On reaching the offices of the board, Stepan Arkadyevitch, escorted by a deferential porter with a portfolio, went into his little private room, put on his uniform, and went into the boardroom. The clerks and copyists all rose, greeting him with good-humored deference. Stepan Arkadyevitch moved quickly, as ever, to his place, shook hands with his colleagues, and sat down. He made a joke or two, and talked just as much as was consistent with due decorum, and began work. No one knew better than Stepan Arkadyevitch how to hit on the exact line between freedom, simplicity, and official stiffness necessary for the agreeable conduct of business. A secretary, with the good-humored deference common to everyone in Stepan Arkadyevitch’s office, came up with papers, and began to speak in the familiar and easy tone which had been introduced by Stepan Arkadyevitch. “We have succeeded in getting the information from the government department of Penza. Here, would you care?...” “You’ve got them at last?” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, laying his finger on the paper. “Now, gentlemen....” And the sitting of the board began. “If they knew,” he thought, bending his head with a significant air as he listened to the report, “what a guilty little boy their president was half an hour ago.” And his eyes were laughing during the reading of the report. Till two o’clock the sitting would go on without a break, and at two o’clock there would be an interval and luncheon. It was not yet two, when the large glass doors of the boardroom suddenly opened and someone came in. All the officials sitting on the further side under the portrait of the Tsar and the eagle, delighted at any distraction, looked round at the door; but the doorkeeper standing at the door at once drove out the intruder, and closed the glass door after him. When the case had been read through, Stepan Arkadyevitch got up and stretched, and by way of tribute to the liberalism of the times took out a cigarette in the boardroom and went into his private room. Two of the members of the board, the old veteran in the service, Nikitin, and the _Kammerjunker_ Grinevitch, went in with him. “We shall have time to finish after lunch,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “To be sure we shall!” said Nikitin. “A pretty sharp fellow this Fomin must be,” said Grinevitch of one of the persons taking part in the case they were examining. Stepan Arkadyevitch frowned at Grinevitch’s words, giving him thereby to understand that it was improper to pass judgment prematurely, and made him no reply. “Who was that came in?” he asked the doorkeeper. “Someone, your excellency, crept in without permission directly my back was turned. He was asking for you. I told him: when the members come out, then....” “Where is he?”