es  had long been put out. The
Procurator lay on  his couch. He was sleeping with his hand under his  cheek
and breathing noiselessly. Beside him slept Banga.
     Thus  Pontius Pilate, fifth Procurator of  Judaea,  met the dawn of the
fifteenth of Nisan.




        27. The Last of Flat No.50



     Day was breaking as Margarita read the last words of the chapter '. . .
Thus  Pontius Pilate,  fifth  Procurator  of Judaea,  met the  dawn  of  the
fifteenth of Nisan.'
     From the yard she could hear the lively, cheerful early morning chatter
of sparrows in the branches of the willow and the lime tree.
     Margarita got up from her chair,  stretched  and only then realised how
physically exhausted  she felt  and how much she wanted to  sleep. Mentally,
though,  Margarita was  in  perfect  form. Her mind was clear  and  she  was
completely  unmoved  by  the  fact  that  she  had  spent  a  night  in  the
supernatural. It caused her  no  distress  to  think  that she  had  been at
Satan's ball, that by some miracle the master had been restored to her, that
the novel had risen from the ashes, that everything was back in its place in
the basement flat after the expulsion of the wretched Aloysius  Mogarych. In
a word,  her  encounter  with  Woland  had done her no  psychological  harm.
Everything was as it should be.
     She  went into the next  room,  made  sure  that  the master was  sound
asleep, put out the unnecessary light on the bedside table and stretched out
on the other  little divan,  covering herself with an  old, torn  blanket. A
minute  later she was in a dreamless sleep. Silence reigned  in the basement
rooms and in the whole house, silence filled the little street.
     But on that early Saturday morning there was no sleep for a whole floor
of a certain Moscow office which was busy investigating the Woland case ; in
nine offices  the lamps had  been burning all night. Their  windows, looking
out on to a large asphalted square which was being cleaned by slow, whirring
vehicles with revolving brushes, competed with the rising sun in brightness.
     Although the  outlines of the case  had been quite  clear since the day
before, when they had closed the Variety as a result of the disappearance of
its management and the scandalous performance of black magic, everything was
complicated by the incessant flow of new evidence.
     The  department in charge of  this  strange  case  now had the  task of
drawing  together  all the  strands of  the  varied  and  confusing  events,
occurring  all  over  Moscow, which included an  apparent  mixture of  sheer
devilry, hypnotic conjuring tricks and barefaced crime.
     The  first person  summoned  to  the  glaring  electric  light of  that
unsleeping floor was  Arkady  Apollonich Sempleyarov,  the  chairman of  the
Acoustics Commission.
     On  Friday  evening after  dinner, the telephone rang  in his  flat  on
Kamenny  Most and  a  man's voice asked to speak to  Arkady  Apollonich. His
wife, who had answered the call, announced grimly that Arkady Apollonich was
unwell,  had  gone  to  lie  down  and  could  not  come  to the  telephone.
Nevertheless Arkady  Apollonich was obliged to come  when the voice said who
was calling.
     'Of  course ... at once . . . right away,' stammered Arkady's  usually
arrogant spouse and she flew like an arrow to  rouse Arkady Appollonich from
the couch where he had lain down to  recover from the horrific scenes caused
by the theatre  incident and the stormy  expulsion  from  their  flat of his
young cousin from Saratov. In a quarter of a minute, in underclothes and one
slipper, Arkady Apollonich was babbling into the telephone :
     'Yes, it's me. Yes, I will. . .'
     His  wife,  all thought  of Arkady  Apollonich's  infidelity  instantly
forgotten,  put her terrified face round the  door,  waving a slipper in the
air and whispering :
     'Put your other slipper on ... you'll catch cold . . .' At this Arkady
Apollonich,  waving his wife away  with  a  bare leg and rolling his eyes at
her, muttered into the receiver :
     'Yes, yes, yes, of course ... I understand . . . I'll come at once . .
.'
     Arkady Apollonich spent the rest of the evening with the investigators.
     The ensuing conversation was painful and unpleasant in the extreme ; he
was not only made to give a completely frank account of that odious show and
the  fight  in the  box,  but  was obliged to tell everything about  Militsa
Andreyevna Pokobatko  from  Yelokhovskaya Street, as  well as  all about his
cousin  from  Saratov  and much more besides, the  telling of  which  caused
Arkady Apollonich inexpressible pain.
     Naturally  the  evidence given by Arkady Apollonich--an intelligent and
cultured man who had been an eyewitness of the show and who as an articulate
and informed observer was not  only able to give an excellent description of
the mysterious  masked  magician and his  two rascally  assistants  but  who
actually remembered that the magician's name was Woland--helped considerably
to advance the enquiry. When Arkady Apollonich's evidence was  compared with
the  evidence  of  the  others, among them  several of the  ladies  who  had
suffered such embarrassment  after the  show (including the woman  in violet
knickers who had so shocked Rimsky)  and Karpov  the usher who had been sent
to Flat No. 50 at 302a, Sadovaya Street--it became immediately obvious where
the culprit was to be found.
