You see, Vera, I didn't know how to behave or what to do."
"Look here, Vasya," she interrupted him. "Would it pain you if I went to town to take a look at him?"
"No, no, Vera, please go.
I'd like to go myself, but Nikolai's bungled the whole thing.
I'm afraid I should feel awkward."
XII
Vera Nikolayevna left her carriage two blocks off Luteranskaya Street.
She found Zheltkov's flat without much difficulty.
She was met by the same grey-eyed old woman, very stout and wearing silver-rimmed spectacles, who asked as she had done the day before,
"Who do you wish to see?"
"Mr. Zheltkov," said the princess.
Her costume — her hat and gloves — and her rather peremptory tone apparently impressed the landlady.
She began to talk.
"Please step in, it's the first door on your left, and there — he is — He left us so soon.
Well, suppose he did embezzle money.
He should have told me about it.
You know we don't make much by letting rooms to bachelors.
But if it was a matter of six or seven hundred rubles I could have scraped it together to pay for him.
If only you knew, madam, what a wonderful man he was.
He had been my lodger for eight years, but he was more like a son to me."
There was a chair in the passage, and Vera sank down upon it.
"I'm a friend of your late lodger," she said, carefully choosing her words. "Please tell me something about his last minutes, about what he said and did."
"Two gentlemen came to see him, madam, and had a very long talk with him.
Then he told me they'd offered him the position of bailiff on an estate.
Then Mr. George ran out to telephone and came back so happy.
And then the two gentlemen left, but he sat down and began writing a letter.
Then he went out to post the letter, and then we heard something like a shot from a toy pistol.
We paid no attention to it.
He always had tea at seven o'clock.
Lukerya, the maid, went to knock at his door, but he didn't answer, and she knocked again and again.
We had to force the door, and there he lay dead."
"Tell me something about the bracelet," Vera Nikolayevna commanded.
"Ah, the bracelet — I quite forgot.
How do you know about it?
Before writing the letter he came to me and said,
'Are you a Catholic?'
'Yes,' I said.
Then he says,
'You have a nice custom' — that was what he said — 'a nice custom of hanging rings, necklaces, and gifts on the image of the Holy Virgin.
So won't you please hang this bracelet on your icon?'
I promised."
"Will you let me see him?" asked Vera.
"Of course, madam.
There's his door, the first on the left.
They were going to take him to the dissecting-room today, but he has a brother who asked permission to give him a Christian burial.
Please come."
Vera braced herself and opened the door.
The room smelled of incense, and three wax candles were burning in it.
Zheltkov was lying on the table, placed diagonally.
His head rested on a very low support — a small soil cushion that someone seemed to have pushed under it purposely, because that did not make any difference to a corpse.