is paper.
     "Are you returning home soon?"
     "Yes, I'm getting a ticket for Wednesday. What about you?"
     "I'm leaving tomorrow."
     Nikolai thrust  his  paper into his pocket. Rita turned  to  the  woman
behind  the counter of the newsstand. "I'll take  these picture  postcards,"
she said.
     She chose half a dozen cards with colour reproductions on them. Nikolai
glanced absently at them. One  was  a winter  landscape,  another Levi-tan's
"March",  then  a picture in the  Bilibin  style, of  a  ship with  a  taut,
wind-filled sail, bearing a drawing of  the sun, approaching a landing stage
where bearded men  in long  robes stood beside cannon wreathed  in clouds of
smoke.
     Nikolai said the  first thing  that  came into his  head. "'Guns firing
from the  wharf, ordering the  ship to  tie up.' I used to copy that picture
when I was a child."
     Rita swung  round  to face him.  "Did  you ever  give  that  drawing to
anyone?"
     Nikolai  caught  his  breath. He  stared intently  into that  pleasant,
mobile, questioning face  and  suddenly saw  long familiar  features-a perky
freckled nose, a mischievous smile, and glossy  yellow braids jutting out at
a belligerent angle
     "Yellow Lynx?" he whispered.


     What had Rita been doing in Moscow?
     Her friend met her at the railway station on arrival and took her home.
That same day  Rita  went to  a  hospital  in  Pirogov  Street  and  made an
appointment to see a famous neuropathologist. He listened attentively to her
story.
     "Only  a special course  of treatment  can help your husband,"  he told
her. "The cure  takes time  and  patience-but it is  the  only way. You must
persuade your husband to undergo this course of treatment. I can arrange for
him to enter the hospital where a pupil of mine, Dr. Khalilov, is doing very
good work in this field. The sooner he does this,  the better it will be for
him. I'll give you a letter to Dr. Khalilov."
     Now Rita was more upset than ever. She was determined to leave for home
at once,  before the end of the  winter school vacation. However, her friend
persuaded her to spend at least a week in Moscow.
     During that week Opratin came to see her three times.
     It so  happened that  Rita  and Opratin had travelled to Moscow on  the
same train. They had discovered this when  the train  halted  at Mineralniye
Vody and both had stepped out onto the platform  for a breath  of fresh air.
At  Kharkov, Opratin had again  approached  her on the platform and  chatted
with  her  for a few minutes. Rita had  given  him  her  friend's  telephone
number, at which she could be reached in Moscow.
     There was something  threatening and alarming about Opratin's visits to
Rita  in Moscow. His presence made her uncomfortable; she felt as though the
shadow of her husband were standing behind him.
     Opratin talked to her in a gentle,  friendly  tone. He agreed with  the
doctor,  he  said, that  Anatole should undergo  treatment. He himself would
help  to arrange a leave of any duration for Anatole. Rita was not to worry;
there were no particularly alarming  symptoms  as yet. Anatole was  cheerful
and enthusiastic about his work.
     "That backbreaking, endless, senseless  work of  Anatole's is what  has
estranged him from me," Rita thought.
     "We're on the  right track now," said  Opratin. "But I want you to bear
in  mind that it depends to a great extent  on you how much  longer the  job
will take."
     Opratin came to see her for the third time on a cold, snowy morning. It
was warm inside the flat, but tense, disturbing music poured from the radio.
     "That's  a waltz  from Masquerade" Rita  remarked  in a  low  voice  to
Opratin, who  was seated on the sofa, his legs crossed, tapping  one foot in
time to the music.
     "Look here, Rita," he  said as the violins soared and then fell silent.
"I know I'm making a nuisance of myself but I really must speak to you again
about Fedor Matveyev's knife."
     "This is becoming intolerable," Rita said coldly. "I've told you twenty
times that the knife fell into the sea and was lost."
     "No,  the  knife  is  in  your  possession," Opratin declared. "I can't
understand why you are  being so stubborn. Now follow me carefully.  Anatole
and  I have invented  a  remarkable machine. If we  exclude  that accidental
phenomenon which your ancestor Fedor Matveyev witnessed in India, no one has
ever  come  so close  to solving  the problem of the mutual penetrability of
matter  as we have. This will be  a major breakthrough. Your husband's  name
will stand side  by side with those of  the most brilliant scientists of our
age."
     "But I don't want that!" Rita burst out.
     She turned away, biting  her lip to keep from crying, and walked to the
farther end of the room.
     "He doesn't need fame," she continued in a calmer  voice. "He needs  to
forget about  that damned  knife, cure himself and return home. That's all I
want. That and nothing more. Please leave me alone."
     Opratin rose. "Very well. I'll leave  you alone. But Anatole will never
return to you. Well, goodbye."
     He moved to the door.
     "Wait!" Rita shrieked. "Why-why won't he return?"
     Opratin turned round abruptly. "Because he is slowly but surely killing
himself. Because the doses  he is now taking would kill an elephant. Because
he will not be able  to  endure it if we  don't succeed. And success depends
only on the knife. The knife guarantees solution of the  problem and, at the
same time, your husband's recovery."
     Rita pressed the palms of her hands to her temples. Her eyes were those
of a sick, hunted animal.
     Opratin waited. The wind  whipped flurries of snow against the windows,
making the panes tremble.
     Rita walked with  wooden steps  into the next room.  Opratin heard  the
click of a lock.
     She returned and flung a knife on the table.
     It fell with a strangely light tap.
     Opratin walked unhurriedly over to the table. He picked up the knife by
the handle  and fixed his eyes on  the narrow blade  with  the wavy  design.
Suddenly he plunged it into the table. The blade entered the thick, polished
wood almost up to the hill. Opratin's eyes blazed with triumph.
     "Rita, allow me to-"
     "Don't. Just go."
     She stood by the window for  a long lime,  looking  out  from the ninth
floor at a Moscow wrapped in clouds of snow.
     Then she threw on her coat, dashed out of the  flat, and took a taxi to
the railway station.


