"Pankrat!" the Professor cried again. "Hello."

"Verzeihen Sie bitte, Herr Professor," croaked the telephone in German, "das ich store. Ich bin Mitarbeiter des Berliner Tageblatts..."

"Pankrat!" the Professor shouted down the receiver. "Bin momental sehr beschaftigt und kann Sie deshalb jetzt nicht empfangen. Pankrat!"

And just at this moment the bell at the main door started ringing.

"Terrible murder in Bronnaya Street!" yelled unnaturally hoarse voices, darting about between wheels and flashing headlights on the hot June roadway. "Terrible illness of chickens belonging to the priest's widow Drozdova with a picture of her! Terrible discovery of life ray by Professor Persikov!"

Persikov dashed out so quickly that he almost got run over by a car in Mokhovaya and grabbed a newspaper angrily.

"Three copecks, citizen!" cried the newsboy, squeezing into the crowd on the pavement and yelling: "Red Moscow Evening News, discovery of X-ray!"

The flabbergasted Persikov opened the newspaper and huddled against a lamp-post. On page two in the left-hand corner a bald man with crazed, unseeing eyes and a hanging lower jaw, the fruit of Alfred Bronsky's artistic endeavours,

stared at him from a smudged frame. The caption beneath it read: "V I.

Persikov who discovered the mysterious ray." Lower down, under the heading World-Wide Enigma was an article which began as follows: "'Take a seat,' the eminent scientist Persikov invited me hospitably..."

The article was signed with a flourish "Alfred Bronsky (Alonso)".

A greenish light soared up over the University roof; the words "Talking Newspaper" lit up in the sky, and a crowd jammed Mokhovaya.

"Take a seat!' an unpleasant thin voice, just like Alfred Bronsky's magnified a thousand times, yelped from a loudspeaker on the roof, "the eminent scientist Persikov invited me hospitably. 'I've been wanting to tell the workers of Moscow the results of my discovery for some time...'"

There was a faint metallic scraping behind Persikov's back, and someone tugged at his sleeve. Turning round he saw the yellow rotund face of the owner of the artificial leg. His eyes were glistening with tears and his lips trembled.

"You wouldn't tell me the results of your remarkable discovery, Professor," he said sadly with a deep sigh. "So that's farewell to a few more copecks."

He gazed miserably at the University roof, where the invisible Alfred raved on in the loudspeaker's black jaws. For some reason Persikov felt sorry for the fat man.

"I never asked him to sit down!" he growled, catching words from the sky furiously. "He's an utter scoundrel! You must excuse me, but really when you're working like that and people come bursting in... I'm not referring to you, of course..."

"Then perhaps you'd just describe your chamber to me, Professor?" the man with the artificial leg wheedled mournfully. "It doesn't make any difference now..."

"In three days half-a-pound of frog-spawn produces more tadpoles than you could possibly count," the invisible man in the loudspeaker boomed.

"Toot-toot," cried the cars on Mokhovaya.

"Ooo! Ah! Listen to that!" the crowd murmured, staring upwards.

"What a scoundrel! Eh?" hissed Persikov, shaking with anger, to the artificial man. "How do you like that? I'll lodge an official complaint against him."

"Disgraceful!" the fat man agreed.

A blinding violet ray dazzled the Professor's eyes, lighting up everything around-a lamp-post, a section of pavement, a yellow wall and the avid faces.

"They're photographing you, Professor," the fat man whispered admiringly and hung on the Professor's arm like a ton weight. Something clicked in the air.

"To blazes with them!" cried Persikov wretchedly, pushing his way with the ton weight out of the crowd. "Hey, taxi! Prechistenka Street!"

A battered old jalopy, a 'twenty-four model, chugged to a stop, and the Professor climbed in, trying to shake off the fat man.

"Let go!" he hissed, shielding his face with his hands to ward off the violet light.

"Have you read it? What they're shouting? Professor Persikov and his children've had their throats cut in Malaya Bronnaya!" people were shouting in the crowd.

"I don't have any children, blast you!" yelled Persikov, suddenly coming into the focus of a black camera which snapped him in profile with his mouth wide open and eyes glaring.

"Chu... ug, chu... ug," revved the taxi and barged into the crowd.

The fat man was already sitting in the cab, warming the Professor's side.

 


 

 

 

CHAPTER V.

The Tale of the Chickens

 

 

 

 

In the small provincial town formerly called Trinity, but now Glassworks, in Kostroma Province (Glassworks District), a woman in a grey dress with a kerchief tied round her head walked onto the porch of a little house in what was formerly Church, but now Personal Street and burst into tears. This woman, the widow of Drozdov, the former priest of the former church, sobbed so loudly that soon another woman's head in a fluffy scarf popped out of a window in the house across the road and exclaimed: "What's the matter, Stepanovna? Another one?"

"The seventeenth!" replied the former Drozdova, sobbing even louder.

"Dearie me," tutted the woman in the scarf, shaking her head, "did you ever hear of such a thing? Tis the anger of the Lord, and no mistake! Dead, is she?"

"Come and see, Matryona," said the priest's widow, amid loud and bitter sobs. "Take a look at her!"

Banging the rickety grey gate, the woman padded barefoot over the dusty hummocks in the road to be taken by the priest's widow into the chicken run.

It must be said that instead of losing heart, the widow of Father Sawaty Drozdov, who had died in twenty-six of anti-religious mortification, set up a nice little poultry business. As soon as things began to go well, the widow received such an exorbitant tax demand that the poultry business would have closed down had it not been for certain good folk. They advised the widow to inform the local authorities that she, the widow, was setting up a poultry cooperative. The cooperative consisted of Drozdova herself, her faithful servant Matryoshka and the widow's dear niece. The tax was reduced, and the poultry-farm prospered so much that in twenty-eight the widow had as many as 250 chickens, even including some Cochins. Each Sunday the widow's eggs appeared at Glassworks market. They were sold in Tambov and were even occasionally displayed in the windows of the former Chichkin's Cheese and Butter Shop in Moscow.

And now, the seventeenth brahmaputra that morning, their dear little crested hen, was walking round the yard vomiting. The poor thing gurgled and retched, rolling her eyes sadly at the sun as if she would never see it again. In front of her squatted co-operative-member Matryoshka with a cup of water.

"Come on, Cresty dear... chuck-chuck-chuck...