The Coronation (24 page)

Fandorin pulled on my arm, andwe both tumbled to the floor.

‘Lie still, Ziukin!’ he shouted. ‘There’s nothing to be done now.’

It seemed to me that the firing went on for a long time, occasionally punctuated by howls of pain and Karnovich’s commands.

‘Korneev, where are you? Take your lads to the right! Miller, ten men to the left! Torches, get those torches here!’

Soon rays of light started probing the basement – running over the barrels, the overturned table, two motionless bodies on the floor. The shooting had stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

‘Come out with your hands up!’ Karnovich shouted. ‘You’ve got nowhere to go anyway. The building is surrounded. Stump first!’

‘That’s for you from Stump!’

A tongue of flame spurted out from the far corner and the rays of light instantly darted to that spot. I saw an overturned barrel and above it the silhouette of a head and shoulders.

‘They’ll kill him, the b-blockheads,’ Fandorin hissed in fury.

There was a deafening salvo, and chips of wood went flying off the barrel in all directions, then again and again. No one fired back from the corner any longer.

‘We surrender!’ someone shouted out of the darkness. ‘Don’t fire, chief.’

One at a time, three men came out into the open, holding their hands up high. Two of them could barely stay on their feet. Stump was not among them.

Erast Petrovich stood up and walked out of our hiding place. Masa and I followed him.

‘Good evening,’ Karnovich greeted Fandorin ironically. The colonel was completely surrounded by stalwart young men in civilian dress. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’

Without even glancing at the head of the court police, Fandorin walked across to the overturned barrel from behind which a lifeless arm could be seen projecting. He squatted down on his haunches and then immediately got up again.

A large number of men appeared out of nowhere on every side. Some put handcuffs on the bandits who had surrendered, some darted around between the barrels and for some reason some even felt the floor with their hands. The rays of electric light, dozens of them, glided over everything. There was a harsh smell of gunpowder and smoke. For some reason I glanced at my watch. It was seven minutes to twelve, which meant that only sixteen minutes had elapsed sincewe entered the basement.

‘You have ruined everything, Karnovich,’ said Fandorin, halting in front of the colonel. ‘Stump is riddled with bullets, and he was the only one who knew where to find Lind. Where the devil did you spring from, damn you? Have you been spying on me?’

Karnovich looked somewhat embarrassed. He squinted sideways at me and gave no answer, but Fandorin understood anyway.

‘You, Ziukin?’ he said quietly, looking at me, and shook his head. ‘How stupid . . .’

‘
Kare da
!’ squealed Mr Masa, who was standing some distance away from me. ‘
Uragirimono
!’

As if it were a dream, I saw him gather speed as he came running towards me, jump high in the air and thrust one foot out in front of him. My vision was obviously working much more rapidly than my thoughts, because I managed to get a very good look at the Japanese shoe (small, made of yellow leather, with a patched sole) as it approached my forehead.

And that was the end of 10 May for me.

¹
My God! Mr Ziukin, what has happened? And who are these men? Is this the Japanese servant?

²
appart from that.

³
I will try my best.

⁴
Immediately.

⁵
Let me go, let me go.

11 May

Saturday did not exist for me because I spent a night, a day and another night lying in a dead faint.

12 May

I came to instantly, without any preliminary wandering between oblivion and wakefulness, that is, not at all as if I were emerging from ordinary sleep. One moment I was seeing the basement illuminated by those creeping beams of light and the rapidly approaching yellow shoe, then I closed my eyes, and when I opened them I was in a completely different place: daylight, a white ceiling and at one side, at the limit of my vision, two faces – Mademoiselle Declique and Mr Fandorin. At first for a moment I did not think this fact of any great importance. I simply noted that they were sitting there, looking down at me, and I was lying in bed. And then I began feeling the strange numbness in all my body, heard the regular murmur of rain outside the window and started. Why were their shoulders touching like that?

‘
Grace à Dieu
!’ said Mademoiselle. ‘
Il a repris connaissance. Vous aviez raison.
’
¹

I looked from her to Fandorin with a feeling that there was something that I ought to ask him.