     "Yes, Yellow Lynx. That was what they called me when we were kids." She
took Nikolai by the arm. Her eyes shone as though a  film had  been stripped
from them. "I still have that drawing you made."
     "I kept thinking there  was something  familiar about your  face," said
Nikolai in a constrained whisper.
     "I kept wondering too. When you and your friend came  to my house I was
on the verge of recognizing you."
     "You know who  my friend was? It was Yura." "Yura?" Rita laughed. "Dear
me, he used lo be such a little boy. But so brave, with those feathers stuck
in his hair."
     "But  we told you  our names. Didn't you-" "Do you  know my last name?"
"No."
     "Well,  I didn't know  yours  either. Children  are never interested in
last names. If we'd attended the same school it would  have been a different
matter."
     Nikolai studied Rita's face. "Can it really be Yellow Lynx?" he thought
in amazement. "You've changed a lot," he said.
     Rita's face grew sober. She gave  him a long, inquiring glance. Nikolai
had the feeling that she was about to tell him  something important. But she
only said, "Do you still live in the same place?"
     "Yes, in Cooper Lane."
     "Cooper Lane," Rita mused. "It seems like a hundred years ago."
     "Why not  take a ticket for Wednesday?" Nikolai suggested hesitatingly.
"Then we could travel together."
     Rita was silent. Did she want to spend another whole day in Moscow? No,
definitely not. She wanted lo leave tomorrow. There was nothing more for her
to do  in Moscow. But she  suddenly  heard herself  saying, "Yes,  Wednesday
would suit me fine."
     Afterwards they  walked along the Sadovoye Ring. Rita,  her gloved hand
raised to protect  her face from the snow, told  Nikolai how her  family had
moved  lo Leningrad and then the war had come and her father had been killed
when Tallinn was evacuated. He had been in command of a big Troop Transport.
She and  her mother had survived the siege of Leningrad.  After the war they
had moved back  to the town  on the Caspian Sea because her mother was  very
ill and the doctors had ordered a warmer climate for her.
     Rita said nothing about her marriage.
     "Why didn't you ever pay a visit to Cooper Lane?"
     "I did, soon after we came back. I stopped in to look at the flat where
we  used to live. I saw a  fat woman sitting on  the balcony, knitting.  The
place called  up painful memories. Everything reminded me of Father. If only
Father   had  lived-"  Rita  stopped.  "Everything  would  have  turned  out
differently."
     She shivered. Nikolai screwed up his courage and took her by the arm.
     "I remember now," he  said.  "There used to be  two small bars of iron,
with some  kind  of mysterious letters engraved on  them, on  your  father's
desk. Lately I've been wondering where  I  saw them before. Do you remember?
We pledged to do everything we could to discover their secret." "Do you know
that my maiden name was Matveyev?" Rita suddenly asked.
     "Matveyev?" Nikolai repeated in confusion. "That means you're-"
     "That's right,  I'm-" Rita's face grew longer. "Rut we won't talk about
that now. Please don't. There's been too much for one day."
     She  gave  Nikolai  a  searching  look,  studying  his  frank face  and
attentive grey eyes. His ears were a bright red. Imagine going about in such
a frost with just a spring hat on one's head!
     "I'm so glad I met you." she said in a low voice. "I have such a lot to
tell you. No, not now. On the train."