     They went to No.  50 more  than  once  and not only  searched  it  with
extreme thoroughness but tapped on the walls, examined the chimney-flues and
looked for  secret  doors. None of this,  however, produced any results  and
nothing was found during the visits  to the flat. Yet someone was  living in
the flat, despite the fact that every official body in Moscow concerned with
visiting foreigners stated firmly  and categorically that  there was not and
could  not be  a magician  called Woland in  Moscow. He  had definitely  not
registered on  entry,  he  had  shown no  one  his  passport  or  any  other
documents,  contracts or agreements  and no one had so much as heard of him.
Kitaitsev,  the  director  of  the  programmes department of  the Theatrical
Commission, swore  by all  the saints that the  missing Stepa Likhodeyev had
never  sent  him   a  programme  schedule  for  anyone  called   Woland  for
confirmation  and  had  never  telephoned  Kitaitsev a  word  about Woland's
arrival. Therefore  he, Kitaitsev, failed completely to understand how Stepa
could have allowed a show  of this sort to be put on at the Variety. When he
was told that Arkady Apollonich had seen the performance  with his own eyes,
Kitaitsev could only  spread his hands and  raise  his eyes to heaven.  From
those eyes alone it was obvious that Kitaitsev was as pure as crystal.
     Prokhor Petrovich, the chairman of the Entertainments Commission . . .
     He, incidentally, had re-entered his suit as soon as the police reached
his  office, to the  ecstatic joy of  Anna  Richardovna  and  to  the  great
annoyance of the police, who had been alerted for nothing. As soon as he was
back at  his post and wearing his striped grey suit, Prokhor Petrovich fully
approved all the minutes that his suit had drafted during his short absence.
     So Prokhor Petrovich obviously knew nothing about Woland either.
     The  sum total of  their enquiries amounted to a  conclusion  which was
little short of farcical:  thousands of spectators, plus the Variety Theatre
staff  plus, finally, Arkady Apollonich,  that highly  intelligent  man, had
seen this magician and his thrice-cursed assistants, yet in the meantime all
four had  completely vanished. What could it mean? Had Woland been swallowed
up by the earth or had he, as some claimed, never come to Moscow  at all? If
one accepted the first alternative, then he had apparently spirited away the
entire Variety management  with him; if you believed the second alternative,
it  meant  that  the theatre  management itself, having first indulged in  a
minor orgy of destruction had decamped from Moscow leaving no trace.
     The officer in charge of the case was,  to give him his due, a  man who
knew  his job. Rimsky, for instance, was tracked down with astounding speed.
Merely by  linking the Ace of Diamonds' behaviour at the taxi-rank  near the
cinema with certain timings, such as the time of the end of the show and the
time  at  which Rimsky  could  have vanished,  they  were  able  to  send an
immediate telegram to Leningrad. An hour later (on Friday evening) the reply
came back that  Rimsky had been found in room 412 at the Astoria  Hotel,  on
the fourth floor next to the room containing the repertory manager of one of
the Moscow theatres then on  tour in Leningrad, in that famous room with the
blue-grey furniture and the luxurious bathroom.
     Rimsky,  found hiding in  the wardrobe  of his room at the Astoria, was
immediately arrested and interrogated  in Leningrad, after  which a telegram
reached Moscow stating  that treasurer Rimsky was  an irresponsible  witness
who had proved unwilling or  incapable of replying  coherently to  questions
and had done nothing  but beg  to be  put into  an  armourplated strong-room
under armed  guard. An  order was telegraphed to Leningrad for Rimsky to  be
escorted back to Moscow, and he  returned under  guard by the Friday evening
train.
     By Friday evening, too, they were on the track of Likhodeyev. Telegrams
asking for information on Likhodeyev had been sent to every town and a reply
came from Yalta that Likhodeyev was there but  about to leave for Moscow  by
aeroplane.
     The only person whose trail they failed to  pick up was Varenukha. This
man, known to the entire theatrical world of Moscow, seemed to have vanished
without trace.
     Meanwhile  investigations  were in hand  on related incidents  in other
parts of  Moscow. An explanation was needed,  for instance, of  the baffling
case  of  the  office  staff  who  had  sung  the  '  Volga Boatmen  '  song
(Stravinsky,  incidentally, cured them  all within two hours by subcutaneous
injections)  and  of  other  cases of people (and  their  victims)  who  had
proffered  various  pieces  of rubbish  under  the illusion  that  they were
banknotes.  The  nastiest, the most scandalous and the most insoluble of all
these episodes was, of course,  the theft,  in broad  daylight, of Berlioz's
head from the open coffin at Griboyedov.
