Chapter summary
The day after the show, a line a kilometer long forms in front of the Variety Theater, but Likhodeyev, Rimsky and Varenukha have vanished, the contract of the mysterious magician is not in any folder, the police sniffer dog loses the trail at the taxi stand, Rimsky's wife appears in tears because she cannot find him, the cleaning woman reports that his office was open with the window broken, and the show is canceled. The treasurer Vasily Stepanovich Lastochkin goes to take the report to the entertainments commission and finds its chairman, Prokhor Petrovich, reduced to an empty suit that dispatches papers from behind the desk, while the secretary Anna Richardovna weeps that he is not inside it.
At the branch of the commission on Vagankovsky Lane, the employees sing in chorus without being able to stop, after a conductor in checked trousers and a broken pince-nez, Korovyov himself, rehearsed them at lunch and vanished, and not even a sedative given by a doctor takes away their urge to sing; they are taken away by truck, still singing. Then the treasurer goes to the finance department to hand over the previous day's takings, 21,711 rubles, and unwraps the parcel he had tied up: in place of the rubles he finds a heap of foreign money. He is arrested right there, just like Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy in chapter 9, after a clerk takes him for one of the jokers from the Variety Theater.
Analysis
The treasurer does what the day demands, delivering the report and then the takings, and at every window what he finds contradicts the order he expects. The commission has a president who is hollow, the branch sings in chorus without being able to stop after the checked-trousered conductor rehearsed them, and in the finance section the money is something else. He is the witness of the restless day, and the arrest closes the series.
Behind the enormous office desk, with a massive inkwell, sat the empty suit, which was writing across the paper with a dry pen.
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