The investigator smiled politely and took the liberty of assuring the poet that although he was in a slight depression at the moment, it would soon pass.

" No, " countered Ivan, looking not at the investigator, but at a point in the distance on the darkening horizon, " it will never pass. The poems I wrote were bad poems, and I realize that now."

The investigator left Ivanushka after having received very important information. By tracing the thread of events backwards, from finish to start, he finally succeeded in reaching the source of all the events that followed. The investigator was certain that everything started with the murder at Patriarch's Ponds. Of course, neither Ivanushka nor the fellow in checks had pushed the unfortunate chairman of MASSOLTT under the streetcar. Physically speaking, no one had facilitated his fall under the wheels. But the investigator was convinced that Berlioz had thrown himself under the streetcar (or fallen under it) while in a hypnotic trance.

Yes, there was a great deal of information, and they already knew who should be apprehended and where. But the hitch was that it had ' proved impossible to apprehend him by any means whatsoever. Admittedly, there was no question that someone was, indeed, living in the thrice-cursed apartment No. 50. Phone calls to the apartment would at times be answered by a nasal, or by a cracked voice, windows would be opened, and a phonograph would be heard playing, But every time they went over to investigate, they found no one there. And they had been there many times, at all hours of the day and night. Not only that, they had combed the apartment and looked in every corner. The apartment had been under suspicion for a long time. Guards had been posted along the route that led through the gateway into the courtyard, and at the back entrance as well; not only that, guards had been posted

The Eni o/ Apartment No. 50 287

Up on the roof, next to the chimney pipes. Yes, apartment No. 50 was up to no good, but there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Thus die case dragged on until after midnight Friday when Baron Maigel, wearing evening dress and patent leather shoes, made his grand entrance into apartment No. 50 as a guest. The baron was heard being admitted to the apartment. Precisely ten minutes after that they entered the apartment without any advance warning, but not only did they find no residents, there was not even a trace, which was already utterly bizarre, of Baron Maigel.

And so, as has been said, the case dragged on this way until dawn on Saturday. Some new and very interesting facts then emerged. A six-seater passenger plane landed at Moscow airfield from the Crimea. One of the passengers who got off was rather strange. He was a young man, his face overgrown with stubble, who had not washed for three days, had inflamed and frightened eyes, no luggage, and was rather queerly dressed. He was wearing a Caucasian-style fur cap, a felt cloak over a nightshirt, and brand-new, just purchased, blue leather bedroom slippers. They approached him as he stepped off the gangway. They had been expecting him, and shortly after that, the unforgettable director of the Variety Theater, Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeyev, appeared before the investigators. He added some new information. It now became dear that Woland had gotten into the Variety disguised as a performer, by hypnotizing Styopa Likhodeyev, and had then contrived to spirit the aforementioned Styopa out of Moscow, God knows how many kilometers away. This added to the mounting evidence, but things did not become any easier as a result, and, may in fact have become even more difficult, since it was becoming obvious that it was not going to be easy to capture someone capable of pulling that kind of stunt on Stepan Bogdanovich. In the meantime, Likhodeyev was locked up in a strong room at his own request, and appearing before the investigators was Varenukha, who had just been arrested at his apartment, where he had returned after an unaccountable absence of almost two days.

Despite the theater manager's promise to Azazello never to lie again, he began with a lie. Although one should not judge him too harshly for that. After all, Azazello had forbidden him to tell lies and be rude over the telephone, but in the given instance the manager was speaking without the aid of such an instrument. His eyes wandering, Ivan Savelyevich declared that on Thursday afternoon he had gotten drunk alone in his office at the Variety, after which he had gone somewhere—but where he couldn't recall, had drunk some more Starka vodka, flopped down under a fence somewhere, but where—he again couldn't recall. It was only after the manager had been advised that his stupid and ill-considered conduct was impeding the investigation of an important case and that, naturally, he would have to take the consequences, that Varenukha broke into sobs and, with a trembling voice, his eyes darting all around,