The train came to a halt by an asphalt platform.
It was Moscow.
It was Ryazan Station, the freshest and newest of all the Moscow termini.
None of the eight other Moscow stations had such vast, high-ceilinged halls as the Ryazan.
The entire Yaroslavl station with all its pseudo-Russian heraldic ornamentation could easily have fitted into the large buffet-restaurant of the Ryazan.
The concessionaires pushed their way through to the exit and found themselves on Kalanchev Square.
On their right towered the heraldic birds of Yaroslavl Station.
Directly in front of them was October Station, painted in two colours dully reflecting the light.
The clock showed five past ten.
The clock on top of the Yaroslavl said exactly ten o'clock.
Looking up at the Ryazan Station clock, with its zodiac dial, the travellers noted that it was five to ten.
"Very convenient for dates," said Ostap. "You always have ten minutes' grace."
The coachman made a kissing sound with his lips and they passed under the bridge. A majestic panorama of the capital unfolded before them.
"Where are we going, by the way?" Ippolit Matveyevich asked.
"To visit nice people," Ostap replied. "There are masses of them in Moscow and they're all my friends."
"And we're staying with them?"
"It's a hostel.
If we can't stay with one, we can always go to another."
On Hunter's Row there was confusion.
Unlicensed hawkers were running about in disorder like geese, with their trays on their heads.
A militiaman trotted along lazily after them.
Some waifs were sitting beside an asphalt vat, breathing in the pleasant smell of boiling tar.
They came out on Arbat Square, passed along Prechistenka Boulevard, and, turning right, stopped in a small street called Sivtsev Vrazhek.
"What building is that?" Ippolit Matveyevich asked.
Ostap looked at the pink house with a projecting attic and answered:
"The Brother Berthold Schwartz Hostel for chemistry students."
"Was he really a monk? "
"No, no I'm only joking.
It's the Semashko hostel."
As befits the normal run of student hostels in Moscow, this building had long been lived in by people whose connections with chemistry were somewhat remote.
The students had gone their ways; some of them had completed their studies and gone off to take up jobs, and some had been expelled for failing their exams. It was the latter group which, growing in number from year to year, had formed something between a housing co-operative and a feudal settlement in the little pink house.
In vain had ranks of freshmen sought to invade the hostel; the ex-chemists were highly resourceful and repulsed all assaults.
Finally the house was given up as a bad job and disappeared from the housing programmes of the Moscow real estate administration.
It was as though it had never existed.
It did exist, however, and there were people living in it. The concessionaires went upstairs to the second floor and turned into a corridor cloaked in complete darkness.
"Light and airy!" said Ostap.
Suddenly someone wheezed in the darkness, just by Ippolit Matveyevich's elbow.
"Don't be alarmed," Ostap observed.
"That wasn't in the corridor, but behind the wall.
Plyboard, as you know from physics, is an excellent conductor of sound. Careful! Hold on to me! There should be a cabinet here somewhere."
The cry uttered at that moment by Ippolit Matveyevich as he hit his chest against a sharp steel corner showed that there was indeed a cabinet there somewhere.
"Did you hurt yourself?" Ostap inquired. "That's nothing.
That's physical pain.
I'd hate to think how much mental suffering has gone on here.
There used to be a skeleton in here belonging to a student called Ivanopulo.
He bought it at the market, but was afraid to keep it in his room.
So visitors first bumped into the cabinet and then the skeleton fell on top of them.
Pregnant women were always very annoyed."
The partners wound their way up a spiral staircase to the large attic, which was divided by plyboard partitions into long slices five feet wide.
The rooms were like pencil boxes, the only difference being that besides pens and pencils they contained people and primus stoves as well.