The Illustrious (The Sublime Electricity Book #1)

by Pavel Kornev

  The poet just snorted pointedly, took the binoculars and set about following the horses as they burst from their stalls. With an unbelievable speed, the main group carried past us; then I elbowed the poet in the side and wondered:

  "Well, what?"

  "Admiral is in the next race," Albert told me, not pulling away from the oculars.

  "Oh, that garbage!" I waved it off and shook my head: "How can you trust unintelligent beasts and their riders with your money? The only thing those riders are good for is their low weight."

  "Remind me, Leo, who was it that dragged me down here?"

  "Hey, I’m just trying to move the conversation along."

  "Ah, then!" The poet took the call, then parried without the slightest hesitation: "Dice or roulette is a much more chance-based game. There are always perennial favorites at the races. They look at the horse, and look at the jockey. They study the stats and figure out what the condition of the horse and rider is at race time. How they get along, how they work against the competition. It's a whole science, my friend. A whole science!"

  I chuckled.

  "But the guy who handles it all is some creep who wouldn't be ashamed of taking a couple tenners from you and another dozen simpletons for a supposedly sure bet."

  "A fiver. It was just a fiver," Albert corrected me. "And the bet really is a sure thing. Admiral will come in first."

  "You're throwing your money away. You'll realize that soon enough."

  "Wanna bet?" The poet suggested.

  "It would be base on my part to profit from your loss," I refused. "Look, they're already taking out the horses."

  Albert looked into the binoculars again, then handed them to me.

  "Just look at that beaut! He's simply fated to win!"

  I glanced and involuntarily found myself appreciating my friend's confidence. Admiral was impressive. Bundles of muscles pumped away beneath the graceful animal's shiny coat. Its movements were smooth and confident.

  "I say!" The poet took the binoculars and purred out an incomprehensible song to himself. After that, he jabbed me in the side and nodded at the arena. "Really, just look!"

  "Yes, I'm looking, I'm looking," I mumbled without particular enthusiasm.

  Start! The horses burst from their places, and Admiral immediately tore out in front. He sped along like the wind and, after the second turn, was ahead of his nearest competitor by more than two full body-lengths.

  "Come on!" Albert shouted out when the racers sped past us. "Hit it! Faster!"

  And soon added another couple words that were totally and completely inappropriate.

  And it really was something!

  The stallion in second, with white speckles on his forehead, suddenly started speeding up and began to reduce the distance between himself and the favorite. The jockey in a black helmet and red vest was glued to his back.

  "Run, devil beat you!" The poet yelped out. "Run!"

  But by then, the distance had gone down to half a body-length. Then the horses got up nostril to nostril. As they came around another turn, Albert glued himself to the binoculars again.

  "Giddy up, you old screw!" he muttered angrily under his breath, occasionally punctuating his appeals with words that would make even a longshoreman scratch the back of his head in embarrassment.

  But then, the poet jumped to his feet, swung his arm up and released the bet tickets into the air. I, though, gave him an encouraging clap on the shoulder.

  "Throwing your money away?"

  "Argentum!" Albert moaned. "Leo, did you see that? Argentum went around Admiral like he was standing still!"

  I didn't want to pour salt into my friend's internal wounds, so I simply took his binoculars. I looked at the VIP box and was simply taken aback for a moment when it seemed that I met eyes with Elizabeth-Maria. I quickly lowered the binoculars and calmed my floundering breathing.

  Elizabeth-Maria must have been looking somewhere in front of me. Not at me. She had long forgotten about the existence of the ungainly detective constable. Had long since cast him from her mind. The inspector general was right. I was no match for her.

  But, all the same, I could trade a few words with her by chance. I might even be able to find a reason for it, but the sensationalist newspapermen were pecking away at the supposed return of Procrustes and had pushed the story about the murderous muse off into the police blotter section.

  Curses!

  My mood was instantly spoiled. I glanced at my time-piece and asked:

  "Albert, are you going somewhere?"