‘What is
uragirimono
?’ I then asked, repeating the resounding word that had stuck in my memory. In fact, I thought that I had only just heard it.

‘It means t-traitor in Japanese,’ Erast Petrovich replied coolly, leaning over me and for some reason pulling down my lower eyelids with his fingers (I was simply mortified at such familiarity). ‘I am glad that you are alive, Ziukin. After a blow like that you might never have recovered consciousness. You have a very thick skull – there is not even any concussion. You have been lying unconscious for almost forty hours. Try to sit up.’

Sitting up without any especial effort, I suddenly felt embarrassed because I saw that I was wearing only my undershirt, and it was unbuttoned over my chest. Noticing my unease, Mademoiselle delicately averted her eyes.

Fandorin handedmea glass ofwater and in the same measured tone of voice told me something that brought me back to reality: ‘You, Ziukin, have done serious damage to our cause by telling Karnovich about our plans. A highly promising lead has been lost. Stump has been killed. Four of his gang, including the sentry whom I stunned, have been taken alive, but they are quite useless to us. Onewas used for snooping around the Hermitage. Another was the driver in the carriage that you attempted to chase. He was the one who lashed you with his whip, remember? But he does not know who was sitting in the carriage – he did not even hear the child cry out. Stump ordered him to get up on the coach box on Nikolo-Yamskaya Street, drive along a set route, and then get back down again at the Andronnikov Monastery. There he gave up his seat to a different driver, who did not look Russian. And that is all. Stump, at least, knew where L-Lind’s lair is. But now we have been left empty-handed. So Masa’s anger is understandable. Now that it is clear you are alive and almost well, my assistant will finally be released from custody, and a good thing too – without him I am like a man without arms.’

I touched my forehead and felt a substantial bump. Well, serve me right.

‘But are there no leads at all then?’ I asked, my voice trembling with awareness of the gravity of my mistake.

‘Now all we can do is put our trust in Mademoiselle Declique. I am afraid I have run out of ideas. My Lady, tell Afanasii Stepanovich about your journeys to Lind’s place yesterday and today.’

‘What, have you already been to see him twice?’ I asked in amazement and turned towards the grey window, wondering what time it was.

‘Yes, today’s meeting was early this morning,’ Mademoiselle replied. ‘Will you permit me to speak French? It will be much quicker.’

And indeed, in five minutes she gave me an account of the events that had occurred during my enforced absence.

The previous day, Saturday, she had once again been summoned from the church by a note. The carriage (not the same one as the day before, but verymuch like it and also with boarded-up windows) was waiting on the next side street. The driver was the same – bearded, unspeaking, with his hat pulled down low over his eyes. Fifty-four minutes later (on this occasion Fandorin had given Mademoiselle a watch with phosphorescent hands) she was once again blindfolded and soon found herself in the same underground vault. This time they uncovered her eyes for a few moments so that she could take a brief glance at Mikhail Georgievich. The boy was lying with his eyes closed, but he was alive. The governess was forbidden to look around and all she saw was a bare stone wall dimly lit by a candle, and a chest that served His Highness as a bed.

On the morning of that day the whole procedure had been repeated. Doctor Lind had acquired an aigrette of diamonds and sapphires. During the few seconds that Mademoiselle was not blindfolded, she was able to take a closer look at the prisoner. He was still unconscious, had lost a lot of weight and his left hand was bandaged. Mademoiselle had touched his forehead and felt a strong fever.

Mademoiselle’s narrative broke off at that point, but she quickly took herself in hand.

‘How I wish this was all over,’ she said with a self-control that I found quite admirable. ‘Michel will not survive very long in conditions like that. He is a strong healthy child, but everything has its limits.’

‘Did you see Lind? Even out of the corner of your eye?’ I asked hopefully.

‘No. The blindfoldwas removed for no more than ten seconds and I was strictly forbidden to turn round. I only sensed that there were several men standing behind me.’

I felt an empty ache in the pit of my stomach.

‘So the search is no further forward at all?’