     The job of the team of twelve men assigned to the  case was rather like
that of  someone with a knitting-needle trying to pick  up  stitches dropped
all over Moscow.
     One of  the  detectives called  on Profes sor Stravinsky's  clinic  and
began by asking  for  a list  of all patients admitted during the past three
days.  By  this  means they  discovered  Nikanor  Ivano-vich  Bosoi and  the
unfortunate compere whose head had been wrenched off, although they were not
greatly interested  in  these two. It  was  obvious now that  they had  both
merely been victimised by the gang  headed by  this  weird magician. In Ivan
Nikolayich  Bezdomny,  however,  the  detective  showed  the  very  greatest
interest.
     Early  on Friday evening the  door  of  Ivan's room opened  to  admit a
polite, fresh-faced  young man- He looked quite unlike a detective,  yet  he
was one  of  the  best in the  Moscow  force.  He saw lying  in bed a  pale,
pinched-looking young man with lack-lustre, wandering eyes. The detective, a
man of considerable charm and tact, said that he had come to see Ivan for  a
talk about the incident at Patriarch's Ponds two days previously.
     The poet would  have  been  triumphant  if  the  detective  had  called
earlier, on Thursday  for  instance when Ivan had  been trying so loudly and
passionately  to induce  someone  to listen  to his story  about Patriarch's
Ponds.  Now  people  were  at  last  coming  to  hear  his  version  of  the
affair--just when his urge to help capture Professor Woland  had  completely
evaporated.
     For Ivan,  alas, had altogether changed  since  the night of  Berlioz's
death. He  was quite prepared to answer the detective's  questions politely,
but his voice and his expression betrayed his utter disinterest. The poet no
longer cared about Berlioz's fate.
     While Ivan had been dozing before the detective's arrival, a succession
of  images  had  passed before his mind's  eye.  He  saw a strange,  unreal,
vanished city with great arcaded marble piles ;
     with  roofs that  flashed in  the  sunlight; with the  grim,  black and
pitiless tower of Antonia ; with a palace on the western hill plunged almost
to roof-level in a garden of  tropical greenery, and above the garden bronze
statues  that glowed  in the setting sun ;  with Roman  legionaries clad  in
armour marching beneath the city walls.
     In his half-waking dream Ivan saw a man sitting  motionless in a chair,
a clean-shaven  man with taut, yellowing skin  who wore a white cloak  lined
with red, who sat and stared with loathing at  this alien, luxuriant garden.
Ivan saw, too, a treeless ochre-coloured hill  with three empty cross-barred
gibbets.
     The events at Patriarch's Ponds no longer interested Ivan  Bezdomny the
poet.
     'Tell  me,  Ivan Nikolayich, how  far were you from the turnstile when
Berlioz fell under the tram? '
     A barely detectable smile of irony crossed Ivan's Ups as he replied:
     'I was far away.'
     'And was the man in checks standing beside the turnstile? '
     'No, he was on a bench nearby.'
     'You  distinctly  remember,  do  you,  that he did  not  approach the
turnstile at the moment when Berlioz fell? '
     'I  do remember. He didn't  move.  He was on the bench and he  stayed
there.'
     These were the detective's last  questions. He got up, shook hands with
Ivan, wished him a speedy  recovery and said that he soon hoped to read some
new poetry of his.
     'No,' said Ivan quietly. ' I shall not write any more poetry.'
     The detective smiled  politely  and assured the  poet that although  he
might be in a slight state of depression at the moment, it would soon pass.
     'No,' said  Ivan, staring  not  at the  detective but at the  distant
twilit horizon, ' it will never pass. The poetry I wrote was  bad p.oetry. I
see that now.'
     The  detective left Ivan,  having  gathered  some  extremely  important
evidence. Following the thread of events  backwards from  end to  beginning,
they could now pinpoint the source of the  whole episode. The detective  had
no  doubt that  the events in  question had  all  begun  with the murder  at
Patriarch's  Ponds. Neither Ivan, of course, nor the  man  in the check suit
had pushed the unfortunate chairman of massolit under the tramcar;
     n"o one  had  physically caused him  to fall under the  wheels, but the
detective  was convinced  that  Berlioz had  thrown himself (or  had fallen)
beneath the tram while under hypnosis.
