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Empire as its crest illustrates quite magnificently the entire system of government of that country, where any matter of even the slightest importance is not entrusted to a single authority but at least two, and these authorities hamper each other's efforts while taking no ultimate responsibility for anything. The same thing is happening now in the Russian army in the field. Formally speaking, the commander-in-chief is the Grand Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich, who is currently based in the village of Tsarevitsy. However, located in the small town of Bela, in the immediate vicinity of Nikolai's headquarters, is the staff of Emperor Alexander II, to which are attached the Chancellor, the Minister of War, the Chief of Gendarmes and other dignitaries of the highest rank. Taking into account the fact that the allied Roumanian army possesses its own commander in the person of Prince Karl Hohenzollern-Siegmaringen, one is reminded less of the double-headed king of the feathered tribe than of the droll humour of the Russian fable in which a swan, a crayfish and a pike are harnessed to the same carriage . . .
    'Well then, how am I to address you, as "madame" or
    "mademoiselle"?' asked the beetle-black lieutenant-colonel of gendarmes, twisting his lips revoltingly. 'This is not a ballroom, but army headquarters, and I am not paying you compliments, but conducting an interrogation, so I would be obliged if you would stop beating about the bush!'
    The lieutenant-colonel was called Ivan Kharitono-vich Kazanzaki, and since he was resolutely determined not to see Varya's side of things, the most likely outcome in prospect for her was clearly compulsory deportation to Russia.
    When they had finally reached Tsarevitsy the day before, it was almost night. Fandorin had immediately set out for the headquarters staff building and Varya, by this time so tired that she could barely stand, had set about doing what had to be done. The charitable nurses from Baroness Vreiskaya's medical unit had given her some clothes and heated some water for her and, after she had tidied herself up, Varya had collapsed on to a field hospital bed - fortunately the wards were almost completely empty of wounded. Her meeting with Petya had been postponed until the following day, for she would require full command of all her faculties during the important discussion that lay ahead.
    In the morning, however, Varya had not been allowed to catch up on her sleep. Two gendarmes wearing hard helmets and carrying carbines had turned up and escorted 'the individual styling herself Miss Suvorova' directly to the special unit of the Western Division, without even allowing her to arrange her hair properly.
    And now she had been attempting for hours to explain to this clean-shaven, bushy-browed monster in the blue uniform the precise nature of the
    4i relationship that bound her to the cryptographer Pyotr Yablokov.
    'Why on earth don't you call Pyotr Afanasievich and he will confirm everything himself,' Varya kept repeating, but the lieutenant-colonel's reply was always the same: 'All in good time.'
    Kazanzaki was particularly interested in the details of her encounter with 'the individual styling himself Titular Counsellor Fandorin'. The lieutenant-colonel noted down all about Yusuf-pasha and Vidin, and the coffee with French conversation, and freedom won in a game of backgammon,- but his professional curiosity was galvanised most powerfully by the discovery that the volunteer had spoken to the Bashi-Bazouks in Turkish, and he demanded to know exactly how he had spoken - with a stammer or without. Simply clarifying all that nonsense about the stammer must have taken at least half an hour.
    And then, when Varya was already on the verge of dry, tearless hysterics, the door of the mud-walled peasant hut that housed the special section had suddenly swung open and in had walked, or rather run, an extremely important-looking general with imperiously bulging eyes and luxuriant