With additional bullets, again with no effect, and the cat disappeared in the setting sun that was flooding the city.

Meanwhile, back in the apartment the parquet floor caught fire under the men's feet, and in die flames, on die spot where the cat had sprawled with his phony wound, there gradually materialized the body of the former Baron Maigel with protruding chin and glassy eyes. It was no longer possible to pull him out.

Those in the living room jumped over the burning squares of parquet, slapping their smoking chests and shoulders with their palms, and retreated into the study and the front hall. Those in the dining room and the bedroom ran out through the hallway. Those in the kitchen also rushed out into the front hall. The living room was already smoking and in flames. On his way out someone managed to dial the number of the fire department and shout tersely into the receiver, " Sadovaya Street! S02B! "

They could not delay any longer. The flames swept out into the hall. It became hard to breathe.

As soon as the first streams of smoke sifted through the broken windows of the bewitched apartment, cries were heard out in the courtyard, " Fire! Fire! We're on fire! "

People in various apartments of the building began screaming into their phones, " Sadovaya Street! Sadovaya, S02B! "

As the sound of bloodcurdling sirens filled Sadovaya Street, and long red engines descended upon it from all parts of the city, the people milling about in the courtyard saw smoke coming out of a fifth floor window and flying out with it, three dark, apparently male silhouettes and one of a naked woman.

*

XXVIII

The Final Adventures of Korovyov and Behemoth

Hether the silhouettes were actually there or were merely fantasies of the terror-stricken residents of the ill-starred building on Sadovaya Street is, of course, impossible to say with exactitude. If they were there, then where they were headed is also unknown. Nor can we say at what point they separated, but we do know that approximately fifteen minutes before the fire started on Sadovaya Street, a tall man in a checked suit and a huge black cat showed up at the plate-glass doors of the Torgsin Store at the Smolensk Market.

After winding his way defdy through the crowd of passersby, the man opened the outer door of the store. But here a short, bony, and extremely inhospitable doorman barred his way and said angrily, " No cats allowed."

" I beg your pardon, " crackled the tall man, and put his gnarled hand to his ear as if he were hard of hearing, " Cats, did you say? Where do you see any cat? "

The doorman's eyes bulged, and with good reason: there was no longer any cat at the man's feet, but instead, from behind his shoulder a fat man in a torn cap, whose face did look a bit catlike, was pushing and shoving his way into the store. In the fat man's hands was a primus stove.