Growling like a dog, Ippolit Matveyevich seized it in a death-grip.
"Give me the pliers," he shouted to Bender.
"Don't be a stupid fool," gasped Ostap. "The ceiling is about to collapse, and you stand there going out of your mind!
Let's get out quickly."
"The pliers," snarled the crazed Vorobyaninov.
"To hell with you.
Perish here with your chair, then.
I value my life, if you don't."
With these words Ostap ran for the door.
Ippolit Matveyevich picked up the chair with a snarl and ran after him.
Hardly had they reached the middle of the street when the ground heaved sickeningly under their feet; tiles came off the roof of the theatre, and the spot where the concessionakes had just been standing was strewn with the remains of the hydraulic press.
"Right, give me the chair now," said Bender coldly. "You're tired of holding it, I see."
"I won't!" screeched Ippolit Matveyevich.
"What's this?
Mutiny aboard?
Give me the chair, do you hear?"
"It's my chair," clucked Vorobyaninov, drowning the weeping, shouting and crashing on all sides.,
"In that case, here's your reward, you old goat!"
And Ostap hit Vorobyaninov on the neck with his bronze fist.
At that moment a fire engine hurtled down the street and in the lights of its headlamps Ippolit Matveyevich glimpsed such a terrifying expression on Ostap's face that he instantly obeyed and gave up the chair.
"That's better," said Ostap, regaining his breath. "The mutiny has been suppressed.
Now, take the chair and follow me.
You are responsible for the state of the chair.
The chair must be preserved even if there are ten earthquakes.
Do you understand?"
"Yes."
The whole night the concessionaires wandered about with the panic-stricken crowds, unable to decide, like everyone else, whether or not to enter the abandoned buildings, and expecting new shocks.
At dawn, when the terror had died down somewhat, Ostap selected a spot near which there was no wall likely to collapse, or people likely to interfere, and set about opening the chair.
The results of the autopsy staggered both of them-there was nothing in the chair.
The effect of the ordeal of the night and morning was 'too much for Ippolit Matveyevich; he burst into a vicious, high-pitched cackle.
Immediately after this came the third shock. The ground heaved and swallowed up the Hambs chair; its flowered pattern smiled at the sun that was rising in a dusty sky.
Ippolit Matveyevich went down on all fours and, turning his haggard face to the dark purple disc of the sun, began howling.
The smooth operator fainted as he listened to him.
When he regained consciousness, he saw beside him Vorobyaninov's lilac-stubble chin.
Vorobyaninov was unconscious.
"At last," said Ostap, like a patient recovering from typhus, "we have a dead certainty.
The last chair [at the word "chair", Ippolit Matveyevich stirred] may have vanished into the goods yard of October Station, but has by no means been swallowed up by the ground.
What's wrong?
The hearing is continued."
Bricks came crashing down nearby.
A ship's siren gave a protracted wail.
CHAPTER FORTY
THE TREASURE
On a rainy day in October, Ippolit Matveyevich, in his silver star-spangled waistcoat and without a jacket, was working busily in Ivanopulo's room.
He was working at the windowsill, since there still was no table in the room.
The smooth operator had been commissioned to paint a large number of address plates for various housing co-operatives.
The stencilling of the plates had been passed on to Vorobyaninov, while Ostap, for almost the whole of the month since their return to Moscow, had cruised round the area of the October Station looking with incredible avidity for clues to the last chair, which undoubtedly contained Madame Petukhov's jewels.
Wrinkling his brow, Ippolit Matveyevich stencilled away at the iron plates.
During the six months of the jewel race he had lost certain of his habits.
At night Ippolit Matveyevich dreamed about mountain ridges adorned with weird transparents, Iznurenkov, who hovered in front of him, shaking his brown thighs, boats that capsized, people who drowned, bricks falling out of the sky, and ground that heaved and poured smoke into his eyes.