by Pavel Kornev
"It's just a theory," I warned him, "but I suggest you look into the helium tanks on the landing platform."
"Why?" Smith squinted.
"Malone reacted very nervously when someone showed interest in the gas tanks. A mime was simply playing around foolishly near them, but he was immediately escorted off the roof."
"Helium floats, no one could be poisoned by that."
"Who said the tanks truly contain helium? Or only helium? You could mix anything you want with the inert gas."
The investigator drummed his fingers on the edge of the table.
"It's a bit flimsy," he sighed, then froze as if he had stopped breathing. "What did you say? Inert gas?"
"Well, sure. And what of it?"
"Günther Klosse!" Thomas Smith announced and clapped his palm on the tabletop. "A chemist specializing in inert gasses! He spent a long time vacationing here and often came to visit Malone."
And then I recalled the half-forgotten memory that had been bothering me.
"Günther Klosse hung himself in his hotel room in New Babylon," I told the investigator.
"That's right!" he pointed his index finger at me. "I read about it. And another surprising thing: the chemist was in public view here, but I never heard any rumors about intrigues or scandals. So, why would he crawl into a noose?"
Smith quickly folded the sheets into the clipboard and hopped out from behind the table.
"Run!" he demanded and dashed for the exit, but immediately returned. "And did you bring my Colt?"
"No," I lied habitually, not planning to part with the gun, still tucked behind my belt.
"To hell with it, I'll get it later!"
"Stop!" I barked and lowered my voice: "And my passport?"
"Tomorrow!" the investigator promised and ran away. I paid for the beer and walked outside. My head was purely empty, as if someone had wiped away all the dust of memories, sensations and impressions of the preceding day with a rag. Detachment – that's what I felt.
Was I just too worked up?
I wanted to go home and fall asleep, and I even headed to the nearest alley, but a familiar pair appeared out of nowhere to meet me. Ivan Prokhorovich and Yemelyan Nikiforovich were slightly hobbling, leaning one on the other and trying not to fall over.
"Lev Borisovich!" Krasin grew joyful. "Come along with us, then! There's a place nearby that does a marvelous anisette. Yes, with black-bread crust..."
"He’s quite right, Count!" the journalist supported his acquaintance. "Please join us. We'd be very glad!"
"Now gentlemen," I couldn't hold back a smile, "it seems to me that you've had enough for today. I still have yet to recover from yesterday myself."
"Oh! I've heard a lot about the spiritualist seance! A lot!" Sokolov nodded. "You are mistaken on one count, though: for us, the night is just beginning! Isn't that right, Yemelyan Prokhorovich?"
"That's right!" Krasin confirmed and again started asking me to join them for a glass, but I was not inclined.
"Don't even try to talk me out of it! I'm going to sleep!"
"Alright, Count, it's up to you!" Sokolov threw up his hands.
I walked away from them, and suddenly noticed a couple leaving the restaurant. He was somewhat fat and had a cigar in his mouth, she was tall, svelte and red-haired.
It was Elizabeth-Maria von Nalz with her husband. My Elizabeth-Maria, the daughter of the inspector general!
My heart simply stopped. The din of the people walking on the square went silent. Every color turned gray.
Most likely, I died.
"Count!" Ivan Prokhorovich looked startled. "You've gone pale! It’s like you've seen a ghost! What's happened to you?"
Yemelyan Prokhorovich clapped his meaty palm on my back.
"Come now, Leopold Borisovich, wake up!"
Elizabeth-Maria and her husband sat in a carriage and rolled off into the night. My heart shuddered, gave a few puttering uneven beats, then suddenly started hammering away like mad. Blood flushed into my face. I heard a buzzing in my ears. I found it impossible to breathe, but I overcame myself, pulled in air with a whistle, and exhaled with a wheeze.
"Out of sight, out of mind!" came into my head, a phrase I'd heard my father say many times. I'd never loved the inspector general's daughter to the point of losing my memory, but a year away from the object of my admiration had diminished my former ardor. She had long ceased to appear in my dreams. And this was just a recurrence. Just a phantom pain, a memory of a disease long cured.
Life went on. And I had something to live for.
"Lev Borisovich! It’s my medical opinion that you should take one hundred grams of clear spirits at once!"
"I thank you gentlemen! Thank you!" I refused. "But my heart is jumping. I’d probably better take some validolum..."
I very quickly bid them farewell, and walked away with the uneven gate of a hop head, not listening to any offers to take me back home. My eye caught on an open bakery, and I went into it.
"One coffee and an order of eclairs with egg-white cream," I said and leaned heavily on the tall table.
"We're closing soon!" the owner warned me.
"One coffee and an order of eclairs with egg-white cream," I repeated, "and some sugared hazelnuts, cream candy, meringue, sugar cookies and a couple of pies. Yes, those two, on the side. The eclairs and pies are for here. As for the rest, weigh out three hundred grams total and pack it up. I'll be taking it to go."
The owner worked out my total and decided he'd rather have my business, despite the late hour. He put the coffee on the stove, brought out the eclairs and pastries, then returned behind the counter to put the order together.
"Sugar, milk?" he clarified when the water had boiled.