     Although there was  plenty  of evidence  and  it was obvious  whom they
should  arrest and  where, it proved impossible to lay hands on them.  There
was no doubt that someone  was  in  flat Nib. 50. Occasionally the telephone
was  answered by a quavering or a nasal  voice, occasionally  someone in the
flat opened a window and the sound of a gramophone  could be  heard floating
out.  Yet  whenever  they went  there  the place was  completely empty. They
searched it at various  hours of the  day,  each time going  over it  with a
fine-tooth comb. The flat had been under suspicion for some time and a watch
had been placed on both the main stairs and the back stairs ; men  were even
posted on  the roof among the chimney pots. The flat was  playing tricks and
there was nothing that anyone could do about it.
     The case dragged on in this way until midnight on  Friday,  wlien Baron
Maigel, wearing evening dress and patent-leather pumps, entered flat  No. 50
as  a  guest.  He was heard  being  let in. Exactly  ten  minutes later  the
authorities  entered the flat without  a sound.  It  was not  only  empty of
tenants, but worse, there was not even a trace of Baron Maigel.
     There things rested until dawn on Saturday, when some new anid valuable
information came  to light  as a  six-seater  passenger  aeroplane landed at
Moscow airport  having flown  from the Crimea. Among  its passengers was one
extremely odd young man. He had  heavy stubble on  his face,  had not washed
for three days, his eyes were red  with exhaustion  and fright,  he  had  no
luggage and was somewhat eccentrically  dressed. He wore a  sheepskin hat, a
felt cloak over a nightshirt and brand-new blue leather bedroom slippers. As
he stepped off the gangway from the aircraft cabin, a group of expectant men
approached him. A short while later the one and only manager of the  Variety
Theatre, Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeyev,  was facing the detectives. He added
some  new information.  They  were now able  to  establish  that  Woland had
tricked his way into the Variety after hypnotising Stepa Likhodeyev  and had
then spirited  Stepa  God knows how many kilometres away from  Moscow.  This
gave the authorities more evidence, but far from making their job any easier
it made it if  anything rather harder, because it was obviously not going to
be  so simple to arrest a person capable of the kind  of  sleight-of-hand to
which  Stepan Bogdanovich had fallen victim. Likhodeyev, at his own request,
was locked up in a strong-room.
     The next witness was Varenukha,  arrested at home where he had returned
after an  unexplained absence lasting nearly forty-eight  hours. In spite of
his promise  to Azazello, the house manager began  by lying. He should  not,
however,  be  judged too  harshly for this--Azazello had,  after  all,  only
forbidden him  to  lie on the telephone and  in  this instance Varenukha was
talking without the help of  a telephone. With a shifty look Ivan Savye-lich
announced that on  Thursday he had shut himself up in his office and had got
drunk, after which he  had gone somewhere-- he couldn't remember where; then
somewhere else and  drunk  some  loo-proof  vodka  ; had  collapsed  under a
hedge--again he couldn't  remember  where. He was  then told that his stupid
and irrational  behaviour was prejudicial to the course of justice and  that
he would  be held responsible for it. At this Varenukha broke down, sobbing,
and whispered in a  trembling  voice, glancing round fearfully,  that he was
only telling lies out of fear of Woland's gang, who had already roughed  him
up once and that he begged, prayed, longed  to be locked up in  an  armoured
cell.
     'There soon won't be room for them  all in that strong-room! ' growled
one of the investigators.
     'These villains have certainly  put  the fear  of God into them,' said
the detective who had questioned Ivan.
     They calmed Varenukha as well as they could, assuring him that he would
be  given  protection without having  to resort  to a  strong-room. He  then
admitted  that he had never drunk any loo-proof vodka but had been beaten up
by two characters, one with a wall eye and the other a stout man . . .
     'Looking like a cat? '
     'Yes,  yes,'  whispered  Varenukha,  almost  swooning  with  fear and
glancing  round every  moment, adding  further  details of  how he had spent
nearly two days in flat  No. 50 as  a vampire's decoy and  had nearly caused
Rimsky's death . . .
     Just then Rimsky himself was  brought  in from the Leningrad train, but
this  grey-haired,  terror-stricken,  psychologically  disturbed  old   man,
scarcely  recognisable  as the  treasurer of the Variety Theatre, stubbornly
refused to speak the truth. Rimsky claimed that  he had never  seen Hella at
his office window that night, nor had he seen Varenukha;  he had simply felt
ill and had  taken the train to Leningrad in  a fit  of amnesia. Needless to
say the ailing treasurer concluded  his evidence by begging  to be locked up
in a strong-room.
     Anna was arrested while trying to pay a store cashier with a ten-dollar
bill.  Her  story  about people flying out  of the  landing window  and  the
horseshoe, which she claimed to have picked up in  order to hand  it over to
the police, was listened to attentively.
     'Was the horseshoe really gold and studded with diamonds? ' they asked
Anna.
     'Think I don't know diamonds when I see them? ' replied Anna.