     It was nearly five o'clock by the time Nikolai returned to the hotel.
     "Boris, you simply won't believe  your eyes!" he called out exuberantly
from the doorway. "Read this." He drew the newspaper from his pocket.
     Privalov pushed his  spectacles up  to his forehead and skimmed through
the item about the displays at the exhibition.
     "A small  metal box with the inscription A M D G." Privalov leaned back
in his chair and his glasses dropped onto his nose of themselves. "You think
this has some relation to-"
     "Yes, definitely.  It's  the same engraving as on our box. What if this
is 'The Key to the Mystery'?"
     "In the hands of an Italian subversive  agent? Hm-m. Sounds doubtful to
me."
     "De  Maistre  came from Italy too,"  Nikolai protested. "And  there are
Jesuits  there to this day, of course. We ought to go to the museum and take
a look, Boris. If the size of the box coincides with the measurements in the
drawing-"
     There were not too  many visitors at the exhibition. Several youngsters
were arguing heatedly in front of the walkie-talkie display. Two airmen were
examining the wreckage of a foreign plane brought down on Soviet territory.
     It did not take Privalov and Nikolai long to find, in the  next room, a
tall glass showcase in which  stood a life-size  dummy dressed in a tattered
outfit, with a parachute on its back. A small golden crucifix gleamed at the
throat,  visible through  the  open collar.  Bars of  blasting  charges,  an
aqualung,  a frogman's suit,  a pistol,  a radio transmitter and receiver, a
ball of nylon cord and other articles were laid out at the dummy's feet.
     Rut there was no sign of a small metal box with the inscription A  M  D
G.
     "How odd!" Nikolai slowly ran  his eyes again  over  the things in  the
showcase. "Very odd indeed. The paper clearly slated-"
     "Let's speak to the person in charge," said Privalov.
     The  director  of the  exhibition,  a  short,  balding man,  raised his
eyebrows in surprise when  Privalov told him  there was no  metal box in the
showcase.
     "That can't be," he said. "You simply failed to notice it."
     But the  director himself was unable to find the  box with the initials
of the Jesuit motto. It had vanished.
     "It was here last night," he said, looking worried. "I remember showing
it to  a group of visitors." At  this point he noticed that the tiny lock on
the showcase had been forced open.
     The director gave Privalov a questioning look and asked him to  explain
his interest in the little box.
     Privalov  briefly recounted the  history of the iron  boxes. He did not
say anything  about their contents but merely mentioned that  the Academy of
Sciences was interested in them.
     "No  doubt you have  an  inventory  of  the  Italian  agent's  things,"
Privalov said when he had finished.  "We  should like to see the description
of the stolen box."
     The director showed them the inventory. They could hardly believe their
eyes when they read that the body of the Italian agent and his equipment had
been  found  by a  person named Nikolai  Opratin, a  Candidate  of Technical
Sciences, in the environs of Derbent the previous August.
     "At  every  turn  we come up against Opratin,"  Nikolai  said in a  low
voice.
     "I now  recall having heard about  some  sort  of adventure  he had  at
Derbent,"  said Privalov.  "Let's read further." A flat  metal box  with the
letters A M  D G, and below them the letters J d M engraved on it was listed
as No. 14 in the inventory. It weighed 430 grammes. Its size was-
     "The very same measurements!" Nikolai exclaimed. "I remember them well.
This is 'The Key to the Mystery'. There's no doubt about it."
     An hour  or  so later they had to repeat the story of  the boxes  to  a
black-eyed young investigator, who wrote it all down in a notebook.
     It  was fairly late by the time Privalov and  Nikolai  emerged into the
street. A raw  wind  whirled the  snow  into their faces. The  frost pinched
their ears.
     "'The Key to the Mystery'," Privalov mused. "What could it be? Probably
some very important paper."
     "Perhaps it's a description of the machine."
     They walked along  a  narrow  path  in the snow leading  to the  hotel.
Fences stretched on one side  of them and  stalls  and booths  on the other.
Somewhere in  the distance a dog howled.  The  lighted windows of the  hotel
sparkled in front of them.
     "What a day!" Nikolai thought. He recalled he had not had any dinner.
     "I'll drop into the cafeteria, Boris," he said.
     As  he walked past the  hotel  across  the street from his own, Nikolai
stopped at the entrance.
     "Why not?" he thought. "I'll draw  Uncle Vova  out  of the room-without
Opratin knowing about it,  of  course-and put the question to  him straight.
Drive him into a corner. Something tells me he's the one who stole it."
     Nikolai entered the  lobby and  asked the  desk  clerk to summon a  man
named Bugrov from room 130.
     "Bugrov?"  The clerk  looked into the  register.  "He  checked out this
afternoon.  Opratin and Bugrov.  They called  a taxi and  drove off  to  the
airport."


