“I should rather think he has,” the patient was entirely mollified. “But what trash! It would be interesting to take a look at him. Moscow is buzzing with all sorts of legends about you…”
Philip Philipovich merely made a despairing gesture. At this point the guest noticed that the Professor had developed a stoop and even appeared to have gone somewhat greyer lately.
*
The crime had ripened and now, as so often happens, fell like a stone. Polygraph Polygraphovich returned that evening in the van troubled by some indefinable presentiment of disaster which simply would not go away. Philip Philipovich’s voice invited him into the consulting room. Surprised, Sharikov went and, with a vague stirring of fear, looked down the barrel of Bormental’s face and then at Philip Philipovich. The assistant looked like thunder and his left hand with the cigarette trembled slightly on the arm of the gynaecological chair.
Philip Philipovich with most ominous calm said:
“Take your things this instant: trousers, coat, everything you need, and get out of this flat!”
“What the?..” Sharikov was sincerely taken aback.
“Out of the flat — today,” Philip Philipovich repeated monotonously, examining his nails through narrowed eyes.
Some evil spirit took possession of Polygraph Polygraphovich: evidently death was already awaiting him and Doom stood at his elbow. He cast himself into the embrace of the inevitable and snapped angrily and abruptly:
“What do you think you’re trying to do? Surely you don’t think I don’t know where to go to get you lot sorted out. I’ve a right to my 13 square yards here, and here I’ll stay.”
“Get out of this flat,” whispered Philip Philipovich on a note of intimate warning.
Sharikov invited his own death. He raised his left hand and, with scratched and bitten fingers which smelt unbearably of cats, made a vulgar gesture of defiance. Then, with his right hand, pulled a revolver from his. pocket on the dangerous Bormental. Bormental’s cigarette fell like a shooting star and a few seconds later Philip Philipovich, leaping over the broken glass, was dithering in horror between the cupboard and the couch.
On the couch, flat on his back and struggling for breath, lay the head of the sub-department of Pest Control, and on his chest the surgeon Bormental was crouching and stifling him with a small, white cushion. A few minutes later an unrecognisable Doctor Bormental went through to the hall and hung out a notice: “There will be no reception today on account of the Professor’s illness. Please do not disturb by ringing the bell.” With a shiny penknife he cut the bell-wire, and looked into the mirror at his scratched, bleeding face and convulsively trembling hands. Then be appeared in the door of the kitchen and said to the anxious Zina and Darya Petrovna:
“The Professor requests you not to leave the flat.” “Very good, Sir,” Zina and Darya Petrovna answered timidly.
“Permit me to lock the back door and keep the key,” said Bormental hiding in the shadow behind the door and covering his face with his hand. “It is a temporary measure, not because we don’t trust you. But someone might come and you might find it difficult to refuse them entry, and we must not be disturbed. We are busy.” “Very good, Sir,” replied the women and immediately turned pale. Bormental locked the back door, locked the front door, locked the door into the corridor, and his footsteps receded into the consulting room.
Silence enveloped the flat, crawling into every corner. Twilight infiltrated it, ill-omened, tense, in a word — murk. True, later on the neighbours on the other side of the courtyard said that in the windows of the consulting room, which overlooked the courtyard, all the lights were ablaze that night and they even glimpsed the white surgeon’s cap of the Professor himself… It is hard to check.
It is true also that Zina, when it was all over, did say that by the fireplace in the study after Bormental and the Professor had left the consulting room, Ivan Arnoldovich had scared her almost to death. She said he was squatting down in front of the fire burning with his own hands a blue exercise book from the pile of case histories of the Professor’s patients! The doctor’s face appeared completely green and covered all over in scratches. As to Philip Philipovich, he was not himself at all that evening. She also said that … however, maybe the innocent girl from the Prechistenka flat is just making it all up…
One thing is certain: throughout that evening the most complete and terrible silence reigned throughout the flat.
Epilogue
On the night of the tenth day after the battle in the consulting room in the flat of Professor Preobrazhensky in Obukhov Alley there was a sharp ring at the door.
“Militia here. Open up.”
There was a sound of running footsteps, they began to knock, entered and, in the brilliantly lit entrance hall with all the cupboards newly glazed, a mass of people were suddenly foregathered. Two in militiaman’s uniform, one in a dark coat with a briefcase, the chairman Shvonder, pale and bursting with malicious satisfaction, the youth-woman, the porter Fyodor, Zina, Darya Petrovna and the half-dressed Bormental, trying in embarrassment to cover his bare throat, having been caught without a tie.