  "Huh? No! There's three more races!" My gambling friend called back, shuffling through his remaining bet tickets.

  "I've gotta go. See you later."

  "Until next time!" The poet waved it off and took some nips of his calvados flask, but immediately came to his senses: "Leo! Come by tomorrow! Without fail! Do you hear me?"

  "I hear you," I answered and set about carefully descending the slippery steps to the lower level. My leg hadn't started hurting any less, and just one careless step threatened ending in a fall that would be just as funny to watch as it would be painful.

  But I made it. I didn't even lose my balance once.

  And afterward, already coming out onto the square in front of the hippodrome, I suddenly felt that something was wrong and turned around in bewilderment. I was taken aback in surprise to find myself face to face with Elizabeth-Maria.

  My Elizabeth-Maria, the succubus!

  I was overcome with indignation, but I didn't make a scene.

  "What the devil are you doing here?" I simply whispered quietly when the girl had caught up to me and taken me by the hand.

  "You didn't come home last night," Elizabeth-Maria reminded me, "and I started to get worried."

  "How did you find me?"

  "You and I are connected, don't forget that."

  "Well, don't do this again!" I ordered.

  "Leopold," the girl squinted unhappily. "That all depends on you and you alone." And, after making an abrupt transition back to being sweet and caring, she cooed out: "Shall we go home, dear?"

  I shook my head:

  "I have business."

  "May I come with you?"

  "No," I cut her off, and grudgingly explained my decision: "Your presence would be improper."

  "More corpses?"

  "Not mine," I answered, slightly bending the truth.

  "You still smell of death, Leo," Elizabeth-Maria lowered her voice. "Of death and fear."

  "That's enough!"

  But it wasn't so easy to brush the succubus off.

  "Is it true that I stick out like a sore thumb?" she smiled. "You know, dear, I was actually mistaken on your account. I supposed that there was some ailing shame preventing you from opening up about your feelings to that illustrious bean pole. But no, you simply are not capable of it. You are deathly afraid of being rejected! You have so many fears..."

  "Have you all come to an understanding or something?!" I couldn't resist, but immediately got myself together and called a cabby. "Take the lady home!" I ordered him, sitting Elizabeth-Maria in the carriage and handing him a crumpled fiver. "We'll talk later."

  "As you say, dear," she answered coldly.

  I ignored her unhappy tone and headed off to find a free carriage. It was time to go to the raising of the armored car...

  3

  I HAD ARRIVED EARLY to the Euler bridge. I had bought some candied nuts from a hawker and was now loafing about on the embankment nibbling on them and looking into the cloudy water of the river.

  The sky was not visible this evening. Quite the opposite, in fact. The city was enveloped in a gray fog, so the first sign I saw of the tug was puffs of black exhaust coming from its smokestack. Only a few minutes later did its rusted body with low, creeping walls come into view.

  Assuming it was precisely this washtub that had been designated for the raising of the armored car, I headed for the hole in the bridge wall that had been strung in front of with a strong
rope and little red flags to make it safe.

  I didn't walk up close to the opening, instead walking up to the railing a few steps from it. No, fear of heights was not one of my many phobias, but falling down from a sudden gust of wind wouldn't have been fun at all, regardless of my mental condition. From such heights, there was no difference at all between falling on water and falling on concrete.

  And, as I’d supposed, the tug was anchored directly opposite the hole in the railing, and soon a diver came out on its deck dressed in a rubber suit with a hard round helmet; a sickly sailor deftly attached a flexible tube to him and, turning the wheel of a compressor, started pumping down air. The diver stuck his thumb upward, grabbed onto the cable of the steam hauler on the aft of the tug and slowly descended down into the water.

  I looked around, not understanding why the investigators were late, but only then noticed Maurice LeBrun and Bastian Moran standing on a stone loading dock off the square. They had already gone down to the river and were observing the tug team with measured interest. Not far away, there was a police coach and four constables stopping the newspapermen and gawkers from getting close.

