“Wha’s this?” came Govorov’s slurred cry.
“Murderer!” shouted Tolkachenko back.
“What are you talking about, you old fool? You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. It’s not me who’s the murderer. Besides, you can’t lock me in.”
Tolkachenko now heard Govorov try to insert his own key into the lock. But the keyhole was of course blocked.
“This is an outrage!”
“I’ll tell you what an outrage is. Murder.”
“There he is again with his murder. Good heavens! All he ever talks about is murder. Have you ever heard such a thing?” But there was no answer from whoever was in the apartment with Govorov.
“The police were here,” cried Tolkachenko. “That’s what I’m talking about. The police were here, looking for you. Let them come back and decide. That’s what I say.”
“Very well, let them come. I have nothing to-” Govorov’s speech decayed abruptly into a strangled scream. There was a heavy, complicated crash, which resonated musically at the end. Now Tolkachenko heard a desperate thrashing about as if there was a struggle going on inside. Then a stifled gurgling of fluid in flesh and a panicked gasping for breath that would not come. It was a sound he could barely accept as human in origin. He wanted to run from it, to get as far away from that sound as he could. And yet the terrible novelty of it held him.
Then it stopped.
There was only silence now, or rather an oppressive buzzing emptiness.
Tolkachenko rapped his knuckles hesitantly on the door. When that produced no answer, he called out: “Hey! You! Konstantin Kirillovich! What are you up to?”
Tolkachenko heard footsteps behind him, coming down from the landing above. He turned and blinked into the gloom. At the same moment the door from the apartment across the landing opened, leaching a soft yellow light. Iakov Borisovitch, the young civil servant who lived there, peered out nervously. The footsteps on the stairs had stopped. Whoever was there seemed to be hanging back.
“Leonid Simonovich?” Iakov Borisovitch’s face was white, his eyes wide with fear. He was a sickly, nervous young man at the best of times.
“Iakov Borisovitch! You must go to the police station on Stolyarny Lane. Alert Lieutenant Salytov. Tell him that Tolkachenko sent you. Tell him I have captured Govorov.”
“You have captured Konstantin Kirillovich? But why?”
“There isn’t time to explain that now. You must go! Immediately!”
“But Leonid Simonovich, I’m unwell. I couldn’t go to the ministry today. As you can see”-Iakov Borisovitch stepped out onto the landing-“I’m still in my dressing gown.”
“You must get dressed. It’s the middle of the afternoon. You shouldn’t be in your dressing gown in the middle of the afternoon.”
“But I’m not well. It’s the old problem. Nerves. I’m feeling terrifically depressed.”
“Well, you must pull yourself together and go to the police station. Otherwise…he will murder us all.”
There was a strange sound, a kind of rasping hiss, from the darkness above them. Iakov Borisovitch leaped back into his apartment.
“What was that?”
“Who’s there?” Tolkachenko called up the stairs.
There was no answer.
“You must go,” Tolkachenko insisted to Iakov Borisovitch. “Besides, I believe you will be safer at the police station than here.”
There was a moment while Iakov Borisovitch took this in. Then he nodded and hurried back inside.
As soon as the door was closed, the landing was plunged back into darkness. The footsteps on the stairs began again. Instinctively, Tolkachenko stepped back and pressed himself against the wall. He was able to make out an indistinct figure as it stepped down onto the landing, but the features remained obscure. The figure seemed to turn toward him and then bow. “Good day to you” came from it, in a light, ironic, and half-familiar voice.
Tolkachenko could say nothing in return. He felt a climactic churning in his besieged stomach. His cheeks bulged and a loud, reverberating burp escaped.
The figure crossed the landing and continued down the stairs.
Tolkachenko was still positioned outside Govorov’s door when he heard Iakov Borisovitch return. He felt as though the darkness had solidified around him.
“Leonid Simonovich!” cried the young civil servant from below. “It’s I, Iakov Borisovitch. I have brought the policeman. And another gentleman.”
“Can we not have a light here?” This voice was unknown to Tolkachenko. A moment later a match flared, and Iakov Borisovitch lit the gas in the hall. The police lieutenant and the “other gentleman” came up the stairs. Their expressions denied Tolkachenko the reassurance he might have hoped for from their presence. Iakov Borisovitch stayed downstairs, close to the front door.
“So he is in there?” whispered Salytov.
“Yes,” confirmed Tolkachenko, also speaking in a low voice. “I have not moved from here. He has not come out. Neither of them has come out.”
“Neither of them?” whispered the other man, whose colorless eyelashes flickered energetically. “So there are two men in there?”
“Yes,” said Tolkachenko. “I heard two men come up the stairs. And two voices inside.”
“Open the door,” demanded Salytov.
Tolkachenko hesitated, deferring to the gentleman who had come with Salytov.
“One moment, Ilya Petrovich. Does it not occur to you that they might be armed?”
Lieutenant Salytov opened his greatcoat and pulled an American revolver from a holster. The gun’s long barrel probed the air like a sleek snout. “I have come prepared, Porfiry Petrovich,” he said.
“Oh!” moaned Tolkachenko.
“We should give them the chance to surrender, I think,” said Porfiry Petrovich. “It is possible we may conclude this business without a shot being fired-or a drop of blood shed.”
Salytov hammered on the door with the butt of his revolver. “You in there! This is the police. You are under arrest. Do you understand?”
There was no answer.
“I should tell you, I heard something,” hissed Tolkachenko. “Before. It sounded like a struggle. A crash. Someone falling over.” Tolkachenko fell silent. His eyes flitted desperately, as though fleeing from something that was forcing itself on his imagination. “Then nothing.”
The frequency of Porfiry Petrovich’s blinking increased sharply. “A fight?” he wondered aloud.
“We have given them a chance,” said Salytov grimly, before Tolkachenko could answer.
Porfiry nodded. “First let us turn off the light out here.”
Salytov nodded back and signaled to Iakov Borisovitch, drawing a hand across his throat and pointing to the light. Iakov Borisovitch stared back, stupefied by the brutality of the gesture. Finally he blinked his enlarged eyes and turned off the gaslight.
“Unlock the door, then stand aside” came Salytov’s command from the darkness.
They waited as Tolkachenko fumbled with the key. They wanted the turning of the key to take forever, and at one moment it seemed as though it would. At last Tolkachenko moved out of the way, ducking into a huddle in the far corner of the landing. Salytov stood on one side of the door frame, Porfiry on the other. The lieutenant turned the handle and pushed the door in. Light from the flat gushed out.
Slowly, leading with the revolver held out in front of him, Salytov edged inside, followed by Porfiry. The room was cold and smelled strongly of vodka. Despite the burning gas, the atmosphere was undeniably lifeless.
They could tell that the man lying facedown on top of a smashed guitar was not going to get up. He was a big man who might have struggled to get to his feet at the best of times. But there was something final about the compact his bulk had made with gravity now.
Porfiry crossed to the body and crouched down to turn the head. The eyes were open but shrunken to dark slits under the frozen puffiness of his face. Salytov prowled the rest of the apartment, still with his revolver extended in front of him.