Boris Akunin - He Lover of Death

Suddenly the handsome man laughed, twitched his black moustache and said, with a bit of a stammer: ‘Of c-course, Semyon Spidorov, I’ll let you go, but . . . but not until you return my jade b-beads.’

Senka gaped at him. How come he knew his name?

‘Eh?’ he said. ‘What d’you—? What beads are those?’

‘The ones that you pilfered from my valet Masa eight d-days ago. You’re a smart young man. You’ve c-cost us a lot of time, making us chase after you.’

That was when Senka recognised him: it was the same gent he’d seen from the back on Asheulov Lane. His temples were grey, too, and he stammered.

‘No offence intended,’ the gent went on, taking hold of Senka’s sleeve in a grip like a vice with his finger and thumb, ‘but Masa is t-tired of running after you, he’s not sixteen years old any more. We’ll have to take p-precautions and put you in irons t-temporarily. That rod of yours, if you please.’

The dandy took Senka’s iron stick, gripped both ends tight, wrinkled up his smooth forehead, and then didn’t he just twist that rod round Senka’s wrists! Real easy, too, like it was some kind of wire!

That took incredible strength! Senka was so shaken he couldn’t even do his poor orphan routine.

But the strongman raised his fine eyebrows, as if he was amazed by his own strength, and said: ‘Curious. May I enquire where you g-got this thingummy from?’

Senka gave him the appropriate answer: ‘Where from, where from? From a stroke of luck. If you want to know more, you can go get. . .’

It was like his hands really were in shackles, there was no way he could pull them from the iron loops, no matter how he wriggled.

‘Well, indeed, you’re quite right,’ the man with the moustache agreed calmly. ‘My question is indiscreet. You have every right not to answer it. So where are my beads?’

Then the Chinaman joined them. Senka screwed up his eyes and winced – old Yellow-face would hit him now, like he did Mikheika and the lads.

The words just burst out on their own: ‘Tashka’s got them! I gave them to her.’

‘Who this Taska?’ asked the Chinee that the dandy had called Masa.

‘My moll.’

The handsome gent sighed: ‘I understand. It’s unpleasant and improper to t-take a present back from a l-lady but please understand me, Semyon Spidorov I’ve had those b-beads for fifteen years. One grows accustomed to things, you know. And furthermore, they are associated with a certain rather special m-memory. Let us go to see Mademoiselle Tashka.’

Now, Senka took offence at that. How did he know Senka’s moll was a mamselle? Well, of course, Tashka was a mamselle, but he hadn’t said anything of the sort about her. She could have been a respectable girl. Senka was all set to spring to the defence of Tashka’s honour, shout some coarse insult, but he took a closer look at those calm blue eyes and thought better of it.

‘All right,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s go.’

They set off back along Podkolokolny, Masa holding one end of the twisted rod. The other tormentor walked on his own, tapping his cane on the cobbles.

Senka felt ashamed, being led along like a little dog on a lead. If any of the lads saw him, he’d be disgraced. So he tried to walk as close as he could to the Chinaman, like they were friends, or they were doing a job together. The Chinee understood Senka’s suffering: he took off his jacket and threw it over Senka’s shackled hands. He was human too, even if he wasn’t Russian.

A crowd of people was jostling around the way into the Yerokha. And over their heads, Senka could see a cap with a badge. A constable! Standing there looking all stern and haughty, not letting anyone in. Senka knew right off what was going on – they’d found the Siniukhins! But in the crowd they were saying all sorts.

Someone, who looked like a ragman (they collected old rags from rubbish tips), was explaining loudly: ‘It’s this order as was just issued by the orforities. Close down the Yerokha and spray it with infection, ’cause it’s spreading bacilluses right across Moscow.’

‘What’s it spreading?’ a woman with a broken nose asked in a frightened voice.

‘Bacilluses. Well, to put it simply, that’s a mouse or a rat. And you gets cholera from them, ’cause some of them as live in the Yerokha eats these bacilluses when they’re hungry, and they swell right up from the rat meat. Well, the orforities have found out about it.’

‘Don’t tell lies, sir, you’re only confusing the good people,’ a man emaciated from drink rebuked the ragman. Wearing a tattered frock coat, he was, must have been, one of the pen-pushers, like the late deceased Siniukhin, God rest his soul. ‘There’s been a murder in there. They’re waiting for the superintendent and the investigator.’

‘Hah, they wouldn’t make all this fuss over a trifle like that,’ the ragman said suspiciously. ‘Only today two men were stabbed to death across there in the Labour, as if anyone cares.’

The pen-pusher lowered his voice. ‘My neighbour told me what happened was horrible. Supposedly they did away with countless numbers of little children.’

The people around him gasped and crossed themselves, and the gent who owned the beads pricked up his ears and stopped.

‘Children have b-been killed?’ he asked.

The pen-pusher turned round, saw the important-looking gent and whipped off his cap. ‘Yes indeed, sir. I did not witness it myself, but Ivan Serafimovich from the Old Rags Basement heard the constable who ran to the station saying to himself: “Didn’t even spare the children, the vicious brutes”. And something else, about eyes being put out. My neighbour is an extremely honest man, he would never lie. He used to work in the excise office, a victim of fate, like myself. Obliged to waste his life away in such an appalling place because—’

‘The eyes were p-put out?’ Senka’s captor interrupted and handed the pen-pusher a coin. ‘Here, take this. All right, Masa, let’s go in and t-take a look at what’s happened here.’

And he walked up to the door of the flophouse, the Chinaman pulling Senka along behind. But the Old Rags Basement was the last place on God’s earth Senka wanted to go.

‘Why, what’s there to see in there?’ he whined, digging his heels in. ‘People talk all sorts of rubbish.’

But the gent had already gone up to the constable and given him a nod – the constable didn’t dare stop an imposing individual like that, he just saluted.

After they had walked down the steps to the cellars, the dandy murmured thoughtfully: ‘The Old Rags Basement? I think. . . that’s l-left and then right.’

What an amazing gent, where would he know that from? He walked along the dark corridors quickly, confidently too. Senka was astonished. But he still whined as he was dragged behind: ‘Mr Chinaman, why don’t we wait here, eh? What do you say to that?’

The Chinee stopped, turned round and gave Senka a light flick on the forehead.

‘I not Chinese, I Japanese. Awright?’

Then he went back to towing Senka.

Well, well! And Senka thought Japanese and Chinese were all the same yellow-faced slanty-eyes, but apparently they thought they were different, and they even took offence.

‘Mr Jappo,’ said Senka, correcting his mistake, ‘I’m exhausted, I can’t go on.’

And he tried to sit down, like he’d collapsed, but Masa waved a fist at him very persuasively, so Senka stopped talking and accepted his fate.

When they reached Siniukhin’s apartment, who was at the door but Boxman himself? As straight and tall as the Kremlin’s bell tower. And there was a lit paraffin lamp on the ground.

‘Boxman?’ the gent said in surprise. ‘So you’re still in Khitrovka. Well, well, well.’