     'And did he really give you ten-rouble notes? '
     'Think I don't know a tenner when I see one? '
     'When did they turn into dollars? '
     'I don't know what dollars are and I never saw any! ' whined Anna. ' I
know  my rights! I  was given the  money  as a  reward  and went to buy some
material with it.' Then she started raving about  the whole thing being  the
fault  of the  house management  committee which had allowed evil  forces to
move in on the fifth floor and made life impossible for everybody else.
     Mere a detective  waved a pen at Anna to shut up because she was boring
them,  and  signed  her release on a green  form with which, to the  general
satisfaction, she left the building.
     There followed a  succession  of others, among  them Nikolai Ivanovich,
who had been arrested thanks to the stupidity of his jealous wife in telling
the  police  that  her  husband  was  missing.   The   detectives  were  not
particularly surprised when Nikolai Ivanovich  produced the joke certificate
testifying that he  had  spent  his time at Satan's ball. Nikolai  Ivanovich
departed  slightly  from  the  truth, however, when he described how  he had
carried Margarita Nikolayevna's naked maid  through  the air to bathe in the
river  at  some  unknown  spot and  how  Margarita Nikolay-evna herself  had
appeared  naked at the  window.  He  thought  it  unnecessary to recall, for
instance, that he had appeared in the bedroom carrying Margarita's abandoned
slip or that he had  called Natasha ' Venus.' According to him, Natasha  had
flown out of the window, mounted him and made him fly away from Moscow . . .
     'I was forced to obey under duress,' said Nikolai Ivanovich, finishing
his  tale with a request not  to tell  a word  of  it to his wife, which was
granted.
     Nikolai  Ivanovich's evidence established the fact that  both Margarita
Nikolayevna  and  her maid Natasha had vanished  without  trace.  Steps were
taken to find them.
     So the investigation progressed without a moment's break until Saturday
morning. Meanwhile the city was  seething with the most  incredible rumours,
in  which a tiny grain of  truth was embellished with  a luxuriant growth of
fantasy.  People  were  saying  that after the show at the Variety  all  two
thousand spectators had rushed out into  the street as naked as the day they
were  born ;  that the  police  had  uncovered a  magic  printing-press  for
counterfeiting money  on Sadovaya Street; that a gang had kidnapped the five
leading impresarios in Moscow but  that the police had found them all again,
and much more that was unrepeatable.
     As  it grew near lunchtime  a telephone bell rang in the investigators'
office.  It was a report  from  Sadovaya  Street that  the haunted  flat was
showing  signs of  life again.  Someone  inside  had apparently  opened  the
windows, sounds  of piano music  and singing had  been heard coming from it,
and a black cat had been observed sunning itself on a windowsill.
     At about four o'clock  on that warm afternoon a  large squad  of men in
plain clothes climbed out of three  cars that had stopped a little way short
of No. 302a, Sadovaya  Street. Here the large squad divided into two smaller
ones, one of which entered the courtyard through the main gateway and headed
straight for staircase  6,  while the other  opened a small  door,  normally
locked, leading to the back staircase  and both began converging on flat No.
50 by different stairways.
     While this was going on Koroviev and Azazello, in their  normal clothes
instead  of  festive  tailcoats,  were sitting in the  dining-room finishing
their lunch.  Woland, as was his  habit, was  in the bedroom and no one knew
where the  cat  was, but to judge from the clatter of  saucepans coming from
the kitchen Behemoth was presumably there, playing the fool as usual.
     'What are those footsteps on the staircase? ' asked Koroviev, twirling
his spoon in a cup of black coffee.
     'They're coming to arrest us,' replied Azazello and drained a glass of
brandy.
     'Well, well . . .' was Koroviev's answer.
     The men  coming  up  the  front  staircase  had  by  then  reached  the
third-floor landing,  where  a couple of  plumbers  were fiddling  with  the
radiator. The party exchanged meaning looks with the plumbers.
     'They're all at home,' whispered one of the plumbers, tapping the pipe
with his hammer.
     At  this the leader  of  the squad drew a  black Mauser  from under his
overcoat  and the man beside him produced, a skeleton key.  All the men were
suitably  armed. Two of  them had  thin, easily unfurled silk nets  in their
pockets, another had.  a  lasso  and the sixth  man was equipped with  gauze
masks and an ampoule of chloroform.
     In a second the front door  of  No. 50 swung  open and the party was in
the  hall,  whilst  the knocking on the  door  from the  kitchen to the back
staircase showed that the second squad had also arrived on time.
     This  time at least partial success seemed to be in their grasp. Men at
once fanned out  to all the rooms and found  no one, but on  the dining-room
table were  the remains of  an obviously recently finished meal  and in  the
drawing-room, alongside a crystal jug, a  huge black cat was perched on  the
mantelpiece, holding a Primus in its front paws.
