The sound was long, undulating, and mournful.
On a foggy night, a sound like this makes seamen uneasy, makes them want to ask for hazard pay, for some reason.
The siren continued to wail.
It was joined by a variety of horns and other sirens, more distant and even more mournful.
Pedestrians suddenly sped up, as if they were being chased by a driving rain.
At the same time, they were all chuckling and glancing at the sky.
The fat old women who sold sunflower seeds ran with their stomachs stuck out, glass cups bouncing in rush baskets that were full of their ever-shifting wares.
Adolf Nikolaevich Bomze raced across the street, cutting the corner.
He managed to slip safely into the revolving door of the Hercules.
A squad of mounted police reserves on mismatched horses galloped past.
An automobile emblazoned with red crosses whizzed by.
The street was suddenly empty.
Ostap caught sight of a small herd of Pique Vests far ahead as they detached themselves from the former Florida Cafe.
Waving their newspapers, boater hats, and panamas, the old men went trotting down the street.
But before they reached the corner, there was the deafening, cracking sound of an artillery blast. The Pique Vests lowered their heads, froze, then turned around, and trotted back.
The flaps of their woven silk jackets blew in the wind.
The maneuvers of the Pique Vests made Ostap laugh.
While he was admiring their amusing gestures and leaps, Alexander Ivanovich went ahead and opened the package he brought from home.
“Wild geezers!
Vaudeville comics!” said Ostap, turning toward Koreiko.
But there was no Koreiko.
Instead, the grand strategist saw a grotesque mug with the glass eyes of a diving suit and a rubber trunk, at the end of which dangled a khaki metal cylinder.
Ostap was so startled that he even jumped.
“That’s not funny!” he said, reaching for the gas mask. “Citizen defendant, please come to order!”
But the next moment, a whole group of people in similar masks surrounded them, and he could no longer recognize Koreiko among the dozen or so identical rubber mugs.
Holding his folder close, Ostap immediately started looking at the monsters’ legs, but the moment he thought he recognized Koreiko’s widower pants, he was grabbed by the arms, and a spirited voice announced:
“Comrade!
You’ve been poisoned!”
“Who’s been poisoned?” protested Ostap, trying to free himself.
“Let me go!”
“Comrade, you’ve been poisoned by gas!” repeated the orderly cheerfully. “You’re in the affected zone.
See, there’s the gas bomb.”
And indeed, a small wooden box was sitting in the middle of the street, with thick smoke busily pouring out of it.
The suspicious pants had moved far away.
They flashed for the last time between two plumes of smoke and disappeared altogether.
Ostap fought hard and silently to free himself.
Six gas masks were already restraining him.
“Plus you’ve been hit by shrapnel in the arm, Comrade.
Don’t get upset, Comrade!
Please understand.
You know there’s a military exercise going on.
We’ll bandage your wounds and carry you to the gas shelter.”
The grand strategist just couldn’t grasp that there was no use resisting.
The gambler, who had hit a winning streak at sunrise and kept surprising everybody at the table, lost everything within ten minutes to a young man who had dropped in casually, just out of curiosity.
He no longer looks pale and triumphant, and the regulars no longer crowd around him, begging him for a few lucky coins.
He’ll be returning home on foot.
A Young Communist League girl with a red cross on her apron ran up to Ostap. She pulled bandages and gauze out of her canvas bag and wrapped them around the grand strategist’s arm, on top of his sleeve.
She kept frowning, so as not to burst out laughing. After her act of mercy was complete, she giggled and ran to the next casualty, who obediently offered her a leg.
Others tried to carry Ostap to the stretcher.
Another skirmish ensued, with trunks swaying around, while the first orderly, who was in charge, continued to appeal to Ostap’s conscience and other civic virtues in the loud voice of a lecturer.