In the doorway of the room a hand grabbed her sleeve from behind. Columbine jerked away as hard as she could, sending buttons flying. But she recovered her voice.
‘Help!’ she shouted at the top of her lungs. And then she carried on shouting. As loud as she could manage.
She darted out of the room to the left, into the kitchen. There was the door of the bathroom, she could hear the water splashing out of the tap. No, not enough time.
Left again out of the kitchen, into the corridor. The circle was completed. Where to now? Back into the room or out on to the stairs? The front door was still open.
Better on to the stairs. Maybe someone would look out of their door?
She flew out on to the dark landing with a scream and went dashing down the steps. If only she didn’t stumble!
Columbine’s long skirt hampered her. She tugged it up above her knees with a jerk.
‘Stop, thief! Stop!’ the hoarse voice roared behind her.
Why ‘thief’? Columbine wondered, and at that very moment, just before the final flight of steps, the heel of her shoe slipped sideways with a crunch.
The fugitive screeched and fell, landing with her chest and stomach on the steps, and slid downwards. She hit her elbows against the stairs, but she didn’t feel any pain, she was just very afraid.
Realising she wouldn’t have time to get up, she pressed her forehead against the floor. It was cold and smelled of dust. She squeezed her eyes shut.
The door of the entranceway banged loudly and someone shouted out: ‘Don’t move! I’ll fire!’
The hoarse voice answered: ‘Here, take this!’
There was a deafening crash and Columbine’s ears were suddenly blocked. She hadn’t been able to see anything in the dark, and now she couldn’t hear anything either.
As well as the dust, there was another smell now. An acrid smell, vaguely familiar. She remembered what it was – gunpowder. When her brother Misha used to shoot crows in the garden it had smelled like that.
She heard a faint voice in the distance.
‘Columbine! Are you alive?’
Genji’s voice.
Hands that were strong but gentle, not rough like those others, turned her over on to her back. She opened her eyes and then squeezed them shut again.
There was an electric torch shining straight into them.
‘That’s blinding,’ Columbine said.
Then Genji put the torch down on a step and she could see that he was leaning against the banisters with a smoking revolver in his hand; his top hat had slipped to one side and his coat was unbuttoned.
Columbine asked in a whisper: ‘What was all that?’
He picked up the torch again and pointed the beam to one side. Caliban was sitting by the wall, with his dead eyes staring down at the floor. There was a trickle of something dark running from his half-open mouth and another trickle, absolutely black, running from the round hole in his forehead.
He’s dead, Columbine guessed. The bookkeeper was still clutching a knife in his hand, holding it by the blade instead of the handle.
‘He was about to throw it,’ Genji explained. ‘He must have learned that from his shipmates while he was still sailing the seas. But I fired first.’
Even though her teeth were chattering and she had hic-cups, Columbine asked: ‘W-why? What f-for? I was g-going to do it anyway, myself . . .’
How strange, she thought, now I’m stammering, but he isn’t.
‘Later, later,’ Genji said to her.
He carefully picked the young lady up in his arms and carried her up the stairs. Columbine pressed her head against his chest. She felt very content just then. He was holding her so comfortably, just right. As if he had made a special study of how to carry enervated and exhausted young women.
She whispered: ‘I’m a doll, I’m a doll.’
Genji leaned his head down and asked: ‘What?’
‘You’re carrying me like a broken doll,’ she explained.
A quarter of an hour later Columbine was alone in her flat, sitting with her feet pulled up on to the armchair, wrapped in a rug and crying.
Alone because, after wrapping her in the rug, Genji had gone to get a doctor and the police.
With her feet pulled up because the entire floor was wet – the bath had overflowed.
But she was not crying because she was afraid (Genji had told her there would be nothing more to be afraid of). She was crying in grief: brave Lucifer was lying on her knees still and lifeless, like a patterned ribbon.
Columbine sobbed and sniffed as she stroked the rough scales on her rescuer’s back.
But she stopped crying when she turned to look in the mirror and saw the crimson graze on her forehead, her swollen nose and red eyes and the blue stripes on her neck.
She ought to tidy herself up a bit before Genji got back.
III. From the ‘Agents’ Reports’ File
To His Honour Lieutenant-Colonel Besikov
(Private and confidential)
Dear Lieutenant-Colonel,
You may consider the epic story of the ‘Lovers of Death’ at an end. I shall try to set forth for you the events of this evening without omitting anything of significance.
When we all gathered at the usual time at Prospero’s apartment, I immediately realised that something quite exceptional had happened. The meeting was not chaired by Blagovolsky, but the Stammerer, and it soon became clear that our Doge had been overthrown and the reins of power had been taken up by the strong hands of a new dictator, although not for long and only in order to declare the society disbanded.
It was from the Stammerer that we learned of the quite incredible events of the previous night. I will not retell them here, because you have undoubtedly been informed about everything by your own sources. I presume that the Moscow police and your people are searching for the Stammerer in order to question him about what happened, however, I cannot help you with that. It is absolutely obvious to me that the man acted correctly, and if he does not wish to meet representatives of the law (and his words certainly gave me that impression), that is his right.
The necessity for the killing, which was committed in self-defence, was also confirmed by Columbine, who almost met her end at the hands of the insane Caliban (the aspirant to whom I have referred in previous reports as the Bookkeeper – his real name is no doubt already known to you). The poor girl’s neck, which still bore the signs of the violence done to her, was covered with a scarf, a bruise was clearly visible under a thick layer of powder on her forehead, and her voice, usually so clear, was quite hoarse from crying desperately for help.
The Stammerer began his lengthy speech by denouncing the idea of suicide, a matter in which I am entirely in agreement with him. However, with your permission, I shall not reproduce this inspired monologue, since it is of no interest to your department. I will only note that the speaker was remarkably eloquent, although he stammered more than usual.
However, the information that the Stammerer provided will probably be of some use to you. This part of his speech I shall relate at length and even in the first person, without reproducing the stammer, in order to be able to interpose my own comments from time to time.
The Stammerer began as follows, or pretty much so.
‘I live abroad for most of the time and only rarely visit Moscow, since for some time now the climate of my native city (I thought he was a Muscovite, from his accent) has not been very good for my health. But I follow events here carefully: I receive letters from friends and read the major Moscow newspapers. Reports of an epidemic of suicides and the “Lovers of Death” could not fail to attract my attention, since not too long ago I happened to deal with the case of the “Nemesis” club in London – a criminal organisation which had mastered the rare criminal speciality of driving people to commit suicide in order to profit from their deaths. It is hardly surprising that the news from Moscow made me prick up my ears. I suspected that there might be a perfectly natural and practical reason for the unusually high frequency of motiveless suicides. Was the story of the “Nemesis” club being repeated, I wondered. What if certain malevolent individuals were deliberately pushing gullible or easily influenced people to take the fatal final step?