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Updated: May 4, 2025
With this end in view he wrote to his friend M. Hersant a keen student of the Occult in Saratova, to join him, and three days after the despatch of his letter met the latter at the Orskaia railway station. M. Durant retailed the case as they drove to his house. "It is a remarkable affair, in every way," he said.
While M. Durant stood glancing round him rather impatiently, M. Hersant made a careful scrutiny of the walls. "Humph," he said at last. "As you so rightly observed, Henri, this is a remarkable case. I have finished my investigation for to-night. Let us be going home. To-morrow I should like to visit Marthe's home."
The night grew darker and darker, and presently into the air stole a something that all three men at once realized was supernatural. M. Hersant coughed nervously, the priest crossed himself, and M. Durant called out, "This is getting ridiculous. These mediæval proceedings are too absurd. Let us go home." The next moment, from the far distance, a church clock began to strike.
"The police have searched it thoroughly," M. Durant said. "I've no doubt," M. Hersant replied drily. "No one knows better than I what the thoroughness of the police means." They entered the premises cautiously, since the roof was in a rickety condition, and any slight concussion might dislodge an avalanche of stones and plaster.
"Pray for the dead, and sprinkle the circle with holy water." The priest, as well as his trembling limbs would allow, obeyed; whereupon the bird instantly vanished. "For Heaven's sake," M. Durant gasped, "tell us what it all means." "Only this," M. Hersant said solemnly, "the phantasm we saw caused the death of the Popenkoff family.
M. Durant was as good as his word; after they had partaken of a somewhat hasty meal, they set out to the morgue, where they made a careful inspection of the poor woman's remains. M. Hersant examined the marks on the woman's body very closely with his magnifying-glass. "Ah!" he suddenly exclaimed, bending down and almost touching the corpse with his nose, "Ah!" "Have you made a discovery?"
"The woman was leading a perfectly respectable married life; she was hard-working and industrious, and beyond the fact that she was over-indulgent to her children, does not seem to have had any serious faults. As far as I can ascertain she had no enemies." "Nor secret lovers?" M. Hersant asked. "No; she was quite straight." "And you feel sure she was murdered?" "I do.
On their arrival, M. Hersant produced a big compass, and on the earth floor of the mill-house drew a large circle, in which he made with white chalk various signs and symbols. He then sat in the middle of it, and bade his two companions stand in the doorway and watch.
"That is the exact place where she lay," M. Durant said, indicating with his finger a dark patch on a little wooden bridge spanning a stream, within a stone's throw of a tumbledown mill-house, all overgrown with ivy and lichens. M. Hersant looked round and sniffed the air with his nostrils. "There is an air of loneliness about this spot," he remarked, "that in itself suggests crime.
He was pronounced guilty by all excepting M. Hersant; and of course M. Hersant thought him guilty, too; only he liked to think differently from anyone else. "I don't want to commit myself," was all they could get out of him. "I may have something to say later on." M. Durant laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "It, undoubtedly, is Peter Popenkoff," he observed.
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