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tormenting Elizaveta Alexandrovna with their interrogations yesterday. Outside with you, if you please, outside.” And the scoundrel actually began nudging Fandorin toward the exit with his fat belly.
    “But what about the spinster Pfühl?” Erast Fandorin cried out despairingly. “Emma Gottliebovna, forty-eight years of age? I would like at least to have a few words with her. This is important state business!”
    The doorman smacked his lips pompously. “Very well, I will admit you to her. Go through that way, under the stairs. Third door on the right along the corridor. That is where the madam governess resides.”
    The door was opened in response to Fandorin’s knock by a gaunt individual who stared, unspeaking, at her visitor out of round brown eyes.
    “I am from the police. My name is Fandorin. Are you Miss Pfühl?” Erast Fandorin inquired uncertainly, then repeated the question in German just to be sure: “ Polizeiamt. Sind Sie Freilein Pfühl? Guten Abend .”
    “Good efening,” the gaunt individual replied severely in Russian. “Yes, I am Emma Pfühl. Come in. Zit down zere on zat shair.”
    Fandorin sat where he had been ordered, on a Viennese chair with a curved back standing beside a writing desk on which some textbooks and stacks of writing paper were laid out in an extremely tidy fashion. It was a pleasant room with good light but completely uninteresting, lacking in life. The only spot of bright color throughout its entire extent was provided by a trio of exuberant geraniums standing in pots on the window.
    “Are you here about zat shtupid young man who shot himzelf?” Miss Pfühl inquired. “I answered all of ze policeman’s kvestions yesterday, but if you vish to ask again, you may ask. I understand vat ze vork of ze police is—it is very important. My uncle Günter zerved as an Oberwachtmeister in ze Zaxon police.”
    “I am a collegiate registrar,” Erast Fandorin explained, not wishing himself to be taken for a sergeant major, “a civil servant, fourteenth class.”
    “Yes, I know how to understand rank,” the German woman said with a nod, pointing to the lapel of his uniform jacket. “Zo, mister collegiate registrar, I am listening.”
    At that moment the door swung open without a knock and a fair-haired young lady with an enchanting flush on her cheeks darted into the room.
    “Fräulein Pfühl! Morgenfahren wir nach Kuntsevo! * Honestly. Papa has given his permission!” she babbled rapidly from the doorway. Then, noticing the stranger, she stopped short and lapsed into a confused silence, but the gaze of her gray eyes nonetheless remained fixed on the young official in an expression of the most lively curiosity.
    “Veil brought-up young baronesses do not run, zey valk,” her governess told her with feigned strictness. “Ezpecially ven zey are all of zeventeen years old. If you do not run but valk, zen you haf time to notice a stranger and greet him properly.”
    “Good day, sir,” the miraculous vision whispered.
    Fandorin leapt to his feet and bowed, his nerves jangling quite appallingly. The poor clerk was so overwhelmed by the girl’s appearance that he was afraid he might fall in love with her at first sight, and that was something he simply could not do. Even in his dear papa’s more prosperous days, a princess like this would have been well beyond his reach, and now the idea was even more ridiculous.
    “How do you do,” he said very dryly with a grave frown, thinking to himself: Cast me in the role of a pitiful supplicant, would you?
General was her father’s rank and designation ,
    A mere titular counselor was he, and poor ,
    So when he made his timid declaration ,
    She quickly had him put out of the door .
    Oh no, you don’t, my dear lady! I still have a long way to go before I even reach titular counselor.
    “Collegiate Registrar Erast Petrovich Fandorin, of the Criminal Investigation Division,” he said, introducing himself in an official tone. “I am