“‘Grind away, Emilian; it’s your week!’ So, according to you, whoever knew Aquilina is the murderer!  Hot-head!  You ought to be sucking a bottle, and not handling affairs!  You were one of Aquilina’s admirers yourself—­does it follow that you are implicated too?”

“Aquilina was cook in your house for a month.  I am saying nothing about that!  The night before that Saturday I was playing cards with you, and saw you, otherwise I should be after you too!  It isn’t the woman that matters, old chap!  It is the mean, nasty, low spirit of jealousy that matters.  The retiring young man was not pleased when they got the better of him, you see!  His vanity, don’t you see?  He wanted revenge.  Then, those thick lips of his suggest passion.  So there you have it:  wounded self-love and passion.  That is quite enough motive for a murder.  We have two of them in our hands; but who is the third?  Nicholas and Psyekoff held him, but who smothered him?  Psyekoff is shy, timid, an all-round coward.  And Nicholas would not know how to smother with a pillow.  His sort use an ax or a club.  Some third person did the smothering; but who was it?”

Dukovski crammed his hat down over his eyes and pondered.  He remained silent until the carriage rolled up to the magistrate’s door.

“Eureka!” he said, entering the little house and throwing off his overcoat.  “Eureka, Nicholas Yermolaiyevitch!  The only thing I can’t understand is, how it did not occur to me sooner!  Do you know who the third person was?”

“Oh, for goodness sake, shut up!  There is supper!  Sit down to your evening meal!”

The magistrate and Dukovski sat down to supper.  Dukovski poured himself out a glass of vodka, rose, drew himself up, and said, with sparkling eyes: 

“Well, learn that the third person, who acted in concert with that scoundrel Psyekoff, and did the smothering, was a woman!  Yes-s!  I mean—­the murdered man’s sister, Maria Ivanovna!”

Chubikoff choked over his vodka, and fixed his eyes on Dukovski.

“You aren’t—­what’s-its-name?  Your head isn’t what-do-you-call-it?  You haven’t a pain in it?”

“I am perfectly well!  Very well, let us say that I am crazy; but how do you explain her confusion when we appeared?  How do you explain her unwillingness to give us any information?  Let us admit that these are trifles.  Very well!  All right!  But remember their relations.  She detested her brother.  She never forgave him for living apart from his wife.  She is of the Old Faith, while in her eyes he is a godless profligate.  There is where the germ of her hate was hatched.  They say he succeeded in making her believe that he was an angel of Satan.  He even went in for spiritualism in her presence!”

“Well, what of that?”