The Winter Queen (12 page)

“All right, my dear chap,” he said in Russian with a slight accent. “Show me your leg—don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you. Be a man and bear it. Fell from the rings, m’lady,” he explained to the baroness in English. “Weak hands. I am afraid the ankle is broken. Would you please tell Mr. Izyumoff?”

Her ladyship nodded without speaking and, gesturing to Erast Fandorin to follow her, walked quickly out of the hall.

“I’ll go for the doctor, Mr. Izyumov,” she told him, speaking rapidly. “This kind of thing happens frequently. Boys will always be boys…That was Gerald Cunningham, my right-hand man. An alumnus of the London Astair House. A brilliant teacher. He is in charge of the entire Russian branch. In six months he has mastered your difficult language, which is quite beyond me. Last autumn Gerald opened the Astair House in St. Petersburg and now he is here temporarily, helping to get things going. Without him I am like a woman with no hands.”

She stopped in front of a door bearing the inscription DOCTOR.

“I do beg your pardon, sir, but I shall have to cut short our conversation. Some other time, perhaps? Come tomorrow and we’ll talk. You have some business to discuss with me?”

“Nothing of any importance, my lady,” said Fandorin, blushing. “Indeed I really…some other time. I wish you success in your noble profession.”

Erast Fandorin bowed awkwardly and walked quickly away. He felt very ashamed.

“WELL, DID YOU CATCH the villainess red-handed?” Fandorin’s chief greeted his shamefaced subordinate merrily, raising his head from some complicated diagrams. The curtains in the office were closed and the lamp on the desk was lit, for it had already begun to grow dark outside. “Let me guess. Her ladyship had never even heard of Mr. Kokorin, let alone Miss Bezhetskaya, and the news of the suicide’s bequest upset her terribly. Is that right?”

Erast Fandorin merely sighed.

“I met the lady in St. Petersburg. In the Third Section we considered her request to be allowed to conduct teaching activities in Russia. Did she tell you about the morons who are geniuses? Right, then, let’s get to work. Take a seat at the desk,” said Fandorin’s chief with a wave of his hand. “You have a fascinating night ahead.”

Erast Fandorin felt a pleasant tingling sensation of anxious anticipation in his breast—such was the effect produced on him by his dealings with State Counselor Brilling.

“Your target is Zurov. You have already seen him, so you have a certain notion of the man. Getting into the count’s house is easy enough—no recommendations are required. He runs something in the nature of a gambling den in his home, none too well disguised. The accepted style is all hussars and guards, but all sorts of good-for-nothing riffraff turn up as well. Zurov maintained a house of a precisely similar kind in St. Petersburg, but after a visit from our police he moved to Moscow. He is entirely his own master, listed at his regiment as being on indefinite leave for more than two years now. Let me state your task: try to get as close to him as possible and get a good look at his entourage. Perhaps you might come across your white-eyed acquaintance there? But no amateur heroics—you can’t possibly deal with a type like that on your own. Anyway, he is hardly likely to be there. I do not exclude the possibility that the count may himself take an interest in you. After all, you did meet at Bezhetskaya’s house, and he is evidently not indifferent to her. Act in accordance with the situation. But don’t get carried away. This gentleman is not to be trifled with. He cheats at cards, or as they say in that company, he ‘fixes the odds,’ and if he is caught in the act he deliberately provokes a scandal. He has a dozen or so duels to his account, and there are others we know nothing about. And he can crack your skull open without the excuse of a duel. For instance, in seventy-two at the Nizhni Novgorod Fair Zurov got into an argument over cards with a merchant, Svyshchov, and threw that bearded gentleman out of a window. From the second floor. The merchant was badly smashed up and couldn’t speak for a month—he could only mumble. But nothing happened to the count. He squirmed his way out of it. He has influential relatives in high places. What are these?” asked Ivan Brilling, as usual without any transition as he placed a deck of playing cards on the desk.

“Cards,” Fandorin answered in surprise.

“Do you play?”

“I don’t play at all. Papa forbade me even to touch cards. He said he’d already played enough for himself and me, and for the next three generations of Fandorins.”

“A pity,” said Brilling, concerned. “Without that you’ll get nowhere at Zurov’s. All right, take a piece of paper and make notes.”

