of them! And this is a report from the head of the police in the city of Kagosima. He says that according to reports from his agents, the sword master Ikemura Hyoske and two of his pupils have set out for Tokyo. Description: forty-five years old, a scar on the left side of his neck and his temple, left arm twisted. His nickname is Kamiyasuri – “Glasspaper”, because he covers the hilt of his sword with glass paper – his right hand is harder than steel. It’s him, the man with the withered arm! Wait, wait, there’s more here…’ Asagawa took out three sheets of paper covered with writing in a strange brown-coloured ink. ‘It’s an oath. Written in blood. “We, the undersigned, do hereby swear on our honour not to begrudge our lives in the name of an exalted goal – to exterminate the base traitor Okubo…” There are three such documents. One of them has six signatures – that is the group that killed the minister. The second document has three signatures, and the first one is Ikemura Hyoske’s. Our Satsumans! The third document has four signatures. So there was another group that remained undiscovered. The names are here, it will not be difficult to find the plotters before they can do anything else dangerous… We have won, Fandorin-san! We have Suga in our hands! With these oaths and the stolen reports we can pin him down!’
‘He was already in our hands anyway,’ Erast Petrovich remarked coolly. ‘This delightful little archive will cost him his head without any c-conspiracies.’
Asagawa shook his head.
‘Surely you do not think that I will allow all these abominations to come pouring out? There is so much filth here, so many family secrets! There would be a wave of suicides, divorces, scandals, resignations in disgrace. No, worse than that! The new minister would take the archive for his own use, he would announce that it has been destroyed, but keep the spiciest items – just in case.’
‘Then what is to be done?’
‘We are going to destroy all this poison. Without reading it.’
‘Very n-noble,’ declared Fandorin, who could not have savoured the Japanese secrets even if he had felt any desire to do so. ‘But what are these signs? They don’t look like hieroglyphs.’
He pointed to a sheet of paper lying at the very bottom of the file. Right at the centre there was a circle with a strange squiggle inside it. Lines ran out from the circle, connecting it with other, smaller circles.
‘No, those are not hieroglyphs,’ the inspector murmured, peering at the paper. ‘At least, not Japanese hieroglyphs. I have never come across any writing like this before.’
‘It looks like a diagram of the conspiracy,’ Fandorin suggested. ‘And in code too. It would be interesting to know who is symbolised by the c-circle at the centre.’
‘It must be Suga.’
‘Unlikely. He wouldn’t have denoted himself with some kind of doodle. He would just have drawn the circle and left it at that.’
They leaned down over the mysterious diagram, with their shoulders pressed against each other. Asagawa must have breathed in a lot of dust, because he sneezed, and the sound echoed loudly under the low vaulted ceiling.
‘You’re crazy!’ Fandorin hissed. ‘Quiet!’
The Japanese waved his hand nonchalantly and answered without lowering his voice.
‘What does it matter? We no longer have to hide. As soon as we’ve destroyed the unnecessary documents, I’ll call the duty officer and explain that…’
But he didn’t finish what he was about to say.
Without the slightest warning, the secret door slammed shut with that familiar metallic clang. The wall trembled slightly and the room was suddenly as silent as the grave.
Erast Petrovich’s first reaction was purely nervous – he glanced at his watch. It showed eighteen minutes past two.
If it is eighteen
Or nineteen minutes past two -
What’s the difference?
THE SCALES FALL FROM HIS EYES
For a few minutes the burglars who had fallen into a trap behaved in a perfectly normal and predictable way – they hammered on the impervious partition with their fists, tried to find a joint in the wall with their fingers and searched for some kind of knob or lever. Then Erast Petrovich left all the fussing about to his partner and sat down on the floor with his legs crossed.
‘It’s p-pointless,’ he said in a steady voice. ‘There isn’t any lever in here.’
‘But the door closed somehow! No one came into the office, we would have heard them – I closed the catch!’
Erast Petrovich explained.
‘A timing mechanism. Set to twenty minutes. I’ve read about doors like this. They use them in large bank safes and armoured repositories – where the loot can’t be carried out very quickly. Only the owner knows how much time he has before the spring is activated, but anyone who breaks in gets caught. Calm down, Asagawa. We’re not going to get out of here.’
The inspector sat down as well, right in the corner.
‘Never mind,’ he said cheerfully. ‘We’ll sit here until the morning, then let them arrest us. We have something to show the authorities.’
‘No one will arrest us. In the morning Suga will come to work and from the disorder in the office, he’ll realise that he’s had uninvited visitors. From the chair under the crucifixion, he’ll realise that there are mice in the trap. And he’ll leave us here to die of thirst. I must admit, I’ve always been afraid of dying that way…’
The words were spoken, however, without any particular feeling. The poisoning of heart and brain had evidently already affected the instinct of self-preservation. So be it, then, thirst it is, Erast Petrovich thought languidly. What difference does it make, in the end?
Fatalism is an infectious thing. Asagawa looked at the waning flame in his lamp and said thoughtfully:
‘Don’t worry. We won’t have time to die of thirst. We’ll suffocate before Suga arrives. There’s only enough air here for four hours.’