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A hideous moustache had been painted on the monster's lip either with blood or red chalk, and he tried to call attention to it with extreme self-satisfaction. "Is the master at home, or the missus, eh! Mekipiros?" inquired the first-comer. "The master is singing and the mistress is dancing," replied the half-man with a bestial chuckle.
At that same instant Mekipiros turned upon Ivan with flashing eyes, seized him round the thighs and holding him fast embraced, hauled him along the roof. For a second the pair of them tottered on the very edge of the gutter, but then Ivan clutched the metal cornice and held on to it convulsively with both hands. "Hamama, hamama, hamama!" howled the enraged monster.
"Send this filthy sea-bear to the deuce, Mekipiros, can't you? It's licking my very nose off." The person so addressed was a curious sport of nature. It was a square-set creature dressed completely in women's clothes. Its features were those of a semi-bestial type.
"Who gave you this letter?" asked the rector. Mekipiros sat there tied with cords so as to be almost bent double with his head between his knees, and did not seem to be aware that he was spoken to. "Do you hear?" whispered the headsman's apprentice hoarsely, at the same time giving him a vicious pinch.
The monster set up a howl, which lasted only for an instant, then he was silent again, and his face did not change. "Is it not true now, my dear son, that a gentleman gave you this letter?" asked the rector, giving the question another turn. Mekipiros made no reply.
"Will you shut up!" called Ivan, in a voice of suppressed fury. "The beast will betray us! Haul up, can't you?" Ivan clutched hold of the rope with both hands. Mekipiros with vigorous tugs hoisted him upwards, hauling up the rope with his short arms as easily as if there were no weight attached to it. "How I wish he would let him fall," murmured Dame Zudár to herself.
Nothing could have been more circumspectly conceived. When the rope was firmly fastened to the top of the gutter Ivan hurried up Mekipiros and shoved the free end of the rope into his hand. The little monster did not trust himself to shout but expressed his satisfaction in a lowly murmured "Hamamamama!"
Round the roof of the castle ran a metal gutter, which terminated at the corners in old-fashioned dolphins. On to one of such dolphins Ivan threw the pack-thread noose, and seizing hold of the re-descending lead plummet, hoisted up the rope likewise. It was really a capital idea. Mekipiros was to clamber up the rope, he knew the trick of it.
And then one pulled his hair, and another tugged at his ears, and a third tweaked his nose, and everyone of them was delighted to have found a fresh object on which to wreak their furious cruelty. And all the time the fellow ground his teeth together and said nothing. It was poor Mekipiros. It was his mauled and bruised shape, his half-bestial face that they were torturing and tormenting.
"Come! go in and don't stand staring aimlessly about," said the new-comer turning to his comrade, who was standing in melancholy amazement on the threshold, wrapped up in a large mantle, with a broad-brimmed hat on his head. The dog accompanied the guests as far as the door of his kennel, sniffing all the time at the heels of the stranger, whilst the gabbling Mekipiros tugged away at its chain.
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