the
police in order to be able to study everything more at my ease. Do you
understand now my confidence and why I have been able to assume so heavy
a responsibility? It is because I knew I had only one thing to watch:
one little hat-pin. It is not difficult, madame, to watch a single
little hat-pin."

"A mistake," said Matrena, in a low voice. "Miserable little domovoi who
told me nothing, me whom you let go to sleep on my mattress, in front of
that door that might open any moment."

"No, madame. For I was behind it!"

"Ah, dear little holy angel! But what were you thinking of! That door
has not been watched this afternoon. In our absence it could have been
opened. If someone has placed a bomb during our absence!"

"That is why I sent you at once in to the dining-room on that search
that I thought would be fruitless, dear madame. And that is why I
hurried upstairs to the bedroom. I went to the stairway door instantly.
I had prepared for proof positive if anyone had pushed it open even half
a millimeter. No, no one had touched the door in our absence.

"Ah, dear heroic little friend of Jesus! But listen to me. Listen to me,
my angel. Ah, I don't know where I am or what I say. My brain is no
more than a flabby balloon punctured with pins, with little holes of
hat-pins. Tell me about the hat-pins. Right off! No, at first, what is
it that makes you believe--good God!--that someone will return by that
door? How can you see that, all that, in a poor little hat-pin?"

"Madame, it is not a single hat-pin hole; there are two of them.

"Two hat-pin holes?"

"Yes, two. An old one and a new one. One quite new. Why this second
hole? Because the old one was judged a little too narrow and they wished
to enlarge it, and in enlarging it they broke off the point of a hat-pin
in it. Madame, the point is there yet, filling up the little old hole
and the piece of metal is very sharp and very bright."

"Now I understand the examination of the hat-pins. Then it is so easy as
that to get through a door with a hat-pin?"

"Nothing easier, especially if the panel is of pine. Sometimes one
happens to break the point of a pin in the first hole. Then of necessity
one makes a second. In order to commence the second hole, the point of
the pin being broken, they have used the point of a pen-knife, then have
finished the hole with the hat-pin. The second hole is still nearer the
bolt than the first one. Don't move like that, madame."

"But