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When I drove back to the corner in a cab a quarter of an hour later, Fandorin emerged from the dense shadows to meet us. Straightening his sword belt, he said in a stern commanding voice: ‘Badge number 345?You’ll be with us all night long. Secret business. You’ll be paid twenty-five roubles for your work. Drive into that entranceway and wait. And no sleeping now, Vologda. Understand?’

‘I understand, what’s so hard to understand?’ the cabby replied briskly. He was a young peasant with a clever snub-nosed face. I didn’t understand how Fandorin guessed from his appearance that he was from Vologda, but the cabby certainly did stretch his vowels to the limit.

‘Let’s go, Afanasii Petrovich. I’ve found a most comfortable spot.’

Opposite the little wooden house was a more impressive detached property surrounded by a trellis fence. Erast Petrovich bounded over the fence in an instant and beckoned for me to follow his example. Compared with the railings at the Neskuchny Park it was simple.

‘Well, not bad, is it?’ Fandorin asked proudly, pointing to the other side of the street.

The view of the Postman’s house from there really was ideal, but our observation point could only have been called ‘most comfortable’ by a masochistic (I believe I have remembered the word correctly) habitué of the chamber at the Elysium club. Right behind the fence there were thick prickly bushes that immediately started catching at my clothes and scratching my forehead. I groaned as I tried to free my elbow. Would I really have to sit here all night?

‘Never mind,’ Fandorin whispered cheerfully. ‘The Chinese say: “The noble man does not strive for comfort.” Let’s watch the windows.’

We started watching the windows.

To tell the truth, I failed to spot anything remarkable – just a vague shadow that flitted across the curtains a couple of times. In all the other houses the windows had gone dark a long time ago, while the inhabitants of our house seemed to have no intention of going to sleep at all – but that was the only thing that might have seemed suspicious.

‘And what if there is a fourth?’ I asked after about two hours.

‘A fourth what?’

‘Alternative.’

‘Which is what?’

‘What if you were mistaken and the post office employee has nothing to do with Lind?’

‘Out of the question,’ Fandorin hissed rather too angrily. ‘He definitely does. And he is bound to lead us to the d-doctor himself.’

Oh, to taste the honey that your lips drink, I thought, recalling the old folk saying, but I said nothing.

Another half-hour went by. I started thinking that probably for the first time in my life I had lost track of the days. Was today Friday or Saturday, the seventeenth or the eighteenth? It was not really all that important, but for some reason the question gave me no peace. Finally I could stand it no longer, and I asked in a whisper: ‘Is today the seventeenth?’

Fandorin took out his Breguet, and the phosphorescent hands flashed in the darkness.

‘It has been the eighteenth for five minutes.’

1You, shit! Kiss me on—

18 May

The previous day had been warm, and so had the evening, but after several hours of sitting still I was chilled right through. My teeth had started to chatter, my legs had gone numb, and any hope that our nocturnal vigil would produce some useful result had almost completely evaporated. But Fandorin remained completely unruffled – indeed, he had not stirred a muscle the whole time, which made me suspect that he was sleeping with his eyes open. And what irritated me most of all was the calm, I would even say complacent, expression on his face, as if he were sitting there listening to some kind of enchanting music or the song of birds of paradise.

Suddenly, just when I was seriously considering the idea of rebellion, Erast Petrovich, without any visible change in his demeanour, whispered: ‘Attention.’

I started and looked carefully but failed to see any change. The windows in the house opposite us were still lit up. There was not a single sign of movement, not a single sound.

I glanced at my companion again and saw that he had not yet emerged from his sleep, swoon, reverie or whatever – his general strange state of trance.

‘They are about to come out,’ he said quietly.

‘Why do you think that?’

‘I have fused into a single reality with the house and allowed the house to enter into myself so that I can feel it b-breathing,’ Erast Petrovich said with a completely serious air. ‘It is an oriental t-technique. It would take too long to explain. But a minute ago the house began creaking and swaying. It is preparing to expel people from within itself.’

It was hard for me to tell if Fandorin was joking or was simply raving. I rather inclined towards the latter option, because it was not funny enough to be a joke.

‘Mr Fandorin, are you asleep?’ I enquired, and at that very moment the windows suddenly went dark.

Half a minute later the door opened and two people came out.

‘There is no one left in the house; it is empty n-now,’ Fandorin pronounced slowly, then suddenly grabbed hold of my elbow and whispered rapidly. ‘It’s Lind, Lind, Lind!’

I jerked my head round with a start and saw that Erast Petrovich had completely changed: his face was tense, his eyes were narrowed in an expression of intense concentration.

Could it really be Lind after all?

One of the two who had come out was the Postman – I recognised his build and the peaked cap. The other man was average in height, wearing a long operatic cloak like an almaviva thrown over his shoulders and a Calabrian hat with a sagging brim that hung very low.

‘Number two,’ Fandorin whispered, squeezing my elbow in a grip that was extremely painful.

‘Eh? What?’ I muttered in confusion. ‘Alternative number two. Lind is here, but the hostages are somewhere else.’

‘But are you certain it really is Lind?’

‘No doubt about it. Those precise, economical and yet elegant movements. That way of wearing the hat. And finally that walk. It is he.’

My voice trembled as I asked: ‘Are we going to take him now?’

‘You have forgotten everything, Ziukin. We would detain Lind if he had come out with the hostages, according to alternative number one. But this is number two. We follow the doctor; he leads us to the boy and Emilie.’

‘But what if—’

Erast Petrovich put his hand over my mouth again, in the same way as he had done before so recently. The man in the long cloak had looked round, although we were talking in whispers and he could not possibly have heard us.