olice came, the news of
the terrible discovery was all over the village, and there was no
thought of sleep or rest after that.

Worried to death, perspiring and puzzled, the police officers hastily
sent down from Arad had vainly tried to make head or tail of the mass of
conflicting accounts which were poured into their ears in a continuous
stream of loud-voiced chatter for hours at a stretch: and God only knows
what judicial blunders might have been committed before the culprit was
finally brought to punishment if the latter had not, once for all,
himself delivered over the key of the mystery.

Leopold Hirsch had hanged himself to one of the beams in his own back
shop. His assistant found him there--dead--later in the day.

As--by previous arrangement--the whole village was likely to be at Elsa
Kapus' wedding, there would not have been much use in keeping the shop
open. So the assistant had been given a holiday, but he came to the
shop toward midday, when the whole village was full of the terrible news
and half the population out in the street gossiping and commenting on
it--marvelling why his employer had not yet been seen outside his doors.

The discovery--which the assistant at once communicated to the
police--solved the riddle of Eros Bela's death. With a sigh of relief
the police officers adjourned from the mayor's parlour, where they had
been holding their preliminary inquiries, to the castle, where it was
their duty to report the occurrence to my lord the Count.

At the castle of course everyone was greatly surprised: the noble
Countess raised her aristocratic eyebrows and declared her abhorrence of
hearing of these horrors. The Count took the opportunity of cursing the
peasantry for a quarrelsome, worrying lot, and offered the police
officers a snack and a glass of wine. He was hardly sorry for the loss
of his bailiff, as Eros Bela had been rather tiresome of late--bumptious
and none too sober--and his lordship anyhow had resolved to dispense
with his services after he was married. So the death really caused him
very little inconvenience.

Young Count Feri knew nothing, of course. He was not likely to allow
himself or his name to be mixed up with a village scandal: he shuddered
once or twice when the thought flashed through his mind how narrowly he
had escaped Eros Bela's fate, and to his credit be it said he had every
intention of showing Lakatos Andor--who undoubtedly had saved his life
by giving him tim