Page:Chernyshevsky - What's to be done? A romance.djvu/16

6 The door yielded; they entered; the room was empty.

"Look under the bed," said the official. At the same time, approaching the table, he saw a sheet of paper, unfolded, upon which were written these words:

"I leave at eleven o'clock in the evening and shall not return. I shall be heard on the Liteing Bridge between two and three o'clock in the morning. Suspect no one."

"Ah! the thing is clear now! at first we did not understand," said the official.

"What do you mean, Ivan Afanacievitch?" asked the butler.

"Give me some tea, and I will tell you."

The story of the commissioner of police was for a long time the subject of conversations and discussions; as for the adventure itself, this was it: At half-past two in the morning, the night being extremely dark, something like a flash was seen on the Liteing Bridge, and at the same time a pistol shot was heard. The guardians of the bridge and the few people who were passing ran to the spot, but found nobody.

"It is not a murder; some one has blown his brains out," they said; and some of the more generous offered to search the river. Hooks were brought and even a fisherman's net; but they pulled from the water only a few pieces of wood. Of the body no trace, and besides the night was very dark, and much time had elapsed: the body had had time to drift out to sea.

"Go search yonder!" said a group of carpers, who maintained that there was no body and that some drunkard or practical joker had simply fired a shot and fled; "perhaps he has even mingled with the crowd, now so anxious, and is laughing at the alarm which he has caused." These carpers were evidently progressives. But the majority, conservative, as it always is when it reasons prudently, held to the first explanation.

"A practical joker? Go to! Some one has really blown his brains out."

Being less numerous, the progressives were conquered. But the conquerors split at the very moment of victory.

He had blown his brains out, certainly, but why?

"He was drunk," said some.

"He had dissipated his fortune," thought others.

"Simply an imbecile!" observed somebody.

Upon this word imbecile, all agreed, even those who disputed suicide.

In short, whether it was a drunkard or a spendthrift who had blown his brains out or a practical joker who had made a pretence of killing himself (in the latter case the joke was a stupid one), he was an imbecile.

There ended the night's adventure. At the hotel was found the proof that it was no piece of nonsense, but a real suicide.

This conclusion satisfied the conservatives especially; for, said they, it proves that we are right. If it had been only a practical joker, we might have hesitated