Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fateful Eggs -
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did not enter the Professor's study, but stayed outside in the dark
corridor. The brightly lit study wreathed in clouds of tobacco smoke was
entirely visible to him. The face of this third man, also in civilian
clothes, was adorned by a tinted pince-nez.
The two inside the study wore Persikov out completely, examining the
visiting card, asking him about the five thousand and making him describe
what the man looked like.
"The devil only knows," Persikov muttered. "Well, he had a loathsome
face. A degenerate."
"Did he have a glass eye?" the small man croaked.
"The devil only knows. But no, he didn't. His eyes darted about all the
time."
"Rubinstein?" the cherub asked the small man quietly. But the small man
shook his head gloomily.
"Rubinstein would never give cash without a receipt, that's for sure,"
he muttered. "This isn't Rubinstein's work. It's someone bigger."
The story about the galoshes evoked the liveliest interest from the
visitors. The cherub rapped a few words down the receiver: "The State
Political Board orders house committee secretary Kolesov to come to
Professor Persikov's apartment I at once with the galoshes." In a flash
Kolesov turned up in thes study, pale-faced and clutching the pair of
galoshes.
"Vasenka!" the cherub called quietly to the man sitting in the hall,
who got up lethargically and slouched into the study. The tinted lenses had
swallowed up his eyes completely.
"Yeh?" he asked briefly and sleepily.
"The galoshes."
The tinted lenses slid over the galoshes, and Persikov thought he saw a
pair of very sharp eyes, not at all sleepy, flash out from under the lenses
for a second. But they disappeared almost at once.
"Well, Vasenka?"
The man called Vasenka replied in a flat voice:
"Well what? They're Polenzhkovsky's galoshes."