‘And I thought you were on leave. Visiting your family, or your parents, perhaps.’
‘I’m not married. Where would I get the earnings to set up a family? I’m dog poor. And I haven’t got any parents, I’m an orphan. And in the regiment they used to taunt me for a Tatar because of my squinty eyes.’
After the stop at Kolpino the staff captain brightened up somewhat and became more talkative, and his broad cheekbones even turned slightly pink.
Suddenly he glanced at his watch and stood up.
‘Pardon, I’ll just go out for a smoke.’
‘Smoke here, I’m used to it,’ Glyceria Romanovna told him graciously. ‘Georges smokes cigars. That is, he used to.’
Vasilii Alexandrovich smiled in embarrassment.
‘I’m sorry. When I said a smoke, I was being tactful. I don’t smoke, an unnecessary expense. I’m actually going to the WC, on a call of nature.’
The lady turned away with a dignified air.
The staff captain took the tube with him. Catching his female companion’s indignant glance, he explained in an apologetic voice:
‘I’m not allowed to let it out of my hands.’
Glyceria Romanovna watched him go and murmured:
‘He really is quite unpleasant.’ And she started looking out of the window.
But the staff captain walked quickly through second class and third class to the carriage at the tail of the train and glanced out on to the brake platform.
There was an insistent, lingering blast on a whistle from behind.
The conductor-in-chief and a gendarme sentry were standing on the platform.
‘What the hell!’ said the conductor. ‘That can’t be the special. They telegraphed to say it was cancelled!’
The long train was following them no more than half a verst away, drawn by two locomotives, puffing out black smoke. A long tail of flat wagons cased in tarpaulin stretched out behind it.
The hour was already late, after ten, but the twilight had barely begun to thicken – the season of white nights was approaching.
The gendarme looked round at the staff captain and saluted.
‘Begging your pardon, Your Honour, but please be so good as to close the door. Instructions strictly forbid it.’
‘Quite right, old fellow,’ Rybnikov said approvingly. ‘Vigilance, and all the rest of it. I just wanted to have a smoke, actually. Well, I’ll just do it in the corridor here. Or in the WC.’
And he went into the toilet, which in third class was cramped and not very clean.
After locking himself in, Vasilii Alexandrovich stuck his head out of the window.
The train was just moving on to an antediluvian bridge, built in the old Count Kleinmichel style, which spanned a narrow little river.
Rybnikov stood on the flush lever and a hole opened up in the bottom of the toilet. Through it he could clearly see the sleepers flickering past.
The staff captain pressed some invisible little button on the tube and stuffed the narrow leather case into the hole – the diameter matched precisely, so he had to employ a certain amount of force.
When the tube had disappeared through the hole, Vasilii Alexandrovich quickly moistened his hands under the tap and walked out into the vestibule of the carriage, shaking the water from his fingers.
A minute later, he was already walking back into his own compartment.
Lidina looked at him severely – she still had not forgiven him for that ‘call of nature’ – and was about to turn away, when she suddenly exclaimed:
‘Your secret case! You must have forgotten it in the toilet!’
An expression of annoyance appeared on Rybnikov’s face, but before he could answer Glyceria Romanovna there was a terrifying crash and the carriage lurched and swayed.
The staff captain dashed to the window. There were heads protruding from the other windows too, all of them looking back along the line.
At that point the line curved round in a small arc and they had a clear view of the tracks, the river they had just crossed and the bridge.
Or rather, what was left of it.
The bridge had collapsed at its precise centre, and at the precise moment when the line of heavy military flat wagons was crossing it.
The catastrophe was an appalling sight: a column of water and steam, splashed up into the air as the locomotives crashed down into the water, upended flat wagons with massive steel structures tumbling off them and – most terrible of all – a hail of tiny human figures showering downwards.
Glyceria Romanovna huddled against Rybnikov’s shoulder and started squealing piercingly. Other passengers were screaming too.
The tail-end carriage of the special, probably reserved for officers, teetered on the very edge of the break. Someone seemed to jump out of the window just in time, but then the bridge support buckled and the carriage went plunging downwards too, into the heap of twisted and tangled metal protruding from the water.
‘My God, my God!’ Lidina started screaming hysterically. ‘Why are you just looking? We have to do something!’
She dashed out into the corridor. Vasilii Alexandrovich hesitated for only a second before following her.
‘Stop the train!’ the small lady gabbled hysterically, throwing herself on the conductor-in-chief, who was running towards the leading carriage. ‘There are wounded men there! They’re drowning! We have to save them!’
She grabbed him by the sleeve so tenaciously that the railwayman had no choice but to stop.
‘What do you mean, save them? Save who? In that shambles!’ Pale as death, the captain of the train crew tied to pull himself free. ‘What can we do? We have to get to a station, to report this.’
Glyceria Romanovna refused to listen and pounded him on the chest with her little fist.
‘They’re dying, and we just leave them? Stop! I demand it!’ she squealed. ‘Press that emergency brake of yours, or whatever you call it!’
Hearing her howling, a dark-complexioned man with a little waxed moustache put his head out of the next compartment. Seeing the captain of the train hesitate, he shouted menacingly:
‘Don’t you dare stop! I’ve got urgent business in Moscow!’
Rybnikov took Lidina gently by the elbow and started speaking soothingly:
‘Really and truly, madam. Of course, it’s a terrible disaster, but the only thing we can do to help is telegraph as soon as possible from the next…’
‘Ah, to hell with all of you!’ shouted Glyceria Romanovna.
She darted to the emergency handle and pulled it.
Everyone in the train went tumbling head over heels to the floor. The train gave a hop and started screeching sickeningly along the rails. There were howls and screams on every side – the passengers thought their train had crashed.
The first to recover his senses was the man with the dark complexion, who had not fallen, but only banged his head against the lintel of the door.
With a cry of ‘You rrrotten bitch, I’ll kill you!’ he threw himself on the hysterical woman, who had been stunned by her fall, and grabbed her by the throat.
The small flames that glinted briefly in Vasilii Alexandrovich’s eyes suggested that he might possibly have shared the swarthy gentleman’s bloody intentions to some extent. However, there was more than just fury in the glance that the staff captain cast at Glyceria Romanovna as she was being strangled – there was also something like stupefaction.
Rybnikov sighed, grabbed the intemperate dark-haired man by the collar and tossed him aside.
The fourth syllable, in which a hired gun sets out on the hunt
The phone rang at half past one in the morning. Before he even lifted the receiver to answer, Erast Petrovich Fandorin gestured to his valet to hand him his clothes. A telephone call at this hour of the night could only be from the Department, and it had to be about some emergency or other.
As he listened to the voice rumbling agitatedly in the earpiece, Fandorin knitted his black eyebrows tighter and tighter together. He switched hands, so that Masa could slip his arm into the sleeve of a starched shirt. He shook his head at the shoes – the valet understood and brought his boots.