‘And who are these people, Erast Petrovich?’ Her Highness asked, pointing timidly to the hapless kidnappers lying completely motionless. ‘Are they unconscious?’
Before replying, the dark-haired man went to each of the four men lying on the ground in turn, felt the arteries in their necks and shook his head four times. The last one he examined was the dreadful man with the beard. Fandorin turned him over onto his back and even to me, a man totally ignorant in such matters, it was perfectly clear that he was dead – the gleam of his motionless eyes was so completely lifeless. But Fandorin leaned down lower over the body, took hold of the beard between his finger and thumb and gave it a sudden jerk.
Her Highness cried out in surprise, and such crude familiarity with death seemed indecent even to me. However, the black beard parted easily from the face andwas left in Fandorin’s hand.
I saw that the dead man’s crimson features were pitted with pockmarks and he had a forked white scar on his cheek.
‘This is the famous Warsaw bandit Lech Penderetski, also kn-known as Blizna, which means Marked One or Scar,’ Fandorin stated calmly, as if he were introducing someone he knew well, and then added, almost to himself: ‘So that’s what’s going on . . .’
‘Are all these men really dead?’ I asked, realising with a sudden shudderwhat a terrible situation the royal family could find itself in as a result of this incident. If some stroller were to peep round the corner now, the scandal that broke out would echo round the world. Just think of it . . . an attempt to kidnap a cousin of the Russian tsar! Four men killed! And some Warsaw bandit or other! The sacred solemnity of the coronation ceremony would be completely shattered!
‘We have to get them into the carriage immediately!’ I exclaimed with a fervour untypical of me in normal circumstances. ‘Will your butler consent to assist me?’
While the Japanese and I piled the bodies into the carriage, I felt terribly anxious that someone might catch us engaged in this rather disreputable activity. Everything about the business was far from customary for me. Not only was there blood flowing down my face from my bruised forehead and broken lip, I had also stained my new promenading tunic with blood that was not my own.
And so I did not hear what Her Highness and Fandorin were talking about. But to judge from her flushed cheeks, she must have been thanking the mysterious gentleman again for saving her.
‘Where is His Highness?’ I asked Mademoiselle as soon as I recovered my breath.
‘I left him in ze . . .’ She clicked her fingers, trying to remember the word, but could not. ‘Ze quayside? Ze dock for ships?’
‘The arbour,’ I prompted her. ‘Let’s go together. His Highness must be feeling very frightened.’
Beyond the bushes there was a rather extensive lawn, with a lacy white wooden arbour standing at its centre.
When we did not find Mikhail Georgievich in it, we started calling for him, thinking that the grand duke must have decided to play hide and seek with us.
Our shouts brought Fandorin. He looked around on all sides and suddenly squatted down on his haunches, examining something in the grass.
Itwas the pink Chinese sugar lollipop, which had been crushed by some heavy object, probably a heel.
‘Damn, damn, damn!’ Fandorin exclaimed, striking himself on the thigh with his fist. ‘I ought to have foreseen this!’
1Little Red Riding Hood.
2And she went through the forest to see her grandmother.
3Don’t point!
4What do you want that rubbish for?
5I just want it that’s all.
6Get the grand duke away!
7I‘m coming! I’m coming!
7 May
I shall not describe the events of the evening and the night that followed His Highness’s disappearance, because in effect there were no events as such. The primary concern of those who were aware of what had happened was to keep the matter secret, and so from the outside everything appeared as if nothing had happened at all, except for the constant ringing of the telephones and the over-reckless pace at which horsemen raced round the triangle formed by the Hermitage, the Petrovsky Palace and the governor general’s residence.
All of this carefully concealed but extremely frenetic (not to say chaotic) activity produced absolutely no result, since the most important thing remained unclear: who could havewanted to kidnap His Majesty’s little cousin and why? And the mystery was not cleared up until the morning, when a letter without any stamp arrived at the Hermitage together with the ordinary municipal post – the postman himself was unable to say how it could have got into his bag in that condition.
As a result of this letter the sovereign himself, having received his grateful Asian subjects His Highness the Emir of Bukhara and His Grace the Khan of Khiva in the morning, postponed a parade at the Khodynsk Field at the last moment on the pretext of the cold and rainyweather and, accompanied only by the head of the court police, travelled in complete secret in an ordinary closed carriage with his personal valet, Seleznyov, on the coach box to join us at the Hermitage. That was when this palace in the park demonstrated the two great advantages forwhich it had received its name – its remoteness and privacy.
His Majesty’s uncle the Grand Duke Kirill Alexandrovich and the Grand Duke Simeon Alexandrovich arrived in the same conspiratorial manner: the former came alone (his butler Luka Emelianovich was on the coach box) and the latter brought his adjutant, Prince Glinsky – the horses driven by the most highly respected of all living butlers, you might call him the elder of our trade, Foma Anikeevich.
Those in our house who knew about the emergency, apart from the family, were Mademoiselle Declique and I, the Englishmen, because in any case it would have been impossible to keep it secret from them, and Lieutenant Endlung, for the same reason and also because Pavel Georgievich had no secrets from his raffish friend. I did not explain anything to the servants living in the house and merely forbade them to leave the Hermitage for any reasonwhatever. As born court servants, they did not ask any questions. And the Moscowservants lodged above the stables were told that His Highness had gone to stay at Ilinskoe, the country palace of his uncle the governor general.
Naturally, Ekaterina Ioannovna in St Petersburg was not told anything. Why alarmHer Highness unnecessarily? And until the ominous letter arrived, we all still cherished the hope that some sort of misunderstanding had occurred and Mikhail Georgievich would soon return to the Hermitage unharmed and in good health.
Need I say that I barely slept a wink that night? I had terrible visions, each one worse than the one before. I imagined that His Highness had fallen into some invisible fissure overgrown with grass, and long after midnight I drove the servants out with blazing torches to search the park once again, telling them that Xenia Georgievna had lost a diamond earring. Then when I got back to my room, I suddenly imagined that Mikhail Georgievich had fallen victim to some monster of depravity who preyed on little boys, and my teeth started chattering in fright, so that I had to take valerian drops. But of course the assumption that seemed most likelywas that the grand duke had been abducted by accomplices of the man with the false beard known as Blizna or Scar. While we were fighting some of the bandits for Xenia Georgievna, others had carried off the defenceless Mikhail Georgievich – and this was made all the more likely by the discovery of apparently fresh tracks from the wheels of another carriage not far from the fateful lawn.