        CHAPTER EIGHT

        IN WHICH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE MATVEYEV FAMILY IS BROUGHT TO
THE READER'S ATTENTION

     "Get in quick!" the plump conductress said to Nikolai.
     Nikolai waved to Privalov for the last time and hurriedly followed Rita
up the steps and into the carriage.
     The early winter twilight thickened fast.  The houses  of a small  town
appeared in sight and vanished, to be followed  by a frozen stream and three
motionless figures standing with fishing lines beside holes in the ice.
     Nikolai  was  the first to speak. "There's something you wanted to tell
me, Rita, isn't there?"
     "Yes, there is."
     The wheels clicked rhythmically on the rail joints.
     Nikolai  stared out into  the darkness with unseeing  eyes as he waited
for Rita to begin.
     "I  don't  know  how  to  start,"  Rita  finally  said.  "It's  all  so
complicated-and I've never told anyone about it before." She sighed  softly.
"All  right,  listen. You remember those two small bars of iron that used to
lie  on  Father's  desk  when  we were children,  don't  you? I'll  tell you
everything I know about them."
     The authors  will now  take the liberty of relating  the  story  of the
boxes since  they have every reason to believe that they now know it  better
than Rita did.


     The Story of the Three Boxes


     Stories about strange  doings  in  the Matveyev family  had  long  been
circulating in St. Petersburg. To begin with,  way back during the reign  of
Peter the Great a Matveyev, a naval lieutenant, had returned from India with
a bewitchingly beautiful dark-eyed  girl. The "taint" in the Matveyev family
had  probably started  with her. Her sons and grandsons did not rise high in
the  government service.  They cut  short  their  careers  by resigning  and
burying themselves on their estate in the Tver Province. There they lived in
seclusion, rarely entertaining any visitors.
     From  the  few outsiders  who did  enter the  house it was learned that
rustling, grinding  and crackling sounds would come from a forbidden chamber
long past midnight.  These sounds were  accompanied by infernal  sparks; the
kind  of freshness  in  the  air that  follows a  thunderstorm would  spread
through the house.
     Moreover, it was whispered that  the Matveyevs  had a  magic knife, the
Indian  girl's dowry.  No one really knew what kind of a magic  knife it was
until it came the turn of Arseny Matveyev, great-grandson of  Fedor Matveyev
and  his Indian wife,  to graduate from the naval school in St.  Petersburg.
The young  warrant  officers hired a  room in  a tavern  on the Moika  for a
bachelor supper party to celebrate their graduation. They  made a great many
fiery  speeches over the wine. They recalled adventures from  their cruises,
for all of them had sailed in seas near and far as naval cadets.
     At the height of the  party Arseny  Matveyev placed his swarthy hand on
the table, palm  downwards,  snatched  a knife  from a  scabbard inside  his
shirt, and plunged it into his hand right up to  the  hilt. Then  he quickly
returned the knife  to  its  hiding place and held up his hand.  It bore  no
trace of a scratch, no sign  of  blood. Afterwards, the young revelry-makers
could not say for sure whether they had actually seen this or whether it was
a product of their wine-heated imaginations.
     However that may be, Arseny Matveyev and his knife were soon forgotten.
Napoleon's army invaded Russia. The years that followed were wreathed in the
gunpowder smoke of danger and martial glory.
     But there  was one person in St. Petersburg, a man  always dressed only
in black, who thought constantly about the  miraculous knife.  From  trusted
men he received periodic reports about  Arseny Matveyev, wherever the latter
happened to be.
     The  man in black was Count Joseph Marie de Maistre, Ambassador  of the
King of  Sardinia  (a  king  who  had been deprived  of  his  realm)  and an
important personage in the Society of Jesus.
     Before the War of 1812 there had been a Jesuit school in St. Petersburg
