There was a moment of breathless suspense. The
scar on the mother's face whitened, and her right eyebrow traveled
upward. Rybin's black beard quivered strangely. He dropped his
eyes, and slowly scratched one hand with the other.
"Take this dog out of here!" said the officer.
Two gendarmes seized Nikolay under the arm and rudely pulled him
into the kitchen. There he planted his feet firmly on the floor
and shouted:
"Stop! I am going to put my coat on."
The police commissioner came in from the yard and said:
"There is nothing out there. We searched everywhere!"
"Well, of course!" exclaimed the officer, laughing. "I knew it!
There's an experienced man here, it goes without saying."
The mother listened to his thin, dry voice, and looking with terror
into the yellow face, felt an enemy in this man, an enemy without
pity, with a heart full of aristocratic disdain of the people.
Formerly she had but rarely seen such persons, and now she had
almost forgotten they existed.
"Then this is the man whom Pavel and his friends have provoked,"
she thought.
"I place you, MR. Andrey Onisimov Nakhodka, under arrest."
"What for?" asked the Little Russian composedly.
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