“Hey, there, on the schooner!” Ostap called out, tired.
“Good thing you don’t smoke.
It would be torture to ask a cheapskate like you for a cigarette.
You’d never offer the whole box, fearing that they might take more than one. You’d fiddle in your pocket forever, you’d struggle to open the box, and then you’d drag out a lousy, bent cigarette.
You’re a bad man.
Why is it so hard to pull out the whole suitcase?”
“Not a chance!” growled Koreiko, suffocating under the bed.
He didn’t like being compared to a stingy smoker.
At that very moment, he was fishing thick stacks of money out of his suitcase.
The nickel-plated lock was scraping his arms, which were bare up to the elbows.
To make things easier, he lay on his back and worked like a miner at a coal face.
Husks and other plant debris, along with some kind of powder and grain bristles, were spilling out of the straw mattress right into the millionaire’s eyes.
“This is really bad,” thought Alexander Ivanovich, “really bad and scary!
What if he strangles me now and takes all my money?
Just like that.
Cuts me up and dispatches the pieces to different cities on a slow train.
And pickles my head in a barrel of sauerkraut.”
Koreiko suddenly felt a crypt-like chill.
He peeked out from under the bed fearfully.
Bender was dozing on his crate, leaning against the conductor’s lantern.
“But maybe I should dispatch him . . . on a slow train?” thought Alexander Ivanovich, continuing to extract the stacks and feeling horrified. “To different cities?
In strict confidence.
How about that?”
He peeked out once again.
The grand strategist stretched and yawned with abandon, like a Great Dane.
Then he picked up the conductor’s lantern and started swinging it:
“Boonieville Station!
Get off the train, citizen!
We’ve arrived!
Oh yes, I completely forgot: are you by any chance thinking of doing away with me?
I want you to know that I’m against it.
Besides, someone already tried to kill me once.
There was this wild old man, from a good family, a former Marshal of the Nobility, who doubled as a civil registrar, named Kisa Vorobyaninov.
He and I were business partners, searching for happiness to the tune of 150,000 rubles.
And just when we were about to divvy up the loot, the silly marshal slit my throat with a razor.
It was in such poor taste, Koreiko.
And it hurt, too!
The surgeons were barely able to save my young life, and for that I am deeply grateful.”
Finally Koreiko climbed out from under the bed and pushed the stacks of money toward Ostap’s feet.
Each stack was neatly wrapped in white paper, glued, and tied up with string.
“Ninety-nine stacks,” said Koreiko dolefully, “Ten thousand each.
In 250-ruble bills.
You don’t need to count, I’m as good as a bank.”
“And where’s stack number one hundred?” asked Ostap enthusiastically.
“I deducted ten thousand.
To cover the mugging at the beach.”
“Now that’s really low.
The money was spent on you, after all.
Don’t be such a stickler.”
Sighing, Koreiko made up the difference and received his life story, in the yellow folder with shoelace straps, in exchange.