by Pavel Kornev
I buried my forehead in the floor, clenched my teeth, and waited for the pain to subside. Then I demanded:
"Leave him alone."
"I'd never dream of it."
"Leave him!"
The girl came up closer, grabbed me by the chin and raised my head.
"You can only ask. Do you want to beat me on Albert's terms? Let's see how good you are in bed."
I threw back my hand, understanding perfectly that it was just a scheme to make me and the poet fight.
"No?" Elizabeth-Maria laughed hoarsely as she walked away from me. She then squeezed out contemptuously: "Weakling!"
Letting the insult go unnoticed, I got up from the floor and flopped into bed in exhaustion. And when the succubus went for the exit, I asked:
"So, you say you weren't using charms?"
"That’s right," the girl answered, throwing open the door and only then catching the hidden meaning in my words. "Do you mean to tell Albert about my true nature?" she asked, now facing me again.
"You're missing one fairly important thing."
"And what might that be?"
I tapped my finger on my temple.
"Elizabeth-Maria is entirely in my head. Entirely! To the last hair!"
The girl stared at me gloomily, then shook her head and announced:
"You are not capable of changing my appearance! That is not one of your powers!"
"That's right," I confirmed, falling onto my back. "Your image is too bright. Sometimes, I even think you and I have known each other for many years. In fact, it’s as if I’ve known you my whole life."
"Where are you going with this, Leo?" Elizabeth-Maria got on guard.
"People do tend to change with time though," I answered, closing my eyes. "Your body is mortal. What will it look like in two decades?"
"No!"
I got up and looked at the girl.
"I've known you for many years. Many long years..."
"No!" Elizabeth-Maria exclaimed as she ran toward me, but then she was struck with an attack of fierce pain. Now, her muscles were tied in a knot, and her body was shaking in an unbearable fit.
I waited for her to come back to her senses, then smiled ruthlessly:
"If memory serves, Albert never did like ladies past a certain age."
"No!" the girl exhaled again, rubbing out her cheek with her fingers to find it had now lost its formerly taught surface. Her skin, now covered in a web of the finest wrinkles, dried up once and for all. "No!" Elizabeth-Maria shouted out and ran away. A moment later, thunder rang out, the door to her bedroom slamming shut.
I just shrugged my shoulders. My imagination had treated Elizabeth-Maria fairly mercifully. Now, she looked like a ripe lady, just over forty years of age. But for the girl, it was a crushing blow.
And what a shock this would be to Albert!
For a moment, I even felt slightly bad for my unlucky friend. But he'd survive another breakup, even if it would be hard on him. The poet never did get used to splitting with girlfriends.
With a fateful sigh, I grabbed the old man by the legs and dragged him out of the room. On the stairs, the back of his head slapped against every step with an unpleasant thud, but it no longer mattered to me; I was too tired. After leaving the corpse by the hatch to the basement, I found Theodor and ordered him to bring it down to the icehouse.
The manor was gradually becoming a burial ground.
I didn't have dinner. The slaughter had completely destroyed my appetite, and the strong smell of corpses caused profound nausea.
Fortunately, on the third floor, the smell of dead flesh wasn't quite so strong; I locked the bedroom door, set my knife and pistols on the bedside table, then checked the blinds and fell powerless onto the bed. I recovered my breath and picked up the old man's jacket which had been lying there all that time. Beyond unremarkable baubles, in one of his pockets I discovered a wallet. And in the wallet, there were business cards. His business cards.
The illustrious man was named William Mathew. The name was unfamiliar to me, but the phrase "judge emeritus" was a clear indication that this was an important person, and his disappearance would surely be noticed. There would be people looking for him; not only his illustrious co-conspirators, but also his relatives.
"We need to get rid of the bodies!" I decided, stashing the dead man's money in my wallet. I put back a photograph of two twins, a boy and a girl in modern clothing, then wiped off my fingerprints and threw the wallet on top of his jacket on the floor.
