The Death of Achilles by Boris Akunin Read Free Book Online Page B

help of illustrative examples, Mr. Pavlov demonstrated the depths to which this great talent has sunk in the pursuit of a tendentious and spurious reality. The next reading will be devoted to analyzing the works of Shchedrin as the leading representative of the crudest and most fallacious form of realism.
    Fandorin was dismayed to read that. Among the Russian diplomats in Japan it was considered good tone to praise Turgenev and Shchedrin. How very far he had fallen behind the literary scene in Russia during his absence of almost six years! But what was new in the field of technology?
Tunnel Under the English Channel
    The length of the railway tunnel under the English Channel is already approaching 1,200 meters. The engineer Brunton is excavating the galleries with a ram-drill powered by compressed air. According to the plans, the total length of the underground passage should be a little over thirty versts. The initial design envisaged that the English and French digs would link up after five years, but skeptics claim that the labor-intensive work of facing the walls and laying the rails will delay the opening of the line until at least 1890…
    With his keen sensitivity to progress, Fandorin found the digging of the Anglo- French tunnel quite fascinating, but something prevented him from reading this interesting article to the end. A certain gentleman in a gray two-piece suit, whom Fandorin had only recently spotted beside the head porter in the vestibule, had now been hovering around the buffet counter for several minutes. The isolated words that reached the collegiate assessor’s ears (and his hearing was quite excellent) seemed to Fandorin so curious that he immediately stopped reading, although he continued to hold the newspaper in front of his face.
    “Don’t you try putting one over on me,” the gray-suited gentleman pressed the man behind the counter. “Were you on duty last night or not?”
    “I was asleep, Yer Onner,” droned the man, a fat-faced, rosy-cheeked hulk with a greasy beard combed to both sides. “The only one here from the night shift is Senka.” He jerked his beard in the direction of a boy serving cakes and tea.
    The man in gray beckoned Senka to him. A police sleuth, Erast Petrovich thought with absolute certainty and without any great surprise. So our chief of police Evgeny Osipovich was feeling jealous — he didn’t want all the laurels to go to the governor’s deputy for special assignments.
    “Now tell me, Senka,” the inquisitive gentleman said ingratiatingly, “was there a general and some officers at Mam’selle Wanda’s place last night?”
    Senka twitched his nose, fluttered his white eyelashes, and asked: “Lasnigh’? A gen’ral?”
    “Yes, yes, a gen’ral,” said the sleuth, nodding.
    “ ‘Ere?” asked the boy, wrinkling up his forehead.
    “Yes here, here, where else?”
    “But does gen’rals drive out at nigh’?” Senka inquired suspiciously.
    “And why wouldn’t they?”
    The boy replied with deep conviction: “Nah, gen’rals sleeps at nigh’. Tha’s what gen’rals does.”
    “You just watch it, you… little idiot!” the man in gray exclaimed furiously. “Or I’ll take you down to the station and soon have you singing a different tune.”
    “I’m an orphan, mister,” Senka responded swiftly, and his foolish eyes were instantly flooded with tears. “You can’t take me down the station, it gives me the fainting fits.”
    “Are you all in this plot together, or what?” the police agent snapped viciously and stormed out, slamming the door loudly behind him.
    “A serious gent’man,” said Senka, looking at the door.
    “Yesterday’s were more serious,” the counterman whispered and smacked the lad on the back of his close-cropped head. “The sort of gentlemen who’d rip your head off without any police or anything. You take care, Senka, keep your mouth shut. Anyway, they probably slipped you something, didn’t they?”
    “Prof.