This final observation was occasioned by the fact that, before the attackers stepped on to the rice-straw mats, they kicked off their wooden sandals. And then there was a kind of brawl that Fandorin had never seen before, although, despite his young age, the titular counsellor had already been involved in several bloody altercations.
In this unpleasant situation, Erast Petrovich acted rationally and coolly: he caught Sophia Diogenovna as she swooned in horror, dragged her into the farthest corner and shielded her with his body. Shirota was there beside him in an instant, repeating an unfamiliar word in a panicky voice: ‘Yakuza, Yakuza!’
‘What’s that you’re saying?’ Fandorin asked him as he watched the battle develop.
‘Bandits! I warned you! There’s going to be an Incident! Ah, this is an Incident!’
And the clerk was quite right about that – a most serious incident was shaping up.
The gamblers and idle onlookers scattered in all directions. First they pressed themselves back against the wall and then, taking advantage of the absence of any guards on the door, they ran for it. Fandorin could not follow their sensible example – he could not abandon the young lady, and the disciplined Shirota clearly had no intention of abandoning his superior. The clerk even attempted, in turn, to shield the diplomat with his own body, but Erast Petrovich moved the Japanese aside – he was blocking his view.
The young man was rapidly seized by the excitement that seizes any individual of the male sex at the sight of an affray, even if it has nothing to do with him and he is an altogether peaceable individual. The breathing quickens, the blood flows twice as fast, the hands fold themselves into fists and, in defiance of reason, in defiance of the instinct of self-preservation, the desire arises to dash headlong into the free-for-all, doling out blind, fervent blows to left and right.
In this fight, however, almost no blind blows were struck. Perhaps even none at all. The fighters did not bawl out profanities, they only grunted and screeched furiously.
The attackers’ leader seemed to be the man with the moustache. He was the first to throw himself into the fray and smack the surviving doorman very deftly across the ear with the end of his pole – apparently only lightly, but the man fell flat on his back and did not get up again. The pair who had followed the man with the moustache started lashing out, one with his chain and the other with his piece of wood, and they laid out the three guards in white bandanas.
But that was not the end of the battle – far from it.
Unlike the frenetic fellow with the moustache, the hunchback did not go looking for trouble. He stayed behind his men, shouting out instructions. New warriors came dashing out from back rooms somewhere, and the attackers also started taking punishment.
The hunchback’s fighters were armed with long daggers (or perhaps short swords; Erast Petrovich would have found it hard to give a precise definition of those blades fifteen to twenty inches long) and they handled their weapons rather deftly. One might have expected a bamboo pole and a short wooden rod, or the bare hands with which the giant and the titch fought, to be useless against steel, but nonetheless, the scales were clearly not tipping in the ‘Rakuen’s’ favour.
Chubby Face struck out with his feet as well as his hands, managing to hit one man on the forehead and another on the chin. His elephantine comrade acted more majestically and simply: with a nimbleness that was quite incredible for such vast dimensions, he grabbed an opponent by the wrist of the hand clutching a dagger and jerked, flinging him first to the floor and then against the wall. His massive ham-like hands, completely covered with red tattoos, possessed a truly superhuman strength.
The only persons present to remain indifferent to the battle were the spinster Blagolepova, still in a swoon, and the opium addicts in their state of bliss, even though every now and then the blood from some severed artery splashed as far as the mattresses. Once the latest victim of the mountainous man-thrower crashed down on to a dozing Chinaman, but the temporary resident of paradisiacal pastures merely smiled dreamily.
The white bandanas backed towards the counter, losing warriors on the way: some lay with their heads split open, some groaned as they clutched a broken arm. But the raiders suffered losses too: the virtuoso master of the wooden rod impaled his chest on a sharp blade; the chain-bearer fell, skewered from both sides. The chubby-faced prancer was still alive, but he had taken a heavy blow to the temple from a sword-hilt and was sitting on the floor, doltishly wagging his half-shaved head.
But now the hunchback was squeezed into a corner and his two most dangerous enemies – the tattooed giant and the man with the moustache under a hook-nose – were advancing on him.
The owner pressed his hump against the counter, flipped over with amazing agility and ended up on the other side. But that was hardly likely to save him.
The raiders’ leader stepped forward and started twirling his weapon through the air in a whistling figure of eight, just barely touching it with his fingertips.
The hunchback raised his hand. And a six-chamber revolver glinted in it.
‘And about time too,’ Erast Petrovich remarked to his assistant. ‘He c-could have thought of that a bit sooner.’
The face of the bandit with the moustache was suddenly a mask of amazement, as if he had never even seen a firearm before. The hand holding the pole whirled upwards, but the shot rang out too quickly. The bullet struck the bandit on the bridge of the nose and knocked him off his feet. Blood oozed out of the black hole slowly and reluctantly. The dead man’s face was still frozen in an expression of bewilderment.
The last remaining raider was also dumbfounded. His plump lower lip drooped and his narrow eyes started blinking rapidly in their cushions of fat.
The hunchback shouted out some kind of order. One of the guards got up off the floor, swaying on his feet. Then a second, and a third, and a fourth.
They took a firm grip of the giant’s arms, but he gave a light, almost casual shrug, and the white bandanas went flying off and away. Then the owner of the dive calmly discharged the other five cartridges into the hulk’s chest. The huge man only jerked as the bullets ripped into his massive body. He swayed for a moment or two, wreathed in powder smoke, and sat down on the straw mats.
‘At least half a dozen c-corpses,’ said Erast Petrovich, summing up the outcome of the fight. ‘We have to call the police.’
‘We have to get away as quickly as possible!’ protested Shirota. ‘What a terrible Incident! The Russian vice-consul at the scene of a bandit massacre. Ah, what a blackguard that man Semushi is.’
‘Why?’ Fandorin asked in amazement. ‘After all, he was defending his own life and his establishment. They would have killed him otherwise.’
‘You do not understand. Genuine Yakuza will have nothing to do with gunpowder! They kill only with cold steel or their bare hands! What a disgrace! What is Japan coming to! Let’s go!’
Roused by the shots, Sophia Diogenovna sat up and pulled in her feet. The clerk helped her to get up and pulled her towards the exit.
The consular functionary followed but he kept looking around. He saw the guards dragging the dead behind the counter, carrying and leading away the wounded. They pinned the stunned titch’s arms behind his back and emptied a jar of water over him.
‘What are you doing?’ Shirota called from the doorway. ‘Hurry!’
‘Wait for me outside. I’ll just c-collect my winnings.’
But the titular counsellor did not move towards the table where the silver was lying in a blood-spattered heap, he moved towards the counter – the owner was standing there and the Yakuza who had been seized had been dragged across to him.