It was almost light when Vorobyaninov, leaving everything as it was in the chess-room and forgetting the pliers and his yachting cap with the gold insignia of a non-existent yacht club, crawled tired, heavy and unobserved through the window into the street.
"It can't be right," he kept repeating, having walked a block away. "It can't be right."
Then he returned to the club and began wandering up and down by the large windows, mouthing the words:
"It can't be right.
It can't be."
From time to time he let out a shriek and seized hold of his head, wet from the morning mist.
Remembering the events of that night, he shook his dishevelled grey hair.
The excitement of the jewels was too much for him; he had withered in five minutes.
"There's all kinds come here!" said a voice by his ear,
He saw in front of him a watchman in canvas work-clothes and poor quality boots.
He was very old and evidently friendly.
"They keep comin'," said the old man politely, tired of his nocturnal solitude. "And you, comrade, are interested.
That's right.
Our club's kind of unusual."
Ippolit Matveyevich looked ruefully at the red-cheeked old man.
"Yes, sir," said the old man, "a very unusual club; there ain't another like it."
"And what's so unusual about it?" asked Ippolit Matveyevich, trying to gather his wits.
The little old man beamed at Vorobyaninov.
The story of the unusual club seemed to please him, and he liked to retell it.
"Well, it's like this," began the old man, "I've been a watchman here for more'n ten years, and nothing like that ever happened.
Listen, soldier boy!
Well, there used to be a club here, you know the one, for workers in the first transportation division. I used to be the watchman.
A no-good club it was. They heated and heated and couldn't do anythin'.
Then Comrade Krasilnikov comes to me and asks,
'Where's all that firewood goin'?'
Did he think I was eatin' it or somethin"?
Comrade Krasilnikov had a job with that club, he did.
They asked for five years' credit for a new club, but I don't know what became of it.
They didn't allow the credit.
Then, in the spring, Comrade Krasilnikov bought a new chair for the stage, a good soft'n."
With his whole body close to the watchman's, Ippolit Matveyevich listened.
He was only half conscious, as the watchman, cackling with laughter, told how he had once clambered on to the chair to put in a new bulb and missed his footing.
"I slipped off the chair and the coverin' was torn off.
So I look round and see bits of glass and beads on a string come pouring out."
"Beads?" repeated Ippolit Matveyevich.
"Beads!" hooted the old man with delight. "And I look, soldier boy, and there are all sorts of little boxes.
I didn't touch 'em.
I went straight to Comrade Krasilnikov and reported it.
And that's what I told the committee afterwards.
I didn't touch the boxes, I didn't.
And a good thing I didn't, soldier boy. Because jewellery was found in 'em, hidden by the bourgeois. . . ."
"Where are the jewels?" cried the marshal.
"Where, where?" the watchman imitated him. "Here they are, soldier boy, use your imagination!
Here they are."
"Where?"
"Here they are!" cried the ruddy-faced old man, enjoying the effect.
"Wipe your eyes.
The club was built with them, soldier boy.
You see?
It's the club.