No part of this caused me any real emotions whatsoever. It wasn't me that killed the old man; his past did him in. He lived many years in fear of being uncovered, but would have died his own death surrounded by relatives and friends, if he had not decided to try and trick fate.
The illustrious man's fortune was of little concern to me; the ten million francs in the Swiss deposit box was all I could think about. It was burning my soul. Possessing such a grandiose fortune without being able to use it – is that not the greatest torture you could imagine for an honest person?
I cursed aloud, put out the gas lamps and went to sleep with a feeling of extreme pessimism.
MY MOOD was no better in the morning, either. I laid in bed for a long time, listening to the rustling in the empty manor, then reached for the bedside table and looked at my timepiece.
It was nine forty-five.
I should have been up long ago, but when I remembered yesterday's events, I suddenly wanted to wrap up under the comforter and hunker down in the hope that the hardships would just pass me by.
Baloney! I shouldn't be acting like a caricatural ostrich with my head stuck in the sand. If I didn't get myself together and deal with these troubles right away, an avalanche of problems would entomb me in and pull me down so low I'd reach the very bottom. Straight to the underworld.
And first thing I had to do was get rid of the illustrious man's body. The disappearance of a retired judge was not the kind of event that went unnoticed. The police might even come to my quarantined estate if they thought I had him. All it would take is one anonymous tip. And I should not be doubting that it would soon follow: the old man's co-conspirators certainly knew where he was headed before he disappeared.
But if the body turned up in some canal without signs of a violent death, there wouldn't be much of an investigation. Bad weather, an elderly man, a heart attack. Such things were known to happen. But that meant I had to go get the armored car I'd left at Dyak's right away and take the dead man into town.
After that, I’d deal with the money. No, not the money I'd pulled out of the old man's wallet and part of which I put back with some measure of pity, but the deposit for ten million francs that promised me a new life, free from want.
Staying in New Babylon was now extremely dangerous, but if I got control over the funds in Zurich, I'd be able to get at least to the New World, or the continent. I'd even have enough to make it to Zuid-India. The problem was that getting it required the second part of the number. The fragment with it was apparently among the personal effects of Count Kósice found on the dirigible crash site. But it didn't seem possible for me to get to it. After the recent events, I wasn't particularly popular in the Newton-Markt.
I remembered Elizabeth-Maria von Nalz and my heart was overcome with a fatal sorrow. Why had she written about me in her diary? Did she want to harm me, or had she been forced? Maybe it was a cry for help? Oh, if only I knew where to find the girl...
Empty dreams! Without hesitation, I threw out the imagined tale of me rescuing my beloved from captivity and confessing my love to her. I got out of bed and walked over to the window. The blinds opened with a creak, but not all the way, as if someone had tried to break them yesterday and nearly found success in that endeavor. Outside, it was damp and gloomy; there was no rain, but the sky was stretched over with thunder clouds. There was a drizzle hanging in the air. A piercing wind blew. The bad weather had just given the city a small breather, no more. By the evening, or mayb
e even earlier, there would be a storm.
I quickly shaved and brushed my teeth, got dressed then put my Cerberus and knife in my pockets and started considering what to do with the Mauser. I didn't want to leave home with just the three-round snub-nose. I had to find my traveling bag and put the pistol in it.
After that, I went down to the first floor, and there, my somber butler was washing the kitchen floor.
"Your little hellspawn made this puddle right in the middle of the room!" he declared with distaste, clearly referring to the leprechaun.
"Well, Theodor! That is the least of our problems!" I said, trying to cheer up my abnormally nervous servant and throwing the illustrious man's jacket over a chair. "Put this down with the body in the icehouse."
"Yes sir, Viscount," he nodded, gone gray after all he'd been through.
Despite the open windows, there was still a strong corpse stench, but it was no longer quite as pungent as last night. Theodor had dragged all the rag-wrapped corpses out to the yard last night, and he even managed, with what strength he had left, to mop the floor and clean the walls.
