Алексей Николаевич Толстой - The Garin Death Ray

"Let's go. We've got some serious things to talk over."

In the doorway Zoe looked back. Through the smoke and the tangle of streamers she again saw Garin's burning eyes. Then, incredibly, dizzily, his face doubled: somebody sitting with his back to the dancers got up and stood beside him; both of them looked at Zoe. Or was k an illusion worked by the mirrors?

For a second Zoe shut her eyes and then ran down the worn carpet to her car. Rolling was waiting for her. When he had shut the door he touched her hand.

"I didn't tell you everything about my talk with that guy who called himself Pyankov-Pitkevich... There are things I can't understand. Why the fake hysterics? Surely he couldn't expect to get any sympathy out of me? Altogether his behaviour was suspicious. And why did he come to me, anyway? Why did he flop on the table?..."

"Rolling, you didn't tell me that."

"Yes, yes. He knocked over the clock. Crumpled my papers..."

"Did he try to steal your papers?"

"What? Steal?" Rolling pondered over that. "No, I don't think he did. He lost his balance and fell with his hand on my writing-pad. There were several sheets of paper lying there."

"Are you sure nothing is missing?"

"They were just notes of no importance. He crumpled them and I threw them into the wastepaper-basket."

"I beg you, try to remember every detail of the conversation."

The limousine drew up on the Rue de la Seine. Rolling and Zoe went straight to the bedroom. Zoe disrobed rapidly and got into the wide, carved four-poster standing on eagle's claws—one of the genuine beds that had belonged to the Emperor Napoleon I. Rolling undressed slowly, walking up and down the carpet as he did so and leaving articles of wearing apparel on the gilded chairs, the little tables and the mantelshelf; while he was undressing he gave Zoe full details of everything that had occurred during Garin's visit the day before.

She listened to him, leaning on her elbow. Hopping on one leg to pull off his trousers, Rolling looked like anything but a king. With the words: "That is absolutely everything," he got into bed and pulled the satin quilt up to his nose. A bluish night-light illuminated the luxurious bedroom, the scattered clothing, the golden cupids on the bedposts, and Rolling's fleshy nose stuck into the quilt. His head was sunk deep in the pillow, his mouth half-open—the Chemical King was asleep.

That snorting nose did more than anything to disturb Zoe's thoughts. It brought back undesirable memories of other events. She shook her head to get rid of them and imagined another head on the pillow in place of Rolling's.

Growing tired of struggling against her own thoughts, she closed her eyes and smiled. Garin's face, pale from excitement, floated before her... "Perhaps I should ring up Gaston Bee de Canard and tell him to wait?" Suddenly a thought pierced her like a needle: "He had a double sitting with him, just as he did in Leningrad..."

She slipped out of bed and began pulling on her stockings. Rolling mumbled in his sleep but only turned over on his side.

Zoe ran into the dressing-room. She put on some clothes, and a mackintosh which she belted tightly, then went back to the bedroom for her bag with the money in it.

"Rolling," she called softly, "Rolling... We're done for..."

Again he mumbled in his sleep. She ran down to the vestibule and with an effort opened the heavy street doors. The Rue de la Seine was empty. A dull yellow moon peeped through a gap between the mansards. Zoe's heart sank. She glanced up at the disc of the moon that hung over the sleeping city. "Oh, my God, how terrifying, how gloomy." With both her hands she pulled her hat down over her forehead and ran to the embankment.

The old, three-storeyed house, number sixty-three on the Rue des Gobelins, had one wall facing an empty lot. On this side the only windows were in the mansard. Another, a blank wall faced a park. On the side facing the street the ground floor was occupied by a cafe catering for carters and lorry-drivers. The first floor was an overnight hotel and the top floor, the mansard, was let out in single rooms to permanent lodgers. The entrance to the upper floors was through gates and a long tunnel.

It was past one o'clock, and not a single lighted window on the whole of the Rue des Gobelins. The cafe was closed, the chairs were up-ended on the tables. Zoe stopped in the gateway for a moment, staring; at the number sixty-three. A shiver ran down her back. She plucked up courage and rang the bell. There was the rustle of a rope and the gates opened. She slipped into the dark entrance and the voice of the concierge growled, "Night's the time to sleep, you ought to get home earlier," but did not ask who it was.

The place was a real den of infamy and Zoe was genuinely frightened. Before her stretched a low, dark tunnel. A gas jet burned on the rough wall, the colour of ox blood. Semyonov's instructions were: at the end of the tunnel turn left, up a spiral staircase to the top floor, turn left, to number eleven.

Half-way down the tunnel Zoe stopped. She fancied she saw someone peep out at the far end and then disappear again. Perhaps she ought to turn back? She listened but did not hear a sound. She ran to a bend in the tunnel where there was a sort of a smelly hallway out of which led a narrow spiral staircase faintly lit from above. On tiptoe Zoe climbed the stairs, afraid to put her hand on the clammy rail.

The whole house was asleep. On the first-floor landing an arch with flaking plaster led into a dark corridor. As she continued up the stairs Zoe looked back and again she fancied that somebody peeped out of the arch and then disappeared. Only it wasn't Gaston Bee de Canard. "No, no, Gaston hasn't been here, he can't have been, he hasn't had time to..."

On the top-floor landing a gas jet was burning, throwing its light on a brown wall covered with inscriptions and drawings that told a tale of unsatisfied desires. If Garin were not at home she would wait for him here until morning. If he were at home and asleep, she would not leave until she had got what he took from the desk in the office on the Boulevard Malesherbes.

Zoe took off her gloves, pushed back her hair under her hat, and went along the corridor that took a sharp turn to the left. On the fifth door the number 11 was painted in big white figures. Zoe turned the handle and the door opened easily.

The moonlight fell through the open window of a small room. On the floor lay an open suitcase. Scattered papers showed up white in the moonlight. Between the washstand and a chest-of-drawers, a man wearing nothing but a shirt was sitting on the floor by the wall with his bare knees drawn up; his feet looked enormous... The moon lit up one half of the face, showing a bright, wide-open eye and gleaming white teeth in a grinning mouth. Zoe gasped, she could not get her breath as she stood staring at that face with its ghastly grin—it was Garin.

That morning in the Cafe Globe she had told Gaston Bee de Canard to steal the apparatus and the drawings and, if possible, to kill Garin. But in the evening she had seen Garin's eyes through the smoke over a glass of champagne and felt that if such a man wanted her she would abandon and forget everything in order to follow him. At night, when she realized the danger and had set out to intercept Gaston, she had not known what it was that drove her in such alarm through the Paris night, from bar to bar, into gambling houses and other places where Gaston might have been and had finally brought her to the house in the Rue des Gobelins. What was it that urged the clever, cold, cruel woman to enter the room of the man she had condemned to death?

She stared at Garin's white teeth and protruding eye. With a hoarse half-suppressed cry she ran and bent down over him. He was dead. His face was blue and his neck swollen with bruises. It was the same face—haggard, attractive, with excited eyes, with confetti in the silken beard... Zoe grasped the ice-cold marble of the washstand and pulled herself up with difficulty. She had forgotten what she came for. Bitter saliva filled her mouth. "That's all I need, to fall in a faint." With a final effort she tore off the button on the collar that was strangling her, and turned towards the door. In the doorway stood Garin.