So many things in this story were unclear, but Fandorin was struck most forcibly of all by Vsevolod Vitalievich’s strange behaviour.
‘He came running in?’
The punctilious Doronin bursting into his assistant’s apartment first thing in the morning? Something really extraordinary must have happened for him to do that.
Shirota faltered and did not answer.
‘And what did Dr Twigs say?’
The two Japanese exchanged glances again. And once again there was no answer.
Masa said something in an anxious voice and the secretary translated it.
‘You need to lie down and change your compress every hour and you must not worry. Dr Albertini says you have a very serious concussion.’
‘Why Albertini and n-not Twigs?’
Another animated discussion in Japanese, this time without any translation.
Erast Petrovich’s head really was aching terribly, and he felt nauseous, but all this mystery was beginning to get on his nerves.
Damn the doctors and the consul. There was more important business to deal with.
‘Masa, Asagawa-san koko, hayaku!’ [x] the titular counsellor ordered.
The servant batted his eyelids and gave Shirota a frightened glance. The secretary cleared his throat in warning.
Erast Petrovich’s heart started pounding, beating faster and faster with every second. He jerked upright on the bed and bit his lip to stop himself crying out from the pain.
‘Masa, I must get dressed!’
Fandorin returned to the consulate after two in the morning, shattered by the scale of the catastrophe. He would probably have been even more shaken if not for the constant dizziness and spasms of pain that repeatedly transfixed his cranium from temple to temple, imparting an air of unreality to everything that happened, as if it were some appalling nightmare. The horror of it all made it too far-fetched to believe. Things like that didn’t happen in waking life.
Inspector Asagawa had been killed by hooligans. And, if the Japanese police could be believed, purely by chance, in a pointless, drunken brawl.
Sergeant Lockston had died of a heart attack in his office.
And an autopsy had shown that a blood vessel had burst in Dr Twigs’ brain.
All of this was already highly unlikely, but a coincidence of chance events was possible, in theory – if not for that invisible man, who had killed the witness, and the disappearance of the three clues.
The coded diagram had disappeared from the doctor’s study. No oaths written in blood had been discovered on the sergeant’s body. And the police knew nothing about any file of reports supposedly in the inspector’s possession.
As soon as Fandorin tried to fathom the meaning of this monstrous sequence of events, his dizziness intensified and he was swamped by a wave of nausea. And he simply didn’t have the strength to digest and extrapolate on the ‘Don Tsurumaki’ clue.
But the vice-consul was tormented most of all by O-Yumi’s disappearance. Where was she? Would she come back? What was this damned business about a mountain herb?
Gibberish. Insane, crazy gibberish.
Just as Fandorin was approaching the consulate, a two-seater kuruma drove up from the direction of Main Street, and out got Doronin, with the navy agent Bukhartsev (what the hell was he doing here?). They spotted the vice-consul walking towards them and stared at him dourly.
‘Here he is, the hero,’ the lieutenant captain said loudly to Vsevolod Vitalievich. ‘You told me he was almost at death’s door, but now see how chirpy he looks. If I’d only known, I wouldn’t have come, I’d have ordered him to report to Tokyo.’
This beginning boded nothing good, but then, how could there possibly be anything good in all this?
Doronin looked hard into his assistant’s face, which was as white as if it had been dusted with chalk.
‘How are you feeling? Why did you get up?’
‘Thank you, I am p-perfectly all right.’
Fandorin shook hands with the consul, but merely exchanged hostile glances with Bukhartsev, who demonstratively hid his hands behind his back. Well, at the end of the day, they worked in different departments, and they were both on the ninth level of the table of ranks, so no insubordination was involved.
But rank was one thing, and position was quite another, and the sailor immediately demonstrated who was in charge here.
In the consul’s office, he occupied the incumbent’s place at the desk, without bothering to ask permission. Vsevolod Vitalievich had to take a seat on another chair and Fandorin remained standing – not out of diffidence, but because he was afraid that if he sat down, he would not be able to get up again. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.
‘Secretary! Hey, whatever your name is…’ the lieutenant captain yelled through the open door. ‘Stay close, you might be needed!’
‘Yes, sir,’ said a voice in the corridor.
Doronin frowned vaguely but said nothing. And Fandorin realised that Bukhartsev had said that to intensify the menace of the situation, as if some rigorous trial were about to begin here and now, and sentence would be pronounced, and it would need to be dictated.
‘His Excellency and I have not been able to get anything intelligible out of your superior,’ Bukhartsev said in an aggressively assertive tone, fixing Erast Petrovich with a gimlet-eyed stare. ‘Vsevolod Vitalievich merely keeps repeating that he bears responsibility for everything, but he can’t explain anything in a way that makes sense. So I have been instructed to conduct an inquiry. You, Fandorin, are to consider yourself answerable to the ambassador in my person. Indeed, even more than that, answerable to the state of Russia.’
The titular counsellor paused slightly before making a slight bow. So be it, to the state.
‘Well then, the first matter,’ the lieutenant captain continued in the style of a public prosecutor. ‘The Japanese police of Yokohama have discovered the body of Prince Onokoji, a member of the very highest levels of society and relative of many influential individuals, near some warehouses.’
‘Near some warehouses?’ Erast Petrovich thought in surprise, and then recalled his servant’s conspiratorial grimace. So, before he carried his unconscious master away from the pier, he had had the wits to move the body somewhere else. Well done, Masa.
‘On examination of the papers of the head of the foreign police, following his sudden death, it emerged that the aforementioned Prince Onokoji had been kept under arrest in the municipal jail.’ Bukhartsev raised his voice, emphasising every single word now. ‘And he had been confined there at the insistence of the Russian vice-consul! What does this mean, Fandorin? Why this arbitrary arrest, and of such an important individual? The whole truth, with no dissimulation! That is the only thing that can mitigate in any way the punishment that awaits you!’
‘I am not afraid of punishment,’ Erast Petrovich said coolly. ‘I will expound the facts as I know them, by all means. Although I must state in advance that I acted entirely at my own discretion and risk, without informing the c-consul.’