by Pavel Kornev
"As you say," Mrs. Hardy took that order with an icy calm.
"Leo, you need to lie in bed!" Lily said, again showing concern. "I'll call a doctor!"
"No need, my dear," I refused. "I'm completely fine. And, to be honest, before lying down, I would like a bath."
"A bath is the best thing for a cold," Mrs. Hardy approved of that decision, looking expressively at my bare feet.
Liliana pulled me to the stairs; I, meanwhile, pulled an edition of the Atlantic Telegraph from the newspaper table and hid my Webley-Fosbery, which had been causing my pants to nearly fall due to the lack of belt. If that happened, my fingers could get hurt or the gun might even go off when hitting the floor.
I went up to the second story almost without losing my breath. Most likely, it was Liliana's talent at work. She had believed in me this whole time, but it was hard to believe in the return of a person who had disappeared two months earlier without a trace. But now, Lily had bounced back, and it was as if I was bathing in the warmth she radiated.
The stairs led us to a spacious hall with a fireplace a round table and soft armchairs. Now, gloom reigned there. The electric bulbs in the crystal chandelier were off.
"Our bathroom is to the right," Liliana pointed to one of the corridors heading in different directions on the floor.
"Our?" I asked in surprise. "Lily, do you live here?"
There was ample evidence that Albert Brandt and his wife lived here: the rich assortment of alcoholic beverages and paintings from fashionable expressionists on the walls of the living room, mixed in with canvases of nude models, for example. But Liliana? What was she doing here?
"What else could I do?" my girlfriend sighed. "I was waiting for you to come back day in and day out, not wanting to upset my parents." She smiled. "I had to lie that we were traveling through Europe."
"Oh," I exhaled and slumped down in the nearest chair. It was as if my strength left me all at once. My heart was crushed.
"Don't worry, mom and dad don't suspect a thing. Albert's friends send postcards from the continent from time to time," Lily said and turned away, demonstrating her classical profile.
She couldn't hide the tears welling up in her eyes, and my heart burst in pain.
"That's not what I'm worried about," I admitted. "Not at all."
"What happened, Leopold?" Lily asked, sitting on the arm of the chair and embracing me. "What's the matter, my dear?"
"My past caught up with me," I answered, not getting into the details and leaning my forehead against her feminine shoulder. "It was bad without you."
"For me too," Lily said, lifting my head and kissing me on the lips. "Tell me everything later, alright? Now you need to take a bath and drink broth, and I need to take care of Elizabeth-Maria."
"And what happened to her?" I asked, getting on guard.
"Nervous fever," Liliana told me, getting up from the armchair. "No medicine helps, and she hasn't woken up for two weeks."
A shudder ran over me. Nervous fever? Oh, if only! With her current appearance, Elizabeth-Maria was completely and totally obliged to my imagination, and I could no longer hold that image in my mind.
Now, I had another problem hanging heavily around my neck like a millstone...
"Go take a bath, I'll bring you a robe," Liliana ordered, walking down the corridor.
I admired my girlfriend's lithe figure, her narrow waist and copious black hair, but, when Lily was hidden from view, I didn't go into the bathroom, instead glanced into Elizabeth-Maria's bedroom. Her bedroom met me with gloom, a heavy frankincense aroma and the smell of a body warmed by disease. The windows were covered with a curtain, and there was a table at the wide queen bed with a row of glass bottles of medicines and tablets.
When I walked in, Elizabeth-Maria didn't even stir. The sweat-soaked sheet was just barely heaving from the slow movement of her chest. The pillow gleamed with red locks of her fallen hair. Her face was severely slim and had lost its sweet roundness, becoming harsh and sharp. It hadn't lost its beauty one bit, it was just that the true nature of the succubus had begun to peek out, predatory and pitiless.
I tried to resurrect the image of my imaginary bride in my memory, as I had seen her for the first time but, in my memory, beyond the image of the round-faced pretty girl, there was another one that was no less vivid. It was very difficult to forget the succubus licking blood from steely nails with a split tongue while her eyes burned with the fire of the underworld!