A quarter of an hour later Erast Fandorin could already distinguish the suits without hesitation and he knew which card was higher and which was lower, except that he still confused the picture cards a little. He kept forgetting which was higher, the queen or the jack.

“You’re hopeless,” his chief summed up. “But that’s nothing to worry about. At the count’s house they don’t play preference and other such intellectual games. The more primitive the better for them—they want as much money as possible as quickly as possible. Our agents report that Zurov prefers stoss, and the simplified version at that. I’ll explain the rules. The one who deals the cards is called the banker. The other player is the punter. Each has his own deck of cards. The punter selects a card from his deck, let’s say a nine. He puts it facedown in front of him.”

“The face—is that the side with the numbers on?” Fandorin inquired.

“Yes. Now the punter places a bet—let’s say, ten rubles. The banker begins dealing. He lays the top card from his deck faceup to the right (that’s called the ‘forehead’) and the next card to the left (that’s called the ‘dreambook’).”

Forehead
—
R., dreambook
—
L
., Erast Fandorin wrote down diligently in his notepad.

“Now the punter reveals his nine. If the forehead also happens to be a nine, no matter what the suit, then the banker takes the stake. That’s called ‘killing the nine.’ Then the bank, that’s the sum of money that is being played for, increases. If the dreambook turns out to be a nine, then that’s a win for the punter, he’s ‘found the nine.”

“What if there’s no nine in the pair?”

“If there doesn’t happen to be a nine in the first pair, the banker lays out the following pair of cards. And so on until a nine does show up. That’s all there is to the game. Elementary, but you can lose your shirt on it, especially if you’re the punter and you keep doubling up. So get it into your head, Fandorin, that you must only play as the banker. It’s simple: you deal a card to the right, a card to the left; a card to the right, a card to the left. The banker will never lose more than the first stake. Don’t play as the punter, and if you have to because you’ve drawn lots, then set a low stake. In stoss you can’t have more than five rounds, and then the remainder of the bank goes to the banker. Now you can go and collect two hundred rubles from the cashier’s office to cover your losses.”

“A whole two hundred?” gasped Fandorin.

“Not a ‘whole two hundred’ but a ‘mere two hundred.’ Do your best to make that amount last you all night, if you lose everything quickly, you don’t have to leave immediately—you can hang about for a while. But don’t arouse any suspicion. Is that clear? You’ll be playing every evening until you come up with a result. Even if it becomes clear that Zurov is not involved—well, that’s a result, too. One scenario less.”

Erast Fandorin moved his lips as he stared at his crib.

“Hearts—are they the red ones?”

“Yes, sometimes they’re called
cors
, from
coeur*
Get along to the costume section—they’ve made an outfit in your size, and by lunchtime tomorrow they’ll run you up an entire wardrobe for every possible occasion. Quick march, Fandorin. I’ve got enough to do without talking to you. Come straight back here from Zurov’s place. I’m spending the night in the department today.”

And Brilling stuck his nose back into his papers.

which the jack of spades turns up most inopportunely

IN THE SMOKE-FILLED HALL THE PLAYERS WERE seated at six green card tables—in some places in compact groups, in others in fours or twos. There were also observers loitering beside each table: fewer around games where the stakes were low and rather more where the excitement of the
spiel
was spiraling upward. Wine and hors d’oeuvres were not served at the count’s establishment. Those who wished could go into the drawing room and send a servant out to a tavern, but the gamblers only ever sent out for champagne to celebrate some special run of luck. On all sides there resounded abrupt exclamations incomprehensible to the non-gambler:

“
Je coupe.”*

“
Je passe
.”

“Second deal.”

“
Retournez la carte
.”**

“Well, gentleman, the hands are dealt!”—and so forth.

The largest crowd was standing around the table where a high-stakes game was taking place, one against one. The host himself was dealing and a sweaty gentleman in a fashionable, overtight frock coat was punting. The punter’s luck was clearly not running. He repeatedly bit his lips and became excited, while the count was the very image of composure, merely smiling sweetly from under his black mustache as he drew in the smoke from a curving Turkish chibouque. The well-tended, strong fingers with their glittering rings dealt the cards adroitly—one to the right, one to the left.

