'Eight o'clock, and the sky's only just turning grey,' the officer sighed, speaking to no one in particular, and lowered one foot on to the top step.
The train had not yet stopped, its brakes were still screeching and grinding, but already there were two figures hurrying along the platform towards the saloon carriage: a short man carrying a lantern and a tall, slim man in a top hat and a loose, sporty mackintosh with a cape.
'There, that's the special!' cried the first man (the stationmaster, to judge from his peaked cap), turning to his companion.
The other man stopped in front of the open door, holding his top hat down on his head, and asked the officer: 'Are you M-Modzalevsky? - His Excellency's adjutant?'
Unlike the railway official, the man with the stammer did not shout, and yet his calm, clear voice was distinctly audible above the howling of the blizzard.
'No, I'm the head of his guard,' the white-haired man replied, trying to make out the fop's face.
It was a remarkable face: the features were subtle but severe, the moustache was neatly trimmed, the forehead dissected by a resolute vertical crease,
'Aha, Staff Captain v-von Seidlitz - excellent,' the stranger said with a nod of satisfaction, and immediately introduced himself. 'Fandorin, Deputy for Special Assignments to His Excellency the Governor General of M-Moscow. I expect you have heard of me.'
'Yes, Mr State Counsellor, we were informed by encrypted message that you would be responsible for Ivan Fyodorovich's safety in Moscow. But I had assumed you would meet us at the station there. Come up, come up, the snow's blowing in.'
The State Counsellor nodded farewell to the stationmaster and tripped lightly up the steep steps into the carriage, slamming the door shut behind him and reducing the sounds from outside to a hollow, rumbling echo.
'You have already entered the p-province of Moscow,' he explained, removing his top hat and shaking the snow off its crown. This revealed that his hair was black, but his temples, despite his young years, were completely grey. 'My jurisdiction, s-so to speak, starts here. We shall be stuck here at Klin for at least t-two hours - they're clearing snow off the line up ahead. We shall have time enough to agree everything and allocate responsibilities. But f-first I need to see His Excellency, introduce myself and c-convey an urgent message. Where can I leave my coat?'
'This way, please, into the guardroom. There's a coat rack in there/
Von Seidlitz showed the State Counsellor through into the first room, where the security guards in civilian dress were on duty. Then, after Fandorin had removed his mackintosh and put his soaking-wet top hat down on a chair, he showed him into the second room.
'Michel, this is State Counsellor Fandorin,' the head of the guard explained to the Lieutenant Colonel. 'We were told about him. He has an urgent communication for Ivan Fyodorovich.'
Michel stood up. 'His Excellency's adjutant, Modzalevsky. May I see your documents, please?'
'N-Naturally.' The official took a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket and handed it to the adjutant.
'He is Fandorin,' the head of the guard affirmed. 'His verbal portrait was given in the message, I remember it very clearly'
Modzalevsky carefully examined the seal and the photograph and returned the paper to its owner. 'Very good, Mr State Counsellor. I'll announce you.'
A minute later the State Counsellor was admitted into the kingdom of soft carpets, blue light and mahogany furnishings.
'Hello, Mr Fandorin,' the General growled amiably. He had already changed his velvet jacket for a military frock coat. 'Erast Petrovich, isn't it?'
'Yes ind-deed, Your Excellency'
'So you decided to engage your charge out on the route of approach? I commend your diligence, although I consider all this fuss entirely unnecessary. Firstly, I left St Petersburg in secret; secondly, I am not even slightly afraid of our revolutionary gentlemen; and thirdly, we are all of us in God's hands. If the Lord has spared Khrapov thus far, he must need the old war dog for something.' The General, evidently this self-same Khrapov, crossed himself devoutly.
'I have an extremely urgent and absolutely c-confidential message for Your Excellency,' the State Counsellor said impassively, with a glance at the adjutant. 'I beg your pardon, L-Lieutenant Colonel, but those are the instructions I was g-given.'
'Off you go, Misha,' said the new Governor General of Siberia, the man whom the newspaper from abroad had called a butcher and a satrap. 'Is the samovar ready? As soon as we finish talking business, I'll call you and we'll have some tea.' When the door closed behind his adjutant, he asked: 'Well, what have you got for me that's so mysterious? A telegram from the sovereign? Let's have it.'
The functionary moved close to the seated man, slipping one hand into the pocket of his beaver jacket, but then his eyes fell on the illegal newspaper with the article circled in red. The General caught the glance and his face darkened.
'The nihilist gentlemen continue to flatter me with their attention. A "butcher" they call me! I suppose you have also read all sorts of rubbish about me, Erast Petrovich. Don't believe the slanderous lies of vicious tongues; they turn everything back to front! She wasn't flogged by brutal jailers in my presence, that's pure slander!' His Excellency had clearly found the unfortunate incident of Ivantsova's suicide by hanging very disturbing, and it was still bothering him. 'I'm an honest soldier, I have two George medals - for Sebastopol and the second battle of Plevna!' he exclaimed heatedly. 'I was trying to save that girl from a penal sentence, the young fool! What if I did speak to her in a familiar fashion? I was only being fatherly! I have a granddaughter her age! And she slapped my face - me, an old man, an adjutant general - in front of my guards, in front of the prisoners. According to the law, the tramp should have got ten years for that! But I gave orders for her just to be whipped, and not to let the business get out - not to flog her half to death, as they wrote in the newspapers afterwards; just to give her ten lashes, and to go easy on her as well! And it wasn't the jailers who whipped her, it was a female warder. How could I know that crazy Ivantsova would lay hands on herself? She's not even blue-blooded, just an ordinary bourgeois girl - why all this nonsensical delicacy?' The General gestured angrily. 'Now I'll have her blood on my hands for ever. And afterwards another stupid fool tried to shoot me. I wrote to the sovereign, asking him not to have her hanged, but His Majesty was adamant. He wrote on my request in his own hand: "For those who raise the sword against my faithful servants there will be no mercy."' Moved by this memory, Khrapov began blinking and an old man's tear glinted briefly in his eye. 'Hunting me down like a wolf. I was only acting for the best... I don't understand it, for the life of me, I don't!'
The Governor General spread his hands in regretful despair, but the man with the black hair and grey temples snapped back, without a trace of a stammer: 'How could you ever understand the meaning of honour and human dignity? But that's all right: even if you don't understand, it will be a lesson to the other dogs.'
Ivan Fyodorovich gaped at this amazing official and tried to get up out of the chair, but the other man had already removed his hand from his pocket, and the object in it was not a telegram but a short dagger. The hand plunged the dagger straight to the General's heart. Khrapov's eyebrows crept upwards and his mouth dropped open, but no sound escaped from it. The Governor General's fingers clutched at the State Counsellor's hand, locking on to it, and the diamond ring flashed again in the lamplight. Then his head slumped backwards lifelessly and a thin trickle of scarlet blood ran down his chin.
The killer unclasped the dead man's fingers from his hand with fastidious disgust. Then he tore off his false moustache and rubbed his grey temples, which turned as black as the rest of his hair.