where,  for a  high fee,  quite a  number  of young  men  from distinguished
families  learned  Latin prayers  and  Bible  history,  plus  obedience  and
humility.  When graduates of the school entered the  government service they
did not forgot their spiritual fathers.
     Young Prince Kurasov visited Count de Maistre perhaps more  often  than
others.  He  was  the  one  who  told  the  Sardinian  Ambassador about  the
miraculous knife. The prince had been one of the few  non-naval  men invited
to the supper party and had seen Arseny Matveyev  plunge the knife into  his
hand.
     The prince's story gave Count de Maistre much food for thought. A knife
that passed harmlessly through a hand? The elderly Jesuit believed as firmly
in divine  signs as he did in the glorious predestination of the Society  of
Jesus, vigilant guardian of the faith and thrones. This was certainly a sign
from on high.  Just  as the knife  had passed through  human flesh,  Jesuits
would  pass without  hindrance  into the  palaces  of monarchs and  into the
chambers of high officials to persuade  them to stamp out free thinking. The
time had  come to put  a stop to  the  anti-religious  sciences that  had so
multiplied.  These  Devil's  instruments  advocated   the   Jacobinism  that
destroyed thrones.  The  time had  come  to make  men's hearts humble before
divine  Providence.  The time had come to  elevate the Society, despite  the
persecution to which it was subjected, despite the blindness of some rulers.
The  great honour of  bringing this sign to the attention of the Society had
fallen on him, Count Joseph Marie de Maistre.
     The Count resolved  not  to let Arseny  Matveyev  disappear  from view.
Through scraps of information brought  him by other  graduates of the school
he followed the  young man's  fortunes in the war.  He knew that Arseny  had
been wounded,  had convalesced  at his  estate at Tver, had been recalled to
the Baltic  Fleet, promoted to the rank of lieutenant, and was now stationed
at Kronstadt, near St. Petersburg.
     One day in  March 1815 a carriage drew up to the Sardinian Ambassador's
residence,  and  a  tall, thin-faced  man  stepped out  of  it. Fastidiously
skirting a large puddle of melting snow, he mounted the steps leading to the
front  entrance. The Count received him  at once. The  thin-faced  man bowed
respectfully as he entered the Count's study.
     The  Count was  sitting in a deep  armchair before  the  fireplace.  He
turned  his lined,  parchment-yellow face to  the newcomer  and  indicated a
chair with a wave of his hand.
     "What is the news, mon prince?" he asked in a weary voice.
     Young Prince Kurasov seated himself on the edge of a chair.
     "The news  is  fairly good, Your Excellency,"  he said  wanly.  "I have
learned that Arseny Matveyev does not carry the knife about with him but has
left  it  at Zakharino,  the  family estate.  He  has been appointed  senior
officer on the brig Askold, now being outfitted at Kronstadt preparatory  to
cruising in the Pacific Ocean in search of new lands."
     The Count lowered his eyelids. "Is that all?"
     "No.  Now comes the most important news. Three days ago, in the company
of philosophers and atheists  like himself, Arseny  Matveyev made  seditious
speeches. He  spoke in favour of the  convocation  of a general assembly  in
Russia."
     Count de  Maistre sat up straight and  struck the arm of his chair with
his  frail  fist. The  eyes  in the  yellow  face glowed with  an  evil  and
unexpectedly youthful sparkle.
     "It  seems  to  me,  Your Excellency," Prince Kurasov  said cautiously,
"that it would be well to set things in motion-"
     The Count stopped him with a gesture and became lost in thought.
     "No,  mon  prince,'" he  said  after  a  long interval, "we'll  take  a
different course. When does the lieutenant depart on the brig?"
     "In June."
     "Splendid!  We've waited a long time, and  we can wait a little longer,
until June.  The matter  must be arranged without undue fuss. Do not disturb
Arseny Matveyev."


