Crimson wax seals dangled from all the pieces of furniture, including the chair from the Stargorod mansion.
Ippolit Matveyevich paid no attention to this.
He immediately forgot about the criminal code and Ostap's admonition, and ran towards the chair.
At this moment the papers on the divan began to stir.
Ippolit Matveyevich started back in fright.
The papers moved a little way and fell on to the floor; from beneath them emerged a small, placid tomcat.
It looked uninterestedly at Ippolit Matveyevich and began to wash itself, catching at its ear, face and whiskers with its paw.
"Bah!" said Ippolit Matveyevich and dragged the chair towards the door.
The door opened for him and there on the threshold stood the occupant of the room, the stranger with the bleat.
He was wearing a coat under which could be seen a pair of lilac underpants.
He was carrying his trousers in Ms hand.
It could be said that there was no one like Absalom Vladimirovich Iznurenkov in the whole Republic.
The Republic valued his services.
He was of great use to it.
But, for all that, he remained unknown, though he was just as skilled in his art as Chaliapin was in singing, Gorky in writing, Capablanca in chess, Melnikov in ice-skating, and that very large-nosed and brown Assyrian occupying the best place on the corner of Tverskaya and Kamerger streets was in cleaning black boots with brown polish.
Chaliapin sang.
Gorky wrote great novels.
Capablanca prepared for his match against Alekhine.
Melnikov broke records.
The Assyrian made citizens' shoes shine like mirrors.
Absalom Iznurenkov made jokes.
He never made them without reason, just for the effect.
He made them to order for humorous journals.
On his shoulders he bore the responsibility for highly important campaigns, and supplied most of the Moscow satirical journals with subjects for cartoons and humorous anecdotes.
Great men make jokes twice in their lifetime.
The jokes boost their fame and go down in history.
Iznurenkov produced no less than sixty first-rate jokes a month, which everyone retold with a smile, but he nonetheless remained in obscurity.
Whenever one of Iznurenkov's witticisms was used as a caption for a cartoon, the glory went to the artist.
The artist's name was placed above the cartoon.
Iznurenkov's name did not appear.
"It's terrible," he used to cry. "It's impossible for me to sign my name.
What am I supposed to sign?
Two lines?"
And he continued with his virulent campaign against the enemies of society-dishonest members of co-operatives, embezzlers, Chamberlain and bureaucrats.
He aimed his sting at bootlickers, apartment-block superintendents, owners of private property, hooligans, citizens reluctant to lower their prices, and industrial executives who tried to avoid economy drives.
As soon as the journals came out, the jokes were repeated in the circus arena, reprinted in the evening press without reference to the source, and offered to audiences from the variety stage by "entertainers writing their own words and music".
Iznurenkov managed to be funny about fields of activity in which you would not have thought it was possible to say anything humorous at all.
From the arid desert of excessive increases in the cost of production Iznurenkov managed to extract a hundred or so masterpieces of wit.
Heine would have given up in despair had he been asked to say something funny and at the same time socially useful about the unfair tariff rates on slow-delivery goods consignments; Mark Twain would have fled from the subject, but Iznurenkov remained at his post.
He chased from one editorial office to another, bumping into ash-tray stands and bleating.
In ten minutes the subject had been worked out, the cartoon devised, and the caption added.
When he saw a man in his room just about to remove the chair with the seal, Absalom Iznurenkov waved his trousers, which had just been pressed at the tailor's, gave a jump, and screeched:
"That's ridiculous!
I protest!
You have no right.
There's a law, after all.
It's not intended for fools, but you may have heard the furniture can stay another two weeks!
I shall complain to the Public Prosecutor.
After all, I'm going to pay!"
Ippolit Matveyevich stood motionless, while Iznurenkov threw off his coat and, without moving away from the door, pulled on the trousers over his fat, Chichickovian legs.