“It was yellow, made of canvas.”

“Capital!  Then it was they who were in dark blue. . . .”

Some of the burrs were cut off and carefully wrapped up in paper.  At that moment Artsybashev-Svistakovsky, the police captain, and Tyutyuev, the doctor, arrived.  The police captain greeted the others, and at once proceeded to satisfy his curiosity; the doctor, a tall and extremely lean man with sunken eyes, a long nose, and a sharp chin, greeting no one and asking no questions, sat down on a stump, heaved a sigh and said: 

“The Serbians are in a turmoil again!  I can’t make out what they want!  Ah, Austria, Austria!  It’s your doing!”

The inspection of the window from outside yielded absolutely no result; the inspection of the grass and surrounding bushes furnished many valuable clues.  Dyukovsky succeeded, for instance, in detecting a long, dark streak in the grass, consisting of stains, and stretching from the window for a good many yards into the garden.  The streak ended under one of the lilac bushes in a big, brownish stain.  Under the same bush was found a boot, which turned out to be the fellow to the one found in the bedroom.

“This is an old stain of blood,” said Dyukovsky, examining the stain.

At the word “blood,” the doctor got up and lazily took a cursory glance at the stain.

“Yes, it’s blood,” he muttered.

“Then he wasn’t strangled since there’s blood,” said Tchubikov, looking malignantly at Dyukovsky.

“He was strangled in the bedroom, and here, afraid he would come to, they stabbed him with something sharp.  The stain under the bush shows that he lay there for a comparatively long time, while they were trying to find some way of carrying him, or something to carry him on out of the garden.”

“Well, and the boot?”

“That boot bears out my contention that he was murdered while he was taking off his boots before going to bed.  He had taken off one boot, the other, that is, this boot he had only managed to get half off.  While he was being dragged and shaken the boot that was only half on came off of itself. . . .”

“What powers of deduction!  Just look at him!” Tchubikov jeered.  “He brings it all out so pat!  And when will you learn not to put your theories forward?  You had better take a little of the grass for analysis instead of arguing!”

After making the inspection and taking a plan of the locality they went off to the steward’s to write a report and have lunch.  At lunch they talked.

“Watch, money, and everything else . . . are untouched,” Tchubikov began the conversation.  “It is as clear as twice two makes four that the murder was committed not for mercenary motives.”

“It was committed by a man of the educated class,” Dyukovsky put in.

“From what do you draw that conclusion?”

“I base it on the Swedish match which the peasants about here have not learned to use yet.  Such matches are only used by landowners and not by all of them.  He was murdered, by the way, not by one but by three, at least:  two held him while the third strangled him.  Klyauzov was strong and the murderers must have known that.”