A pause. A nod.
‘Write the names.’
He wrote in English:
‘Just one name.’
And he looked at Fandorin – the agreement was the same, only now they had changed places.
Sensing that if he pressed any harder, the deal could break down, Erast Petrovich said:
‘All right. But the most important one.’
The intendant closed his eyes for a few seconds – evidently gathering himself, either for this betrayal or for his own death. Or most likely for both.
He grasped the pen resolutely, dipped it in the inkwell that was held out to him and started slowly scrawling letter after letter – not in hieroglyphs or the Latin alphabet this time, but in katakana, the syllabic Japanese alphabet that Fandorin could already read.
‘Bu’, he read. Then ‘ru’, ‘ko’, ‘ku’, ‘su’.
Bu-ru-ko-ku-su?
Bullcox!
Why, of course!
Everything immediately fell into place and the scales fell from the titular counsellor’s eyes.
Do you really want
The scales to fall from your eyes
One of these fine days?
A WORD ONCE GIVEN MUST BE KEPT
They went back to Yokohama on the seven o’clock train, the first. They didn’t bother too much about secrecy, sitting next to each other, although they didn’t talk. But then, there was no one else in the carriage apart from the vice-consul and the inspector. The second- and third-class carriages were crammed with clerks and shop assistants on their way to work in Yokohama, but it was too early for first-class passengers.
Asagawa dozed lightly for a while and then – oh, those nerves of steel! – fell into a deep, sweet sleep, even smacking his lips occasionally. Fandorin didn’t feel like sleeping. It was almost as if his body had completely renounced this trivial pastime. But something told the titular counsellor that there would be no more insomnia.
The medicine that would cure the patient of his painful condition was called ‘Bullcox’. Not that Erast Petrovich was thinking about the torment of sleepless nights at this moment, his mind was on something quite different, but at the same time a voice from somewhere in the wings kept whispering to his exhausted body: ‘Soon, you will rest soon’.
The titular counsellor’s reason, which existed independently of any voices, was concerned with a most important matter – Defining a Sequence of Logical Reasoning.
The sequence that emerged could not possibly have been more elegant.
So, at the head of the conspiracy to which the Napoleon of Japan had fallen victim, stood the Right Honourable Algernon Bullcox, agent of the government of Victoria, Empress of India and Queen of Great Britain.
The motivation for the plot was obvious:
To dispose of a ruler who strove to maintain the balance between the two Great Powers that were vying to seize control of the Pacific Ocean -England and Russia. That was one.
To bring to power the party of expansion, which would require a mighty fleet. Who would help in the forthcoming conquest of Korea? Naturally, the ruler of the waves, Britannia. That was two.
Bullcox could count on a great reward. Why, of course he could! As a result of the operation that he had successfully completed Japan would fall into the zone of British influence, followed by the whole of the Far East. That was three.
From the human point of view, it was also clear that Bullcox was capable of such a sordid, cynical undertaking.
He engaged in spying and did not try very hard to conceal the fact. That was one.
According to O-Yumi (and who could know this villain better than she did, thought Fandorin, stabbing himself in the heart), he was capable of any abominable infamy, he could even send assassins to kill a successful rival or take revenge on a woman who left him. That was two.
Of course, it was highly improbable that he had organised the conspiracy against Okubo with the approval of St James’s Palace, but he was an adventurer by nature, an ambitious man who would use any means to secure his own success. That was three.
And now, four. Prince Onokoji had said that the conspirators had a lot of money. But where would poor Satsuman samurai get money? Would they really have been able to reward Suga so generously for the artfulness that he had demonstrated? But the agent of the British crown had access to inexhaustible financial resources. The Right Honourable must have laughed heartily to himself when the high-society gossip-monger told him about the gift of the estate. Bullcox himself must have bought it and then ‘lost’ it to Suga at cards. Or if not himself, then he had acted through intermediaries – what difference did that make!
The course of his deductive reasoning was unwittingly interrupted by Asagawa, who suddenly snored blissfully in his sleep. Resting on his laurels, almost literally, thought Fandorin. Villainy had been punished, justice had triumphed, harmony had been restored. And the inspector’s sleep was not disturbed by any considerations of high politics. Or by the nightmarish events that had taken place two hours earlier in the department of police. The place must be in a fine uproar now. Or it would be very soon.
A cleaner or a zealous secretary, arriving before the start of office hours in order to tidy away a few papers, would glance into the boss’s office and see a sight that would make him feel quite unwell…
When the intendant named Bullcox, the inspector hissed something to the prisoner in Japanese. Flexing his jaw muscles, he explained his indignation to Fandorin:
‘He is an even greater scoundrel than I thought. At least the fanatics from Satsuma believed they were acting in the name of their Homeland, but this one knew they were mere pawns in a game planned by a foreigner!’
Suga bleated.
‘We can take out the hami now,’ said Erast Petrovich, who had still not recovered from his shock – he simply could not understand why this explanation had not occurred to him earlier.
Freed of the gag, the general spat and blurted out hoarsely to Asagawa:
‘And aren’t you a pawn in the hands of a foreigner?’ But then he came to his senses, remembering that he was completely in the inspector’s power, and changed his tone of voice. ‘I have kept my word. Now it is your turn. Give me a dagger.’
‘I don’t have a dagger,’ Asagawa said with a crooked grimace. ‘And if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you. I wouldn’t let you stain the noble steel with your filthy blood! Remember how you forced the hunchback to chew his tongue off? Now it is your turn. You’ve got sharp teeth, go on – if you have the courage. I shall enjoy watching.’
The intendant’s eyes narrowed in hatred and glittered with fire.
The vice-consul tried cautiously to bite the tip of his tongue and shuddered. Asagawa was cruel, and no mistake. He was testing Suga’s strength of character. If the intendant wavered, he would lose face. Then it would be possible to shake all sorts of things out of him.
None of them spoke. Then there was a strange stifled sound – it was Suga gulping.
No one was watching the door that led into the secret room, so when it slammed shut with a clang, they all started. Could twenty minutes really have gone by since the intendant had pressed the lever?
‘You don’t want to eat your own tongue,’ the inspector remarked smugly. ‘Then here is a new proposal. Look here…’ – he took a revolver out of the general’s pocket (Fandorin had not been mistaken, it was a cavalryman’s Hagström) and left one bullet in the cylinder. ‘Tell us who the other circles represent, and you won’t have to gnaw your tongue off.’
The glance that Suga cast at that revolver was beyond description. No Romeo had ever devoured his Juliet with such lust in his eyes, no shipwreck victim had ever gazed so longingly at a speck on the horizon. The titular counsellor was absolutely certain that the general would not be able to resist the temptation. He was certain – and he was mistaken.