The Club Dumas полностью

Nothing good was going to come of this, so he closed his eyes and waited, resigned, for someone to turn the page. He could feel Rochefort’s breathing very near, could feel him lean­ing over him, searching inside the bag. Then Rochefort yanked violently at the strap. This caused Corso to open his eyes again, just enough to make out the flight of steps in his field of vision. But as his face was pressed down against the paving stones, the steps appeared horizontal, crooked, and blurred. So at first he couldn’t tell whether the girl was going up or down. He just saw her move incredibly fast, from right to left, her long legs jumping from step to step. Her duffel coat, which she had just taken off, spread out in the air, or rather moved toward a corner of the screen surrounded by swirls of mist, like the cape of the Phantom of the Opera.

He blinked with interest, in an attempt to focus, and moved his head a little to keep the scene in the frame. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rochefort, his image inverted, give a start as the girl jumped down the last few steps. She fell on top of him with a brief, sharp cry, harder and more piercing than broken glass. He heard a thick sound—a thump—and Rochefort disappeared from Corso’s field of vision as suddenly as if he’d been on springs. Now all Corso could see was the

empty steps. With difficulty he turned his head to the river and lay his other cheek on the paving stones. The image was still crooked: the ground on one side, the black sky on the other, the bridge below and the river above. But now at least it con­tained Rochefort and the girl. For a split second Corso saw her silhouetted against the hazy lights of the bridge. She was stand­ing, her legs apart and her hands out in front of her, as if asking for a moment of calm to listen to some distant tune. Rochefort was facing her, with a knee and a hand on the ground, like a boxer who can’t quite get up while the referee counts to ten. His scar was visible in the light from the bridge. Corso just had time to see his look of amazement before the girl again gave a piercing cry. She balanced on one leg and, raising the other in a semicircular movement that seemed quite effortless, kicked Rochefort sharply in the face.

 XII. BUCKINGHAM AND MILADY

The crime was committed with the help of a woman.

-E. de Queiroz, THE MYSTERY OF THE SINTRA ROAD

Corso sat on the bottom step, attempting to light a cigarette. Still too stunned, he hadn’t re­covered his spatial sense and couldn’t get the match in the same plane as the tip of the cigarette. Also, one of the lenses in his glasses was cracked, and he had to squint with one eye to see with the other. When the flame reached his fingers, he dropped the match between his feet and kept the cigarette in his mouth. The girl, who had been collecting the contents of the bag strewn over the ground, came and handed the bag to him.

“Are you all right?”

Her tone was neutral, without concern or worry. She was probably annoyed at the stupid way that Corso had been taken by surprise in spite of her warning on the phone. He nodded, humiliated and confused. But he was comforted when he re­membered the look on Rochefort’s face just before the kick. The girl had struck precisely and cruelly, but she didn’t follow up as Rochefort lay sprawled on his back. He didn’t challenge her or try to retaliate, but turned over in pain and dragged himself away, while she, no longer interested in him, went to pick up the bag. Corso, had he been able, would have gone after the man and, without a second thought, throttled him until he’d extracted everything from him. But the girl might not have allowed that, and anyway he was too weak even to stand.

“Why did you let him go?” Cors6 asked.

They could make Rochefort out in the distance, a staggering figure that was now disappearing into the darkness around a bend of the riverbank, among moored barges that looked like ghost ships in the low mist. Corso pictured the man retreating, humiliated, his face swollen, wondering how on earth a woman could have done so much damage. Corso felt jubilant at this revenge.

“We should have questioned the bastard,” he complained.

She’d retrieved her duffel coat and sat next to him, but didn’t answer immediately. She seemed tired.

“He’ll come after us again,” she said. She glanced at Corso before looking out at the river. “Be more careful next time.”

He took the damp cigarette from his mouth and started turning it over in his fingers, which made it fall apart.

“I would never have believed ...”

“Men don’t. Until they get their faces pushed in.”

Then he saw that she was bleeding. It wasn’t much: a trickle of blood from nose to lip.

“Your nose,” he said stupidly.

“I know,” she said, touching her face and looking at the blood on her fingers.

“How did he do that to you?”

“It was my fault.” She wiped her fingers on her jeans. “When I fell on top of him. We bumped heads.”