United States or Eswatini ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The sisters spoke little at the table, and they said nothing of their day's adventure. Yet before this they used to be frank and loved to chat, to tell the things that had happened to them. Piotr Matov, a tall, spare, pale youth with sparkling eyes, who looked like a man about to enter a prophetic school, seemed worried and irritated.
One of the members of the circle, the young physician Lunitsin, took the role of betrayer upon himself. He promised to obtain for Dmitry Matov important documents involving many of the members. They made a bargain at a moderate figure.
Trirodov had carelessly entangled himself in this affair, and now it compelled him to have dealings with the blackmailer Ostrov. Piotr's father, Dmitry Matov, had fallen into a trap which he had set for others. He had joined a secret revolutionary circle. There they soon discovered his relations with the police, and they decided to detect him and kill him.
This was because Matov was lucky enough to fall heir to several inheritances. Not only did people say that luck was on his side, but they also hinted at forged wills, strangled aunts, and poisoned children. Dark adventures of some sort enriched and ruined Matov by turns. It was all like some dubious, fantastic game of chance....
Piotr Matov's hostility to Trirodov evidently had its roots in the chance circumstance that Trirodov had bought the house and part of the estate, the Prosianiya Meadows, which formerly belonged to the paternal Matov. Many in the town of Skorodozh remembered very well Dmitry Alexandrovitch Matov, the father of Piotr and Mikhail Matov.
Dmitry Alexandrovitch Matov was already forty years old, and many dark, mad misdeeds weighed on his shoulders, when, quite unexpectedly to all and possibly to himself, he married a young girl with excellent means and a dark past. There was a report that she had been the mistress of a dignitary, who had begun to grow weary of her.
Then Trirodov prepared a special plastic substance, in which he wrapped Matov's body. He pressed it compactly into the form of a cube, and placed it on his writing-table. And thus a thing that once had been a man remained there a thing among other things. Nevertheless Trirodov was right when he told Ostrov that Matov had not been killed.
They engaged him in religious and patriotic conversations and invited him to drink with them. Poltinin and Potseluychikov were also well received in the monastery. Strange threads are woven into the relations of people at times. Although Piotr Matov met Ostrov under unfriendly circumstances, Ostrov managed to scrape up an acquaintance even with him.
But his protestations soon grew weaker. Then he began to beg for mercy. He spoke of his wife and of his children. Matov's entreaties failed to impress any one. His judges were adamant. His fate was decided. The sentence of hanging was passed unanimously. Matov was bound. The noose was already thrown about his neck. Then Trirodov intervened: "What are you going to do with him?
He injected with a small syringe several drops of the liquid under Dmitry Matov's skin. Matov gave a feeble cry and fell heavily to the floor. In a few moments the body lay before them, blue and apparently lifeless. Lunitsin examined Matov and said: "He's done for." The men left one by one. Trirodov alone remained with Matov's body. Trirodov took off Matov's clothes and burned them in the stove.
Word Of The Day