CHAPTER XXVIII
The local police department was not very skilful in tracking down thieves and murderers. And it did not occupy itself much with this ungrateful business. It had other things to think of in those turbulent days. Instead, it turned its ill-disposed attention to Trirodov’s educational colony—thanks to the efforts of Ostrov and his friends and patrons.
The neighbourhood of Trirodov’s estate began to teem with detectives. They assumed various guises, and though they employed all their cunning to escape observation they did not succeed in fooling any one. Of limited intelligence, they fulfilled their duties without inspiration, tediously, greyly, and dully.
Soon the children learned to recognize the detectives. Even at a distance they would say at the sight of a suspicious character:
“There goes a detective!”
Upon seeing him again they would say:
“There goes our detective!”
Of the uniformed police the first to make inquiries at Trirodov’s colony was a sergeant. He was fairly drunk. It happened on the same day that Egorka returned home to his mother.