However, what I ought to do now was not clear. I still had no money so I could not even hire a cab. Andwherewould I actually go?
I halted indecisively.
There was a newspaper boy wandering along the street. Still a little child, about nine years old. He was shouting with all his might, although there didn’t seem to be anyone there to buy his goods.
‘The latest Half-Kopeck News. Get your Half-Kopeck News. The newspaper for private ads! An admirer for some, a bride for others! An apartment for some, a good job for others!’
I started, recalling my wager with Fandorin. I rummaged in my pockets, hoping to find a copper half-kopeck or one-kopeck piece. There was something round and flat behind the lining. An old silver coin, a Peter the Great altyn.
Well, never mind. He probably would not notice in the dark.
I called the newspaper seller, tugged a folded paper out of his bag and tossed the silver coin into his mug – it jangled every bit as well as copper. The boy plodded on his way as if nothing at all had happened, bawling out his crude doggerel.
I walked over to a street lamp and unfolded the grey paper.
And I saw it – right there in the centre of the front page, with letters a full vershok in height:
My eagle! My diamond-precious love! I forgive you.
I love you. I am waiting for your message.
Your Linda
Write to the Central Post Office,
to the bearer of treasury note No. 137078859.
That was it! No doubt at all about it! And how cunningly it had been composed. No one who did not know about the diamond and the exchange would have the slightest idea!
But would Fandorin see this paper? How could I inform him? Where should I seek him now? What terrible luck!
‘Well then?’ a familiar voice asked out of the darkness. ‘That’s genuine love for you. This passionate declaration has been published in all the evening papers.’
I swung round, astonished at such a fortunate encounter.
‘Why do you look so surprised, Ziukin? After all, it was clear that if you managed to escape from the house, you would climb over the railings. I just d-did not know exactly where. I had to engage four newspaper boys to walk up and down the railings and shout about private advertisements at the tops of their voices. That’s it, Ziukin. You have lost the wager. So much for your remarkable drooping moustache and sideburns.’
17 May
Staring out at me from the mirror was a puffy thick-lipped face with the beginnings of a double chin and unnaturally white cheeks. Deprived of its sumptuous drooping moustache and combed sideburns, my face seemed to have emerged out of some cloud or bank of fog to appear before me naked, exposed and defenceless. I was quite shaken by the sight of it – it was like seeing myself for the first time. I had read in some novel that as a man passes through life he gradually creates his own self-portrait, applying a pattern of wrinkles, folds, hollows and protuberances to the smooth canvas of the persona that he inherited at birth. Everyone knows that wrinkles can be intelligent or stupid, genial or spiteful, cheerful or sad. And the effect of this drawing, traced by the hand of life itself, is to make some people more beautiful with the passing years, and some more ugly.
When the initial shock had passed and I looked at the self-portrait a little more closely, I realised that I could not say with any certainty whether I was pleased with the work. I supposed I was pleased with the pleated line of the lips – it testified to experience of life and a quite definite firmness of character. However, the broad lower jaw hinted at moroseness, and the flabby cheeks provoked thoughts of a predisposition to failure. The most astounding thing of all was that the removal of the covering of hair had altered my appearance far more than the ginger beard I had recently worn. I had suddenly ceased to be a grand-ducal butler and become a lump of clay, which could now be moulded into a man of any background or rank.
However, Fandorin, having studied my new face with the air of a connoisseur of painting, seemed to be of a different opinion. Setting aside the razor, he muttered as if to himself: ‘You are hard to disguise. The gravity is still there, the prim fold on the forehead has not disappeared either, or the alignment of the head . . . Hmm, Ziukin, you are not at all like me, not in the least, except that we are about the same height . . . But never mind. Lind knows that I am a master of self-transformation. Such obvious dissimilarity might actually make his men quite certain that you are me. Who shall be we dress you up as? I think we should make you a civil servant, sixth or seventh class. You don’t look at all right for any rank lower than that. You stay here; I’ll g-go to the military and civil uniform shop on Sretenka Street. I’ll look out something for myself at the same time. Here in Russia the easiest way to hide a man is behind a uniform.’
The previous evening Erast Petrovich had found an announcement of an apartment for rent in the same Half-Kopeck News where Doctor Lind had placed his notice:
For rent, for the coronation, a seven-room apartment
with furniture, tableware and telephone.
Close to the Clear Ponds. 5000 roubles.
Use of servants possible for additional charge.
Arkhangelsky Lane, the house of state counsellor’s
widow Sukhorukova. Enquire at porter’s lodge.
The number of rooms appeared excessive to me, and the price – bearing in mind the coronation celebrations were almost over – was quite staggering, but Fandorin would not listen to me. ‘On the other hand, it is close to the post office,’ he said. And before the evening was out we were installed in a fine gentleman’s apartment located on the ground floor of a new stone house. The porter was so pleased to receive payment in advance that he did not even ask to see our passports.
After taking tea in a sumptuously but rather tastelessly furnished dining room, we discussed our plan of further action. Actually, our discussion was more like a monologue by Fandorin, and for the most part I listened. I suspected that for Erast Petrovich a so-called discussion was simply a matter of him thinking aloud, and any requests for my opinion or advice ought be regarded as no more than figures of speech.
It is true, though, that I began the conversation. Lind’s initiative and the acquisition of a roof over our heads had had a most heartening effect on me, and my former despondency had vanished without trace.
‘The business does not seem so very complicated to me,’ I declared. ‘We will send a letter with a statement of the terms of exchange, and occupy an observation post close to the window where they hand out the poste restante correspondence. When the bearer of the treasury note turns up, we shall follow him inconspicuously, and he will lead us to Lind’s new hideout. You said yourself that the doctor has only two helpers left, so we shall manage things ourselves, without the police.’
The plan seemed very extremely practical to me, but Fandorin looked at me as if I were blathering some kind of wild nonsense.
‘You underestimate Lind. The trick with the bearer of the note has a completely different meaning. The doctor of course expects me to trail his messenger. Lind must already know that I am playing my own game and the authorities are no longer helping me but on the contrary trying to hunt me down. Anything that is known to the entire municipal police is no longer a secret. So Lind thinks that I am acting alone. If I wait at the post office trying to spot the doctor’s courier, someone else will spot me. The hunter caught in his own trap.’