The door from the study opened to admit Philip Philipovich. He emerged in the familiar azure dressing gown and there and then it became clear to them all that Philip Philipovich had much improved in health over the last week. It was the old commanding and energetic Philip Philipovich, full of dignity, who appeared before these nocturnal visitors and begged pardon that he was in his dressing gown.
“Don’t let that worry you, Professor,” said the man in plain clothes with deep embarrassment, hesitated for a moment, then pronounced: “Very unpleasant business. We have a warrant to search your flat and,” the man squinted at Philip Philipovich’s moustaches and concluded, “and to make an arrest, depending on the results.”
Philip Philipovich narrowed his eyes and asked:
“May I ask on what grounds and whom?”
The man scratched his cheek and began to read from a paper in his briefcase:
“Preobrazhensky, Bormental, Zinaida Bunina and Darya Ivanova are hereby arrested on suspicion of the murder of the head of the sub-department of Pest Control of M. K. Kh., Polygraph Polygraphovich Sharikov.”
Zina’s sobs drowned the end of his words. There was a general stir.
“Quite incomprehensible,” replied Philip Philipovich with a lordly shrug of the shoulders.
“What Sharikov had you in mind? Ah, yes, I see, that dog of mine … the one I operated on?”
“Beg pardon, Professor, not the dog, but when he was already human; that’s what it’s all about.”
“You mean when he was able to speak?” asked Philip Philipovich. “That does not necessarily imply being human. However, that is not important. Sharik is still with us and most definitely no one has killed him.”
“Professor!” the man in black exclaimed in great surprise, raising his eyebrows. “In that case he must be produced. It’s ten days since he disappeared and the facts at our disposal, if you’ll pardon my saying so, look very black indeed.”
“Doctor Bormental, be so good as to produce Sharik for the inspector,” ordered Philip Philipovich, taking the warrant.
Doctor Bormental, with a smile that went somewhat awry, made for the door.
When he returned and gave a whistle a curious-looking dog came prancing in after him. Parts of him were bald, on other parts the hair had already grown back. He made his entrance like a trained circus-dog on his hind legs, then sank down onto all fours and looked about him. A deathly hush froze the hall, setting like jelly. The ghoulish-looking dog with the crimson scar round his forehead again stood up on his hind legs and, with a smile, sat down in an armchair.
The second militiaman suddenly crossed himself in a sweeping peasant fashion and, stepping back, trod heavily on both Zina’s feet.
The man in black without shutting his mouth pronounced:
“I can’t believe it … he worked for Pest Control.”
“That was not my doing,” replied Philip Philipovich. “It was Mr. Shvonder who recommended him, if I am not mistaken.”
“It’s beyond me,” said the man in black at a loss, and turned to the first militiaman. “Is this he?”
“He it is,” the first militiaman mouthed the words soundlessly. “He as ever was.”
“That’s him all right,” Fyodor’s voice made itself heard. “Only the villain’s gone all hairy again.”
“But he could talk … hee … hee…”
“And he still can, but less and less as time goes by, so now is the time to hear him, he’ll soon be quite dumb again.”
“But why?” asked the man in the black coat quietly.
Philip Philipovich shrugged his shoulders.
“Science has yet to discover ways of transforming beasts into human beings. I had a try, but it was unsuccessful, as you see. He spoke for a while and then began to regress towards his original condition. Atavism.”
“Do not use improper expressions,” barked the dog suddenly and rose from his chair.
The man in black suddenly went very pale, dropped his briefcase and began to keel over sideways. A militiaman steadied him from the side and Fyodor from the back.
There was some confusion, through which most distinctly could be heard three phrases:
Philip Philipovich’s: “Tincture of valerian. He’s fainted.”
Doctor Bormental’s: “As to Shvonder I’ll throw him down the stairs with my own hands if he ever again shows his face in Professor Preobrazhensky’s flat.”
And Shvonder’s: “I request that those words be recorded in the protocol.”
*
The grey accordion-shaped radiators were pleasantly warm. The long curtains hid the dark Prechistenka night with its single star. The higher being, the dignified benefactor of the canine breed,
