word. They didn’t curse him, they didn’t call him a fool, but Senka wasn’t shown any sympathy either. He didn’t hear anything like ‘Oh, you poor lad, how awful for you!’ or even ‘Ah, that’s really terrible’, not from the likes of them. Even though he tried real hard to impress them.
But then, he only had himself to blame, didn’t he?
‘I’m sorry, Erast Petrovich, forgive me, and you too, Mr Masa,’ Senka said honestly at the end. ‘It was a real stroke of luck, and I bungled the whole thing. We’ll never find that villain now.’
He hung his head repentantly, but he peeped out from under his eyebrows to see whether they were really angry or not.
‘Your opinion, Masa?’ Erast Petrovich asked after listening to the story.
The sensei closed his narrow slits of eyes, kind of buried them in folds of skin, and just sat there for two or three minutes. Mr Nameless didn’t say anything either, he waited for an answer.
At last the Japanese spoke: ‘Senka-kun did werr. Orr crear now.’
The engineer nodded in satisfaction. ‘That is what I think t-too. You have nothing to apologise for, Senya. Thanks to your actions we n-now know who the killer is.’
‘How’s that?’ asked Senka, bouncing up and down on his chair. ‘Who is it?’
But Mr Nameless didn’t answer the question, he changed tack.
‘In fact, as far as d-deduction is concerned, the task was not really very c-complicated from the outset. Any investigator with even the s-slightest experience would solve it easily if he p-possessed your evidence. However, an investigator is only interested in the l-law, while my interest in this case extends beyond that.’
‘Yes,’ Masa agreed. ‘Raw ress than justice.’
‘Justice and mercy,’ Erast Petrovich corrected him.
The two of them seemed to understand each other very well, but Senka didn’t have a clue what they were talking about.
‘But who’s the killer?’ he asked eagerly. ‘And what put you on to him?’
‘Something you t-told us,’ the engineer said absent-mindedly, obviously thinking about something else. ‘Try exercising your b-brains, it helps develop the personality ...’ And then he muttered some kind of gibberish. ‘Yes, undoubtedly justice and m-mercy are more important. Thank God I am now a private individual and d-do not have to act according to the letter of the law. But time, I have so little t-time . . . and there is his maniacal c-caution, we must not frighten him off . . . One single b-blow to finish it. At a single stroke laying s-seven low, like in the folk tales . . . Eureka!’ Erast Petrovich exclaimed and slapped his hand down on the table so loudly that Senka shuddered on his chair. ‘We have a plan of operations! It’s d-decided: justice and mercy.’
‘Operation wirr be corred that?’ the sensei asked. ‘Justice and mercy? A fine name.’
‘No,’ Mr Nameless said cheerfully as he got up. ‘I’ll think of a m-more interesting name.’
‘What operation’s that?’ Senka asked plaintively, pulling a sour face. ‘You said it was thanks to me you solved the whole thing, but you don’t explain anything.’
‘When we g-go to the Yauza Boulevard tonight, you’ll l-learn all about it there.’
They set off.
Death opened the door as soon as they knocked – had she been waiting in the hallway? She said nothing, just looked at Mr Nameless hungrily, without even blinking, as if her eyes had been blindfolded just a moment earlier, or she’d been sitting in the dark for a long time, or maybe she’d just recovered her sight after being blind. That was the way she looked at him. She didn’t even glance at Senka, never mind saying ‘Hello, Senya’ or ‘How are you?’ Then again, she didn’t answer Erast Petrovich when he said, ‘Good evening, madam,’ either. She even frowned slightly, as if those weren’t the words she’d been expecting.
They went into the room and sat down. They were supposed to be there to talk business, but something wasn’t right, it was like they were talking about the wrong thing. Death didn’t say much anyway, she looked at Erast Petrovich all the time, and he mostly looked down at the tablecloth. Sometimes he looked up at Death and then lowered his eyes again quickly. He stammered more than usual, as if he was embarrassed, or maybe he wasn’t, you could never tell with him.
Them playing this game of peep for two made Senka feel anxious, he only half listened to what Mr Nameless was saying and all sorts of nonsense kept crowding into his head. To