     There was a long pause as the men gazed at the cat.
     'H'm, yes ... that's him . . .' whispered one 'of them.
     'I'm  doing no harm--I'm not playing games, I'm mending  the Primus,'
said the  cat  with a hostile scowl, ' and I'd better warn you that a cat is
an ancient and inviolable animal.'
     'Brilliant  performance,'  whispered a man and another said loudly and
firmly:
     'All right, you inviolable ventriloquist's dummy, come here! '
     The net whistled across the room but the man missed his target and only
caught the crystal jug, which broke with a loud crash.
     'Missed!' howled the cat. ' Hurrah! ' Putting aside the Primus the cat
whipped a Browning automatic from behind its back. In a flash it took aim at
the nearest man, but the detective beat the cat to the draw and fired first.
The cat flopped  head first from  the mantelpiece, dropping the Browning and
upsetting the Primus.
     'It's all over,' said the cat in a weak voice, stretched out in a pool
of blood.  ' Leave me  for  a  moment, let  me  say  goodbye.  Oh  my friend
Azazello,' groaned the cat, streaming  blood, '  where are you? ' The animal
turned its expiring gaze towards the door into the dining-room. ' You didn't
come  to my help  when  I was  outnumbered  .  . . you  left poor  Behemoth,
betraying him for a glass of  brandy--though it  was very good brandy! Well,
my death will be on your conscience but I'll bequeath you my Browning . . .'
     'The net, the net,' whispered the men urgently round the cat. But  the
net somehow got tangled up in the man's pocket and would not come out.
     'The only thing that can save a mortally wounded cat,' said  Behemoth,
' is  a  drink of  paraffin.' Taking  advantage of the confusion it put  its
mouth  to the round filler-hole of the Primus and  drank some  paraffin.  At
once the  blood stopped pouring from above its left  forepaw. The cat jumped
up bold  and full of life, tucked the Primus under its foreleg,  leaped back
with it on to the mantelpiece and from there, tearing the wallpaper, crawled
along the wall and in two seconds it was high above the invaders, sitting on
a metal pelmet.
     In  a  moment  hands were  grabbing the curtains and pulling them  down
together with the pelmet, bringing the  sunlight flooding into  the darkened
room. But neither the  cat nor the  Primus fell. Without dropping the Primus
the cat  managed  to  leap through the  air  and jump  on to  the chandelier
hanging in the middle of the room.
     'Step-ladder! ' came the cry from below. ' I challenge you to a duel!
' screamed the cat, sailing over their heads on the swinging chandelier. The
Browning appeared in its paw again and it lodged the Primus between the arms
of the chandelier. The cat  took aim and, as it  swung like a  pendulum over
the detectives' heads, opened  fire on them. The sound of gunfire rocked the
flat. Fragments of crystal strewed the floor,  the mirror over the fireplace
was  starred  with  bullet  holes,  plaster  dust  flew  everywhere, ejected
cartridge cases pattered to the floor, window panes  shattered and  paraffin
began  to spurt  from  the punctured tank of  the Primus.  There  was now no
question  of  taking the cat alive and the men were aiming hard at its head,
stomach,  breast  and  back.  The  sound  of  gunfire started  panic  in the
courtyard below.
     But this fusillade did not last long and soon died down. It had not, in
fact, caused either the  men or the cat any  harm. There were no dead and no
wounded. No  one, including the cat, had been hit.  As a final test one  man
fired five rounds into the beastly animal's stomach  and the cat  retaliated
with a whole volley that had the same result--not  a scratch. As it swung on
the chandelier, whose motion was gradually shortening all the time,  it blew
into the muzzle of the Browning and spat on its paw.
     The faces of the silent  men below  showed total bewilderment. This was
the only case, or one of the only cases,  in which gunfire had proved to  be
completely ineffectual. Of course the  cat's Browning might have been a toy,
but this was certainly not true of the detectives' Mausers.  The cat's first
wound, which had undoubtedly occurred, had been nothing  but  a trick and  a
villainous piece of deception, as was its paraffin-drinking act.
     One more attempt  was made  to  seize the cat. The lasso was thrown, it
looped itself round one of the candles and  the whole chandelier crashed  to
the floor. Its fall shook  the whole building, but  it did not help matters.
The men were showered  with splinters while the cat flew through the air and
landed high up under the ceiling  on the gilded frame of the mirror over the
mantelpiece. It made no attempt to  bolt  but from its relatively safe perch
announced:
     'I completely fail to understand the reason for this rough treatment .
. .'
     Here the cat's  speech was  interrupted  by a  low rumbling  voice that
seemed to come from nowhere :
     'What's happening in this flat? It's disturbing my work . . .'
     Another voice, ugly and nasal, cried :
     'It's Behemoth, of course, damn him!'
