sooner! Do you know who the
third person was?"

"Oh, for goodness sake, shut up! There is supper! Sit down to your
evening meal!"

The magistrate and Dukovski sat down to supper. Dukovski poured himself
out a glass of vodka, rose, drew himself up, and said, with sparkling
eyes:

"Well, learn that the third person, who acted in concert with that
scoundrel Psyekoff, and did the smothering, was a woman! Yes-s! I
mean--the murdered man's sister, Maria Ivanovna!"

Chubikoff choked over his vodka, and fixed his eyes on Dukovski.

"You aren't--what's-its-name? Your head isn't what-do-you-call-it? You
haven't a pain in it?"

"I am perfectly well! Very well, let us say that I am crazy; but how do
you explain her confusion when we appeared? How do you explain her
unwillingness to give us any information? Let us admit that these are
trifles. Very well! All right! But remember their relations. She
detested her brother. She never forgave him for living apart from his
wife. She of the Old Faith, while in her eyes he is a godless
profligate. There is where the germ of her hate was hatched. They say he
succeeded in making her believe that he was an angel of Satan. He even
went in for spiritualism in her presence!"

"Well, what of that?"

"You don't understand? She, as a member of the Old Faith, murdered him
through fanaticism. It was not only that she was putting to death a
weed, a profligate--she was freeing the world of an anti-christ!--and
there, in her opinion, was her service, her religious achievement! Oh,
you don't know those old maids of the Old Faith. Read Dostoyevsky! And
what does Lyeskoff say about them, or Petcherski? It was she, and nobody
else, even if you cut me open. She smothered him! O treacherous woman!
wasn't that the reason why she was kneeling before the icons, when we
came in, just to take our attention away? 'Let me kneel down and pray,'
she said to herself, 'and they will think I am tranquil and did not
expect them!' That is the plan of all novices in crime, Nicholas
Yermolaiyevitch, old pal! My dear old man, won't you intrust this
business to me? Let me personally bring it through! Friend, I began it
and I will finish it!"

Chubikoff shook his head and frowned.

"We know how to manage difficult matters ourselves," he said; "and your
business is not to push yourself in where you don't belong. Write from
dictation when you are dictated to; that is your job!"

Dukovski flared up, banged the door,