The butler himself wasn't looking too good: he was somehow peaked, gloomy and strangely angry.
"We need to find the leprechaun's treasure!" Theodor declared, wiping his hands off with a rag. "This cannot go on!"
Elizabeth-Maria came noiselessly down the stairs like a ghost, looked at us and encouraged the servant:
"Theodor, I'll help you look for it."
Abnormally, the girl was wearing a floor-length black dress, gloves and a hat with a thick veil. I couldn't see her face, but her faint voice let me know that yesterday's metamorphosis had been irreversible.
I poured myself some water from the teapot and smiled:
"Best of luck in your search."
I didn't try to talk them out of it. I also was curious to see what would be found in the troublesome pipsqueak’s treasure. But when I started for the exit, Elizabeth-Maria suddenly added significantly:
"There's nothing you want to say to me, Leo?"
"No," I answered shortly.
"You have no heart!"
And on that note, our conversation ended.
I wasn't experiencing even the slightest pangs of conscience over how I had treated the succubus; beyond that – I was preparing to rid myself of her once and for all. That creature was seriously intending to drag my soul down to hell and I could not count on any other outcome. Her look of insulted innocence was all the work of the Deceiver...
After ducking into the guest room for the hand-held machine gun, I carried it into the carriage-house. On my way, I picked up the rifle whose butt-stock had broken over the head of the first mummy. I added a couple of Mauser clips to my traveling bag and went outside.
The garden was a pitiful and unsavory spectacle. Among the black trees, cut down by bullets and shrapnel, there were dead bodies lying everywhere, their appendages strewn about haphazardly. There were dark bald patches in the lawn covered with fresh ash from the burnt phosphorus. In the yard, there was a towering pile of corpses. They were gradually degrading; their rotting flesh was soaking through the rags and forming foul-smelling puddles on the ground.
All that remained was to hope that, when the sun came out, this mess would rot away and dry up as Elizabeth-Maria claimed.
I went back home, cleaned my boots, grabbed my canvas jacket and cane and headed to Leonardo-da-Vinci-Platz. I had to get rid of the illustrious man's body post haste. And it wouldn't have been an issue, but Alexander Dyak hadn't yet started on the repair work.
"A thousand pardons, Leopold Borisovich," he muttered, wiping his puffy face with his hands, "there just wasn't time. First, I was dealing with the incendiary mortar rounds. Then, I just couldn't wait and started work on the electromagnetic wave transmitter. And, would you believe it? It's completely finished!"
"That's great," I sighed, "but I need the armored car now."
"Soldering the radiator is no problem. I just need the right tool. I promise it will be ready by lunch time!" The inventor came out from behind the counter and locked the door behind him. "Leopold Borisovich, there’s something you have to see!"
"What exactly?"
"I attached a cylinder to the transmitter like that of a music box, the pins arranged in the order you suggested. I'm positively burning with desire to test it out!"
"I'm afraid I don't have any time now..." I said, trying to refuse, but the shop owner was implacable.
"You have to see this!" he repeated, trotting out a trusty argument: "Leopold Borisovich, are you personally not intrigued?"
Curses! I was intrigued, and how!
I looked at my timepiece and asked:
"But will the armored car be ready by lunchtime?"
"You have my word!" the inventor promised.
"Alright, I'm with you!"
We went down into the basement. In the far corner, between the spark-showering electrodes, I saw the shadow of the frozen poltergeist. Alexander Dyak demonstrated his apparatus with pride.
"Here, look, Leopold Borisovich!" he said, pointing at the cylinder with two kinds of pins, some thin and some thicker. "The electric wire turns the axle at a constant speed. The pins lift the metal strip and complete the circuit, thus broadcasting either a dot or a dash."
"Have you tested it yet?"
"I have, but without power to the transmitter." The inventor looked at me and, as if apologizing, said: "I don't even know what I'm more afraid of: success or failure. I actually only called you so I could be sure my observations were objective. It's all so near anti-scientific mysticism..."
