-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 I begin 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
honourable woman in the middle of the night for a crazy boy!"

"Respectable, honourable! Do honourable 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 m