     A little over two and a half years later, on a hot day in February, the
brig Askold,  badly  battered  by severe storms, dropped anchor  at  Rio  de
Janeiro. There the Russian  Consul  handed Arseny a  letter from  his father
that had arrived nearly two years before.
     "I  shall  briefly set  forth the  misfortunes which have  befallen our
house, not through God's will  but  because of the  evil designs of wretched
creatures," his father  wrote. "You  of course remember Prince  Kurasov.  He
used  to be a friend of  yours. Fawning  and deference have enabled this man
Kurasov to rise  to the higher ranks and, some say,  to involvement with the
secret police. Out of spite, or for some other reason,  Kurasov has informed
against you, repeating everything that you said  in your youthful  hastiness
and  naming  the books you  read. This  denunciation  brought  officials  to
Zakharino. They searched the  house from top to  bottom,  turning everything
upside down, under the pretence of looking for seditious papers.
     "But it seems to me that  they  were looking for something else.  Since
they did not find any papers of that kind some of those hounds ransacked our
special chamber  most painstakingly.  They examined the electricity machines
from all sides. Furthermore, they confiscated the manuscript  in which Fedor
Matveyev,  my  grandfather  and your great-grandfather, described his Indian
travels. They also confiscated that wonderful knife of his."
     At the beginning of June 1818, after an  absence of nearly three years,
the Askold sailed into the roadstead near St. Petersburg.
     Early  next  morning Prince Kurasov's valet announced  that  Lieutenant
Matveyev  wished  to see  him. The  Prince, in his  dressing-gown, was being
shaved by his barber.
     "Tell him I'm not at home," he ordered.
     A  few minutes  later there was a commotion downstairs, and the valet's
raised voice could be heard. Then the door was flung  open. Arseny Matveyev,
his cheeks tanned  a  deep brown, stood on the threshold. He was in uniform,
with a sword at his side. Prince Kurasov pushed aside the barber's hand  and
slowly rose  to his feet, wiping the lather from his cheek. Arseny looked at
him with burning eyes.
     "Is this how you welcome old friends, Prince?"
     "Please leave the room, sir," the Prince said coldly. "You should thank
the Almighty you got off so easily."
     Arseny put his  hand on  his sword-hilt. "I give you exactly one minute
to hand back the souvenirs you  took from my father's estate," he  said with
restrained fury.
     The Prince's narrow face turned whiter  than  his lace  cuffs. He  took
several slow steps  backwards,  towards his canopied bed, and  stretched out
his hand to tug at the bell-rope. In two bounds Arseny, his sword drawn, was
at the Prince's side.
     Meanwhile the barber had fled, whimpering, from the room.
     The  Prince,  frightened out  of  his wits, stammered  that  the things
confiscated during  the  search  had  been turned  over  to Count Joseph  de
Maistre, the former Sardinian Ambassador.
     "Where does that Jesuit reside now? Tell me, quick!"
     "The Count left Russia last year," Prince Kurasov replied sullenly.  "I
do not know where he is now."
     Arseny  spent  only  a short  time in St. Petersburg.  He tendered  his
resignation arid left for Zakharino.
     The warm September day was drawing to a close. Candles had been lighted
in the small  snow-white Villa standing in a garden on the edge of a town in
northern Italy. Their  flickering glow  was reflected in the mahogany panels
that lined the walls of the study. A spare old man in  black  stood  leaning
against an elegant table, examining a sheet of parchment which he held close
to his  eyes. Another man, portly  and somewhat  younger, stood to one side,
waiting.
     "My friends were not mistaken in recommending you and your erudition to
me," the old man said, laying the sheet of parchment on the table.
     The scholar bowed.
     "You have done the Society of Jesus a great service," said the old man,
taking a purse out of a drawer in the table.
     "Ad majorem Dei gloriam" the scholar said, accepting the purse. "I wish
Your Excellency a good night."
     After seeing his visitor out of the room the old man summoned a servant
and told him to close all the shutters in the house and kindle a fire in the
fireplace. In his old age Count de Maistre suffered greatly from the cold.
     He sat  down at  the  table  and again examined  the parchment.  He was
pleased.  The old riddle brought  back  from cold Russia  had been given  an
excellent interpretation. He could already foresee the  great  day when  the
glory of the Society of Jesus would shine as never before. He,  Count Joseph
de Maistre, had not toiled in vain these many years.
     The clatter of horses'  hooves  on the stony road not far away came  to
his ears for a minute or so.
     Opening a  carved  casket,  the  Count  removed  from  it  a  rolled-up
manuscript tied with a ribbon, and a knife with  an ivory  handle. Then, one
after  another,  he took out  three small iron boxes and gazed admiringly at
their  gleaming  sides.  A  master  craftsman  in  Turin had fashioned  them
according to his design, and on each box had engraved the initial letters of
the great motto: A M D G
     Below  it he  had  engraved Count  Joseph  de  Maistre's crown and  his
initials:

