‘In Petrovsko-Razumovskoe?’ he asked in surprise. ‘In that d-dump?’
‘Ah, Erast Petrovich, it’s easy to see you haven’t been around for quite a while. Petrovsko-Razumovskoe’s a fashionable dacha district now. For instance, the dacha to which we trailed the dark-haired man is rented by a certain Alfred Radzikovski for a thousand roubles a month.’
‘A thousand?’ Fandorin echoed in astonishment. ‘What kind of Fontainebleau is that?’
‘A Fontainebleau is exactly what it is. A huge great garden with its own stables, even a garage. I left the staff captain to continue the surveillance, he has two corporals with him, in civvies, naturally. Reliable men but, of course, not professional sleuths.’
‘Let’s go,’ the engineer said briskly.
Lisitsky – a handsome fellow with a rakishly curled moustache – proved to be a very capable fellow. He hadn’t wasted his time sitting in the bushes, he had found out a great deal.
‘They live on a grand scale,’ he reported, occasionally slipping into a Polish accent. ‘Electricity, telephone, even their own telegraph apparatus. A bathroom with a shower! Two carriages with thoroughbred trotters! An automobile in the garage! A gym with exercise bicycles! Servants in lace pinafores! Parrots this size in the winter garden!’
‘How do you know about the parrots?’ Fandorin asked incredulously.
‘Why, I was there,’ Staff Captain Lisitsky replied with a cunning air. ‘I tried to get a job as a gardener. They didn’t take me – said they already had one. But they let me take a peep into the conservatory – one of them is a great lover of plants.’
‘One?’ the engineer asked quickly. ‘How many are there?’
‘I don’t know, but it’s a fair-sized group. I heard about half a dozen voices. And, by the way, between themselves they talk Polish.’
‘But what about?’ the lieutenant colonel exclaimed. ‘You know the language!’
The young officer shrugged.
‘They didn’t say anything significant with me there. They praised the dark-haired bloke for something, called him a “real daredevil”. By the way, his name’s Yuzek.’
‘They’re Polish nationalists from the Socialist Party, I’m sure of it!’ Danilov exclaimed. ‘I read about them in a secret circular. They’ve got mixed up with the Japanese, who promised to make independence for Poland a condition if they win. Their leader went to Tokyo recently. What’s his name again…’
‘Pilsudski,’ said Erast Petrovich, examining the dacha through a pair of binoculars.
‘That’s it, Pilsudski. He must have got money in Japan, and instructions.’
‘It l-looks like it…’
Something was stirring at the dacha. A blond man standing by the window in a collarless shirt with wide braces shouted something into a telephone. A door slammed loudly once, twice. Horses started neighing.
‘It looks like they’re getting ready for something,’ Lisitsky whispered in the engineer’s ear. ‘They started moving about half an hour ago now.’
‘The Japs’ spies don’t seem any too bothered about us,’ the lieutenant colonel boomed in his other ear. ‘Of course, our counter-espionage is pretty lousy, right enough, but this is just plain cheeky: setting themselves up in comfort like this, five minutes away from the Nicholas railway station. Wouldn’t I just love to nab the little darlings right now. A pity it’s out of our jurisdiction. The Okhrana boys and the provincial gendarmes will eat us alive. If they were on the railway right of way, now that would be a different matter.’
‘I tell you what we can do,’ Lisitsky suggested. ‘We’ll call our platoon and put the dacha under siege, but we won’t take it, we’ll inform the police. Then they won’t make any fuss about it.’
Fandorin didn’t join in the discussion – he was turning his head this way and that, trying to spot something. He fixed his gaze on a freshly trimmed wooden pole sticking up out of the ground beside the road.
‘A telephone pole… We could listen to what they’re saying…’
‘How?’ the lieutenant colonel asked in surprise.
‘Tap the line, from the pole.’
‘Sorry, Erast Petrovich, I don’t have a clue about technical matters. What does “tap the line” mean?
Fandorin, however, didn’t bother to explain anything – he had already made his decision.
‘One of the platforms on our Nicholas line is c-close by here…’
‘That’s right, the Petrovsko-Razumovskoe way station.’
‘There must be a telephone apparatus there. Send a gendarme. But be quick, don’t waste a second. He runs in, cuts the wire right at the wall, takes the telephone and comes straight back. No wasting time on explanations, he just shows his identification document, that’s all. At the double, now!’
A few moments later they heard the tramping of rapidly receding boots as the corporal rushed off to carry out his mission. About ten minutes after that he came dashing back with the severed telephone and wire.
‘Lucky it’s so long,’ the engineer said happily, and astounded the gendarmes by taking off his elegant coat, clutching a folding penknife in his teeth and shinning up the pole.
After fiddling with the wires for a bit, he came back down, holding the earpiece in his hands, with its wire leading up into the air.
‘Take it,’ he said to the staff captain. ‘Since you know Polish, you can do the listening.’
Lisitsky was filled with admiration.
‘What a brilliant idea, Mr Engineer! How incredible that no one ever thought of it before! Why, you could set up a special office at the telephone exchange! Listen to what suspicious individuals are saying! What tremendous benefit for the fatherland! And so very civilised, in the spirit of technological progr…’ The officer broke off in mid-word, raised a warning finger and informed them in a terrible whisper, ‘They’re calling! The central exchange!’
The lieutenant colonel and the engineer leaned forward eagerly.
‘A man… asking for number 398…’ Lisitsky whispered jerkily. ‘Another man… Speaking Polish… The first one’s arranging to meet… No, it’s a gathering… On Novo-Basmannaya Street… In the Varvarin Company building… An operation! He said “operation”! That’s it, he cut the connection.’
‘What kind of operation?’ asked Danilov, grabbing his deputy by the shoulder.
‘He didn’t say. Just “the operation”, that’s all. At midnight, and it’s almost half past nine already. No wonder they’re bustling about like that.’
‘On Basmannaya? The Varvarin Company Building?’ Erast Petrovich repeated, also whispering without even realising it. ‘What’s there, do you know?’
The officers exchanged glances and shrugged.
‘We need an address b-book.’
They sent the same corporal running back to the way station – to dart into the office, grab the All Moscow guidebook off the desk and leg it back as quickly as possible.
‘The men at the way station will think the railway gendarme service is full of head cases,’ the lieutenant colonel lamented, but mostly for form’s sake. ‘Never mind, we’ll return it all afterwards – the telephone and the book.’
The next ten minutes passed in tense anticipation, with them almost tearing the binoculars out of each other’s hands. They couldn’t see all that well because it was starting to get dark, but all the lights were on in the dacha and hasty shadows flitted across the curtains.
The three of them went dashing to meet the panting corporal. Erast Petrovich, as the senior in rank, grabbed the tattered volume. First he checked what telephone number 398 was. It proved to be the Great Moscow Hotel. He moved on to the Listing of Buildings section, opened it at Novo-Basmannaya Street, and the blood started pounding in his temples.