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We began scratching the caked silt with our fingers, emptying it out of the hole, and — believe it or not,— soon my fingers hit on something hard. In the palm of my hand lay a cigarette-case made of maple wood. There was nothing else in the hole. We climbed out and carefully wiped off from the cigarette-case the reddish silt mixed with clay. In the cigarette-case lay a piece of white cloth which Roman had evidently torn out from his shirt with his teeth. And on this little rag hardly decipherable reddish letters: “Varona mur...” I shrugged my shoulders. The devil knows what this meant! Either evidence that Varona killed Roman, or a request to Varona to kill someone. Rygor was looking at me. “Well, so now it’s clear, Mr. Andrei. Varona drove him here. Tomorrow we shall take him.” “Why tomorrow? He may come today even.” “Today is Friday. You, sir, have forgotten this. People say: ‘Look for the cut-throat in the church.’ Really too holy and godly. They kill with the name of the Holy Trinity on their lips. They will come tomorrow because they’ve lost all patience. They have got to get rid of you.” He became silent, a harsh flame blazed in his eyes. “Tomorrow, at last, I’ll bring the muzhiks. With pitchforks. And we’ll give you one, too. If you’re with us, then you’re with us to the end. We’ll lie in wait at the broken-down cross. And all of them we’ll finish off, all of them. To the very roots, the devil’s seed.” We went together to Marsh Firs and there we learned that Miss Nadzeya was not alone. Mr. Garaboorda was with her. Yanowskaya had been avoiding me lately, and when we met she would turn her eyes away, eyes that had grown dark and were as sad as autumn water. Therefore I asked the housekeeper to call her out into the lower hall where Rygor was somberly looking at St. Yuri, himself as powerful and tall as the statue. Yanowskaya came and Rygor, ashamed of his footprints all over the floor, was hiding his feet behind an armchair. But his voice when he addressed her was as formerly, rough, though somewhere deep down within him, something trembled. “Listen, clever Miss. We have found King Stakh. It’s Varona. Give me a pair of guns. Tomorrow we’ll put an end to him.” “And by the way,” I said, “I was mistaken when I asked you whether you knew a person whose surname began with ‘Likol’. Now I want to ask you whether you know a person whose nickname is Likol, simply Likol. He is the most dangerous man in the gang, perhaps its leader even.” “No!” she screamed suddenly, her hands clutching at her breast. Her eyes widened, frozen with horror. “No! No!” “Who is he?” Rygor asked darkly. “Be merciful! Have pity on me! That’s impossible... He is so kind-hearted and tender. He used to hold Svetilovich and me on his knees. Our childish tongues at that time couldn’t pronounce his name, we distorted it and that gave birth to the nickname by which we called him only among ourselves. Few people knew this.” “Who is he?” adamantly repeated Rygor moving stone jaws. And then she began to weep. Cried, sobbed like a child. And through her sobbing finally escaped: “Mr. Likol... Mr. Rygor Dubatowk.” I was horror-stricken to the very heart. Dumbfounded! “Impossible! Such a good man! And, most important, of what benefit is it to him? After all, he’s not an heir!” And my memory obligingly reminded me of the words of one of the scoundrels under the tree: “He’s in love with antiquity.” And even the undeciphered “...ly ma...” in the letter to Svetilovich suddenly turned naturally into Dubatowk’s favourite byword: “Holy martyrs! What’s going on here in this world!” I wiped my eyes driving off my confusion. Like lightning the solution flashed through my mind. “Wait here, Nadzeya Ramanowna. And Rygor, you wait, too. I’ll go to Mr. Garaboorda. Then I’ll have to look through Berman’s things.” Up the stairs I ran, my mind working in two directions. Firstly: Dubatowk might have arranged matters with Berman (why had he killed him?) Secondly: Garaboorda also might have been dependent on Dubatowk. When I opened the door, an elderly gentleman with Homeric haunches, got out from his armchair to meet me. He looked at my determined face in surprise. “Excuse me, Mr. Garaboorda,” I flung at him sharply, “I must put a question to you concerning your relations with Mr. Dubatowk: why did you permit this man to order you about?” He had the look of a thief caught in the act of committing a crime. His low forehead reddened, his eyes began to wander. However, from the look on my face, he probably understood that I was in no mood for joking. “What can one do... Promissory notes...” he muttered. “You gave Mr. Dubatowk promissory notes secured by Yanowskaya’s estate, which does not belong to you?” And again I struck home aiming at the sky. “It was such a miserly sum. Only 3,000 roubles. The kennel requires so much.” Things were beginning to fall into their places. Dubatowk’s monstrous plan gradually became clear. “According to Roman Yanowsky’s will,” he mumbled, removing something from his morning-coat with trembling fingers, “such a substitution was