  I supposed the armored car would be set in that very spot after being raised, so I hurried to find a place to stand near the police leadership. But the same detective sergeant I’d seen earlier, red-mustached and yellow-eyed, saw me approaching and tore himself from his paper. He waved me toward him. When I got closer, he dismounted and extended a few sheets of paper to me, filled with even lines of printed letters, blurred and dull from the carbon-copy paper they were transferred with.

  "A copy for the Witstein Banking House," the investigator said and demanded: "Sign here."

  I placed a flourish and pointed at the loading dock.

  "May I..."

  "Yes, you can go through," the detective sergeant allowed, and leaned back over his tablet, filling out the header of the armored-car investigation from in advance.

  After rolling the papers up into a tube, I walked down to the loading dock and stood a bit away from the top brass. I couldn't hear what they were conversing about. Senior inspector Moran immediately turned toward me and melted into a malignant smile:

  "Viscount! I can see an unasked question in your eyes!"

  The disappearance of the word "constable" from my usual address cut me to the core, but I didn't make it known and only shrugged my shoulders carelessly.

  "I’m surprised to see people from Department Three here, yes," I confirmed, trying on the role of representative of the Banking House. Also, at the same time, I was resigning myself to the fact that my forthcoming reinstatement to my former post was now something impossibly ephemeral. If not to say quite improbable.

  "And why's that?" The senior inspector asked in surprise.

  "There are no infernal creatures or spies mixed up in the robbery. It all seems rather straightforward."

  "Straightforward?" Maurice LeBrun flared up. "You think you know enough about this to say that?!"

  Bastian Moran clapped the head of the CID on the shoulder and nodded.

  "I cannot disagree with Mr. LeBrun on this issue," he said didactically, looking me in the eyes, "there isn't one centime of straightforwardness in this matter. Viscount! Even in these difficult times, robbing a bank with flamethrowers and handheld mortars is a bit unorthodox. Or do you not think so?"

  The inspector general's steadfast gaze pressed into me and knocked me off guard, but my dark glasses helped me keep my presence of mind. I repeated calmly.

  "I still think it’s quite straightforward," I repeated again, pointing to the tug with my tube of forms. The tug’s fore was raised up over the water, but the aft was clearly dragging down. "Or it will be in a quarter hour."

  "Oh, to be young again," Senior Inspector Moran shook his head, took out a pack of Chesterfields, lit a cigarette and smiled. "I wish I had your confidence."

  "You can say that again!" Maurice LeBrun agreed with him and dug through his pockets, but instead of a cigarette, took out a tin of sugar drops.

  I also decided to enjoy a candy.

  "It is extremely beneficial for me to take part in the uncovering of this mysterious conspiracy," I announced, popping a mint sugar drop into my mouth, "but the aspiration to fame that you saw in me doesn't prevent me from telling the difference between what I want and what is real."

  "Perhaps, perhaps," Bastian Moran nodded.

  But the head of the CID wondered logically:

  "Are you telling me the Judeans spent up everything they had on your considerable advance?"

  "Come now, senior inspector!" I laughed with all ease I could muster. "The advance was just a formality. Just a pretense for me to figure out the situation firsthand."

  "I thought it was straightforward." Inspector Moran immediately reminded me of my recent affirmation.

  "It will be as soon as the armored car is raised," I turned back and looked at the tug that had begun slightly drifting from the center of the river to one side. Behind it, stretched out the white surf. From time to time, you could see the roof of the armored self-propelled carriage peeking out between the waves.

  Bastian Moran followed my gaze and shrugged his shoulders:

  "Let's wait and see."

  Maurice LeBrun snorted then in a totally undefined way.

  I even started getting the sense that certain progress must have been made since our last meeting, but I decided to hold back from too much inquiry.

  Everything would become clear on its own soon.