     J d M

     The Count placed the rolled manuscript in  one of the boxes, muttering:
"The Source".
     Then  he cautiously took the knife by  its handle and  laid  it in  the
second box: "The Evidence," he said.
     "And  this-"  he  neatly  folded the  parchment which  the  scholar had
brought- and this will be 'The Key to the Mystery'."
     All of a sudden he glanced with a  start at the dark window. He thought
he had heard the crunching of pebbles. But no, all was quiet.
     The Count placed "The Key to the  Mystery" in the third box. Now he had
only to close the covers and have them sealed.
     He  heard  a  rustle  outside the window. Was it the porter  making his
rounds?
     The Count  went  up to  the  window  and flung it open,  but  instantly
started back with a cry. A man in a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat was staring
at him from the shadow of an old hornbeam. He was young and swarthy, and his
dark eyes gleamed fiercely at the Count.
     "You have vigilant guards, Count," he said in French. "I was forced  to
climb over the wall. Do not be afraid. I am not a robber."
     The Count had recovered somewhat from  his fright.  "Who are you,  sir?
What do you want in my house?"
     "My name is Arseny Matveyev. Now you know what I want."
     Fear  distorted  the  Count's yellow  face.  Suddenly,  with  an energy
unexpected in such an old body, he dashed  to the table, on which his pistol
case lay.
     By this time Arseny was in the room.
     "Stop where you are, Count!"
     The unbidden guest whipped  out a pistol from under his cloak and aimed
it at  the Count, who took a step backwards. Realizing that the game was up,
the old Jesuit said in a gentle voice:
     "It  is  not becoming, my son,  to  threaten an  old man with a pistol.
Someone has evidently misled you."
     "Silence!" Arseny Matveyev barked.  "I  didn't  travel the  length  and
breadth of France  and Italy  searching for  you  just  to  listen  to  your
miserable evasions. Put  the knife and  the manuscript  on  that table. I'll
count to three."
     "There is no need," the Count said dispiritedly. "They are lying on the
table."
     Arseny strode over to the table. His eyes sparkled with joy at sight of
the knife.
     "The  manuscript is in that little  box," said Count de Maistre. "Don't
touch the third box. It is mine."
     "I  am  not a Jesuit. I do  not covet what  belongs to  others," Arseny
snapped, this time in Russian. "Take this for your iron boxes."
     He  tossed a  gold coin on  the table. Then he closed the covers of the
two boxes, one containing the knife and the other the manuscript, and thrust
them into his pockets.
     "Don't you dare to raise the alarm, you old  fox," he said as he turned
to leave. "If you do, you'll get a dose of lead."
     With  those  words  Arseny Matveyev  jumped down from the window.  Soon
after,  the  sound  of horse's hooves  on the  stony  road  faded  into  the
distance.
     On  returning to Russia, Arseny  Matveyev  was  unable to get down to a
thorough  study of the secret which  his great-grandfather had  brought from
India. Other affairs absorbed him. After his father's death he freed the few
serfs the family owned and turned over the estate to his younger brother. He
had  the two  small iron  boxes  reliably  sealed.  Then  he  moved  to  St.
Petersburg, where he joined a secret society of revolutionaries.
     On December 14, 1825, after the failure of the December uprising in St.
Petersburg, Arseny  came  galloping into  Zakharino in the  night. The  next
morning gendarmes broke into the house. As they led Arseny out of the house,
under arrest,  he only had time to whisper to his brother: "Guard those  two
little iron boxes like the apple of your eye. Farewell."
     Arseny Matveyev  was exiled to salt mines in Siberia. He never returned
from there.


     "All  I know," said Rita,  "is that Arseny brought  home two small iron
boxes from abroad, and they were in  the  possession of the Matveyev  family
ever since. No one knew that anything was inside them. When my husband and I
started  packing our  things before moving to  our present flat,  the  knife
suddenly  dropped out of one of the  boxes. Mother  threw the other box away
along with a  lot of old junk. It  was dirty  and rusty and had been used to
prop up an  old wardrobe  with a broken leg.  Who could have  guessed  there
would be a manuscript inside?"
     "Did you ever hear anything about a third box?" Nikolai asked.
     "No. That's why  I  was so surprised when you and Yura came  to ask  me
about it. What do you know?"
     "Only that it exists."
     Nikolai then told Rita about the Italian subversive agent and the theft
in the museum.
     "There was  something very important in that third little box," he said
in conclusion. "De Maistre called it 'The Key to the Mystery'."
     The  other  passengers in the  carriage  had  gone to  bed.  The  plump
conductress  was  sweeping  the corridor.  They  continued  to stand by  the
window, watching  the snowbound night  fly  past,  marked  off by  telegraph
poles.
     Nikolai reflected in amazement that here was Rita standing by his side,
elbow to elbow, no longer an infinitely distant stranger but Yellow Lynx, an
old friend from his childhood. Yet still in all a stranger.
     "Look here, Nikolai," Rita  said suddenly, pressing her forehead to the
glass and closing her eyes. "Can I trust you?"
     He wanted to  say that he  was  ready  to jump off  the  train into the
darkness then and there if she asked him to.
     "Yes," he said.
     Rita was silent for  a while. Then she threw back her  head. "I feel as
though I'll burst into tears in a moment if I don't tell someone-"
     She then proceeded to tell him,  without holding  anything  back, about
the misfortune that had befallen her. She told him how  Anatole had  started
to study the knife and how she had encouraged his ambition. How, desiring to
increase his  working capacity, he  had  become a  drug  addict. How she had
jumped  overboard after  the knife, caught it in  the clear water, hidden it
under  her  dress and  told  her  husband  it was lost  because-so  she  had
thought-without   the  knife  he  would   not  be  able  to   continue   his
investigations.  How  she  had urged  Anatole  to  give  up  those  accursed
experiments,  but  instead he  had joined up with Opratin  and  was  wearing
himself  out  with work and with drugs. How he had walked out of  the house.
And  finally, she told  Nikolai  how she  had given  Opratin the  knife  the
previous day in the hope that this  would help them to complete  the project
sooner, after which Anatole would return to her.
     "You gave the knife to Opratin!" Nikolai exclaimed.
     Rita measured him with a long look.
     "Promise me you won't tell a soul about any of this. Not a single soul.
Not even Yura."
     "But  why, Rita?  Why keep silent? On the contrary, something has to be
done.  We  must convince your husband  that  such  single-handed experiments
aren't fruitful. We must persuade him to switch to our Institute."
     "No," she said. "He wouldn't pay any attention to that kind of talk. It
would only make him still angrier."
     "He wouldn't  listen  to  me, of course.  But he  would to Privalov and
Professor Bagbanly."
     "No, you don't know him," Rita repeated insistently. "You must  promise
to say nothing. I demand it."
     "Very well," said Nikolai in a downcast voice, "I promise."



