Feeling highly annoyed, he set off towards the door, but stopped in the corridor before he got there. He mustn’t! Mr Asagawa had warned him very strictly: no night visitors, no opening the door for anyone.
‘Doctor! Is that you?’ a voice said outside. ‘Dr Twigs? I saw the plate on your door. Help me, for God’s sake!’
It was an agitated, almost tearful male voice with a Japanese accent.
‘I’m Jonathan Yamada, senior sales clerk at Simon, Evers and Company. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, open up!’
‘Why, what’s happened?’ asked Twigs, without the slightest intention of opening up.
‘My wife’s gone into labour!’
‘But I’m not an obstetrician. You need Dr Buckle, he lives on…’
‘I know, I was taking my wife to Dr Buckle! But the carriage overturned! Just round the corner here! Doctor, I beg you! She’s hurt her head, there’s blood! She’ll die, Doctor!’
Twigs heard low, muffled sobbing.
If it had been anything else, Lancelot Twigs would probably not have opened the door, for he was a man of his word. But he remembered his poor Jenny and his own helplessness and hopeless despair.
‘Just a moment… just a moment.’
And he opened the door slightly, without taking it off the chain.
He saw a plump Japanese man in a bowler hat and frock coat, with his trembling face streaming with tears. The man immediately went down on his knees and held his hands up to the doctor.
‘I beg you! Come quickly!’
There was no one else in the street.
‘You know, I’m not well,’ Twigs muttered in embarrassment. ‘Dr Albertini, an excellent surgeon, lives on Hommura-dori Street. It’s only ten minutes away from here…’
‘While I run there, my wife will bleed to death! Save her!’
‘Ah, what is to be done with you!’
Of course, a man should keep his word, but there was also the Hippocratic oath…
He sighed and took the door off the chain.
The senior sales clerk Jonathan Yamada sobbed.
‘Thank you! Thank you! Allow me to kiss your hand.’
‘Nonsense! Come in. I’ll just change my shoes and get my instruments. Wait in the hallway, I’ll only be a moment.’
The doctor set off quickly towards his study – to get his bag and conceal the secret diagram. Or would it be best to take it with him? No, that probably wasn’t a good idea.
Either the sales clerk didn’t hear that he was supposed to wait in the hallway, or he was too agitated to think clearly, but he tagged along after the doctor, babbling all the time about kissing his hand.
‘At least allow me to shake your noble hand!’
‘Oh, be my guest,’ said Twigs, holding out his open right hand and taking hold of the door with his left. ‘I have to leave you for just a second…’
In his emotional fervour Jonathan Yamada squeezed the doctor’s hand with all his might.
‘Ow!’ Twigs exclaimed. ‘That hurts!’
He raised his hand to his eyes. A small drop of blood oozed out of the base of his middle finger.
The sales clerk started fussing again.
‘For God’s sake, forgive me! I have a ring, an old one, a family heirloom. Sometimes it turns round, it’s a bit too big. Did I scratch you? Did I scratch you? Oh, oh! I’m so sorry! Let me bandage it, I have a handkerchief, it’s clean!’
‘Don’t bother, it’s nothing,’ Twigs said with a frown, licking the wound with his tongue. ‘I’ll only be a moment. Wait.’
He closed the door behind him, walked across to the desk and staggered – everything had suddenly gone dark. He grabbed the top of the desk with both hands.
The sales clerk had apparently not stayed in the corridor after all, he had come into the study too, and now he was coolly rummaging through the doctor’s papers.
Twigs, however, was no longer concerned about Jonathan Yamada’s strange behaviour, he was feeling very unwell indeed.
He looked at the photograph of Jenny in a silver frame, standing on the small chest of drawers, and couldn’t tear his eyes away.
Lancelot’s retouched wife gazed back at him with a trusting, affectionate smile.
Everything changes,
Except for the same old face
In an old photo
DONG, DONG
Erast Petrovich did not sleep for very long, he kept glancing at his watch, and at half-past three he quietly got up. O-Yumi was asleep and he looked at her for half a minute, with an exceptionally powerful feeling that he would have found hard to express in words: never before had the world seemed so fragile and at the same time so durable; it could shatter into glassy fragments at the slightest breath of wind, or it could withstand the onslaught of the most violent hurricane.
The titular counsellor put his boots on in the corridor. Masa was sitting on the floor in front of the cupboard, with his head lowered on to his chest. Fandorin touched him on the shoulder and he jumped to his feet.
‘Go and sleep,’ Fandorin said in a whisper. ‘Neru. I’ll keep watch for a while.’
‘Hai,’ Masa said with a yawn, and set off towards his own room.
Erast Petrovich waited until he heard the sound of peaceful snuffling and smacking lips (he did not have to wait for more than a minute), and paid a visit to the prince.
Onokoji seemed to have made himself rather comfortable in his refuge. The shelves holding Masa’s supplies and small household items had been concealed by a blanket, there was a lamp, now extinguished, standing on the floor, and the remains of supper were lying on an empty crate. The prince himself was sleeping serenely, with his thin lips set in a subtle smile – His Excellency was apparently reposing in the delightful embrace of sweet dreams. After O-Yumi, to watch anyone else sleeping, especially an individual as distasteful as this one, seemed blasphemous to Erast Petrovich. Moreover, the source of the wondrous nocturnal visions was not in any doubt – there was an empty syringe glinting beside the pillow.
‘Get up,’ said Fandorin, shaking the witness by the shoulder. ‘Sh-sh-sh-sh. It is I, do not be afraid.’
But the idea of being afraid never entered Onokoji’s head. He opened his bleary eyes and smiled even more widely, still under the influence of the narcotic.
‘Get up. Get dressed. We’re going out.’
‘For a walk?’ The prince giggled. ‘With you, my dear friend – to the ends of the earth.’
As he pulled on his trousers and shoes, he jigged and twirled around, jabbering away without a pause – the vice-consul had to tell him to be quiet.
Fandorin led his disorderly companion out of the building by the elbow. To be on the safe side, he kept his other hand in his pocket, on the butt of his Herstal, but he didn’t take the gun out, in order not to frighten the prince.
It was drizzling and there was a smell of fog. As the fresh air started bringing Onokoji to his senses, he glanced round at the empty promenade and asked:
‘Where are you taking me?’
‘To a safer place,’ the titular counsellor explained, and Onokoji immediately calmed down.
‘I heard a woman’s voice in your apartment,’ he said in a sly voice. ‘And that voice sounded very familiar. Ve-ry, ve-ry familiar.’
‘That’s none of your business.’
It was a long walk to the thirty-seventh pier, long enough for the effect of the dope to wear off. The witness stopped jabbering and looked around nervously more and more often, but he didn’t ask any more questions. He must have been feeling cold – his shoulders were trembling slightly. Or perhaps the trembling was the result of the drug?
This looked like the place. Fandorin saw the number ‘37’ daubed in white paint on a low godaun. A long pier stretched out from the shore into the sea, its beginning lit up by a street lamp, and its far end lost in darkness. Set along it were the black silhouettes of boats, with their mooring cables creaking.