Sophia Diogenovna was weeping quietly, inconsolably. Fandorin’s cambric handkerchief was already soaked through, and she took out her own, which had dried off slightly.
‘What kind of game is this?’ Erast Petrovich asked curiously. ‘Is it d-difficult?’
‘No, it is absolutely simple. It is called “Choka-hanka” – that is, “Odds and evens”. If you place money to the left of that line there, it means you are betting on evens. If you place it on the right, you are betting on odds.’ The clerk spoke in nervous haste, all the while tugging the vice-consul towards the door with his finger and thumb. ‘Do let us go. This is absolutely not a good place.’
‘Well then, I’ll try it too. I believe at the current rate the yen is worth two roubles?’
Erast Petrovich squatted down awkwardly, took out his wallet and counted out fifteen red ten-rouble notes. That made exactly seventy-five yen. The embassy functionary put his stake to the left of the line.
The owner of the den was not at all surprised by the sight of banknotes with a portrait of the bearded Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov; Russians had evidently been rather frequent visitors to the ‘Rakuen’. But the hunchback was surprised by the size of the stake, for none of the other players had put more than five yen on the table.
Everything went very quiet. The idle onlookers moved closer, with the guards in white bandanas who had given poor Shirota such a bad fright towering over them. A stocky, round-faced Japanese with a little waxed ponytail on the shaven back of his head had been about to move towards the door, but his attention was caught too. He changed his mind about leaving and froze on the spot.
The little cup swayed in the hunchback’s strong hand and the dice rattled against its thin walls – a sweep of the arm, and the two little dice went tumbling across the low table. The red one rolled over a few times and stopped, showing five dots on its upper surface. The blue one skipped as far as the very edge and stopped right in front of Erast Petrovich, displaying three dots.
A sigh ran round the table.
‘Did I win?’ Erast Petrovich asked Shirota.
‘Yes!’ the clerk said in a whisper. His eyes were blazing in elation.
‘Well then, tell him that he owes me seventy-five yen. He can give the money to Miss Blagolepova.’
Erast Petrovich started getting up, but the owner grabbed his arm.
‘No! Must play three! Rule!’
‘He says that under the rules of the establishment, you have to play at least three times,’ said Shirota, pale-faced, although Fandorin had already understood the meaning of what was said.
The clerk apparently tried to argue, but the owner, who had just tipped a heap of yen on to the table, started shifting them back towards him. It was clear that he would not let the money go without repeating the game.
‘Leave it,’ Erast Petrovich said with a shrug. ‘If he wants to play, we’ll play. It will be worse for him.’
Once again the dice rattled in the little cup. Now everyone on the room had gathered round the table, apart from the apathetic smokers and the two guards at the door, but even they stood up on tiptoe, trying to get at least a glimpse of something over the bowed backs.
The only person who was bored was the titular counsellor. He knew that by a mysterious whim of fate he always won in any game of chance, even in games of which he did not know the rules. So why should he be concerned about a stupid game of ‘Odds and evens’? In his place another man would have become a millionaire ages ago, or else gone insane, like Pushkin’s Herman in The Queen of Spades, who was unable to endure the mystical whimsicality of Fortune. But Fandorin had made it a rule always to trust in miracles and not attempt to squeeze them into the pigeonholes of human logic. If miracles happened, then Thank You, Lord – looking a gift horse in the mouth was bad form.
Erast Petrovich barely even glanced at the table when the dice were cast for the second time. Once again the blue die was slower to settle than the red one.
The spectators shed their reserve and the air rang with exclamations.
‘They are saying: “The blue die has fallen in love with the gaijin!” Shirota, red-faced now, shouted in the titular counsellor’s ear and started raking the heap of white and yellow coins towards him.
‘Madam, there is your father’s money,’ said Fandorin, setting aside the heap of money lost by the owner in the previous game.
‘Damare!’ the hunchback roared at the spectators.
He looked terrifying. His eyes were bloodshot, his Adam’s apple was trembling, his humped chest was heaving.
The servant girl dragged a jangling sack across the floor. The owner untied the laces with trembling hands and began quickly setting out little columns on the table, each column containing ten coins.
He’s going to try to win it all back, Erast Petrovich realised, and suppressed a yawn.
One of the bruisers guarding the door finally succumbed and set off towards the table, which was almost completely covered with little silver columns that gleamed dully.
This time the hunchback shook the little cup for at least a minute before he could bring himself to throw. Everyone watched his hands, mesmerised. Only Fandorin, firmly convinced of the immutability of his gambler’s luck, was gazing around curiously.
And that was why he saw the chubby-faced Japanese edging slyly towards the door. Why was he being so furtive? Had he not settled his bill? Or had he filched something?
The dice struck against the wood and everyone leaned down over the table, shouldering each other aside, but Fandorin was observing the young moon-faced youth.
His behaviour was quite astonishing. Once he had backed away as far as the guard, who was totally absorbed in the game, even though he had remained at the door, Moon-face struck the guard on the neck with his open hand in a fantastically rapid movement. The big brute collapsed on to the floor without a sound and the sneak thief (if he was a thief) was away and gone: he slid the bolt open soundlessly and slipped outside.
Erast Petrovich merely shook his head, impressed by such adroitness, and turned back to the table. What had he staked his money on? Evens, wasn’t it?
The little red cube had stopped on 2, the blue one was still rolling. A second later a dozen throats let out a roar so loud that the titular counsellor was deafened.
Shirota hammered his superior on the back, shouting something inarticulate. Sophia Diogenovna gazed at Fandorin through eyes radiant with happiness.
The blue die was lying there, displaying six large black dots.
Oh why does it love
Only the indifferent,
The fleet tumbling die?
THE FLAG OF A GREAT POWER
Pushing his way through the others, Shirota started scooping the silver back into the sack. The room was filled with a melancholy jingling sound, but the music did not continue for long.
A loud, furious bellow issued simultaneously from several throats and a rabble of most daunting-looking natives came bursting into the room.
The first to run in was a moustachioed, hook-nosed fellow with his teeth bared in a ferocious grin and a long bamboo pole in his hands. Another two flew in behind him, bumping their shoulders together in the doorway – one slicing an iron chain through the air with a whistle, the other holding an odd-looking contrivance: a short wooden rod attached to a cord with an identical wooden rod at the other end. Tumbling in after them came a hulk of such immense height and stature that in Moscow he would have been shown at a fairground – Erast Petrovich had not even suspected that there were specimens like this to be found among the puny Japanese nation. Rolling in last of all came the titch who had recently gone out, so his strange behaviour was finally explained.
Two gangs arguing with each other over something, Erast Petrovich realised. Exactly the same as at home. Only our cut-throats don’t take off their shoes.