Epilogue 329

Styopa Likhodeyev had naturally not flown to any Yalta (even Korovyov couldn't have pulled off a stunt like that), nor had he sent any telegrams from there. After being tricked by Korovyov into seeing a cat with a pickled mushroom on his fork and fainting with fright as a result, Styopa had lain unconscious in the jeweller's widow's apartment until Korovyov, making a fool of him once again, had yanked a felt hat over his head and sent him off to the Moscow airport, having previously convinced CID members that Styopa would get off the airplane arriving from Sevastopol.

True, the Yalta CID maintained that they had taken the barefoot Styopa into custody and had sent telegrams about him to Moscow, but not one copy of those telegrams was ever found in the flies, which led to the sad, but utterly unshakable conclusion that the band of hypnotists was able to practice long-distance hypnosis and not just on individuals, but on whole groups of people at one time. This being the case, the criminals were able to drive the most mentally stable people out of their minds.

Why bother mentioning, therefore, such things as the deck of cards that turned up in the pocket of some stranger in the audience, the ladies' clothing that vanished, or the meowing beret and other such things! Any professional hypnotist of average ability can perform tricks like that on any stage, and that includes the simple trick of tearing off the emcee's head. The talking cat was also downright nonsense. All you need to get such a cat to perform is an elementary knowledge of ventriloquism, and no one could seriously doubt that Korovyov's skills went far beyond the basics.

No, the decks of cards or the forged letters in Nikanor Ivanovich's briefcase were not the issue. Those were mere trifles! And it was he, Korovyov, who had pushed Berlioz to certain death under the streetcar. It was he who had driven the poor poet, Ivan Bezdomny, out of his mind, he who had made him imagine things and have tormenting dreams about ancient Yershalaim and about sun-scorched arid Bald Mountain with its three men hanged on posts. It was he and his gang who had made Margarita Nikolayevna and her maid, the beautiful Natasha, disappear from Moscow. Incidentally, the investigators had given this matter special attention. They had to determine whether the women had been abducted by the gang of murderers and arsonists or whether they had run off with the criminal band of their own free will. Based on the absurd and muddled testimony of Nikolai Ivanovich and taking into account the bizarre and insane note Margarita Nikolayevna had left her husband, in which she said she had gone off to be a witch, and considering the fact that Natasha had disappeared without taking any of her things, the investigators concluded that mistress and maid had both been hypnotized, along with so many others, and abducted by the gang while in that state. The quite likely possibility also arose that