"Oh, my God!" moaned the engineer. "Oh, Lord.
Oh, Lord!"
There was no sign of life.
Then he heard the noise of a truck going up the street.
So there was life somewhere!
Several times more he tried to bring himself to go downstairs, but his nerve gave way each time.
He might as well have been in a burial vault.
"Someone's left a trail behind him, the pig!" he heard an old woman's voice say from the landing below.
The engineer ran to the wall and butted it several times with his head.
The most sensible thing to do, of course, would have been to keep shouting until someone came, and then put himself at their mercy.
But Ernest Pavlovich had completely lost his ability to reason; breathing heavily he wandered round and round the landing.
There was no way out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE AUTOMOBILE CLUB
In the editorial offices of the large daily newspaper Lathe, located on the second floor of the House of the Peoples, material was hurriedly being got ready for the typesetters.
News items and articles were selected from the reserve (material which had been set up but not included in the previous number) and the number of lines occupied were counted up; then began the daily haggling for space.
The newspaper was able to print forty-four hundred lines in all on its four pages.
This had to include everything: cables, articles, social events, letters from correspondents, advertisements, one satirical sketch in verse and two in prose, cartoons, photographs, as well as special sections, such as theatre, sports, chess, the editorial, second editorial, reports from Soviet Party and trade-union organizations, serialized novels, features on life in the capital, subsidiary items under the title of "Snippets", popular-science articles, radio programmes, and other odds-and-ends.
In all, about ten thousand lines of material from all sections was set up, hence the distribution of space was usually accompanied by dramatic scenes.
The first person to run to the editor was the chess correspondent, Maestro Sudeikin.
He posed a polite though bitter question.
"What?
No chess today?"
"No room," replied the editor. "There's a long special feature.
Three hundred lines."
"But today's Saturday.
Readers are expecting the Sunday section.
I have the answers to problems. I have a splendid study by Neunyvako, and I also have-"
"All right, how much do you want?"
"Not less than a hundred and fifty."
"All right, if it's answers to problems, we'll give you sixty lines."
The maestro tried for another thirty so that at least the Neunyvako could go in (the wonderful Tartokover vs. Bogolyubov game had been lying about for a month), but was rebuffed.
Persidsky, the reporter, arrived.
"Do you want some impressions of the Plenum?" he asked softly.
"Of course," cried the editor. "It was held the day before yesterday, after all!"
"I have the Plenum," said Persidsky even more softly, "and two sketches, but they won't give me any room."
"Why won't they?
Who did you talk to?
Have they gone crazy?"
The editor hurried off to have an argument.
He was followed by Persidsky, intriguing as he went; behind them both ran a member of the advertisement section.
"We have the Sekarov fluid to go in," he cried gloomily. The office manager trailed along after them, dragging a chair he had bought at an auction for the editor.
"The fluid can go in on Thursday.
Today we're printing our supplements!"
"You won't make much from free advertisements, and the fluid has been paid for."
"Very well, we'll clear up the matter in the night editor's office.
Give the advertisements to Pasha.
He's just going over there."
The editor sat down to read the editorial.
He was immediately interrupted from that entertaining occupation.