"Treat it like a code," I advised him.
"That is an utterly unscientific approach, Leopold Borisovich!" Alexander Dyak grew gloomy, falling into a bad state of mind. "And I'm a bit embarrassed to be grasping at it like straws. I'm hoping for a miracle, but I should be relying on my mental prowess!"
"Your mental prowess and sublime electricity," I nodded. "Maybe we should start?"
"I'm afraid," the shop owner admitted, but immediately got himself together and switched on the power.
The apparatus hummed to life, then the inventor sent a few short signals as a test. Effected by the electromagnetic-field disturbances, the transparent shadow of the poltergeist broke into layers and started to vibrate. Then slowly, it came into balance, frozen in its former immobility.
"Alright, let's go!" Alexander Dyak exhaled, putting the axle into motion.
The pins started lifting the metal strip one after the other, completing the transmitter's circuit, and the poltergeist started sparking like a heat lamp after turning the power on and off repeatedly.
Short-long-long-short...
The electromagnetic disturbances shook the shadow, digging into it with pellets of light. In time with the flickering, something started quietly ticking in my head, but the evil spirit was doing incomparably worse. His transparent mirage separated into layers and poured over, flaring up like the northern lights, before it gradually burnt up in a strange fluorescence. Soon, the measured rhythm of the flashes started growing slower, and the bursts of light began penetrating the poltergeist with ever greater frequency. The ghost suddenly fell out of our world, then appeared again. But, after that, it started to shine with a blinding light that cut painfully into my eyes, even through my darkened lenses.
Alexander Dyak buried his face in his hands and stretched out to the off switch, and the evil spirit exploded, blasting the metal needles surrounding it around the whole basement.
One second it was there, and the next it was gone, no longer in this world. And its power gushed out in all directions, bending and breaking everything in a small radius. The huge body of the dynamo gave a shudder, having taken the brunt of the pressure wave. It was even moved from place and slowly dragged over the concrete-covered floor. The iron top flew off and cut into the wall, then slammed onto the floor with a deafening clang.
Alexander and I were not hit.
We spent so
me time sitting in complete silence, then Dyak turned to me with a chalk-pale face and exhaled:
"Otche Nash! It worked! Did you see, Leopold? It worked!"
I nodded in silence. The steel needle of one of the electrodes was sticking out of the lead wall lining a few hands away from my head; if it had gone just a bit more to the left, two lost souls would have just been sent to hell: that of the poltergeist and my own.
"It worked!" the inventor exclaimed. "It worked, do you hear me?!"
"I do," I answered, wiping my sweaty face with a kerchief.
I didn't have much hope for the Pater Noster translated into Morse code, but the poltergeist was dispelled even before Dyak's apparatus had finished the prayer left to us by the Savior.
"Stunning!" the shop owner said, continuing to delight in the result of the experiment. "I don't know how, and I don't know why, but it worked! Electromagnetic-field disturbances with that same wavelength were not able to drive out the poltergeist on their own, but that combination of short and long signals led to the complete destruction of the object under study! How can you explain that?"
"Without falling back on theology?" I smiled. "I'm afraid you cannot. But inventing a scientific basis for a discovery once made is easier than making the breakthrough itself."
"You're completely right, Leopold Borisovich! Completely right!" the inventor agreed. "But there's more work to be done here!"
We went up from the basement into Alexander Dyak's workshop. Once there Dyak, overjoyed, opened a bottle of Shustov brandy.
"Have a drink?" he offered me.
"I'll refrain," I shook my head. "I hope our agreement on the armored car remains in force?"
The inventor was obviously impatient to put his thoughts and theories to paper, but he exerted some effort over himself and confirmed:
"Yeah, come by at two."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet!" Alexander Dyak laughed, pouring himself another glass of brandy.
I bid him farewell, went outside and started thinking about what to do with my free time. There was no use in going back home; in the end, I decided to drop by Albert Brandt's and prepare him for parting with yet another lady of his heart.