She Lover of Death: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin Read Online Free

‘A sudden blizzard from Siberia! Do with me what you will.’ Petya of course, would choke in surprise at such audacious directness and the sensation of his own boundless power over this creature who seemed to be woven out of the very ether. He would put his arms round her shoulders, plant a passionate kiss on her soft, submissive lips and lead his uninvited guest into a boudoir enveloped in mysterious twilight. Or perhaps he would take her with all the passion of a rampant young satyr, right there on the floor of the hallway.
    Her lively imagination had immediately painted for her a scene of passion in the company of umbrellas stands and galoshes. The traveller had frowned and trained her unseeing gaze on the spurs of the Ural mountains. She realised that she would have to prepare the altar for the forthcoming sacrifice herself, she could not rely on the whim of chance. And that was when the miraculous word ‘Elysium’ had surfaced in her memory.
    Well, she thought, the fifteen-rouble stage-setting was adequate for the sacred rites.
    Masha – no, Masha no longer, Columbine – ran a caressing glance over the walls hung with lilac moiré satin, the deep-piled, bright-patterned carpet on the floor, the ethereally light furniture on curved legs, and frowned at the naked nymph in the sumptuous gold frame (that was going a bit too far).
    Then she noticed an object of even greater luxury on the table beside the mirror – an absolutely genuine telephone! Her own personal apparatus, standing right there in her room! Just imagine!
    And immediately an idea occurred to her that was even more dramatic than the first one of simply appearing in the doorway. Appearing was no problem, but what if he was not in when she did it? There was a whiff of provincial offhandedness about it too. And again, why make the journey if the fall (which was simultaneously a vertiginous flight) was to take place here, on this bed like a catafalque, with its carved columns and heavy canopy? But to telephone – that was modern, elegant, metropolitan .
    Petya’s father was a doctor, he was absolutely certain to have a telephone at home.
    Columbine picked the stylish brochure entitled Moscow Telephone Subscribers up off the table and – would you believe it – she opened it straight away at the letter ‘L’. There it was, now: ‘Terentii Savelievich Lileiko, Dr of Medicine – 3128’. Surely this was the finger of fate?
    She stood for a moment, facing the gleaming lacquered box with its metal circles and caps and focusing her will. She twirled the handle with desperate speed and when a brassy voice squeaked ‘Central exchange’ into her earpiece, she recited the four figures rapidly.
    While she was waiting, she suddenly realised that the phrase she had prepared would not do for a telephone conversation. ‘What sudden blizzard from Siberia?’ Petya would ask. ‘What sort of way is that to talk? And why should I do anything with you, madam?’
    To bolster her courage, she opened the Japanese ivory cigarette case that she had bought at the station and lit the first papirosa of her life (the pakhitoska that Masha Mironova had once lit up in fifth class at school didn’t count – back then she hadn’t had the slightest idea that you were supposed to inhale the tobacco smoke). She propped her elbow on the little table, turned slightly sideways-on to the mirror and narrowed her eyes. Not bad, not bad at all, interesting and even rather enigmatic.
    ‘Doctor Lileiko’s apartment,’ a woman’s voice said in the earpiece. ‘With whom do you wish to speak?’
    The smoker was rather disconcerted – for some reason she had been certain that Petya would answer. She rebuked herself sternly. How stupid! Of course, he didn’t live alone. His parents were there, and the servants, and possibly even some brothers and sisters. In fact, she didn’t really know very much about him: only that he was a student, he wrote poems and spoke wonderfully well about