Turkish Gambit Read Online Free PDF Page B

of them himself. Paladin and myself are like his lap dogs: wherever he goes, we go. In the first place, we're old friends from back in Turkestan, and in the second place, wherever Michel is, there's always bound to be a good story for an article . . . Ah, look, they're coming back. Empty-handed, of course.'
    'Why "of course"?' Varya asked.
    The correspondent smiled condescendingly but said nothing, and Fandorin, who so far had taken almost no part in the conversation, answered for him: 'You must have seen, mademoiselle, that the Bashi-Bazouks' mounts were fresh, but the pursuers' horses were exhausted.'
    'Precisely so,' McLaughlin agreed with a nod.
    Varya gave them both a cross look for conspiring so outrageously to make a woman look like a fool. However, Fandorin immediately earned her forgiveness by taking an amazingly clean handkerchief out of his pocket and applying it to her cheek. Oh, she had forgotten all about the scratch!
    The correspondent had been mistaken when he declared that the pursuers were coming back 'empty-handed' - Varya was delighted to see that they had managed to recover the captive officer after all: two Cossacks were carrying the limp body in the black uniform by its arms and legs. But had he - God forbid -been killed?
    This time the dandy whom the Briton had called Michel was riding in front. He was a young general with smiling blue eyes and a rather distinctive beard -bushy, carefully tended and combed to both sides like a pair of wings.
    'They got away, the scoundrels!' he shouted from a distance, and added an expression that Varya did not entirely understand.
    'There's a lady present,' said McLaughlin, wagging his finger. He removed his bowler hat and ran a hand over his pink bald patch.
    The general drew himself erect and glanced at Varya, but immediately lost interest, which was natural enough, considering her unwashed hair, scratched face and absurd costume.
    'Major-General Sobolev the Second of His Imperial Highness's retinue’ Michel announced and glanced inquiringly at Fandorin.
    But Varya, thoroughly vexed by the general's indifference, asked: 'The second? And who is the first?'
    Sobolev was astonished. 'What do you mean? My father, Lieutenant-General Dmitry Ivanovich Sobolev, commander of the Caucasian Cossack Division. Surely you must have heard of him?'
    'No. Neither of him nor of you,' Varya snapped; but she was lying, because the whole of Russia had heard of Sobolev the Second, the hero of Turkestan, the conqueror of Khiva and Makhram.
    People said various things about the general. Some idolised him as a warrior of matchless bravery, a knight without fear or reproach, calling him the next Suvorov or even Bonaparte, while others derided him as an ambitious poseur. The newspapers wrote of how Sobolev had single-handedly beaten off an entire horde of Turkomans, standing his ground even though he was wounded seven times; how he had crossed the lifeless desert with a small detachment of men and crushed the forces of the fearsome Abdurahman-bek, who had a tenfold advantage in numbers; but one of Varya's acquaintances had relayed rumours of a very different kind - claims that hostages had been executed and the Treasury of Kokand had been plundered.
    Gazing into the handsome general's clear blue eyes, Varya could see immediately that the stories about the seven wounds and Abdurahman-bek were perfectly true, but the tales of hostages and the khan's treasury were obviously absolute nonsense, the inventions of envious slanderers - especially since Sobolev had now begun paying attention to Varya again, and this time he seemed to have noticed something interesting about her.
    'But how on earth, madam, did you come to be here, where the blood flows in streams? And dressed like this? I am intrigued.'
    Varya introduced herself and gave a brief account of her adventures, an infallible instinct assuring her that Sobolev would not betray her secret and have her despatched to Bucharest under armed