Well, I have found the fourth, and a woman at that. You will never believe who it is! But listen. I went to Klausoff's village, and began to make a spiral round it. I visited all the little shops, public houses, dram shops on the road, everywhere asking for safety matches. Everywhere they said they hadn't any. I made a wide round. Twenty times I lost faith, and twenty times I got it back again. I knocked about the whole day, and only an hour ago I got on the track. Three versts from here. They gave me a packet of ten boxes. One box was missing. Immediately: 'Who bought the other box?' 'Such-a-one! She was pleased with them!' Old man!
Nicholas Yermolaiyevitch! See what a fellow who was expelled from the seminary and who has read Gaboriau can do! From to-day on Ibegin to respect myself! Oof! Well, come!""Come where?"
"To her, to number four! We must hurry, otherwise--otherwise I'll burst with impatience! Do you know who she is? You'll never guess! Olga Petrovna, Marcus Ivanovitch's wife--his own wife--that's who it is! She is the person who bought the matchbox!""You--you--you are out of your mind!"
"It's quite simple! To begin with, she smokes. Secondly, she was head and ears in love with Klausoff, even after he refused to live in the same house with her, because she was always scolding his head off. Why, they say she used to beat him because she loved him so much. And then he positively refused to stay in the same house.
Love turned sour. 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.' But come along! Quick, or it will be dark. Come!""I am not yet sufficiently crazy to go and disturb a respectable honorable woman in the middle of the night for a crazy boy!""Respectable, honorable! Do honorable women murder their husbands?
After that you are a rag, and not an examining magistrate! I never ventured to call you names before, but now you compel me to. Rag!
Dressing-gown!--Dear Nicholas Yermolaiyevitch, do come, I beg of you--!"The magistrate made a deprecating motion with his hand.
"I beg of you! I ask, not for myself, but in the interests of justice. I beg you! I implore you! Do what I ask you to, just this once!"Dukovski went down on his knees.
"Nicholas Yermolaiyevitch! Be kind! Call me a blackguard, a ne'er-do-weel, if I am mistaken about this woman. You see what an affair it is. What a case it is. A romance! A woman murdering her own husband for love! The fame of it will go all over Russia.
They will make you investigator in all important cases.
Understand, O foolish old man!"
The magistrate frowned, and undecidedly stretched his hand toward his cap.
"Oh, the devil take you!" he said. "Let us go!"It was dark when the magistrate's carriage rolled up to the porch of the old country house in which Olga Petrovna had taken refuge with her brother.
"What pigs we are," said Chubikoff, taking hold of the bell, "to disturb a poor woman like this!""It's all right! It's all right! Don't get frightened! We can say that we have broken a spring."Chubikoff and Dukovski were met at the threshold by a tall buxom woman of three and twenty, with pitch-black brows and juicy red lips. It was Olga Petrovna herself, apparently not the least distressed by the recent tragedy.
"Oh, what a pleasant surprise!" she said, smiling broadly. "You are just in time for supper. Kuzma Petrovitch is not at home. He is visiting the priest, and has stayed late. But we'll get on without him! Be seated. You have come from the examination?""Yes. We broke a spring, you know," began Chubikoff, entering the sitting room and sinking into an armchair.
"Take her unawares--at once!" whispered Dukovski; "take her unawares!""A spring--hum--yes--so we came in."
"Take her unawares, I tell you! She will guess what the matter is if you drag things out like that.""Well, do it yourself as you want. But let me get out of it,"muttered Chubikoff, rising and going to the window.
"Yes, a spring," began Dukovski, going close to Olga Petrovna and wrinkling his long nose. "We did not drive over here--to take supper with you or--to see Kuzma Petrovitch. We came here to ask you, respected madam, where Marcus Ivanovitch is, whom you murdered!""What? Marcus Ivanovitch murdered?" stammered Olga Petrovna, and her broad face suddenly and instantaneously flushed bright scarlet.
"I don't--understand!"
"I ask you in the name of the law! Where is Klausoff? We know all!""Who told you?" Olga Petrovna asked in a low voice, unable to endure Dukovski's glance.
"Be so good as to show us where he is!"
"But how did you find out? Who told you?""We know all! I demand it in the name of the law!"The examining magistrate, emboldened by her confusion, came forward and said:
"Show us, and we will go away. Otherwise, we--""What do you want with him?"
"Madam, what is the use of these questions? We ask you to show us!
You tremble, you are agitated. Yes, he has been murdered, and, if you must have it, murdered by you! Your accomplices have betrayed you!"Olga Petrovna grew pale.
