In changing my clothes, I forgot the wallet in my frock coat . . . Verily, when God wishes to punish a man, he first deprives him of reason.29 And it was only today, at half-past seven, on awakening, that I jumped up like a half-wit and snatched my frock coat first thing—only an empty pocket!
Not a trace of the wallet."
"Ah, that's unpleasant!"
"Precisely unpleasant; and you with your genuine tact have just found the suitable expression," Lebedev added, not without insidiousness.
"How is it, though . . ." the prince pondered, beginning to worry, "no, this is serious."
"Precisely serious—you've sought out yet another word, Prince, to signify ..."
"Oh, enough, Lukyan Timofeich, what was there to seek out? The words aren't important. . . Do you suppose that, in a drunken state, you might have dropped it out of your pocket?"
"I might have.
Everything is possible in a drunken state, as you have so sincerely expressed it, my much-esteemed Prince!
But I beg you to consider, sir: if I dropped the wallet out of my pocket while changing my frock coat, the dropped object should be lying there on the floor.
Where is that object, sir?"
"You didn't stuff it into a desk drawer somewhere?"
"I've looked all over, rummaged everywhere, the more so as I never hid it anywhere or opened any drawer, which I remember distinctly."
"Did you look in the little cupboard?"
"First thing, sir, and even several times today . . . And how could I have put it into the little cupboard, my truly-esteemed Prince?"
"I confess, Lebedev, this worries me.
So someone found it on the floor?"
"Or stole it from the pocket!
Two alternatives, sir."
"This worries me very much, because who precisely . . . That's the question!"
"Without any doubt, that is the main question; you find words and thoughts and define the situation with astonishing precision, illustrious Prince."
"Ah, Lukyan Timofeich, stop your mockery, there's . . ."
"Mockery!" cried Lebedev, clasping his hands.
"Well, well, all right, I'm not angry, there's something else here . . . I'm afraid for people.
Whom do you suspect?"
"A most difficult and . . . most complicated question!
I cannot suspect my maid: she was sitting in her kitchen.
Nor my own children ..."
"Hardly!"
"That means it was someone among the guests, sir."
"But is that possible?"
"It is totally and in the highest degree impossible, but it must certainly be so.
I agree, however, to allow, and am even convinced, that if there was a theft, it was carried out not in the evening, when we were all together, but at night or even towards morning, by someone who stayed overnight."
"Ah, my God!"
"Burdovsky and Nikolai Ardalionovich I naturally exclude; they never entered my quarters, sir."
"Hardly, and even if they had!
Who spent the night with you?"
"Counting me, there were four who spent the night, in two adjacent rooms: me, the general, Keller, and Mr. Ferdyshchenko.
Which means it's one of us four, sir!"
"Three, that is; but who?"
"I included myself for the sake of fairness and order; but you must agree, Prince, that I couldn't rob myself, though such things have happened in the world . . ."
"Ah, Lebedev, this is so tedious!" the prince cried impatiently. "To business, why drag it out! . . ."
"So three remain, sir, and first of all Mr. Keller, an unstable man, a drunk man, and on certain occasions a liberal, that is, with regard to the pocket, sir; in everything else his inclinations are, so to speak, more old chivalric than liberal.
He slept here at first, in the sick boy's room, and it was only at night that he moved over to us, on the pretext that it was hard to sleep on the bare floor."
"Do you suspect him?"
"I did, sir.
When I jumped up like a half-wit past seven in the morning and slapped myself on the forehead, I at once woke up the general, who was sleeping the sleep of the innocent.
After considering the strange disappearance of Ferdyshchenko, which in itself aroused our suspicion, we both decided at once to search Keller, who was lying there like . . . like . . . almost like a doornail, sir.
We searched him thoroughly: not a centime in his pockets, and not even a single pocket without holes in it.
A blue, checked cotton handkerchief, sir, in indecent condition.