The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense Read Online Free PDF Page A

she pointed at Mustafin. “Clearly, he is arguing against something perfectly obvious simply in order not to give up his stake. Tell him, say something else, that will force him into silence!”
    “I am waiting for your Matvey to return,” Erast Petrovich replied tersely.
    “But where did you send him?”
    “To the Governor-General’s staff headquarters. The telegraph office there is open around the clock.”
    “But that’s on Tverskoy Boulevard, five minutes’ walk from here, and he’s been gone more than an hour!” someone wondered.
    “Matvey was ordered to wait for the reply,” the officer of special missions explained, then again fell silent while Arkhip Giatsintovich held everyone’s attention with an expansive explanation of the ways in which Fandorin’s theory was completely impossible from the viewpoint of female psychology.
    Just at the most effective moment, as Mustafin was holding forth most convincingly about the innate properties of the feminine nature, which is ashamed of nudity and cannot endure the sight of blood, the door quietly opened and the long-awaited Matvey entered. Treading silently, he approached the collegiate assessor and, with a bow, proffered a sheet of paper.
    Erast Petrovich turned, read the note, then nodded. The hostess, who had been watching the young man’s face attentively, could not endure to wait any longer, and so moved her chair closer to her guest. “Well, what’s there?” she whispered.
    “I was right,” Fandorin answered, also in a whisper.
    That instant Odintsova interrupted the lecture. “Enough nonsense, Arkhip Giatsintovich! What do you know of the feminine nature, you who have never even been married! Erast Petrovich has incontrovertible proof!” She took the telegram from the collegiate assessor’s hand and passed it around the circle.
    Flabbergasted, the guests read the telegram, which consisted of three words:
    “Yes. Yes. No.”
    “And that’s it? What is this? Where is it from?” Such were the general questions.
    “The telegram was sent from the Russian mission in Br-Brazil,” Fandorin explained. “You see the diplomatic stamp there? It is deep night here in Moscow, but in Rio de Janeiro right now the mission is in attendance. I was counting on that when I ordered Matvey to wait for a reply. As for the telegram, I recognize the laconic style of Karl Ivanovich Veber. This is how my message read. Matvey, give me the paper, will you? The one I gave you.” Erast Petrovich took the paper from the lackey and read aloud, “‘Karl, old boy, inform me the following soonest: Is Russian subject born Princess Anyuta Karakina now resident in Brazil married? If yes, is her husband lame? And does the princess have a mole on her right cheek? I need all this for a bet. Fandorin.’ From the answer to the message it is clear that the pr-princess is married to a lame man, and has no mole on her cheek. Why would she need the mole now? In far-off Brazil there is no need to run to such clever tricks. As you see, ladies and gentlemen, Polinka is alive and well, married to her Renar. The terrible tale has an idyllic ending. By the by, the lack of a mole shows once again that Renar was a witting participant in the murder and knows perfectly well that he is married precisely to Polinka, and not to Anyuta.”
    “So, I shall give orders to fetch the Caravaggio,” Odintsova said to Arkhip Giatsintovich with a victorious smile.
    * “Collegiate Assessor” was a civil title—one of fourteen that Peter the Great established when he reformed Russia’s bureaucracy—indicating a high rank, the threshold at which someone attained life nobility. The equivalent rank in the army was major.
    * Skobelev: general whose militant pan-Slavic views and predictions of inevitable conflict with Germany got him in trouble with the government in St. Petersburg and resulted in his recall to the capital, where, in 1882, he died of heart failure.

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

    MURDER
from CRIME