     A third, quavering voice said :
     'Messire! Saturday. The sun is setting. We must go.'
     'Excuse me, I've no more time to spare talking,' said the cat from the
mirror.  ' We must  go.' It  threw  away  its Browning, smashing  two window
panes, then poured the paraffin on to the floor where it burst spontaneously
into a great flame as high as the ceiling.
     It burned  fast and  hard, with  even more violence than is usual  with
paraffin.  At once the wallpaper started to smoke,  the torn curtain  caught
alight  and the frames of the broken  windowpanes began to smoulder. The cat
crouched,  gave  a  miaow,  jumped  from  the mirror to  the windowsill  and
disappeared,  clutching the Primus. Shots  were heard  from  outside.  A man
sitting on an iron fire-escape on the level of No. 50's windows fired at the
cat as it sprang from windowsill to windowsill heading for the  drainpipe on
the corner of the building. The cat scrambled up the drainpipe to  the roof.
There it  came under equally ineffective fire  from  the  men  covering  the
chimney-pots and the cat faded  into the westering sunlight that flooded the
city.
     Inside the flat the parquet was already crackling  under the men's feet
and in  the  fireplace, where  the  cat had shammed  dead,  there  gradually
materialised the corpse of Baron  Maigel, his little  beard jutting upwards,
his eyes glassy. The body was impossible to move.
     Hopping  across the  burning  blocks  of  parquet,  beating  out  their
smouldering clothes, the men in the drawing-room retreated to  the study and
the  hall. The men who had been  in the  dining-room and the bedroom ran out
into  the passage.  The  drawing-room  was  already full of smoke and  fire.
Someone managed to dial the fire brigade and barked into the receiver :
     'Sadovaya, 302a! '
     They  could stay no longer. Flame was lashing  into the hallway  and it
was becoming difficult to breathe.
     As  soon  as the  first wisps of smoke appeared  through  the shattered
windows of the haunted flat, desperate cries were heard from the courtyard :
     'Fire! Fire! Help! We're on fire!'
     In several flats people were shouting into the telephone :
     'Sadovaya! Sadovaya, 302a! '
     Just as the heart-stopping  sound of bells was heard  from the long red
fire-engines  racing towards  Sadovaya  Street  from all over  the city, the
crowd in the courtyard saw three dark figures, apparently men, and one naked
woman, float out of the smoking windows on the fifth floor.






        28. The Final Adventure of Koroviev and Behemoth




     No one,  of course, can say for certain whether those figures were real
or merely imagined  by the frightened inhabitants of that ill-fated block on
Sadovaya  Street. If  they  were real, no one knows exactly where they  were
going; but we  do know that about a quarter of an hour after the outbreak of
fire  on Sadovaya Street, a tall man in a check  suit and a  large black cat
appeared outside the glass doors of the Torgsin Store in Smolensk Market.
     Slipping dexterously between  the passers-by,  the man opened the outer
door of the  store only to be met  by  a  small, bony and  extremely hostile
porter who barred his way and said disagreeably :
     'No cats allowed!'
     'I beg your pardon,' quavered the tall man, cupping his knotty hand to
his ear as though hard of hearing,' no cats, did you say? What cats?'
     The porter's eyes  bulged,  and with reason:  there was  no cat  by the
man's side, but instead  a  large fat man  in a tattered  cap,  with vaguely
feline looks and holding a Primus, was pushing his way into the shop.
     For  some reason the misanthropic porter did  not care for  the look of
this couple.
     'You can only buy with foreign currency here,' he croaked, glaring at
them from beneath ragged, moth-eaten eyebrows.
     'My dear fellow,' warbled the  tall man, one  eye glinting through his
broken  pince-nez,' how do you know that I haven't got any? Are  you judging
by my  suit?  Never do  that, my good man. You may make a terrible  mistake.
Read the story of the  famous caliph  Haroun-al-Rashid and you'll see what I
mean. But for the present,  leaving history aside for a moment, I warn you I
shall complain to the manager and I shall tell him such tales about you that
you'll wish you had never opened your mouth!'
     'This  Primus of  mine may be  full  of foreign currency for all  you
know,'  said the stout cat-like  figure. An angry crowd  was  forming behind
them.  With  a look of hatred and suspicion at the dubious  pair, the porter
stepped aside  and our friends Koroviev and Behemoth found themselves in the
store. First they looked around and then Koroviev announced in a penetrating
voice, audible everywhere :
     'What a splendid store! A very, very good. store indeed! '
     The customers  turned round  from the counters to stare  at Koroviev in
amazement, although there  was every reason to praise the store. Hundreds of
different bolts of  richly coloured  poplins  stood in holders on the floor,
whilst behind them  the shelves were piled with calico, chiffon amd worsted.