"I'll take both," I answered, scarfing down the eclairs.
After that, I poured all the cream from the table into the coffee, threw three lumps of sugar into it and started devouring the almond pastries thoughtfully.
The cloudiness in my head started slightly dispersing. The world reobtained its color. The ringing in my ears went quiet. The stunning dose of sugar calmed my nerves no worse than a glass of water.
What's more, time heals all wounds. And although not all patients are fated to survive all wounds, the fact remains. They heal.
I held my arm out in front of me. My fingers were not shaking.
Now that is excellent. Love is something sacred, but I'm really not sure that it is a label that applies to unrequited adoration for a stranger. Such a feeling is probably closer in nature to a psychiatric disorder.
After finishing my coffee, I paid up for the sweets, left the pastry shop and looked thoughtfully from side to side. I'd lost all desire to go home. Instead, I took the meringue out of the bag, stuck the treat in my mouth and it just melted on the tongue. I spent some time standing on the sidewalk, then walked back to the square in no particular hurry.
Surprising zigzags were defining my fate once again. I ran away to the edge of the world and wasn't planning to return from there, but here I was, standing in the middle of a vacation town an eight-hour train ride from New Babylon. And, strangely, it was just packed with old friends. Albert, Charles, Elizabeth-Maria...
How did such a thing happen?
As soon as I considered that, my mood was ruined. Could it really be true?
The dirigible crash wasn't random, because it precisely had served as the starting point for all the subsequent events. It may be that there never was any attempt to kill me. Perhaps, some unknown puppet-master had used this incredibly primitive method to draw me into their game.
But if that was true, hadn't they left too much up to the hands of fate?
I was now done with the meringues. I bought a plain mineral water from a stall, drank my fill and sat down on an empty bench under a street light. Wanting to get my thoughts in order, I took out my notepad and started drawing a very simple diagram: squares and triangles connected with arrows. People, events, actions.
The crashing
of my dirigible had provided the jumping off point. I thought for a long time over the role of my chance rescuers, but I didn't start suspecting them of any secret conspiracy. I could have gotten to the shore without them just by swimming.
The Indian, though, was a different story. Although he was a mere pawn, he was the precise pawn who had made the first move, trying to poison me in the cabaret. There couldn't be the slightest doubt. Otherwise, they wouldn't have gotten rid of him.
But why had he been assigned that job? Had someone wanted to connect me with Liliana?
Nonsense! Even if you take into account the minor fact that I went to the cabaret entirely of my own accord, how could anyone have known I would leave through the back door?! And by the way, why exactly had I done that?
I frowned, searching my memory and snapped my fingers.
The mime! The Incredible Orlando was entertaining guests at the main entrance, and by then, I was already sick and tired of his jokes and tricks. The restless mime brought me to a state of mute distemper every time I saw him...
Every time? That was right!
The mime was also at the reception. The mime was the one handing out cards before the spiritualist seance. And today, it was also him messing about near the helium tanks! And as a result: he was there when I met Liliana, he was there for her trance, and he helped me arrive at the secret of the upcoming assassination of Crown Princess Anna! Was that not just too many coincidences?
I stashed the notepad in my pocket, looked at the square, which was beginning to empty out and hurried to Charles Malacarre, who had already packed up his easel.
"Charles!" I stopped him. "I have an attractive offer for you!"
"Leo!" the blind illustrator sighed. "If I wanted to draw portraits of criminals, I'd have gone to work for the police."
"I assure you, this time will be fun," I laughed and stuck fifty francs worth of bills into his chest pocket.
Charles felt through the banknotes and determined what they were by touch, then whistled in surprise:
"I thought you said you got rich?"
"That's right! And I didn't even have to rob a bank. Here, help yourself."
The old man took some of my sweets and shook his head:
"I have an incurable sweet tooth!"
"So, will you help me?"
"What can I do with you? Sit down!"
I collapsed on the couch and closed my eyes.
"Pull out everything you can from my memory," I asked the artist. "Take away the makeup and the idiotic hat. I want to know what he would look like without them."
"Another police-style sketch?"
"That would be ideal."
Charles attached a new sheet to the easel, picked up a pencil and demanded:
"Relax! Your talent is blinding me like a hundred-watt bulb!"
I tried, and although I didn't get it right the first time, in the end, the canvas revealed a man of thirty years with a straight nose and sunken cheeks. He was unfamiliar to me.
"Are you sure that's him?" I doubted.
"Yes," the blind illustrator confirmed. "Without makeup, this is precisely how he would look."
"Great!"
I put the drawing in my pocket and helped Charles gather his things and call a cabby.
"Hey, Leo!" the artist called out to me. "Your treats!"
"Keep them!" I waved it off, jumping into an empty carriage and commanding: "To the train station!"
I started to feel the call of fate. I no longer wanted sweets. I didn't remember correctly when the next train to New Babylon was expected, but there was no longer any time left. One way or another, everything would work itself out tomorrow. And I wanted devilishly to be armed to the teeth when it did.
