Erast Fandorin’s first thought was, He’s stabbed him in the liver, and from somewhere or other his memory cast up a sentence from the gymnasium textbook on biology—“Liver—an organ in the body of an animal that separates blood from bile.” Then he saw Akhtyrtsev die. Erast Fandorin had never seen anyone die before, but somehow he knew immediately that Akhtyrtsev had died. His eyes seemed to turn to glass, his lips distended spasmodically, and from between them there erupted a jet of dark, cherry-red blood. Very slowly and even, it seemed to Fandorin, elegantly, the white-eyed man pulled out the knife, which was no longer gleaming, and turned calmly and slowly toward Erast Fandorin so that his face was very close: luminous eyes with black dots for pupils, thin bloodless lips. The lips moved, distinctly articulating a word: “Azazel.” And then time’s expansion came to an end. Time contracted like a spring, then straightened out and struck Erast Fandorin in the right side with a force so great that he fell backward and banged the back of his head painfully against the edge of the porch’s parapet. What is this? What is this ‘azazel’?—wondered Fandorin. Am I asleep, then? And he also thought, His knife must have hit the Lord Byron. Whalebone. An inch-thin waist.
The doors burst open and a jolly company came tumbling out, laughing, onto the porch.
“Oho, gentlemen, we have an entire battle of Borodino here,” a drunken merchant’s voice cried out merrily. “Weren’t up to it, poor chaps! Can’t take their drink!”
Erast Fandorin raised himself up a little, pressing one hand against his hot, wet side, to take a look at the man with the white eyes.
But strange to tell, there was no man with white eyes. Akhtyrtsev was lying where he had fallen—facedown across the steps—and his top hat lay where it had rolled a little further away, but the functionary had disappeared without trace, vanished into thin air. And there was not a single soul to be seen anywhere in the street. Nothing but the dull glow of the streetlamps.
Then suddenly the streetlamps did the oddest thing—they began turning and then spinning around and around, faster and faster. First everything became very bright, and then it went absolutely dark.
CHAPTER SIX
in which the man of the future makes his appearance
“LIE DOWN, LIE DOWN, THERE’S A GOOD CHAP.” said Xavier Grushin from the doorway when the embarrassed Erast Fandorin lowered his legs from the hard divan. “What did the doctor tell you to do? I know all about it—I made inquiries: two weeks in bed after discharge, so that the cut can heal up properly and your concussed brain can settle back into place, and you haven’t even been lying down for ten days yet.”
He sat down and mopped his crimson bald spot with a checkered handkerchief.
“O-oh, that sun’s really warm today, really warm. Here, I’ve brought you some marzipan and fresh cherries—help yourself. Where shall I put them?”
Grushin surveyed the dark, narrow box of a room in which Fandorin lodged. There was nowhere to put his bundle of presents: the host was lying on the divan, Xavier Grushin himself was sitting on the chair, and the table was cluttered with heaps of books. The room contained no other furniture, not even a cupboard, and the numerous items of the tenant’s wardrobe were hanging on nails hammered into the walls.
“Does it ache a bit?”
“Not at all,” Erast Fandorin said, not entirely truthfully. “The stitches could come out tomorrow. It just scraped my ribs a bit, but otherwise it’s fine. And my head is in perfectly good order.”
“You might as well be sick for a while anyway—your salary’s going through.” Xavier Grushin gave a little frown of guilt. “Don’t be angry with me, my dear fellow, for not popping ‘round to see you for so long. I dare say you were thinking badly of the old man—when he needed to get his report written he was ‘round to the hospital in a flash, but since then he has no more use for me, doesn’t even show his face. I sent someone to the doctor to inquire, but I just couldn’t get away to see you myself. The things that are going on in our department—we’re in there all day and all night, too, and that’s the honest truth.” Grushin shook his head and lowered his voice confidentially. “That Akhtyrtsev of yours wasn’t just anybody: he was the grandson of His Highness Chancellor Korchakov, no less.”
“You don’t say!” Fandorin gasped.
“His father’s the ambassador in Holland, married for the second time, and your acquaintance here in Moscow used to live with his aunt, the Princess Korchakova, in a private palace on Goncharnaya Street. The princess passed away last year and left her entire estate to him, and he already had plenty from his deceased mother. It’s pandemonium down in the office now, let me tell you. First of all they demanded that the case should be personally supervised by the governor-general, Prince Dolgoruky himself. But there is no case, and no leads to make a start on. Apart from you, nobody saw the killer. As I told you last time, Bezhetskaya has vanished into thin air. The house is empty. No servants and no papers. It’s a wild-goose chase. Who she is, is a mystery; where she came from no one knows. According to her passport she’s a noblewoman from Vilnius. They sent an inquiry to Vilnius, and there’s no such person registered there. All right. His Excellency called me in to see him a week ago. “Don’t take this amiss, Xavier,” he said. “I’ve known you for a long time and I respect you as a conscientious officer, but this affair is just too big for you to handle. There’s a special investigator coming from St. Petersburg, a special assignments officer attached to the chief of gendarmes and head of the Third Section, His Excellency Adjutant General Lavrenty Arkadievich Mizinov.” You get the idea—a really big noise. One of the new men, a man of the people, a man of the future. Does everything scientifically. An expert in all sorts of clever business—we’re no match for him.” Xavier Grushin snorted angrily. “So he’s a man of the future, and Grushin is a man of the past. All right. He got here three days ago, in the morning. That would make it Wednesday the twenty-second. He’s called Ivan Franzevich Brilling, a state counselor. At thirty years of age! The whole office has been set on its ear! It’s Saturday today, and I was in from nine o’clock this morning. And last night till eleven o’clock everyone was in meetings, drawing charts. Remember the refreshment room, where we used to drink tea. Well, now where the samovar used to stand there’s a telegraph apparatus and a telegrapher on duty ‘round the clock. You can send a telegram to Vladivostok, even to Berlin if you like, and the answer comes back straightaway. He’s kicked out half the agents and brought down half of his own from Peter, and they obey only his orders. He questioned me meticulously about everything and listened to what I said very carefully. I thought he would retire me, but, no, apparently Superintendent Grushin still has his uses. Actually, my dear chap, that’s the reason I came to see you,” Xavier Feofi-laktovich Grushin suddenly recalled. “I wanted to warn you. He was intending to come here himself today. He wants to question you in person. Don’t you be upset—there’s no blame attached to you. You were even wounded in the course of carrying out your duty. But be sure not to put the old man on the spot, will you? Who could have known that the case would take a turn like this?”
Erast Fandorin cast a miserable glance around his wretched abode. A fine impression the big man from St. Petersburg would get of him.