“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.