Among the observers, standing demurely at the back, was a young man with black hair whose face bore no resemblance to that of a gambler. It was immediately obvious to a man of experience that the youth came from a good family, had wandered into a gaming hall for the first time, and felt entirely out of place. Several times old stagers with brilliantined partings in their hair had proposed that he might like to ‘turn a card,’ but they had been disappointed. The youth never staked more than five rubles and positively refused to be ‘wound up.’ The experienced card master Gromov, a man known to the whole of gambling Moscow, even threw the boy some bait by losing a hundred rubles to him, but the money was simply wasted. The rosy-cheeked youth’s eyes did not light up and his hands did not begin to tremble. This was an unpromising mark, a genuine ‘louser.’

And in the meantime Fandorin—for of course it was he—believed that he had been slipping through the hall like an invisible shadow without attracting anyone’s attention. In all honesty, he had not yet done a great deal of this ‘slipping.’ Once he had noticed an extremely respectable-looking gentleman slyly appropriate a gold half imperial from a table and walk off with a highly dignified air. Then there were the two young officers who had been arguing in loud whispers in the corridor, but Erast Fandorin had not understood a word of their conversation: the lieutenant of dragoons was heatedly asserting that he was not some ‘top spinner’ or other and he did not ‘play the Arab’ with his friends, while the cornet of hussars was upbraiding him for being some kind of ‘fixer.’

Zurov, beside whom Fandorin had found himself every now and then, was clearly in his native element in this society, by far the biggest fish in the pond. A single word from him was enough to nip a nascent scandal in the bud. Once at a mere gesture from their master two thug-gish lackeys took hold of the elbows of a gentleman who refused to stop shouting and had carried him out the door in an instant. The count definitely did not recognize Erast Fandorin, although Fandorin did catch his quick, unfriendly gaze on himself several times.

“Fifth round, sir,” Zurov declared, and for some reason this announcement drove the punter to a paroxysm of excitement.

“I mark the duck!” he shouted out in a trembling voice and bent over two corners on his card.

A low whisper ran through the watching crowd as the sweaty gentleman tossed back a lock of hair from his forehead and cast a whole bundle of rainbow-colored bills onto the table.

“What is a ‘duck’?” Erast Fandorin inquired in a bashful whisper of a red-nosed gentleman who seemed to him to be the most good-humored.

“That signifies the quadrupling of the stake,” his neighbor gladly explained. “The gentleman desires to take his revenge in full in the following round.”

The count indifferently released a small cloud of smoke and exposed a king to the right and a six to the left.

The punter revealed the ace of hearts.

Zurov nodded and instantly tossed a black ace to the right and a red king to the left.

From somewhere Fandorin heard a whisper of admiration: “Exquisitely done!”

The sweaty gentleman was a pitiful sight. His glance followed the heap of banknotes as it migrated to a position beside the count’s elbow and inquired timidly, “Would you perhaps care to continue against an IOU?”

“I would not,” Zurov replied lazily. “Who else wishes to play, gentlemen?”

His gaze unexpectedly came to rest on Erast Fandorin.

“I believe we have met?” the host asked with an unpleasant smile. “Mr. Fedorin, if I am not mistaken?”

“Fandorin,” Erast Fandorin corrected him, blushing furiously.

“I beg your pardon. Why do you do nothing but stand and stare? This is not a theater we have here. If you’ve come, then play. Please have a seat.” He pointed to the newly vacated chair.

“Choose the decks yourself,” the kind old gentleman hissed in Fandorin’s ear.

Erast Fandorin sat down and, following instructions, he said in an extremely decisive manner, “But if you don’t mind, Your Excellency, I will keep the bank myself. A novice’s privilege. And as for the decks, I would prefer…that one and that one there.” And so saying he took the two bottom packs from the tray of unopened decks.

Zurov smiled still more unpleasantly. “Very well, mister novice, your terms are accepted, but on one condition: if I break the bank, you must not run off. Afterward give me the chance to deal. Well, what’s the pot to be?”

Fandorin faltered, his resolve deserting him as suddenly as it had descended on him.

“A hundred rubles?” he asked timidly.

“Are you joking? This is not one of your taverns.”