The Master and Margarita. he whispered that he was lying out of fear alone, that he was petrified of the vengeance of Woland's gang

he whispered that he was lying out of fear alone, that he was petrified of the vengeance of Woland's gang, into whose dutches he had already fallen, and that he begged, pleaded, and prayed to be locked up in an armored room.

" What the devil! They've all got armored rooms on the brain! " growled one of the chief investigators.

" Those villains scared them out of their wits, " said the investigator who had visited Ivanushka.

They calmed Varenukha as best they could, said they could insure his safety without recourse to an armored room, and at this point it came out that he had not been drinking Starka under any fence, but had been beaten up by two men, one with red hair and a fang, the other—fat...

" Who looked like a cat? "

" Yes, yes, yes, " whispered the manager, faint with fear and looking around at every second, and he gave more details of how he had spent two days in apartment No. 50, serving as a vampire-bait, and how he had almost caused the death of financial director Rimsky...

At this time they brought in Rimsky, who had been transported from Leningrad by train. However, this terror-stricken, psychologically unbalanced, gray-haired old man, who bore litde resemblance to the former financial director, had no desire to tell the truth and was very stubborn in this regard. Rimsky maintained that he had not seen any Hella in his office window that night, just as he had not seen Varenukha, but that he had simply felt unwell and gone to Leningrad in a daze. It need hardly be said that the ailing financial director concluded his testimony by pleading to be locked up in an armored room.

Annushka was arrested just as she was attempting to hand a ten-dollar bill to a cashier at a department store on the Arbat. They listened attentively to Annushka's story about people flying out the window of the building on Sadovaya Street, and about the horseshoe which, according to her, she picked up in order to take it to the police.

" Was the horseshoe really gold with diamonds? " Annushka was asked.

" As if I don't know diamonds when I see them, " she replied.

" But did he give you, as you claim, ten-ruble bills? "

" As if I don't know what they are, " replied Annushka.

" So when did they turn into dollars? "

" I don't know anything about any dollars, and I never saw any, " Annushka replied shrilly. " I was in my rights! I got the money as a reward and was using it to buy some chintz cloth..." She then went off on a tangent about how it wasn't her fault that the house management had let an evil power take over the fifth floor and make life there impossible.

Here the investigator waved Annushka away with his pen, since by then they were all heartily sick of her, and wrote her an exit pass on a green chit of paper, following which, to everyone's relief, she disap-

The End of Apartment No. 50 289