I could no longer count on my own imagination and didn't know the potential consequences of the succubus returning to demonic form so, giving Elizabeth-Maria a heavy slap, I quickly retreated from the bed and said only after that:
"Stand up and walk!"
Elizabeth-Maria's swollen eyes suddenly flew open and she stared at me with an unseeing gaze.
"Scoundrel!" she squeezed out hoarsely, licking her dried lips and groaning out: "You're such an unbearable scoundrel, Leopold Orso! And it was such bad luck for me to cross paths with you!"
Under her heavy gaze, I hobbled to the door.
"Where did you disappear off to?" the succubus whispered, raising up from the pillow.
"Doesn't matter. What matters is that I'm back."
"Make yourself scarce!"
Not wanting to test Elizabeth-Maria's patience, I slipped out the door and only there took the revolver hidden under the newspaper off full cock.
"Leo?" Liliana asked in surprise. "You aren't in the bath yet?"
"No, I decided to visit Elizabeth-Maria," I answered with a careless smile, taking the robe from my girlfriend and walking into the little room. In the middle of it, there was a bulbous copper bathtub on animal feet. There were two pipes leading from it: one with cold water and one with hot.
"I'll bring the broth right away," Liliana warned.But as soon as she entered the corridor, she shouted out excitedly: "Mary? You're awake?!"
After closing the door, I threw off my secondhand clothes right on the tile floor, then plugged the drain and opened both shine-polished copper faucets. I checked the water temperature with my hand, got into the bath and fell down limp, enjoying the heat enveloping me.
After a brief soak, I washed my head, wiped the foam from my short bristle of hair and picked up the newspaper. I felt like a piece had been cut out of me, and I couldn't simply lie in the bath and enjoy the return to normal life. I needed a distraction from the gaping emptiness in my soul.
Something wasn't right with me. And that worried me like finding a chip in my tooth with my tongue but much, much worse. It was as if I had been lobotomized, and I didn't even know it.
"Curses!" I swore aloud, opening the newspaper in a nervous motion.
The front page had a flashy headline: "Has the London Reaper returned?" It was talking about a series of murders of young ladies. At the time of the article’s writing, there were already four known victims. Each of them had their heart cut out, and the alarmed public was demanding the police hurry to catch the malefactors. There were even calls for the inspector general to resign, but no one was taking them seriously yet. At the very end, there was a quote from an expert who wished to remain anonymous, expounding at length on a theory that the mysterious murderer had moved to New Babylon after being at work in London almost a quarter century earlier.
Remembering the arrival of the Aztec priests to the metropole, I was in complete and total agreement with the expert. The bloodthirsty pagans were known to cut out hearts by the hundreds on the summits of their baleful step pyramids, why would they change their modus operandi in New Babylon?
"The Pinkerton Detective Agency must not have hit the mark in their investigation," I decided, looking at a note about an explosion in a bullet factory on the margin and getting distracted by the sound of the door opening. Liliana was wheeling a serving table into the bathroom, where there was a plate with a mound of toast next to a mug of chicken broth. Seeing normal food led my stomach to painful convulsions.
"Just eat your breakfast f
or now," Lily smiled, "I'll be in soon!"
Setting the newspaper on the table, I grabbed the mug of broth with both hands and started taking small cautious sips of the hot aromatic liquid.
Nice...
It really did make me feel nice, but I still didn't touch the toasts, afraid of overburdening my stomach, which was not accustomed to hard food.
After eating my fill, I looked back at the paper. The news didn't inspire particular optimism. The world was going down the tubes. The endless workers’ strike was still underway, and army divisions had been brought into the city to storm the factories they'd captured. The socialists had exploded yet another police armored vehicle, and a group of anarchists had attempted to plant a bomb in the High Imperial Court but failed. It ended with a firefight and the arrest of the malefactors. Her Highness the Crown Princess Anna had been in a coma for almost a month and, in that time, the regent Duke Logrin, had yet to form a new government. His influence in the Imperial Council was growing weaker with every day and, based on what I could see, the biggest political crisis this country had seen in half a century was brewing.
