at the gold chain dangling from the Ghoul’s pocket. ‘Is it a good watch? Does it keep good time? You have to be in Yeroshenko’s basement, right at the far end, where the brick bollards are, tonight. At exactly three o’clock. Poor little dumb Motya here will meet you and show you where to go.’ Senka winced under the keen, venomous stare that the Ghoul fixed on him and let a string of saliva dribble off his drooping lip. ‘And one last thing I wanted to say to you, just so you remember,’ the old Jew went on in a soulful voice, cautiously taking the milker by the sleeve. ‘When you see the treasure and you take it away to a good safe place, you will ask yourself: “Why should I give half to those stupid Jews? What can they do to me? I’d better keep it all for myself and just laugh at them”.’
The Ghoul swung his head this way and that to see whether there was an icon in the corner of the room. When he couldn’t find one he swore his oath dry, without it:
‘May the lightning burn me! May I be stuck in jail forever! May I wither up and waste away! If people treat me right, I treat them right. By Christ the Lord!’
The old grandad listened to all that, nodded his head then asked out of the blue: ‘Did you know Alexander the Blessed?’
‘Who?’ the Ghoul asked, gaping at him.
‘Tsar Alexander. The great-grand-uncle of His Highness the Emperor. Did you know Alexander the Blessed? I ask you. I can see from your face that you did not know this great man. But I saw him, almost as close as I see you now. Not that Alexander the Blessed and I were really acquainted, good God, no. And he didn’t see me, because he was lying dead in his coffin. They were taking him to St Petersburg from the town of Taganrog.’
‘So what are you spouting all this for, Grandad?’ the ghoul asked, wrinkling up his forehead. ‘What’s your tsar in a coffin mean to me?’
The old man raised a single cautionary yellow finger. ‘This, Monsieur Voleur: if you deceive us, they’ll carry you off in a coffin too, and Naum Rubinchik will come to look at you. That’s all, I’m tired. Off you go now. Motya will show you the way.’
He stepped back, sat down in a chair and lowered his head on to his chest. A second later there was the sound of thin, plaintive snoring.
‘A tough old grandad,’ the Ghoul said, winking at Senka. ‘You make sure you’re where you were told to be tonight, Carrot-head. Pull a fast one on me and I’ll wrap your tongue round your neck.’
He turned round softly, like a cat, and walked out of the house.
The moment the door slammed shut, the two Jews jumped out from behind the curtain.
They both started jabbering away at once. ‘What have you told him? What silver? Why did you make all that up? Where are we going to get so many old coins from now? It’s a total catastrophe!’
Erast Petrovich arose immediately from his slumbers, but instead of interrupting the clamouring trustees, he got on with his own business: he took off the skullcap and the grey wig, peeled off his beard, took a little glass bottle out of the sack, soaked a piece of cotton wool and started rubbing it over his skin. The liver spots and flabbiness disappeared as if by magic.
When there was a pause in the clamour, he said briefly: ‘No, I didn’t m-make it all up. The treasure really d-does exist.’
The trustees stared at him, wondering if he was joking or not. But from Mr Nameless’s face it was quite clear that he wasn’t.
‘But . . .’ the black-haired one said to him cautiously, as if he was talking to a madman, ‘ . . . but do you realise that this bandit will trick you? He’ll take all the treasure and not give you anything?’
‘Of course he’ll t-try to trick me,’ the engineer said with a nod as he removed his long coat, faded plush trousers and galoshes. ‘And then what Naum Rubinchik p-prophesied will come to pass. They’ll carry the Ghoul off in his c-coffin. Only not to St Petersburg. To a common g-grave in the Bozhedomka cemetery.’
‘Why have you taken your clothes off?’ the grey-haired man asked in alarm. ‘You’re not going to walk down the street like that, are you?’
‘Apologies