Tanya Grotter And The Magic Double Bass
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Unexpectedly, the birthmark on Tanya’s nose started to hurt, as if someone was scorching it with a match. Such a thing had never happened before. Grimacing, Tanya rushed to the nearest mirror in a heavy ancient frame. The birthmark seemed to her especially ugly at this moment, like a lump of buckwheat porridge sticking to the tip of her nose. How she hated it at this moment!
“Get off from my nose! I tell you – there!” she shouted to the birthmark.
Suddenly a terrible howl was heard, eardrums could burst from it. It seemed all the sirens in the Armoury simultaneously snapped into action. Lights began to blink. Running into the hall, Tanya saw that there was an enormous gap in the glass of the display case, the sword had disappeared, and the supervisor so like a gorilla was lying in a formless heap on the floor. At that moment when Tanya entered, the narrow little pane on the lattice window of the museum slammed shut. However, the hall, even without that, was full of noise.
Tanya froze fearfully. The stamping of many feet was already heard in the corridors. Remembering that they would find her here, the girl wanted to run out fast but she was too late. Into the hall ran the guards, the guide, workers of the museum, Prikhodkin and Irina Vladimirovna, and a good half of the class.
Rushing to the broken display case, they froze wonder-struck. Others attempted to switch off the siren and bring the supervisor round.
“Stolen! What was in this case?” someone shouted.
“The gold sword!” the round-shouldered guide said with infinite despondency in his voice. “And what do you think: for forty years already I’ve been tormented by the pr-remonition that this would happen one day. About seventeen years ago I even shared my considerations with the now deceased director.”
“It’s that same sword that Grotter touched! She was the very first here!” Lena Mumrikova began to bawl suddenly.
“It wasn’t me!” Tanya shouted, but almost no one was listening to her. And even if they did, they did not believe her.
A ring of people surrounded Tanya, staring at her. No one walked up close to her, as if she was a leper. At this moment, the supervisor opened her eyes slightly. On seeing Tanya, she groaned, “Again this girl!” and fainted again.
Tanya sensed that she was blushing, moreover she was not simply blushing but had become crimson, exactly like a tomato. She attempted to justify herself, but no one was listening to her.
“Excellent! I don’t believe my eyes! Grotter swiped the gold sword!” Genka Bulonov exclaimed, almost choking from such enthusiasm and sticking chewing gum on the throne.
“It wasn’t me!” Tanya shouted.
“Shut up! There was no one else in the hall! Search her!” Lena Mumrikova shouted.
Tanya, sweaty and bewildered, moved back, flying with her back against Irina Vladimirovna.
“Grotter! Tatiana! What horror! What disgrace! How could you?” she clucked.
“Really, will no one stand up for me?” Tanya thought with horror, but then as if through a fog she heard the voice of the gym teacher Prikhodkin, “I’ll not allow her to be searched! She was with me all the time! And how could she knock down this hippo?” he said in a bass voice, nodding at the supervisor lying on the floor, who again began to raise her head.
“Oh-oh-oh… The hippo himself… I’m dying…” she groaned and carefully, in order not to hurt the back of her head, fainted anew.
Squeezing through the crowd, a mean confident person approached Tanya.
“Lieutenant Colonel Chuchundrikov. Security service,” he introduced himself. “Come with me!”
Tanya dejectedly trudged right behind, sensing how behind her the amazed and simultaneously enraptured classmates were dragging themselves along like a split herd. How do you like that – a demure Grotter and suddenly she did such a thing!
They turned to the right, once again to the right, and descended the short stairs going down. The mean person brought Tanya to the high plastic arch.
“Go through the detector!” he ordered.
Tanya, shrugging her shoulders, took a step through the arch. She knew that she had nothing. An instant – and the detector literally began to shake from ringing. The eyebrows of the mean little fellow predatorily went up.
“Take out keys and all metallic objects,” he ordered.
Tanya fearfully took out keys and again took a step into the arch. The detector again began to shake.
“Well, that’s it, Grotter, the end for you! The sky in a cell, friends in stripes! You will run errands for someone for apple cores and toothpaste tubes!” Mumrikova shouted.
“Quiet!” Prikhodkin ordered her. “This machine is most likely defective… Here I’ll go through now… There, it’s quiet! What a skunk! Really she could… no, I don’t believe it!”
“So… now we’ll find out… Come here! Not to me! To this screen!” The mean person dragged Tanya to the low screen, and he went up to the monitor. The girl heard as he muttered, “Hm… as if there is no sword… There is nothing… But why then does it ring? Some stupidity… Well and she didn’t swallow the sword…”
“May I leave?” Tanya asked.
“Yes,” Lieutenant Colonel Chuchundrikov allowed. Picking up the handset of the internal telephone, he shouted into it, “Did they rewind the film? Well who’s there? The girl?” They answered him something.
“You’re sure? Absolutely?”
Continuing to hold the handset in his hand, the mean person looked darkly at Tanya, then at the teacher.
It seemed to Tanya that her heart fell from a high, very high altitude. And it broke into smithereens. Her back got soaked, her palm were covered with sweat. Lieutenant Colonel stubbornly kept quiet. The girl blinked and, already standing with tightly closed eyes, heard the words. “It means this. Your student here has nothing to do with it. You can take her away. At the moment of the theft the tracking camera did not lock in on her.”
Lena Mumrikova squealed from disappointment.
“Well, here you see! But what was on the film?” Prikhodkin exclaimed. The nose of the tiny Lieutenant Colonel hardly reached the button on his stomach.
“None of your business,” the Lieutenant Colonel answered.
“How is it not my business? She’s my student!” Prikhodkin was angry.
“I don’t have the right to reveal anything. The investigation isn’t finished. I’ll ask you to clear the museum!”
However, when they left the hall a minute later, it seemed to Tanya, slightly delayed because her legs felt like cotton wool, that he said to his assistant in an undertone, “Either you’ll explain to me what it was on the film or I won’t envy you. And I won’t envy myself.”