“Panikovsky!” the captain called out sternly.
“I give you my word!” exclaimed the violator of the pact. “I’m sure you know, Bender, how much I respect you!
It was all Balaganov’s doing.”
“Shura!” called out Ostap even more sternly.
“How could you believe him?” said the Vice President for Hoofs reproachfully. “Do you really think I would have taken those weights without your permission?”
“So it was you who took the weights!” exclaimed Ostap. “But why?”
“Panikovsky said they were made of gold.”
Ostap looked at Panikovsky.
Only then did he notice that Panikovsky no longer had the fifty-kopeck dickey under his jacket, and that his bare chest was exposed for the whole world to see.
Without saying a word, the grand strategist collapsed onto his chair.
He started shaking and grasped the air with his hands.
Volcanic thunder erupted from his throat, tears filled his eyes, and laughter that expressed all the exhaustion of the night, all the disappointment over the struggle with Koreiko that the half-brothers caricatured so pathetically—a terrible laughter rolled through the gas shelter.
The Pique Vests flinched, while the lecturer started talking even more clearly and loudly about the poisonous chemicals used in warfare.
Laughter was still prickling Ostap with a thousand tingling needles, but he already felt refreshed and rejuvenated, like a man who had gone through the entire routine at the barbershop: a close relationship with the razor, an encounter with the scissors, a sprinkle of hair tonic, and even the combing of the eyebrows with a special brush.
The shiny ocean wave already lapped into Bender’s heart, so when Balaganov asked him how things were going, he said everything was great, except that the millionaire had unexpectedly fled in an unknown direction.
Ostap’s words didn’t register properly with the half-brothers because they were thrilled that they had gotten away with the whole weights business so easily.
“Look, Bender,” said the Vice President for Hoofs, “see that young lady over there?
That’s the one Koreiko always went out with.”
“Oh, so this is Zosya Sinitsky?” said Ostap with emphasis. “Just like the poem: ‘By chance, in a thunderous ballroom . . .’”
Ostap made his way to the stage, interrupted the speaker politely, and learned from him that their captivity would last for another couple of hours. He thanked him and sat down right there, near the stage, next to Zosya.
Shortly thereafter, she was no longer looking at the crudely painted window.
Laughing far too loudly, she was trying to tear her comb out of Ostap’s hands.
As for the grand strategist, he must have been talking incessantly, judging by the way his lips were moving.
The engineer Talmudovsky was next to be brought into the gas shelter.
He was fighting back with his two suitcases.
His ruddy forehead was damp with sweat and shiny like a cre?pe.
“There’s nothing I can do, Comrade!” said the man in charge. “It’s an exercise!
You were inside the affected zone.”
“But I was in a cab!” the engineer insisted. “IN A CAB!
I have to get to the station fast, it’s for my work.
I missed the train last night.
Are you saying I have to miss another one?”
“Comrade, please understand!”
“Why should I understand when I was in a cab!” raged Talmudovsky.
He kept pushing this fact, as if riding in a cab made the passenger immune somehow and stripped chloropicrin, bromoacetone, and benzyl bromide of their deadly properties.
God knows how long Talmudovsky would have continued to bicker with the volunteers had it not been for a new arrival at the shelter. He must have been not only gassed but also wounded, judging by the gauze wrapped around his head.
Seeing him, Talmudovsky shut up and quickly tried to melt away into the crowd of Pique Vests.
But the man in gauze spotted the engineer’s imposing figure right away and headed straight toward him.
“I finally caught up with you, Engineer Talmudovsky!” he said in a sinister tone. “On what grounds did you abandon the plant?”
Talmudovsky’s small wild-boar eyes darted in all directions.
Seeing that there was no place to hide, he sat down on his suitcases and lit a cigarette.
“I come to see him at the hotel,” continued the man in gauze loudly, “and they tell me he checked out.
I say: What do you mean he checked out, when he arrived just yesterday and must work here for a year? That’s what the contract says.
No, they say, he checked out, took his luggage, and went to Kazan.
I thought: That’s it, we’ll have to start the search for an engineer all over again. But now I caught him here, sitting pretty and having a smoke. How about that?
You’re a job-hopper, Talmudovsky! You’re destroying the industry!”
The engineer jumped off his luggage, shouting:
“You’re the one who’s destroying the industry!” And he took his accuser by the waist, led him into a corner, and started buzzing at him like a large fly.
Soon, one could hear phrases like:
“With this salary . . . ,”