Without taking off his cap Varenukha went over to the armchair and sat down opposite Rimsky at the desk.

It must be said there was something slightly odd about Varenukha's reply which was immediately picked up by the financial director, who was as sensitive to vibrations as any seismograph in the world. What was going on? Why had Varenukha come into the financial director's office if he had assumed he wasn't there? After all, he had his own office. That was for starters. And second, no matter which entrance Varenukha had used, he would have bumped into one of the night watchmen, all of whom had been told that Grigory Danilovich would be in his office for some time.

But the financial director did not dwell on this oddity for very long. He didn't feel up to it.

" Why didn't you call? What was all that nonsense about Yalta? "

" Well, it's just as I said, " the manager answered, and he made a smacking sound with his lips as if he had a toothache. " They found him in a tavern in Pushkino."

" What do you mean Pushkino?! Isn't that right near Moscow? And didn't the telegrams come from Yalta?! "

" Yalta like hell! He got the Pushkino telegrapher drunk, they started fooling around and that meant, among other things, sending telegrams marked 'Yalta.'"

" I see, I see... Well, OK, OK..." said Rimsky, crooning rather than speaking. A yellowish light shone in his eyes. A festive vision of Styopa having to leave work in disgrace formed in his head. He'd be free! Free at least of that disaster known as Likhodeyev! And maybe Stepan Bogdanovich was in for more than just getting fired... " Give me the details, " said Rimsky, tapping the paperweight against the desk.

Praise Be to the Rooster 129

And Varenukha began to recount the details. As soon as he had arrived at the place where the financial director had sent him, he had been received right away and listened to with great attention. No one, of course, had ever seriously believed that Styopa was in Yalta. Everyone now agreed with Varenukha that Likhodeyev had obviously been at the Yalta restaurant in Pushkino.

" Where is he now? " asked the agitated financial director, interrupting the manager's account.

" Well, where could he be? " replied the manager with a crooked smile. " Naturally, in a drunk tank! "

" Of course, of coursel Where else! "

And Varenukha continued his story. And the more he talked, the more vivid an impression the financial director formed of Likhodeyev's long chain of outrageous and disgraceful misdeeds. And each successive link in the chain was worse than the last. Take, for example, the drunken dance with the telegraph clerk on the lawn outside the Pushkino telegraph office to the strains of some idler's accordion! The chase after some women who were screeching in terror! The attempt to start a fight with the bartender at the Yalta! Throwing green onions all over the floor of that same Yalta. Smashing eight bottles of dry white " Ai-Danil" wine. Breaking the meter of a cab when the driver refused to take him as a passenger. Threatening to arrest the citizens who were trying to end his spree... In short, holy terror!

Styopa was well known in Moscow theater circles, and everyone knew that he was hardly—a gift to humanity. But what the manager was saying about him now was too much, even for Styopa. Yes, too much. In fact, much too much...

Rimsky's piercing eyes bore into the manager's face from across the desk, and the more the manager talked, the gloomier Rimsky looked. The manager embellished his story with various vile details, and the more vivid and piquant they became, the less Rimsky believed him. When Varenukha reported that Styopa had gone so far as to resist those who had come to take him back to Moscow, the financial director knew for sure that everything the manager was saying—the manager who had returned at midnight—everything was a lie! A lie from beginning to end.

Varenukha had not gone to Pushkino, nor had Styopa himself been in Pushkino. There was no drunken telegraph clerk, no broken glass in the bar, Styopa had not been tied up... none of it had happened.

Once the financial director became convinced that the manager was lying to him, fear crept over his body, starting with his feet, and for the second time it seemed to the financial director that a putrid malarial dampness had spread over the floor. Without ever taking his eyes off the manager—who was sitting in the armchair in an oddly contorted way, trying always to stay within the bluish shadow cast by the desk lamp and rather peculiarly shielding his eyes from the lamp light with a