I didn't even read the criminal blotter. I simply decided to save my nerves. Even without that, I wanted to get out of the bath and take the first ferry to the continent. Basically, if the Empire was coming to an end, there would simply be no more safe places on the planet. There was no reason to feed empty hopes.
The Princess... I led a finger over a scar on the left side of my chest. It was clean and even, not a jagged crude cut. I considered whether I wanted the death of my crown-bearing cousin. Her life or death was in my hands.
I imagined squeezing a heart in my hand–my very own heart! –and I suddenly felt the elasticity of muscle tissue and a very slight beat like the pulsation of an abscessed finger.
I shuddered in surprise and stared at my sweaty palm with unhidden astonishment.
Had I really managed to sense the beating of a heart that now belonged to another, or had it just seemed that way? And could the remnants of my talent, burnt out by electroshock therapy, bring Princess Anna back to life? That little bit was enough for the succubus, would it be enough for the heiress to the throne?
A breeze blew past the back of my head again. I turned in alarm but, when I saw Liliana slipping into the door, I relaxed and went into the soapy water up to my neck.
My girlfriend led her hands behind her head with a crafty smile and, when she lowered them, her dress fell freely to her feet. The only clothing Lily had left was a velvet ribbon on her neck, but everything in me was just stuck inside. My mouth instantly went dry, my heart started beating feverishly, and my ears started ringing as if I was about to slip into unconsciousness.
Not at all embarrassed at having exposed her high breasts and a triangle of curly hair below her stomach, Liliana stepped out of the dress and asked in a languishing voice:
"Won't you please rub my back?"
I just nodded, not feeling capable of removing my gaze from the naked woman's figure.
And then someone knocked on the door.
Squealing in surprise, Liliana grabbed her balled-up dress from the floor and squeezed it against herself, covering her nakedness, but Elizabeth-Maria didn't pay any attention to the fact that she'd caught her friend in such a piquant situation.
"Leo, someone's come for you," she said, adding significantly: "It's urgent."
With a sharp wave of my hand, I called for her to close the door. After a barely perceptible delay, that is exactly what the succubus did while Liliana, crimson in embarrassment, started feverishly pulling her dress back on.
"Leo, who is it?" she asked.
I got out of the bathtub and put on the robe, having no doubt in mind that it was Ramon having brought my attorney so I could organize the transfer of the reward I'd promised him. But I didn't tell Lily that and just shrugged my shoulders:
"I have no idea."
"Well, go and find out!" Lily hurried me along, pulling on her dress. "Wait! Here are some slippers!"
I stuck my feet into the home slippers, at the same time hiding a revolver in the spacious pocket of the soft bombazine robe. After that, I threw open the door and, grabbing Liliana at the exit from the bathroom, kissed her on the neck.
"I love you."
"I'll be with Mary," she giggled and started walking down the corridor.
I didn't delay either. I wanted to get the formalities over with as quickly as possible and get back into the warm bath. Or lay around in bed.
I still wasn't sure.
3
SHAMBLING DOWN the path of springy carpets in the overly large slippers, I walked to the stairs and had started on my way down when the visitor, already having lost his patience, bolted up to meet me. The presentable looking gentleman in a dark cloak and brown hat stopped half-way and raised his head quickly.
He looked at me, and I at him; we recognized one another simultaneously.
To my credit, in spite of my poor health, I reacted first. I simply threw a foot forward and forced my opponent down the stairs with a kick to the chest.
William Grace, the very same lieutenant of her Majesty's Imperial guard who had accompanied me to the operation to remove the heart, threw up his hands and somersaulted down the stairs. When he fell, he hit his head hard on a planter that housed a ficus. He didn't lose consciousness, though, and immediately turned onto his stomach. I yanked my Webley-Fosbery from my pocket but, much to my bad luck, the huge revolver's hammer got caught on the fabric and, before I managed to free it, a sharp command rang out:
"Stop!"
