While the station watchman helped Alexander Semyonovich, whose teeth were chattering on the battered blue mug, to have a drink of water, Shukin and Polaitis conferred together. Polaitis took the view that nothing had happened. But that Feight was mentally ill and it had all been a terrible, hallucination.
Shukin, however, was inclined to believe that a boa constrictor had escaped from the circus on tour in the town of Grachevka.
The sound of their doubting whispers made Feight rise to his feet.
He had recovered somewhat and said, raising his hands like an Old Testament prophet:
"Listen to me.
Listen.
Why don't you believe me?
I saw it.
Where is my wife?"
Shukin went silent and serious and immediately sent off a telegram to Grachevka.
On Shukin's instructions, a third agent began to stick closely to Alexander Semyonovich and was to accompany him to Moscow.
Shukin and Polaitis got ready for the journey.
They only had one electric revolver, but it was good protection.
A 1927 model, the pride of French technology for shooting at close range, could kill at a mere hundred paces, but had a range of two metres in diameter and within this range any living thing was exterminated outright.
It was very hard to miss.
Shukin put on this shiny electric toy, while Polaitis armed himself with an ordinary light machine-gun, then they took some ammunition and raced off on the motorbike along the main road through the early morning dew and chill to the state farm.
The motorbike covered the twelve miles between the station and the farm in a quarter of an hour (Feight had walked all night, occasionally hiding in the grass by the wayside in spasms of mortal terror), and when the sun began to get hot, the sugar palace with columns appeared amid the trees on the hill overlooking the winding River Top.
There was a deathly silence all around.
At the beginning of the turning up to the state farm the agents overtook a peasant on a cart.
He was riding along at a leisurely pace with a load of sacks, and was soon left far behind.
The motorbike drove over the bridge, and Polaitis sounded the horn to announce their arrival.
But this elicited no response whatsoever, except from some distant frenzied dogs in Kontsovka.
The motorbike slowed down as it approached the gates with verdigris lions.
Covered with dust, the agents in yellow gaiters dismounted, padlocked their motorbike to the iron railings and went into the yard.
The silence was eery.
"Hey, anybody around?" shouted Shukin loudly.
But no one answered his deep voice.
The agents walked round the yard, growing more and more mystified.
Polaitis was scowling.
Shukin began to search seriously, his fair eyebrows knit in a frown.
They looked through an open window into the kitchen and saw that it was empty, but the floor was covered with broken bits of white china.
"Something really has happened to them, you know.
I can see it now.
Some catastrophe," Polaitis said.
"Anybody there?
Hey!" shouted Shukin, but the only reply was an echo from the kitchen vaults.
"The devil only knows! It couldn't have gobbled them all up, could it?
Perhaps they've run off somewhere.
Let's go into the house."
The front door with the colonnaded veranda was wide open. The palace was completely empty inside.
The agents even climbed up to the attic, knocking and opening all the doors, but they found nothing and went out again into the yard through the deserted porch.
"We'll walk round the outside to the conservatory," Shukin said. "We'll give that a good going over and we can phone from there too."
The agents set off along the brick path, past the flowerbeds and across the backyard, at which point the conservatory came into sight.
"Wait a minute," whispered Shukin, unbuckling his revolver.
Polaitis tensed and took his machine-gun in both hands.
A strange, very loud noise was coming from the conservatory and somewhere behind it.
It was like the sound of a steam engine.
"Zzzz-zzzz," the conservatory hissed.
"Careful now," whispered Shukin, and trying not to make a sound the agents stole up to the glass walls and peered into the conservatory.
Polaitis immediately recoiled, his face white as a sheet.