On the day when it becomes known that the Japanese were defeating the Russian fleet, Staff Captain Vasily Rybnikov receives a mysterious telegram from Irkutsk. He moves to a dirty station hotel and immediately begins to wander around all public places in St. Petersburg.
Everywhere: on the streets, in restaurants, theaters, Conoco wagons, railway stations appeared this small, swarthy, lame officer, oddly chatty, disheveled and not particularly sober.
Everywhere he declares that he was wounded in the leg during the Mukden retreat, demands benefits and along the way he learns the latest news from the Russo-Japanese war. From time to time Rybnikov sends telegrams to various post offices to Irkutsk.
Vladimir Ivanovich Schavinsky, an employee of a large St. Petersburg newspaper, gets to know Rybnikov in a small dark restaurant where a cheerful company of St. Petersburg newspaper reporters gathers daily. The squalid and miserable staff captain speaks, smashing the mediocre command and extolling - with some affectation - the Russian soldier.
Everything he had was ordinary, purely army ... But there was something very special about him, hidden, ... some kind of internal tense, nervous force.
After observing him, Shchavinsky notices a certain duality in his appearance. His usual snub-nosed face in profile looks mocking and smart, and in the face - even arrogant. Shchavinsky also notes that Rybnikov is not drunk, but only pretends to be drunk. At this time, the drunken poet Pestrukhin wakes up and looks with a cloudy look at the officer: "Ah, Japanese face, are you still here?" "Japanese. That's what he looks like, ”decides Shchavinsky. This idea grows stronger when Rybnikov tries to demonstrate his wounded leg: the underwear of an army infantry officer is made of fine silk.
Shchavinsky, a collector of “rare and strange manifestations of the human spirit”, is interested in Rybnikov. The journalist begins to seriously suspect that a Japanese spy is hiding under the battered uniforms of the captain. A slanted, cheeky face, constant obeisances and a manner of rubbing his hands - all this is not accidental.
What an unimaginable presence of spirit this person should possess, playing out ... in the capital of an hostile nation such an evil and faithful caricature of a Russian army soldier!
Schavinsky wants to confirm his suspicions. Seizing the moment, he leans over to the captain and says that he is a Japanese military agent in Russia. But Rybnikov does not react in any way. The journalist even begins to doubt: after all, among the Ural and Orenburg Cossacks there are many precisely such Mongolian, with yellowness, faces. Shavinsky promises the captain of the captain to keep his secret, admires his composure and admires Japanese contempt for death.Rybnikov does not accept a compliment: the Russian soldier is no worse. The journalist is trying to offend his patriotic feelings: the Japanese is still Asian, half-monkey ... Rybnikov readily agrees. Schavinsky again begins to doubt his conclusions.
In the morning they decide to continue the bungalow at the "girls", where Schavinsky, as a joke, calls Rybnikov the names of Japanese generals. Clotilde takes Rybnikov to the second floor.
The attraction to a woman, still suppressed by a harsh ascetic life, constant physical fatigue, intense work of the mind and will, was suddenly kindled into him by an intolerable, intoxicating flame.
After some time, Rybnikov falls asleep in an alarming sleep. Words of someone else’s speech break from his lips. The frightened Clotilde goes down and joins the company, which is constantly forming around the mysterious client of Lenka, according to rumors related to the police. Clotilde tells him about her strange guest, who speaks Japanese in a dream and reminds her of a Mikado, about his "strange tenderness and passion."
Lenka examines the captain in the door latch and decides to act. A minute later he was already standing on the steps and calling the city men with alarming whistles.
Waking up, Rybnikov hears heavy footsteps in the corridor. From the face of Clotilde, he realizes that he is in danger. The fake headquarters captain turns the key in the door, softly jumps onto the windowsill and opens the window. A woman screaming grabs his hand. He breaks out and awkwardly jumps down.At the same instant, the door falls under the blows, and Lenka jumps after him in a run. Rybnikov does not resist when the pursuer leans on him. He only asks: "Do not push, I broke my leg."
