On the way I visited all the shopkeepers and innkeepers, asking for
Swedish matches. Everywhere I was told 'No.' I have been on my round
up to now. Twenty times I lost hope, and as many times regained it.
I have been on the go all day long, and only an hour ago came upon
what I was looking for. A couple of miles from here they gave me a
packet of a dozen boxes of matches. One box was missing . . . I
asked at once: 'Who bought that box?' 'So-and-so. She took a fancy
to them. . . They crackle.' My dear fellow! Nikolay Yermolaitch!
What can sometimes be done by a man who has been expelled from a
seminary and studied Gaboriau is beyond all conception! From to-day
I shall began to respect myself! . . . Ough. . . . Well, let us
go!"

"Go where?"

"To her, to the fourth. . . . We must make haste, or . . . I shall
explode with impatience! Do you know who she is? You will never
guess. The young wife of our old police superintendent, Yevgraf
Kuzmitch, Olga Petrovna; that's who it is! She bought that box of
matches!"

"You . . . you. . . . Are you out of your mind?"

"It's very natural! In the first place she smokes, and in the second
she was head over ears in love with Klyauzov. He rejected her love
for the sake of an Akulka. Revenge. I remember now, I once came
upon them behind the screen in the kitchen. She was cursing him,
while he was smoking her cigarette and puffing the smoke into her
face. But do come along; make haste, for it is getting dark already
. . . . Let us go!"

"I have not gone so completely crazy yet as to disturb a respectable,
honourable woman at night for the sake of a wretched boy!"

"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 exami