  The tug at that time was approaching the loading dock, and puffs of acrid black smoke were rolling over us. The rusty tub began to tip slightly backward. The steam crane gave a heart-rending creak, winding in the underwater cable. The aft finally sat properly, but before a short wave crashed over the side, the armored car revealed itself. Cloudy streams of water were pouring out of all openings in the self-propelled carriage, then the wheels, steeped in the river muck and sea weed, touched down on the unloading dock, and the sailor that jumped ashore set about hauling in the cable.

  I imagined what it must have been like to fly off the bridge in that iron casket, then slowly sink to the bottom without any hope of rescue, and involuntarily felt a nervous shudder.

  The robbers must have died when the vehicle hit the water.

  When the sailor had unclipped the cable, a constable came out in a waterproof jumpsuit and high rubber boots. Using a crowbar as a lever, he applied his weight and the jammed door suddenly flung open in one abrupt burst. Cloudy water gushed out underfoot, and I hurriedly jumped back, not wanting to get my shoes soaked.

  But I was still able to notice the fact that the cabin was empty.

  There were no drowned people inside, neither in the driver's seat, nor the passenger's; there was just some incomprehensible iron box flickering in the light with fresh rust and a set of metallic rails attaching it to the steering wheel.

  But where were the people? Where were the people?!

  "Back door!" Bastian Moran ordered.

  The constable broke the lock in a few confident strikes, then stuck the flattened end of the crowbar between some folds and easily broke them, but the armored car's back seat was also empty.

  No bodies, and no stolen valuables were to be found inside.

  "What the devil?" I couldn't hold back from the surprised exclamation, walking straight through the puddle that formed and looking inside. "Where'd they go?"

  "As you can see, Viscount, not everything is so unambiguous here," Senior Inspector Moran noted instructively.

  Maurice LeBrun squeezed out a sour smile and kept his distance from the armored car.

  "Bastian, it turned out that you were completely right. And you hold all the cards," he grumbled. He then called the detective sergeant over and ordered: "Make a note in the report!"

  "Sir, yes sir," he sounded off in a military manner.

  But I just stood there flapping my eyelids, having a weak understanding of what they were talking about.

/>   Moran perceived the head of the CID's declaration as a matter of course and pointed to the iron box for the constable in the water-proof overalls.

  "That box! Pull it out!" He demanded.

  The police man tried to carry out the order, but it turned out to have been battened down very tight.

  "Break it out!" The senior inspector allowed. "The main thing is not to damage the box... more than necessary."

  Then the constable pulled it off the rails without particular ceremoniousness and hauled the box out of the cabin. He placed it directly on the earth and stood up straight in anticipation of further orders.

  "Open it!" Bastian Moran ordered. He then looked at Maurice LeBrun and melted into a satisfied smile.

  The wave of good fortune that came over him could be physically felt in the literal sense.

  "Now here is the riddle to end all riddles! A person going missing from a room locked from the inside is child's play compared to this!"

  For the first time in a long time, I was in complete and total agreement with my senior colleague.

  If there weren't any people in the armored car, who had been driving it? It couldn't be that some unknown craftsman had put the route into that incomprehensible iron box as a mechanic puts the melody in a music box, right?

  How could you possibly consider all the nuances? Absurd!

  It should be said, though, that it would become clear soon enough...

  The constable tore the lid off the metallic box, but what was waiting for us inside was a total disappointment: the box was filled with the remaining scraps of a twisted mechanism.

  "Before the fall, witnesses heard a clap that resembled an explosion," the detective sergeant reminded us.

  Bastian Moran nodded thoughtfully, then began staring at me.

  "Viscount!" he smiled. "In that none of your client's property was found in the armored car, I suppose that your further presence here is unnecessary. I’m sorry, but this is still a confidential investigation."

  I hesitated, then Maurice LeBrun waved his hand at the constables standing in the distance.

  "There's no point," I smiled. "As a matter of fact, I should be going now anyway. I must update my employer on the case."