you'll have to study, go through the whole course of biological studies. Otherwise you'll not find any potentials in man, understand?”
“Of course!” he nodded joyously. “That's why I'm here.”
The professor sized him up and pulled him over by the shoulder:
“I'll tell you a secret. I'm studying myself. In the evening classes of electronic technology at Moscow Engineering Institute, in my third year. I go to lectures, and do lab work, and I even have two incompletes — in industrial electronics and quantum physics. I, too, want to figure out what goes where. You can help me… only shhhhh!”
They were back in Onisimov's office. Matvei Apollonovich paced from wall to wall. Krivoshein looked at his watch: it was after five. He frowned, regretting the wasted time.
“So, Matvei Apollonovich, I have my alibi. Please return my documents, and let's say good — bye.”
“No, wait!” Onisimov paced, beside himself with anger and confusion.
Matvei Apollonovich, as has been noted, was an experienced investigator, and he clearly saw that all the facts in this damn case were neatly turned against him. Krivoshein was very obviously alive, and therefore the certified and reported death of Krivoshein was a mistake. He did not ascertain the identity of the man who died or was killed in the laboratory and he didn't even know how to begin to establish the cause of death or means of murder. He did not know the motive for the crime — his version was shot to hell — and there was no body! The facts made it appear that the investigation conducted by Onisimov was just garbage.
Matvei Apollonovich tried to collect his thoughts. “Academician Azarov identified Krivoshein's body. Professor Androsiashvili identified the live Krivoshein and confirmed his alibi. That means that either one or the other made a false statement. Which one is not clear. That means I'll have to see both of them. No… to check up on such people, to put them under suspicion, and then to find out that I'm barking up the wrong tree again! I'll be destroyed….”
In a word, Onisimov understood one thing: under no circumstances could he let Krivoshein out of his hands.
“No, wait! You won't be able to return to your dirty work, citizen Krivoshein! You think that by… putting makeup on the deceased and then destroying the body, you can get off the hook? We'll still check up on who this Androsiashvili really is and why he's covering up for you! The evidence against you is still there: fingerprints, contact with the escaped suspect, the attempt to give him money….”
Krivoshein, disguising his irritation, scratched his chin.
“I just don't understand what you're trying to incriminate me with: being killed or being a killer?”
“We'll clear it up, citizen!” Onisimov yelled, losing the last remnants of his self — control. “We'll clear it up. But one thing is sure: no way could you not be involved in this case. That's impossible!”
“Ah, impossible!?” Krivoshein came up to the detective, his face flushed. “You think that since you work for the police you know what's possible and what isn't?”
And suddenly his face changed rapidly: his nose grew longer and fatter, turning purple and drooping; his eyes grew wider and their green turned to black; his hair fell back from his forehead, creating a bald spot; a mustache sprouted on his upper lip, and his jaw grew shorter. In the space of a minute, Onisimov was facing none other than the Georgian physiognomy of Professor Androsiashvili — with bloodshot eyes, a mighty nose with flaring nostrils and blue, shadowed cheeks.
“You think, katso, that because you work for the police you know what is possible and what isn't?”
“Stop it!” Onisimov backed up to the wall.
“Impossible!” Krivoshein howled. “I'll show you impossible!”
He finished the sentence in a mellifluous, throaty woman's voice, and his face began turning into Elena Ivanovna Kolomiets's face: the cute nose turned up; the cheeks grew pink and round; the dark eyebrows arched delicately, and the eyes glowed with gray light.
“If anyone should come in now….” thought Onisimov feverishly and rushed to lock the door.
“Uh — huh, drop it!” Krivoshein, himself again, stood in the middle of the room in a boxer's stance.
“No, you misunderstood, ” muttered Matvei Apollonovich, coming back to his desk. “Why get upset?”
“Phew!. and don't even think about calling.” Krivoshein sat down, puffing, his face glistening with sweat. “Or I can turn into you. Would you like that?”
Onisimov's nerves gave out completely. He opened his drawer.
“Don't… please relax… stop… don't! Here, take your papers.”
“That's better.” Krivoshein took his papers and picked up his travel bag from the floor. “I explained to you nicely that you should drop your interest in this case — but no, you didn't believe me. I hope that I've convinced you now. Bye!”
He left. Matvei Apollonovich stood still listening to some sound reverberating in the room's stillness. A minute later he realized that it was his teeth chattering. His hands were also shaking. “What's the matter with me?” He grabbed the phone… and dropped it, sank into his chair and impotently laid his head on the cool surface of the desk. “The hell with this job.”
The door opened wide and the medical expert Zubato appeared on his doorstep with a plywood crate in his hands.
“Listen, Matvei, this really is the crime of the century. Congratulations,” he shouted. “Lookee here!” He noisily set the box on the table, opened it, and tossed out the straw packing. “I just got this from the sculpture studio. Look!”
Matvei Apollonovich looked up. He was staring at the plaster cast of Krivoshein's face — with a sloping forehead, a fat upturned nose, and wide cheeks….
Chapter 5
The best way to disguise that you limp with your left foot is 'to also limp with your right. You will then walk with a sailor's swagger.
“You sucker, show — off punk!” Krivoshein berated himself. “You found a wonderful application for your discovery — terrifying the police. He would have let me go anyway; there was no way out.”
His face and body muscles were exhausted. The painful ache was easing in his glands. “Three transformations in a few minutes is an overload. What a hothead. Well, nothing will happen to me. That's the beauty of it, that nothing can happen to me….”
The sky was quickly turning dark blue over the houses. The neon signs announcing the names of stores, theaters, and cafes went on with a slight hiss. The graduate student's thoughts returned to Moscow business.
“Vano Aleksandrovich passed with flying colors; he didn't even ask why I was being held. He identified me and that's all. I understand it: 'If Krivoshein is hiding his affairs from me then I don't want to know about them. The proud old man is hurt. And he's right. It was in conversation with him that I zeroed in on my goals in the experiments. Actually, it had been no conversation — it was an agreement. But it isn't everyone with whom you can argue and come out with enriched ideas.”
Vano Aleksandrovich kept circling him, watching with ironic expectation: what earth — shattering ideas will the dilettante biologist come up with? Once on a December evening, Krivoshein found him in his department office and told him everything that he felt about life in general and about man in particular. It was a good evening: they sat and smoked and talked, while a pre — New Year's storm howled and whistled outside, pounding snow against the window.
“Any machine is constructed somehow and does something,” Krivoshein was expounding. “The biological machine called Man also has these two parts to it: the basic one and the operative. The operative part — organs of
