LITMIR.BIZ

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to bed at that time. While he was taking off his boots and giving you some instructions regarding the estate, Nikolay and you at a given signal seized your intoxicated master and flung him back upon the bed. One of you sat on his feet, the other on his head. At that moment the lady, you know who, in a black dress, who had arranged with you beforehand the part she would take in the crime, came in from the passage. She picked up the pillow, and proceeded to smother him with it. During the struggle, the light went out. The woman took a box of Swedish matches out of her pocket and lighted the candle. Isn’t that right? I see from your face that what I say is true. Well, to proceed…. Having smothered him, and being convinced that he had ceased to breathe, Nikolay and you dragged him out of window and put him down near the burdocks. Afraid that he might regain consciousness, you struck him with something sharp. Then you carried him, and laid him for some time under a lilac bush. After resting and considering a little, you carried him… lifted him over the hurdle…. Then went along the road… Then comes the dam; near the dam you were frightened by a peasant. But what is the matter with you?”

      Psyekov, white as a sheet, got up, staggering.

      “I am suffocating!” he said. “Very well…. So be it…. Only I must go…. Please.”

      Psyekov was led out.

      “At last he has admitted it!” said Tchubikov, stretching at his ease. “He has given himself away! How neatly I caught him there.”

      “And he didn’t deny the woman in black!” said Dyukovsky, laughing. “I am awfully worried over that Swedish match, though! I can’t endure it any longer. Goodbye! I am going!”

      Dyukovsky put on his cap and went off. Tchubikov began interrogating Akulka.

      Akulka declared that she knew nothing about it….

      “I have lived with you and with nobody else!” she said.

      At six o’clock in the evening Dyukovsky returned. He was more excited than ever. His hands trembled so much that he could not unbutton his overcoat. His cheeks were burning. It was evident that he had not come back without news.

      “Veni, vidi, vici!” he cried, dashing into Tchubikov’s room and sinking into an armchair. “I vow on my honour, I begin to believe in my own genius. Listen, damnation take us! Listen and wonder, old friend! It’s comic and it’s sad. You have three in your grasp already… haven’t you? I have found a fourth murderer, or rather murderess, for it is a woman! And what a woman! I would have given ten years of my life merely to touch her shoulders. But… listen. I drove to Klyauzovka and proceeded to describe a spiral round it. On the way I visited all the shopkeepers and innkeepers, asking for Swedish matches. Everywhere I was told ‘No.’ I have been on my round up to now. Twenty times I lost hope, and as many times regained it. I have been on the go all day long, and only an hour ago came upon what I was looking for. A couple of miles from here they gave me a packet of a dozen boxes of matches. One box was missing… I asked at once: ‘Who bought that box?’ ‘So-and-so. She took a fancy to them… They crackle.’ My dear fellow! Nikolay Yermolaitch! What can sometimes be done by a man who has been expelled from a seminary and studied Gaboriau is beyond all conception! From to-day I shall began to respect myself!… Ough…. Well, let us go!”

      “Go where?”

      “To her, to the fourth…. We must make haste, or… I shall explode with impatience! Do you know who she is? You will never guess. The young wife of our old police superintendent, Yevgraf Kuzmitch, Olga Petrovna; that’s who it is! She bought that box of matches!”

      “You… you…. Are you out of your mind?”

      “It’s very natural! In the first place she smokes, and in the second she was head over ears in love with Klyauzov. He rejected her love for the sake of an Akulka. Revenge. I remember now, I once came upon them behind the screen in the kitchen. She was cursing him, while he was smoking her cigarette and puffing the smoke into her face. But do come along; make haste, for it is getting dark already…. Let us go!”

      “I have not gone so completely crazy yet as to disturb a respectable, honourable woman at night for the sake of a wretched boy!”

      “Honourable, respectable…. You are a rag then, not an examining magistrate! I have never ventured to abuse you, but now you force me to it! You rag! you old fogey! Come, dear Nikolay Yermolaitch, I entreat you!”

      The examining magistrate waved his hand in refusal and spat in disgust.

      “I beg you! I beg you, not for my own sake, but in the interests of justice! I beseech you, indeed! Do me a favour, if only for once in your life!”

      Dyukovsky fell on his knees.

      “Nikolay Yermolaitch, do be so good! Call me a scoundrel, a worthless wretch if I am in error about that woman! It is such a case, you know! It is a case! More like a novel than a case. The fame of it will be all over Russia. They will make you examining magistrate for particularly important cases! Do understand, you unreasonable old man!”

      The examining magistrate frowned and irresolutely put out his hand towards his hat.

      “Well, the devil take you!” he said, “let us go.”

      It was already dark when the examining magistrate’s waggonette rolled up to the police superintendent’s door.

      “What brutes we are!” said Tchubikov, as he reached for the bell. “We are disturbing people.”

      “Never mind, never mind, don’t be frightened. We will say that one of the springs has broken.”

      Tchubikov and Dyukovsky were met in the doorway by a tall, plump woman of three and twenty, with eyebrows as black as pitch and full red lips. It was Olga Petrovna herself.

      “Ah, how very nice,” she said, smiling all over her face. “You are just in time for supper. My Yevgraf Kuzmitch is not at home…. He is staying at the priest’s. But we can get on without him. Sit down. Have you come from an inquiry?”

      “Yes…. We have broken one of our springs, you know,” began Tchubikov, going into the drawing-room and sitting down in an easy-chair.

      “Take her by surprise at once and overwhelm her,” Dyukovsky whispered to him.

      “A spring… er… yes…. We just drove up… .”

      “Overwhelm her, I tell you! She will guess if you go drawing it out.”

      “Oh, do as you like, but spare me,” muttered Tchubikov, getting up and walking to the window. “I can’t! You cooked the mess, you eat it!”

      “Yes, the spring,” Dyukovsky began, going up to the superintendent’s wife and wrinkling his long nose. “We have not come in to… er-er-er… supper, nor to see Yevgraf Kuzmitch. We have come to ask you, madam, where is Mark Ivanovitch whom you have murdered?”

      “What? What Mark Ivanovitch?” faltered the superintendent’s wife, and her full face was suddenly in one instant suffused with crimson. “I… don’t understand.”

      “I ask you in the name of the law! Where is Klyauzov? We know all about it!”

      “Through whom?” the superintendent’s wife asked slowly, unable to face Dyukovsky’s eyes.

      “Kindly inform us where he is!”

      “But how did you find out? Who told you?”

      “We know all about it. I insist in the name of the law.”

      The examining magistrate, encouraged by the lady’s confusion, went up to her.

      “Tell us and we will go away. Otherwise we …”

      “What do you want with him?”

      “What is the object of such questions, madam? We ask you for information. You are trembling, confused…. Yes, he has been murdered, and if you will have it, murdered by you! Your accomplices have

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