established. Yanowskaya’s children receive the inheritance...” and he looked at me pitifully in the eyes. “There won’t be any. She’ll die, you know... She’ll die soon. After her — her husband. But she is mad, who will marry her?.. Then the next step — the last of the Yanowskys. But there aren’t any, after Svetilovich’s death — none. I am Yanowskaya’s relative in the female line. If there aren’t any children or a husband — the castle is mine.” And he began to whimper: “But how could I wait? I’ve so many promissory notes. I’m such an unfortunate person. Mr. Rygor has bought up most of my notes. And in addition gave 3,000 roubles. Now he’ll be the owner here.” “Listen to me,” speaking through set teeth, “there was, is, and will be only one owner here, Miss Nadzeya Yanowskaya.” “I laid no hope on receiving an inheritance. Yanowskaya could get married. So I gave him a promissory note, its security being the castle.” “So! You lack both shame and a conscience. You probably do not even know what they are. But don’t you really know that from the financial aspect this act is not valid? That it’s criminal?” “No, I don’t. I was glad.” “But you know, don’t you, that you drove Dubatowk into committing a terrible crime, a crime for which there is no word even in man’s language? Of what is the poor girl guilty that you decided to deprive her of her life?” “I suspected that it was a crime,” he babbled, “but my kennel, my house...” “You lousy thing! I don’t want to dirty my hands on you. The provincial court will busy itself with you. And in the meantime, on my own authority, I’ll put you in the dungeon of this house for a week, so you won’t be able to warn the other rascals.” He began to whimper and whine: “That’s coercion.” “It’s for you, is it, to speak of coercion? You villain! It’s for you, is it, to appeal to the law?” I flung at him. “What do you know about that? You who lick people’s boots!” I called Rygor, and he pushed Garaboorda into the dungeon, under the central part of the building where there weren’t any windows. An iron door thundered behind him. CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH The small light of a candle loomed somewhere in the distance behind dark windowpanes. When I lifted my eyes, I saw close by the reflection of my face in sharp shadows. I was looking through Berman’s papers. It still seemed to me that I might find something of interest in them. Berman was too complicated a character to have lived the life of a foolish sheep. And so, here I was with the consent of the mistress. I had taken out all the papers from the secretaire and put them on the table, also all the books, letters and documents, and I sat, sneezing from the thick layer of dust on these relics. There was little of interest, however, in them. I came across a letter from Berman’s mother, in which she asked for help, and the rough draft of his answer, where he wrote that he was supporting his brother, that now his brother didn’t interfere with his mother living as she liked, and as for the rest — they were quits. Strange! What brother, where is he now? I dug out something resembling a diary in which next to monetary expenditures and rather clever remarks on Byelorussian history, I found also Berman’s discourses such as these: “The Northwest Territory as a concept is a fiction. The reason for this possibly lies in the fact that it serves with its blood and brain the idea of the universe as a whole, but not as of five provinces, that it pays off all debts and obligations, and that it is preparing a new Messiah in its very depths for the salvation of mankind, and therefore its lot is to suffer. This, however, does not refer to those who are its best representatives, people possessing energy, strength and an aristocratic spirit.” “Well, just take a look, with the spirit of a knight, a strong man in torn pants,” I muttered. “My only love is my brother. At times it seems to me that all other people are only caricatures of him and there is need of a person who would remake everybody in his likeness. People must be creatures of darkness. Animal beauty appears more clearly in their organisms, a beauty that we must guard and love. Then isn’t the only difference between the genius and the idiot the fig-leaf, which man himself revised? Belaretzky’s mediocrity irritates me, and, by God, it would be better for him if he disappeared, and the sooner the better.” And yet another note: “Money is the emanation of human authority over a herd of others (regretfully so!). We should have learned to perform castration of the brains of all those who do not deserve the life of a conscious being. And the best should be given boundless happiness, for such a thing as justice is not foreseen by nature itself. This applies also to me. I need peace, which we have here more than anything else, and money in order to mature the idea for the sake of which I appeared in the world, the idea of splendid and exceptional injustice. And it seems to me that the first step might be the victory over that towards which my body is striving and which, however, it’s necessary to overcome, the desire