The smiles disappeared at once, and the cherub replied evasively that it was just some petty speculator not worth worrying about. All the same he trusted that the Professor would treat the events of this evening in complete confidence, and the visitors left.
Persikov returned to his study and the diagrams, but he was not destined to study them.
The telephone's red light went on, and a female voice suggested that the Professor might like to marry an attractive and amorous widow with a seven-roomed apartment.
Persikov howled down the receiver:
"I advise you to get treatment from Professor Rossolimo..." and then the phone rang again.
This time Persikov softened somewhat, because the person, quite a famous one, who was ringing from the Kremlin enquired at length with great concern about Persikov's work and expressed the desire to visit his laboratory.
Stepping back from the telephone, Persikov wiped his forehead and took off the receiver.
Then trumpets began blaring and the shrieks of the Valkyrie rang in the apartment upstairs. The cloth mill director's radio had tuned in to the Wagner concert at the Bolshoi.
To the accompaniment of howls and rumbles descending from the ceiling, Persikov declared to Maria Stepanovna that he would take the director to court, smash his radio to bits, and get the blazes out of Moscow, because somebody was clearly trying to drive him out.
He broke his magnifying glass, spent the night on the divan in the study and was lulled to sleep by the sweet trills of a famous pianist wafted from the Bolshoi Theatre.
The following day was also full of surprises.
After taking the tram to the Institute, Persikov found a stranger in a fashionable green bowler hat standing on the porch.
He scrutinised Persikov carefully, but did not address any questions to him, so Persikov put up with him.
But in the Institute hall, apart from the dismayed Pankrat, a second bowler hat stood up as Persikov came in and greeted him courteously:
"Good morning, Citizen Professor."
"What do you want?" asked Persikov furiously, tearing off his coat with Pankrat's help.
But the bowler hat quickly pacified Persikov by whispering in the gentlest of voices that there was no need at all for the Professor to be upset.
He, the bowler hat, was there precisely in order to protect the Professor from all sorts of importunate visitors. The Professor could rest assured not only about the laboratory doors, but also about the windows.
So saying the stranger turned back the lapel of his jacket for a moment and showed the Professor a badge.
"Hm ... you work pretty efficiently, I must say," Persikov growled, adding naively: "What will you have to eat?"
Whereupon the bowler hat smiled and explained that someone would come to relieve him.
The next three days were splendid.
The Professor had two visits from the Kremlin and one from the students whom he was to examine.
The students all failed to a man, and you could see from their faces that Persikov now filled them with a superstitious dread.
"Go and be bus conductors!
You're not fit to study zoology," came the shouts from his laboratory.
"Strict, is he?" the bowler hat asked Pankrat.
"I should say so," Pankrat replied. "If any of 'em stick it to the end, they come staggerin' out, sweatin' like pigs, and make straight for the boozer."
With all this going on the Professor did not notice the time pass, but on the fourth day he was again brought back to reality, thanks to a thin, shrill voice from the street.
"Vladimir Ipatych!" the voice shouted through the open window from Herzen Street.
The voice was in luck. Persikov had driven himself too hard in the last few days.
And at that moment he was sitting in an armchair having a rest and a smoke, with a vacant stare in his red-rimmed eyes.
He was exhausted.
So it was even with a certain curiosity that he looked out of the window and saw Alfred Bronsky on the pavement.
The Professor recognised the titled owner of the visiting card from his pointed hat and note-pad.
Bronsky gave a tender and courteous bow to the window. "Oh, it's you, is it?" asked the Professor. He did not have the strength to be angry and was even curious to know what would happen next. Protected by the window he felt safe from Alfred. The ever-vigilant bowler hat outside immediately turned an ear to Bronsky. The latter's face blossomed into the smarmiest of smiles.
"Just a sec or two, dear Professor," said Bronsky, raising his voice to make himself heard. "I have one question only and it concerns zoology.
May I put it to you?"
"You may," Persikov replied in a laconic, ironical tone, thinking to himself:
"There's something American about that rascal, you know."
"What have you to say re the fowls, Professor?" shouted Bronsky, cupping his hands round his mouth.
Persikov was taken aback.
He sat on the window-sill, then got down, pressed a knob and shouted, pointing at the window:
"Let that fellow on the pavement in, Pankrat!"
When Bronsky walked into the room, Persikov extended his bonhomie to the point of barking
"Sit down!" to him.
Smiling ecstatically, Bronsky sat down on the revolving stool
"Kindly explain something to me," Persikov began. "You write for those newspapers of yours, don't you?"
"That is so," Alfred replied respectfully.
"Well, what I can't understand is how you can write if you can't even speak Russian properly.