Racks  full  of shoes stretched  into the distance where  several women were
sitting on low chairs, a worn old shoe on their right foot, a  gleaming  new
one on their left.  From somewhere out of sight  came the sound of  song and
gramophone music.
     Spurning all these delights Koroviev and Behemoth went straight  to the
delicatessen and  confectionery departments. These were  spaciously laid out
and full  of  women in headscarves  and berets. A short, completely  square,
blue-jowled  little man  wearing horn-rims,  a pristine  hat with  unstained
ribbon, dressed in  a fawn  overcoat and  tan kid gloves, was standing  at a
counter and  booming away  in  an authoritative voice at: an  assistant in a
clean white  overall  and blue cap. With  a long sharp knife,  very like the
knife Matthew the Levite stole, he was easing the snake-like skin away  from
the fat, juicy flesh of a pink salmon.
     'This department is  excellent, too,'  Koroviev  solemnly pronounced '
and  that foreigner looks a nice man.' He  pointed  approvingly at the  fawn
coat.
     'No, Faggot, no' answered Behemoth thoughtfully. ' You're
     wrong. I think there is something missing in that gentleman's face.'
     The fawn back quivered, but it was probably coincidence, because he was
after  all a foreigner and could not  have  understood what Koroviev and his
companion had been saying in Russian.
     'Is goot? ' enquired the fawn customer in a stern voice.
     'First class! ' replied the assistant, showing off his blade-work with
a flourish that lifted a whole side of skin from the salmon.
     'Is goot--I like, is bad--I not like,' added the foreigner.
     'But of course! ' rejoined the salesman.
     At  this  point our friends left the foreigner to his salmon  and moved
over to the cakes and pastries.
     'Hot today,' said Koroviev to a pretty,  red-cheeked young salesgirl,
to which he got no reply.
     'How much are the tangerines? ' Koroviev then asked her.
     'Thirty kopeks the kilo,' replied the salesgirl.
     'They look delicious,' said  Koroviev with a sigh, ' Oh, dear ' . . .
He  thought  for a  while longer,  then  turned  to  his  friend. ' Try one.
Behemoth.'
     The  stout  cat-person  tucked  his  Primus  under  his arm,  took  the
uppermost tangerine  off the pyramid, ate it whole, skin and  all,  and took
another.
     The salesgirl was appalled.
     'Hey--are you crazy?  '  she  screamed, the colour vanishing from her
cheeks. '  Where  are your travellers'  cheques or foreign  currency?  ' She
threw down her pastry-tongs.
     'My dear,  sweet  girl,'  cooed Koroviev, leaning  right  across  the
counter and winking at the assistant,' I can't help it but we're just out of
currency today.  I promise  you  I'll pay you it all  cash down  next  time,
definitely  not  later than Monday! We live  nearby  on  Sadovaya, where the
house caught fire . . .'
     Having  demolished  a third tangerine. Behemoth thrust his  paw into an
ingenious structure built  of  chocolate bars, pulled  out  the bottom  one,
which brought the whole thing down with a crash, and swallowed the chocolate
complete with its gold wrapper.
     The assistant  at the fish counter stood  petrified, knife in hand, the
fawn-coated  foreigner  turned  round  towards  the  looters, revealing that
Behemoth was wrong:  far from his  face lacking something it was if anything
over-endowed--huge pendulous cheeks and bright, shifty eyes.
     The salesgirl, now pale yellow, wailed miserably.
     'Palosich! Palosich!'
     The  sound  brought  customers  running  from  the drapery  department.
Meanwhile  Behemoth   had   wandered  away   from  the  temptations  of  the
confectionery counter  and thrust his paw into  a barrel labelled ' Selected
Kerch Salted Herrings,'  pulled out a  couple of herrings,  gulped them both
down and spat out the tails.
     'Palosich! '  came another  despairing shriek from  the  confectionery
counter and the man at the fish counter,  his goatee wagging in fury, barked
:
     'Hey, you--what d'you think you're doing!'
     Pavel Yosifovich (reduced to ' Palosich' in the excitement) was already
hurrying to  the scene of  action.  He was an  imposing man in a clean white
overall like  a surgeon, with a pencil sticking out of his breast pocket. He
was  clearly  a man of great experience. Catching sight of a  herring's tail
protruding from Behemoth's  mouth he summed up the situation in a moment and
refusing  to join in a shouting  match with the two villains,  waved his arm
and gave the order :
       Whistle! '
     The porter shot out into Smolensk Market and relieved his feelings with
a furious  whistle-blast.  As  customers  began  edging up to the rogues and
surrounding them, Koroviev went into action.
     'Citizens!  ' he cried in  a vibrant ringing voice,'  What's  going on
here? Eh? I ap