are cut out.
Azores looked for hours. Without five ten. A quick step moved to a chapel. Darkened. From a narrow window dense red light of an icon lamp fell. In the sky – a sickle of a new moon. Smells of the svezhevynuty earth and smoke of the next factory.
Azores shuddered: someone’s steps are heard. Two men quickly approached a chapel.
– Companion Azores? – asked one.
– Yes, it I – Azores answered.
Apparently, it were workers. They shook hands with it.
Azores repeated the story and showed them the certificate of edition. Comers attentively read the document. At the same time they transferred views from a photograph of his face, being convinced of similarity. Having finished the certificate, asked to show the letter.
Workers long and attentively considered the document, then, having exchanged glances, returned it to Azores. One told:
– Companion Azores, we trust you. Let’s try to report about this letter of Hurgesu. You come to the old woman exactly in a week. – And, having said goodbye, went.
“And I?.” – Azores nearly screamed. He wanted to participate in all events. But, probably, it should be content with a passive role and to expect news.
Azores came to the old woman and, having thanked her, invested her in a hand money. Now she did not refuse. On her wrinkled face something similar appeared on a smile. Azores did not know that the poor old woman supported several days the existence only by onions – a bulb for lunch, half of bulbs for dinner and a water bottle – that’s all. And her poor dog for hunger and weakness could not raise the head any more…
Again bustle, turmoil of correspondent work… For the second day Azores was involved in a bad story when photographed street fights of stachechnik with police and strikebreakers. Azores was arrested, and his device was confiscated – such pictures were forbidden.
In several days he managed to be released, but the device remained in police.
In the appointed day Azores came to the old woman, however, except her and the become cheerful dog, found nobody here. “Really and those workers are arrested?” – he thought. The old woman friendly nodded and gave it a note.
– The address – she told. – Go to this address. The person called in the address will offer to you explanations. Take with yourself the letter found you.
Azores thanked the old woman and said goodbye.
RIGHT HAND OF BLASCO JURGUES
From the suburb of the city of Azoresu it was necessary to walk almost to the center – on Mayskaya Street. Employees of transport continued to strike. On streets there was a silence, unusual to the huge city. Trams did not rattle, automobile sirens were not heard. Everywhere there were pickets. Heavy pogromykhivat the police tank. Over the city patrolled planes – searched for congestions of workers and on radio notified command of police groups.
Azores, continually wiping sweat from a forehead and a neck, went by empty shops. Crisis and a strike left the mark on the city – it was similar to the seriously ill patient. As leprosy spots, grew white on walls rhombuses and squares of the removed signs. The show-windows covered with iron curtains, untidy garbage on sidewalks, shreds of newspapers, the turned bus…
At the corner of the street near the closed white marble restaurant there was an old Indian with a torn blanket on shoulders. He held a big glass jug with water in which yellow segments of lemons floated in hand. Azores drank a glass of water – it was cold – and asked where the building of the electric company is located. The Indian vaguely shrugged shoulders. He did not deal with such important enterprises.
At last Azores found the necessary seven-story building with signs on a pediment. Entered the glazed lobby. He was met by the sleepy door-keeper. On a hanger only three straw hats.
– Tell, Mr. Kar lives here? – Azores asked.
– Does not live but only works. The seventh floor, the room seven hundred thirty two – dryishly answered the door-keeper.
Azores went to the elevator.
– Does not work – the door-keeper phlegmatically warned.
It was necessary to walk upstairs.
In flight between the fourth and fifth floors to it the pale young man, in appearance the clerk met. Having looked at Azores, he was obviously disturbed and several times turned back.
“Orders strange here! – Azores thought. – Do not work for them today, perhaps? The impression is such that the building is left. Perhaps, the company moved?”
But here and seventh floor. Azores’s steps were boomingly given in a long corridor. By the way he looked at the slightly opened doors. Long tables, on them – coils, lamps, accumulators, glass tubes, devices, devices… Obviously, laboratories. All rooms were empty. Any person. On all objects a film of dust. The corridor turned to the right, once again to the right. Here and room 732. Azores knocked. Behind a door fast paces, knock, rustling as if someone hastily cleaned the room were heard; then the door revealed, and on a threshold the scared figure of the little person with a red goatee grew. On it there was a shabby blue dressing gown.
– May I see Mr. Cara? – Azores asked.
– I am Carat. At your service – the person with a goatee answered and, having opened a door is wider, passed the guest. – What can I serve as?
– I in the matter of Don Blasco Jurgues.
– Blasco Jurgues? – having jumped up, the Carat screamed. – You sit down, please. – He began to fuss, moving up the guest a chair. – Blasco! He died, died, the poor creature… Died while his life was so necessary!. However what business can be? – And he suspiciously looked at Azores.
Azores told Cara everything, since the bottle caught in the sea and finishing visits of the old woman.
The carat listened, nodded, shook a goatee and repeated everything:
– So, so… Poor creature Blasco Jurgues!. Zhuan sits in a tyurma. It was to be expected. I can look at the letter?
Azores submitted the letter. The carat seized him, almost pulled out from hands, and stared hard at paper.
– So, so… It is his hand, its code…
– And a key from the code? – Azores asked.
The carat once again searchingly looked at Azores: whether it is possible to trust it?
– I am a communist – Azores resolutely told. – You will like it or not, but it so. You see, I am frank, be and you are frank with me.
– Oh, of course, of course! – the Carat began to fuss. – The code at me. Here, in this case where wires, insulators and any stuff are stored. The most reliable place! It is better, than on the apartment. This building as you already, probably, noticed, in essence without people. Yes, yes. Crisis. During a prosperity
