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sei2ed the first thing to hand--a silk dress patterned with enormous bunches
of flowers--grabbed a dressing gown and for good measure scooped up two
flacons of scent. Exactly a minute later a pistol shot rang out, the mirrors
disappeared, the showcases and stools melted away, carpet and curtain
vanished into thin air. Last to disappear was the mountain of old dresses
and shoes. The stage was bare and empty again.
At this point a new character joined the cast. A pleasant and extremely
self-confident baritone was heard from Box No. 2 :
'It's high time, sir, that you showed the audience how you do your
tricks, especially the bank-note trick. We should also like to see the
compere back on stage. The audience is concerned about him.'
The baritone voice belonged to none other than the evening's guest of
honour, Arkady Apollonich Sempleyarov, chairman of the Moscow Theatres'
Acoustics Commission.
Arkady Apollonich was sharing his box with two ladies--one elderly, who
was expensively and fashionably dressed, the other young and pretty and more
simply dressed. The first, as was later established when the official report
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