“This is it. When this evening you let me go to the general’s chamber, I examined the bolt of the door without your suspecting it. My opinion was confirmed. It was that way that the bomb was brought, and it is by that way that someone has prepared to return.”
“But how? You are sure the little hole is the way someone came? But what makes you think that is how they mean to return? You know well enough that, not having succeeded in the general’s chamber, they are at work in the dining-room.”
“Madame, it is probable, it is certain that they have given up the work in the dining-room since they have commenced this very day working again in the general’s chamber. Yes, someone returned, returned that way, and I was so sure of that, of the forthcoming return, that I removed the police in order to be able to study everything more at my ease. Do you understand now my confidence and why I have been able to assume so heavy a responsibility? It is because I knew I had only one thing to watch: one little hat-pin. It is not difficult, madame, to watch a single little hat-pin.”
“A mistake,” said Matrena, in a low voice. “Miserable little domovoi who told me nothing, me whom you let go to sleep on my mattress, in front of that door that might open any moment.”
“No, madame. For I was behind it!”
“Ah, dear little holy angel! But what were you thinking of! That door has not been watched this afternoon. In our absence it could have been opened. If someone has placed a bomb during our absence!”
“That is why I sent you at once in to the dining-room on that search that I thought would be fruitless, dear madame. And that is why I hurried upstairs to the bedroom. I went to the stairway door instantly. I had prepared for proof positive if anyone had pushed it open even half a millimeter. No, no one had touched the door in our absence.
“Ah, dear heroic little friend of Jesus! But listen to me. Listen to me, my angel. Ah, I don’t know where I am or what I say. My brain is no more than a flabby balloon punctured with pins, with little holes of hat-pins. Tell me about the hat-pins. Right off! No, at first, what is it that makes you believe—good God!—that someone will return by that door? How can you see that, all that, in a poor little hat-pin?”
“Madame, it is not a single hat-pin hole; there are two of them.
“Two hat-pin holes?”