A short woman in a dark gray cape and hat with thick veil, whose legs William Grace had rolled up to, gave the command. Two strong fellows behind her in identical black raincoats had already drawn their unusually short carbines, which had thick wire bundles laced around the barrels and box magazines. The exclamation forced them to freeze in place as well.
Even with such a bad turn of events, I easily could have shot right through the pocket but, instead of that, I obediently unclenched my fingers from the handle of the revolver and held my open hands out in front of me. In such matters, one can never guess who might take a stray bullet...
Lieutenant Grace got up from the floor and stuck his hand under his cloak.
"Enough, William!" the strange lady rebuffed him.
"But that's..." the lieutenant gasped, but the lady cut him off with a sharp wave of her hand.
"I don't want to know!" she threw out and demanded: "Hey, you there! Come down at once!"
"Listen!" William Grace objected, taking a kerchief from his pocket and squeezing his nose, which had broken in the fall. "I'm trying..."
"Be quiet, lieutenant!" her cold reply followed. "Or you’ll have to report to me for bad behavior!"
And the lieutenant fell silent, while the strange lady turned her attention back to me.
"Will we have to wait long?" she enquired in annoyance, turning to the guards and pointing first one carbine away from me, then the other. "Yes, put your weapons away, in fact! Well, as much as you can!"
"Put them away," William Grace confirmed the order, and the boys obediently lowered their carbines and even covered them with the tails of their raincoats.
But I still hadn't moved from place, instead demanding explanations:
"What do you want?"
The Imperial Guard lieutenant was still silent, allowing his companion to say her fill.
"You gave your word!" she declared in an icy tone. "You're mistaken if you think you can break it unpunished!"
Gave my word? What the devil?!
I didn't understand a single thing.
At the same time, the extravagant lady, who thought she could give orders to the Imperial Guard lieutenant, turned her attention to the housekeeper frozen against the wall.
"Sweetheart, is there a free room in this building?" she asked.
"You can use the office," Mrs. Hardy said, not looking either dead or alive, terrified by all these new peopl
e, who were armed to the teeth.
"Well?" the strange lady stared at me and added acridly: "Or would you rather die of old age on those stairs?"
The mention of death cut my hearing unpleasantly, and I obediently came down to the first floor. Lieutenant Grace's astonishment was just too authentic. He was certainly not expecting to see me here, a living corpse, so why the devil had he come? And who was this lady bossing around the lieutenant of the Imperial Guard like her personal servant?
"Why do you look like that? Who cuts your hair? You need a new barber, because you look like a scarecrow!" the vixen threw out with contemptuous incomprehension and extended a hand: "Your weapon!"
I pulled my Webley-Fosbery out of my robe pocket and set it in her extended palm, covered with a black lacy glove. The stranger weighed the huge revolver in her hand and snorted acridly:
"Compensating for the size of your masculine dignity?"
She then asked the housekeeper: "Show me the way, sweetheart!"
Mrs. Hardy started ambling down the corridor. The lady went after her almost elegantly, but in too dancing of a gait. The housekeeper stopped at the office door, confused by her new order:
"Coffee, sugar, cream and pastries. And make sure the pastries are with cinnamon! On the double!"
After giving such an unexpected order, the stranger walked first into Albert Brandt's office. The lieutenant suggested I follow her with a gesture. So, under his stubborn gaze, I walked through the doorway into the spacious room with a desk laden with drafts and leaned my elbows on the high back of a guest chair. The boys in raincoats were left in the corridor, and only William Grace joined us.
"This is Leopold Orso!" he declared as he walked.
"He could be Sacher-Masoch for all I care!" the lady answered, throwing my revolver on an empty divan in a careless motion. After that, she removed her hat and, without the thick black veil, turned out to be a middle-aged brunette with very pretty thin face, the noble features of which could not be hidden even with too much gaudy makeup and bright red lipstick.
And also, she was illustrious. In the office, with thick drawn curtains over the windows, gloom reigned, so I could detect a light glow in her colorless gray eyes without effort.