It shines, unaware
Even of its own true name.
The star Sirius
HORSE DUNG
Fandorin was woken by someone patting him gently but insistently on the cheek.
‘O-Yumi,’ he whispered, and saw before him a face with slanting eyes, but, alas, it was not the sorceress of the night, but the secretary Shirota.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said the secretary, ‘but you simply would not wake up, and I was starting to feel alarmed…’
The titular counsellor sat up in bed and looked around. The bedroom was illumined by the slanting rays of the early sun. There no O-Yumi, nor any sign at all of her recent presence.
‘Mr Vice-Consul, I am ready to make my report,’ Shirota began, holding a sheet of paper at the ready.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Fandorin muttered, glancing under the blanket.
The bedsheet was crumpled, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe there was something left – a long hair, a crumb of powder, a scarlet trace of lipstick?
Not a thing.
Had it all been a dream?
‘Following your instructions, I concealed myself in the bushes beside the fork at which the two roads separate. At forty-three minutes past two a running man appeared from the direction of the wasteland…’
‘Sniff that!’ Fandorin interrupted, burying his nose in the pillow. ‘What is that scent?’
The secretary took the pillow and conscientiously drew air in through his nose.
‘That is the aroma of ayameh. What is that in Russian, now… iris.’
The titular counsellor’s face lit up in a happy smile.
It wasn’t a dream!
She had been here! It was the aroma of her perfume!
‘Iris is the main aroma of the present season,’ Shirota explained. ‘Women scent themselves with it and they steep the laundry in it at the washhouses. In April the aroma of the season was wistaria, in June it will be azalea.’
The smile slid off Erast Petrovich’s face.
‘May I continue?’ the Japanese asked, handing back the pillow.
And he continued his report. A minute later Fandorin had completely stopped thinking about the scent of irises and his nocturnal apparition.
The paddy fields shone unbearably brightly in the sunlight, as if the entire valley had been transformed into one immense cracked mirror. The dark cracks in the effulgent surface were the boundaries that divided the plots into little rectangles, and in each rectangle there was a figure in a broad straw hat, pottering through the water, bent double. The peasants were weeding the rice fields.
At the centre of the fields there was a small, wooded hill, crowned by a red roof with its edges curled upwards. Erast Petrovich already knew that it was an abandoned Shinto shrine.
‘The peasants don’t go there any more,’ said Shirota. ‘It’s haunted. Last year they found a dead tramp by the door. Semushi was right to choose a place like this to hide. It’s a very fine refuge for a bad man. And it has a clear view of all the approaches.’
‘And what will happen to the shrine now?’
‘Either they will burn it down and build a new one, or they will perform a ceremony of purification. The village elder and the kannusi, the priest, have not decided yet.’
A narrow embankment no more than five paces wide ran through the fields to the shrine. Erast Petrovich examined the path to the hill carefully, then the moss-covered steps leading up to the strange red wooden gateway: just two verticals and a crosspiece, an empty gateway with no gates and no fence. A gateway that did not separate anything from anything.
‘That is the torii,’ the secretary explained. ‘The gate to the Other World.’
Well, that made sense, if it led to the Other World.
The titular counsellor had an excellent pair of binoculars with twelve-fold magnification, a souvenir of the siege of Plevna.
‘I can’t see Masa,’ said Fandorin. ‘Where is he?’
‘You are looking in the wrong direction. Your servant is over there, in the communal plot. Farther left, farther left.’
The vice-consul and his assistant were lying in the thick grass at the edge of a rice field. Erast Petrovich caught Masa in the twin circles. He was no different from the peasants: entirely naked, apart from a loincloth, with a fan hanging behind his back. Except perhaps that his sides were rounder than those of the other workers.
The round-sided peasant straightened up, fanned himself and looked round towards the village. It was definitely him: fat cheeks and half-closed eyes. He looked close enough for Fandorin to flick him on the nose.
‘He has been here since the morning. He took a job as a field-hand for ten sen. We agreed that if he noticed anything special, he would hang the fan behind his back. See, the fan is behind his back. He has spotted something!’
Fandorin focused his binoculars on the hill again and started slowly examining the hunchback’s hiding place, square by square.
‘Did he come straight here from Yokohama? He d-didn’t stop off anywhere along the way?’
‘He came straight here.’
What was that white patch there, among the branches?
Erast Petrovich turned the little wheel and gave a quiet whistle. There was a man sitting in a tree. The hunchback? What was he doing up there?
But last night Semushi had been wearing a dark brown kimono, not a white one.
The man sitting in the tree turned his head. Fandorin still couldn’t make out the face, but the shaved nape glinted.
No, it wasn’t Semushi! His hair was cut in a short, stiff brush.
Fandorin moved the binoculars on. Suddenly something glinted in the undergrowth. Then again, and again.
Just adjust the focus slightly.
Oho!
A man wearing a kimono with its hem turned up was standing on an open patch of ground. He was absolutely motionless. Beside him was bamboo pole stuck into the earth.
Suddenly the man moved. His legs and trunk didn’t stir, but his sword scattered sparks of sunlight and severed bamboo rings flew off the pole: one, two, three, four. What incredible skill!
Then the miraculous swordsman swung round to face the opposite direction – apparently there was another pole there. But Erast Petrovich was not watching the sword blade any longer, he was looking at the left sleeve of the kimono. It was either twisted or tucked up.
‘Why did you strike the ground with your fist? What did you see?’ Shirota whispered eagerly in his ear.
Fandorin handed him the binoculars and pointed him in the right direction.
‘Kataudeh!’ the secretary exclaimed. ‘The man with the withered arm!’ So the others must be there!’
The vice-consul wasn’t listening, he was scribbling something rapidly in his notebook. He tore the page out and started writing on another one.
‘Right now, Shirota. Go to the Settlement as fast you can. Give this to Sergeant Lockston. Tell him the d-details yourself. The second note is for Inspector Asagawa.’
‘Also as fast as I can, right?’
‘No, on the contrary. You must walk slowly from Lockston to the Japanese police station. You can even drink tea along the way.’
Shirota gaped at the titular counsellor in amazement. Then he seemed to get the idea and he nodded.
The sergeant arrived with his entire army of six constables armed with carbines.
Erast Petrovich was waiting for the reinforcements on the approach to the village. He praised them for getting there so quickly and briefly explained the disposition of forces.
‘What, aren’t we going to rush them?’ Lockston asked, disappointed. ‘My guys are just spoiling for a scrap.’
‘N-no scrap. We’re two miles from the Settlement, beyond the consular jurisdiction.’
‘Damn the jurisdiction, Rusty! Don’t forget: these three degenerates killed a white man! Maybe not in person, but they’re all in the same gang.’