“Yes,” interrupted Von Gaden again, to my annoyance, “just as you were employed fifteen years ago to stab Feodor on the threshold of his home.”
“I was not,” cried the dwarf, vehemently. “Vladimir Sergheievitch stabbed his brother himself; I only witnessed it.”
“It is easy to accuse the dead,” retorted Von Gaden, scornfully.
“It is true,” protested Homyak, angered and frightened by the physician’s mocking manner. “I knew it all, and he feared me,—feared I would betray him to the Czar Alexis.”
“Yet you were guilty, Homyak,” said the other, calmly; “it was you who stripped the dead body of the prisoner and put the clothes on Feodor, while he was yet unconscious.”
The dwarf cowered, watching his interlocutor as if under a spell.
“I never put the clothes on the boyar,” he exclaimed. “I did strip the corpse in the prison and helped Polotsky to throw it in the Yauza, but they dressed Feodor Sergheievitch in the clothes and put him in the cell themselves; he was about the size of the dead felon, and it didn’t cost much to make the guards think he was the same. I did nothing then.”
“You have admitted a good deal,” said Von Gaden, with a laugh; “the boyar may have another opinion about your innocence.”
Homyak collapsed in his chair, suddenly awakened to the trap into which the Jew had skillfully led him. I was beside myself with impatience.
“Come, Homyak,” I said impatiently, “where is Mademoiselle Zénaïde?”