What luck. A postal train from the west coast was going to make a stop in the city at two minutes after ten. I barely even had to wait. As soon as I managed to buy an envelope from a newspaper kiosk, send instructions to Ramon Miro and attach them to the portrait of the mime, it had arrived. After that, everything went off without a hitch. I just grabbed the engineer on his way back from the lavatory and handed him an envelope containing ten francs in exchange for the promise to transmit the message to my former partner unmolested.
After waiting for the train to get underway, I sent my former colleague a telegram right from the train station with a request to do me a small favor and headed home.
If the mime had fallen into the field of view of the metropolitan police even once, Ramon would find out his real name through acquaintances. With fingerprints, it would all have been incomparably easier, but I had never seen the Incredible Orlando without his white gloves, so I didn't even waste time trying to get something that had been in his hands. I hoped the distinguishing features I'd memorized would be enough to track down the sly dog. The height, body type, eye color, and traits of the magician – that wouldn't be as little as it might seem at first glance.
I didn't want to walk down the little streets at night, so I flagged down one of the cabs parked at the square before the train station. He brought me home in a matter of ten minutes.
I paid up and just walked through the gate, but just then saw a figure in a dark cloak stand up from the veranda. My hand went down to the handle of my Cerberus all on its own. My thumb moved the pennant-shaped safety aside, and the electric charge hummed on barely audibly. But then the uninvited guest threw their hood back and, in the darkness of the summer night, I saw the chalk-white face of Liliana.
"Leo!" the girl whispered with tears in her voice. "They're planning to kill you!"
Chapter Six, or Long-Awaited Answers and a Bit of Darkness
A PERSON IN A STATE of shock isn’t always left staring catatonically after unexpected news. Often, when so affected, people can grow many times stronger and accomplish truly impressive feats.
Life has taught me not to freeze up in critical situations, because doing so just makes an easy target. And so, the first thing I did was pull Lily into the house, then shut the lock. Only after that did I ask her:
"Who and what for?"
Liliana sobbed:
"The thugees, Leo! It's all my fault! Because I refused to perform, they're planning to kill you!"
"Stop!" I ordered, pouring water from a decanter and foisting the glass onto her. "Drink this!"
Liliana's hands were shaking. She was even drenched in sweat but still, she overcame herself and started to drink, clinking her teeth on the glass with a sonorous ring.
"And now, let's go through this step by step," I said, stroking her shoulders reassuringly and helping her remove her cloak. "What exactly led you to believe my life was in danger?"
"A letter!" Liliana threw up her hands and started digging in the bag. "It was under my pillow! I found it when I went to bed!"
"Mind if I take a look?" I asked her, taking the wrinkled paper, covered with large printed letters, as if the author was trying to cover up his handwriting or was simply bad at writing.
The letter didn't give me any clues. "Dance, and the goddess will let him go. If you refuse, he will die," and that was all.
"Hm..." I mumbled. "And you came to me in the middle of the night to warn me? You couldn't have sent a letter?"
"Leo, you don't grasp how serious this is. There’s no one I can trust! What if they're one of them?"
"Ah of course, so that’s why you decided to come alone..."
"You gave me a pistol!"
"And your parents? What do they think?"
"I'm a grown woman!" Liliana cut me off, pressing up to me and starting to cry. "Leo, I'm so afraid! I'm afraid of losing you! I'd never forgive you for that..."
"Nothing bad will happen to me," I promised, embracing my girlfriend. "Nor to you. I won't allow it."
"Leo, these are the thugees! They're too elusive!"
"Nonsense."
"It isn't nonsense at all!"
Liliana raised her teary face to me, and I kissed her cautiously; there was a salty taste left on my lips. Lily shuddered and I
demanded:
"Stop the hysterics!"
"I'm not hysterical!"
But I wouldn't listen, grabbing Liliana by the arms and bringing her into the bedroom on the second floor. We both had to calm our nerves, and I knew a reliable way of doing that. Perhaps it wasn't the fastest way, but certainly the most pleasant – that much was for sure.
Afterward, I laid there in complete darkness, listening to the light breathing of my guest and trying to figure out how I felt about her. There was no passion, but I felt a strong draw toward Liliana. And I absolutely did not want any harm to come to her.
I felt I had to take care of her. I was prepared to do anything to make her feel safe. But not now, in the morning.
Meanwhile, all that remained was to lie down next to her and not move, even though my sleeping hand had grown numb.
And I thought. I thought about how Liliana's emotions were like a pendulum, which someone crafty was rocking from side to side, increasing the amplitude. Very carefully, so as not to harm the fragile mechanism.
From security to fear. From self-confidence to nervous breakdown. And so on and so on, without breaks or breathers.
Or was it not her who had been swung at all, but me?
Liliana suddenly opened her eyes and asked:
"What were you thinking about?"
I pulled out my numb arm with relief and threw a lock of black hair off the girl's face.
"I'm trying to guess what your talent is," I answered, not wanting to share the true contents of my mind.
"Is that really what's bothering you right now?" Liliana asked, batting her eyelashes in surprise.
"Well sure," I confirmed. "Somehow you've gotten me to fall in love with you. Was that perhaps the work of your talent?"
"Am I really such a dog?!" Lily grew offended. "Tell me you were joking! Leo, you just cannot be such a scoundrel!"