I caught a glimpse of Colonel Karnovich sitting on the monkey board of the empress-mother’s carriage. He was dressed as a footman of the chamber, with a tunic and a powdered wig, but was still wearing his eternal blue-tinted spectacles. At that moment however the head of the tsar’s bodyguard could not be of any help to me. I needed urgently to talk with Georgii Alexandrovich, although even he would not be able to resolve the problem that had arisen. The tsar himself was required for that. And, even worse, the tsarina.
Following the previous day’s embarrassing failure, Colonel Karnovich had received a vociferous dressing-down from Georgii Alexandrovich for preparing his agents poorly. I got my share too, from both of them, for not getting a good look at anything and not even detaining the newspaper boy. Fandorin was not present at this distressing scene. As Somov later informed me, the state counsellor and his Japanese had gone off somewhere even before I left for the meeting with Doctor Lind’s people, and they had not been seen since.
Their absence worried me greatly. Several times in the course of the evening and once long after midnight I went outside and looked at their windows. There was no light.
In the morning I was woken by a sharp, nervous knocking. I thought it must be Somov and opened the door in my nightcap and dressing gown. Imagine my embarrassment when I saw Her Highness standing there!
Xenia Georgievna looked pale, and the shadows under her eyes suggested that she had not gone to bed at all.
‘He’s not here,’ she gabbled. ‘Afanasii, he wasn’t here last night!’
‘Who, Your Highness?’ I asked in fright, pulling off my nightcap and bending my legs slightly, so that the hem of the dressing gown touched the floor and concealed my bare ankles.
‘What do you mean? Erast Petrovich! Do you perhaps know where he is?’
‘I have no idea,’ I replied, and my heart sank because I did not like the expression on Her Highness’s face at all.
Fandorin and his servant made their appearance after breakfast, when the grand dukes had already left for the Petrovsky Palace for the preparations for the ceremonial entry into the city. The house was full of police agents because a further message from the kidnappers was expected. I myself stayed as close as possible to the telephone and kept sending Somov out to the entrance to see if another note had been left. In fact, that was quite unnecessary, since Colonel Lasovsky had sleuths on duty in the bushes all the way along the avenue leading to the house. This time no one would be able to climb over the fence and approach the Hermitage unnoticed.
‘Did you see the child?’ Fandorin asked instead of greeting me. ‘Is he alive?’
I told him the bare bones of what had happened the previous day, anticipating another helping of reproaches for letting the newspaper boy get away.
In order to forestall any reprimands, I said: ‘I know I am at fault. I ought to have grabbed that little scoundrel by the scruff of his neck and not gone chasing after the carriage.’
‘The most important thing is that you got a good look at the boy and that he is unharmed,’ said Fandorin.
I could have stomached his reproaches, because they were well deserved, but I found such condescension objectionable.
‘But now the only clue has been lost!’ I exclaimed angrily, letting him see that I had no need of his false magnanimity.
‘What clue?’ he asked with a mild gesture of the hand. ‘A perfectly ordinary mop-headed little scamp, eleven and a half years old. Your Senka Kovalchuk doesn’t know a thing, and there’s noway he could have. Justwho do you think Doctor Lind is?’
My jaw must have dropped, because before I began to speak I felt my lips slap together in a most foolish fashion.
‘Se-Senka? K-Kovalchuk?’ I repeated, suddenly developing a stammer. ‘You mean you have found him? But how?’
‘Nothing to it. I got a good look at him when he dived into your g-gig.’
‘A good look?’ I echoed and felt furious with myself for talking like a parrot. ‘How could you get a look at anything, when you weren’t even there?’
‘How do you mean, I wasn’t there?’ Fandorin protested with a dignified air. He knitted his brows together and suddenly boomed in a deep voice that seemed incredibly familiar: “Come on, servant of God, get a move on!” Didn’t you recognise me? I was there beside you all the time, Ziukin.’
The priest, the priest in the rattletrap with the tarpaulin cover!
I took myself in hand and gave vent to my righteous indignation.
‘So you were there beside us, but you didn’t follow us!’
‘What on earth for?’ The gaze of his blue eyeswas so cool that I suspected he was mocking me. ‘I had s-seen quite enough. The boy had the Moscow Pilgrim newspaper in his bag. That is one. The printer’s ink had eaten deep into his fingers, so he really was a newspaper boy who handled hundreds of copies every day. That is two . . .’
‘But there are plenty of boys who sell the Pilgrim,’ I exclaimed in frustration. ‘I’ve heard that almost a hundred thousand copies of that yellow rag are sold in Moscow every day!’
‘The boy also had six fingers on his left hand – did you not notice that? And that is three,’ Fandorin concluded serenely. ‘Yesterday evening Masa and I went round all the ten depots where Moscow Pilgrim news boys collect their wares and we had no difficulty in establishing the identity of the individual who interests us. We had to search for a while before we found him, it is true, and when we found him we had to run a bit too, but it is quite hard to run away from Masa and me, especially for such a young individual.’
So simple. Lord, it was so simple – that was the the first thought that came into my head. In fact, all I needed to have done was look more closely at the kidnappers’ messenger.
‘What did he tell you?’ I asked impatiently.
‘Nothing of any interest,’ Fandorin replied, suppressing a yawn. ‘A perfectly ordinary little Senka. He sells newspapers to earn his own daily bread and his alcoholic mother’s vodka. Has no contacts with the criminal world. Yesterday he was hired by a certain “mister” who promised him three roubles and explained what he had to do. And he threatened to rip the boy’s belly open if he got anything confused. Senka says he was a serious mister, the kind who really would rip you open.’
‘And what else did he say about this “mister”?’ ‘I asked with a sinking heart. ‘What he looked like? How he was dressed?’
‘Ordnery,’ Fandorin said with a gloomy sigh. ‘You see, Ziukin, our young friend has a very limited vocabulary. His answers to every question are “Ordnery” and “Who knows?” The only distinctive f-feature of his employer that we have established is that he has a “bold face”. But I am afraid that will not be ofmuch help to us . . . All right, I’ll go and get a bit of rest. Wake mewhen the message from Lind arrives.’
And the unpleasant man went to his room.
I, however, still could not bring myself to move far away from the telephone apparatus standing in the hallway. I paced up and down, trying to maintain a dour, pensive air, but the servants were already casting glances of frank bewilderment in my direction. Then I stood at the window and pretended to be observing Lord Banville and Mr Carr, both dressed in white trousers and check caps, as they played croquet.
Properly speaking, they were not actually playing, merely strolling around the croquet pitch with sour expressions on their faces, while His Lordship spoke incessantly about something or other, seeming to become more and more angry. Finally he stopped, turned towards his companion and flew into a genuine fury – he waved his hands and started shouting so loudly that even I could hear him through the glass. I had never seen English lords behave in such a manner before. Mr Carr listened with a bored expression on his face, sniffing at his dyed carnation. Freyby was standing a short distance away, smoking his pipe without looking at his gentlemen at all. The butler had two wooden mallets with long handles tucked under his arm.