Stump – for there could be be no doubt it was he – thrust his incredible hand into a dish standing in front of him, pulled out a piece of meat and dispatched it into his mouth.
‘No one’s doing no crowing,’ said one of the men siting with his back to us. ‘Are we dumb clucks or what? But at least give us something to be getting on with. What’s the deal? What are we dossing about like this for? I’ve done enough polishing the seat of my pants. Don’t drink any wine, don’t deal any cards. We’re bored to death.’
The others began fidgeting and muttering, demonstrating their clear agreement with the speaker.
Stump carried on chewing unhurriedly, looking at them with his deep-set eyes drowned in the shadows under his heavy brow– I could only see the sparks glittering in them. He allowed his comrades to make their din for a while, then suddenly swung his hand and struck the dish hard with his fork. There was a crack, and the stout clay vessel split in two. Immediately it all went quiet.
‘I’ll give you wine and cards,’ the leader drawled in a low, quiet voice and spat out his half-chewed scrap of meat to one side. ‘The deal here is the once-in-a-lifetime kind, and not in every life either. A big man has put his trust in us. And if any louse here messes it up for me, I’ll hook his chitterlings out with this here fork and make him eat them.’
He paused, and from the motionless figures of the bandits I realised that the threat he had just made was no mere figure of speech but a perfectly literal promise. I felt the goose pimples rising all over my body.
‘No need to frighten us, Stump,’ said the same bandit, obviously the most reckless desperado in the gang. ‘You lay it out straight and clear. Why treat us like lousy mongrels? We’ve hung around on look-out a couple of times and tailed a couple of gulls. What kind of deal is that? We’re wolves, not miserable dogs.’
‘That’s for me to know,’ the head bandit snapped. ‘And you’ll chirp the way I tell you to.’ He leaned forward. ‘This shindy’s the kind it’s best for you not to know about, Axe, you’ll sleep better for it. And what they called us in for is still to come. We’ll show what we can do. And I tell you what, brothers. Once the job’s done, we’ll cut and run.’
‘Out of Khitrovka?’ someone asked. ‘Or out of town?’
‘Eejit! Out of Roossia!’ Stump snapped impressively.
‘What d’you mean, out of Roossia?’ objected the one he had called Axe. ‘Where are we gonna live? Turkishland, is it? I don’t speak their lingo.’
Stump grinned, baring a mouthful of jagged, chipped teeth.
‘That’s all right. Axe, with the loot you’ll have, the Muslims’ll start chatting your lingo. Believe me, brothers, Stump doesn’t make idle talk. We’ll all get so well greased up from this job, every one of you will stay greased all the way to the grave.’
‘But won’t this big man of yours spin us off?’ the same sceptic asked doubtfully.
‘He’s not that kind. The most honest top man in the whole wide world. Compared to him our King is a louse.’
‘What sort of man is he then? A real eagle, I suppose?’
I noticed that Fandorin tensed up as he waited for the bandit boss’s answer.
Stump clearly found the question rather embarrassing. He picked his teeth with his fork as if he was wondering whether to say anything or not. But eventually he decided to answer.
‘I won’t try to bamboozle you. I don’t know. He’s the kind of man who’s not that easy to get close to. His toffs rolled up with him – real eagles they are, you’re no match for them . . . This man doesn’t speak our lingo. I’ve seen him once. In a basement like ours, only smaller and with no light. I tell you, he’s a serious man and what he says, he means. He sat there in the dark, so I couldn’t see his face. Whispered to his interpreter, and he told me everything in our lingo. Our King likes to bawl and shout, but this here is Europe. You can hear a whisper better than a shout.’
Even though this remark came from the lips of an out-andout criminal, I was struck by its psychological precision. It really is true that the less a person raises his voice, the more he is listened to and the better he is heard. The late sovereign never shouted at anyone. And the procurator of the Holy Synod, the all-powerful Konstantin Petrovich, speaks in a quiet murmur too. Why, take even Fandorin – so very quiet, but when he starts to speak, the members of the royal family hang on every word.
‘Oh-ho, that’s mighty. And where was your meet with this man?’
Fandorin half-rose to his feet, and I held my breath. Would he really say?
At that very moment therewas a deafening crash that rumbled and echoed through the stone vaults of the basement and crumbs of stone fell from the ceiling onto the table.
‘Don’t move, you blackguards,’ said a deafening voice, amplified many times over by a speaking trumpet. ‘This is Colonel Karnovich. You are all in our sights. The next bullet is for anyone who even twitches.’
‘Mmmmm,’ I heard Fandorin groan in a pained voice.
The colonel really had made his appearance at a very bad moment, but on the other hand the arrest of the entire gang, especially of Stump himself, was surely bound to open some door leading to Doctor Lind. Why, good for Karnovich. How cunningly he had pretended that the information he received from me was of no interest!
The bandits all turned round, but I had no chance to get a good look at them because Stump shouted: ‘Douse the lights!’ and the robbers all scattered, overturning the tripods as they went.
The cellar went dark, but not for very long at all. A second later, long vicious streaks of fire started hurtling through the air from all sides, and the din that ensued was so loud that I was deafened.
Fandorin pulled on my arm, andwe both tumbled to the floor.
‘Lie still, Ziukin!’ he shouted. ‘There’s nothing to be done now.’
It seemed to me that the firing went on for a long time, occasionally punctuated by howls of pain and Karnovich’s commands.
‘Korneev, where are you? Take your lads to the right! Miller, ten men to the left! Torches, get those torches here!’
Soon rays of light started probing the basement – running over the barrels, the overturned table, two motionless bodies on the floor. The shooting had stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
‘Come out with your hands up!’ Karnovich shouted. ‘You’ve got nowhere to go anyway. The building is surrounded. Stump first!’
‘That’s for you from Stump!’
A tongue of flame spurted out from the far corner and the rays of light instantly darted to that spot. I saw an overturned barrel and above it the silhouette of a head and shoulders.
‘They’ll kill him, the b-blockheads,’ Fandorin hissed in fury.
There was a deafening salvo, and chips of wood went flying off the barrel in all directions, then again and again. No one fired back from the corner any longer.
‘We surrender!’ someone shouted out of the darkness. ‘Don’t fire, chief.’
One at a time, three men came out into the open, holding their hands up high. Two of them could barely stay on their feet. Stump was not among them.
Erast Petrovich stood up and walked out of our hiding place. Masa and I followed him.
‘Good evening,’ Karnovich greeted Fandorin ironically. The colonel was completely surrounded by stalwart young men in civilian dress. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’