Mademoiselle and Fandorin exchanged glances in a way that seemed conspiratorial to me, and I felt a stab of almost physical pain. The two of them were together, a couple, and I had been left on the outside, alone.

‘We do have something,’ Fandorin declared with a mysterious air and, lowering his voice as if he were revealing some highly important secret, added: ‘I have taught Emilie to count the creaks made by the wheels.’

For a moment the only thing I understood was that he had called Mademoiselle Declique by her first name! Could their friendship really have gone that far? And only then did I attempt to penetrate the meaning of his words. I failed.

‘The creaks made by the wheels?’

‘Why yes. Any axle, even if it is perfectly lubricated, produces a creak which, if you listen closely, is a constant repetition of the same set of sounds.’

‘So what?’

‘One cycle, Ziukin, is a single revolution, a turn of the wheel. You only have to count how many times the wheel has turned in order to know how far the carriage has travelled. The wheels on carriages of the phaeton type preferred by the kidnappers are a standard size – in the metric system, they are a metre and forty centimetres in diameter. Therefore, according to the laws of geometry, the length of the circumference is equal to four metres and eighty centimetres. The rest is simple. Mademoiselle counts and remembers the number of revolutions from one corner to the next. It is easy to tell when the carriage turns a corner, because it leans either to the right or the left. We are not having the carriage followed, in order not to alarm the kidnappers, however, we do see the direction in which Emilie is driven away. After that everything d-depends on her alertness and her memory. And so,’ Fandorin continued in the voice of a teacher expounding a problem in geometry, ‘if we know the number and direction of revolutions, and also the d-distance between the corners, we can identify the place where they are hiding the child.’

‘Well, and have you identified it?’ I exclaimed in eager excitement.

‘Not so fast, Ziukin, not so f-fast,’ Fandorin said with a smile. ‘The mute driver deliberately does not follow a direct route, but turns and twists – evidently checking to see if anyone is on his tail. And so Emilie’s task is not a simple one. Yesterday she and I walked along the route taken by the carriage, checking her observations against the g-geography.’

‘And what did you discover?’ I asked, imagining Mademoiselle walking along the street, leaning on the armof her elegant escort, both of them serious and intent, united by the common cause, and meanwhile I was lying in bed like a useless block of wood.

‘Both times, after wandering around the side streets, the carriage came out onto Zubovsky Square. That is also confirmed by Emilie’s observations – at that point on the route she heard the sound of a large number of carriages and amurmur of voices.’

‘And after that?’

Mademoiselle looked round shamefacedly at Fandorin – this brief trusting glance made my heart ache once again – and said, as if she were making excuses for herself, ‘Monsieur Ziukin, yesterday I managed to remember eleven corners, and today thirteen.’ She screwed up her eyes and listed them hesitantly: ‘Twenty-two, left; forty-one, right; thirty-four, left; eighteen, right; ninety, left; fourteen, right; a hundred and forty-three, right; thirty-seven, right; twenty-five, right; a hundred and fifteen, right (and here, in the middle, at about the fiftieth turn of the wheels, the noise of the square); fifty-two, left; sixty, right; then right again, but I don’t remember how far. I tried very hard, but I lost track . . .’

I was astounded.

‘Good Lord, how did you manage to remember so many?’

‘Do not forget, my friend, that I am a teacher,’ she said with a gentle smile, and I blushed, uncertain as to howI should interpret that form of address and whether such familiarity was permissible in our relations.

‘But tomorrow it will all happen again, and you will lose track again,’ I said, assuming a stern air for the sake of good order. ‘The human memory, even the most highly developed, has its limits.’

I found the smile with which Fandorin greeted my remark most annoying. People smile in that way at the babbling of an innocent child.

‘Emilie will not have to remember everything from the very beginning. After Zubovksy Square, the carriage followed the same route both times, and the last corner that our scout definitely rememberedwas the junction of Obolensky Lane and Olsufievsky Lane. We do not know where the carriage went afterwards, but that spot has been identified with absolute certainty. From there to the final point is not very far – about ten or fifteen minutes.’