here: nailed over there, on the fifth shelf with old hats,
where we keep all dead cats."

"Scat! You darn fool!"

Niura laughs shrilly over all Yama, and throws herself down on the
sill, kicking her legs in high black stockings. Afterward, having
ceased laughing, she all of a sudden makes round astonished eyes and
says in a whisper:

"But do you know, girlie--why, he cut a woman's throat the year before
last--that same Prokhor. Honest to God!"

"Is that so? Did she die?"

"No, she didn't. She got by," says Niura, as though with regret. "But
just the same she lay for two months in the Alexandrovskaya Hospital.
The doctors said, that if it were only this teen-weeny bit higher--then
it would have been all over. Bye-bye!"

"Well, what did he do that to her for?"

"How should I know? Maybe she hid money from him or wasn't true to him.
He was her lover--her pimp."

"Well, and what did he get for it?"

"Why, nothing. There was no evidence of any kind. There had been a
free-for-all mix-up. About a hundred people were fighting. She also
told the police that she had no suspicions of any sort. But Prokhor
himself boasted afterwards: 'I,' says he, 'didn't do for Dunka that
time, but I'll finish her off another time. She,' says he, 'won't get
by my hands. I'm going to give her the works.'"

A shiver runs all the way down Liuba's back.

"They're desperate fellows, these pimps!" she pronounces quietly, with
horror in her voice.

"Something terrible! I, you know, played at love with our Simeon for a
whole year. Such a Herod, the skunk! I didn't have a whole spot on me.
I always went about in black and blue marks. And it wasn't for any
reason at all, but just simply so--he'd go in the morning into a room
with me, lock himself in, and start in to torture me. He'd wrench my
arms, pinch my breasts, grab my throat and begin to strangle me. Or
else he'd be kissing, kissing, and then he'd bite the lips so that the
blood would just spurt out ... I'd start crying--but that's all he was
looking for. Then he'd just pounce an me like a beast--simply shivering
all over. And he'd take all my money away--well, now, to the very last
little copper. There wasn't anything to buy ten cigarettes with. He's
stingy, this here Simeon, that's what, always into the bank-book with
it, always putting it away into the bank-book... Says when he gets a
thousand roubles together--he'll go into a monastery."

"Go on!"

"Honest to God. You look into