        4

        IPATY ISLAND

     "They unfurled their canvas sails
     And sped across the Caspian Sea."
     -From the Russian epic poem
     Vassily Buslayevich





        CHAPTER ONE

     IN WHICH PRIVALOV'S LABORATORY IS BLOWN UP

     Valery  Gorbachevsky  felt, on  that  lovely  day  in  June,  that  his
bottle-green  sun-glasses were rose-coloured.  His leave of absence  to take
his correspondence college exams was over, and everything had gone well,  if
you closed your eyes to a mediocre mark in English.
     He was now on his way to work after an interval of twenty days. He  was
walking  fast because he  had had  to  stop at the library, which  opened at
eight  o'clock,  to return  some textbooks, and  he was  afraid he would  be
reprimanded by Nikolai Potapkin for being late.
     Valery skirted the bed of gladioli near the entrance and  flew into the
lobby. He  dashed past  the cloakroom, with  its  thickets of  nickel-plated
racks, and past the time-board,  now closed, hoping that speed  would enable
him to avoid the timekeeper.
     It did not work out that way. The timekeeper, pleasant-faced Ella,  was
at  her  place.  Strangely  enough, Yura Kostyukov,  incredibly handsome  in
cream-coloured  flannels  and  a  new  green-and-yellow  checked shirt,  was
sitting  beside  her.  Still  under   the  influence  of   Fedor  Matveyev's
manuscript, Yura was amusing himself by paying the girl  courtly compliments
in  eighteenth  century  fashion. Ella did  not understand half of what Yura
said but she was flattered and could not stop giggling.
     When Yura caught sight of Valery he turned with great dignity to glance
at the clock.  "Please  note, Ella," he drawled, "that  this man,  returning
from a  leave of absence, has arrived eleven minutes late but  does not look
the least repentant."
     "What  the hell are you doing  here?" Valery  wondered disrespectfully.
Out loud he said the first thing that came into his head. "The trolleybus-"
     "Ah,  to be sure,  to be sure."  Yura nodded understandingly. "I hadn't
thought of  that. But fate is always  merciful to the lazy  ones." He drew a
folded sheet of paper from his  breast pocket.  "Here you  are. This is  for
you."
     "My annual vacation?" Valery said, reading the paper. "But I don't want
it just now."
     "There  are times when  the management has the right to insist that the
personnel go on vacation even if they don't want to," Yura said in a tone of
mock authority. "I didn't ask for my vacation either. Neither did any of the
others".
     "All of us? The whole laboratory?"
     "At nine  o'clock  you'll be able to draw  your vacation pay. And don't
ask idle questions."
     "I'll step into the laboratory meanwhile."
     "Follow my example, young man, and restrain your zeal."


     Yura was right. Managements do have the right, when circumstances arise
that prevent the normal functioning of a  factory shop, office or the  like,
to insist that members of the staff take their annual vacation regardless of
any schedules that may have been drawn up previously.
     In this case the circumstances had been the following:
     After Privalov  and Nikolai returned from Moscow  the development  of a
pipeless  oil  pipeline  had  been included  in their  Institute's  research
programme.  Since  the  main research  was  being done at  the  Institute of
Surfaces  in  Moscow, cautious Pavel Koltukhov forbade  experiments in  this
field.
     "The devil take  the  lot of you!" he exclaimed in  reply to Privalov's
arguments. "I'm fed up with your delightful habit of sticking your finger in
other people's pies.  First thing I know your lab technician will be putting
his head in an inductor, and I'll have to answer for it."
     When a thick envelope arrived from Moscow towards the end of  April the
Institute  director summoned  Koltukhov and Privalov to a  conference.  When
Professor Bagbanly arrived shortly afterwards he was also  shown through the
massive leather-covered door of the director's office. The conference lasted
for hours. First  glasses of tea were  carried in,  then bottles of  mineral
water.
     Yura appeared in the reception room after lunch. "Smells like something
burning," he remarked  with a  glance  at the closed door, wrinkling up  his
nose.
     The secretary did  not pause in her typing. "Run along now,  Yura," she
said. "They'll manage without you."
     Yura went back to the laboratory.
     "Something's cooking  in the director's office,  Nikolai," he whispered
to his friend. "They've been at it since morning. Boris forgot all about his
yoghur