“Service is tiresome.… I served and served till I was quite fed up, and chucked it. I have no occupation now, sometimes I have nothing to eat.… If, despite its unworthiness, you will publish my story, you will do me more than a great favour.… You will help me.… A journal is not an alms-house, nor an old-age asylum.… I know that, but … won't you be so kind.…”
“He is lying,” I thought.
The breloques and the diamond ring on his little finger belied his having written for the sake of a piece of bread. Besides, a slight cloud passed over Kamyshev's face such as only an experienced eye can trace on the faces of people who seldom lie.
“What is the subject of your story?” I asked.
“The subject? What can I tell you? The subject is not new.… Love and murder.… But read it, you will see.… ‘From the Notes of an Examining Magistrate.’ …”
I probably frowned, for Kamyshev looked confused, his eyes began to blink, he started and continued speaking rapidly:
“My story is written in the conventional style of former examining magistrates, but … you will find in it facts, the truth.… All that is written, from beginning to end, happened before my eyes.… Indeed, I was not only a witness but one of the actors.”
“The truth does not matter.… It is not absolutely necessary to see a thing to describe it. That is unimportant. The fact is our poor readers have long been fed up with Gaboriau and Shklyarevsky.[2] They are tired of all those mysterious murders, those artful devices of the detectives, and the extraordinary resourcefulness of the examining magistrate. The reading public, of course, varies, but I am talking of the public that reads our newspaper. What is the title of your story?”
“The Shooting Party.”
“Hm!… That's not serious, you know.… And, to be quite frank with you, I have such an amount of copy on hand that it is quite impossible to accept new things, even if they are of undoubted merit.”