Nicholas raised his head, stretched his neck, and began to think.
"I don't know, your worship," he said. "I was drunk and don't remember."
"An alibi!" whispered Dukovski, smiling, and rubbing his hands.
"So-o! And why is there blood under the master's window?"
Nicholas jerked his head up and considered.
"Hurry up!" said the Captain of Police.
"Right away! That blood doesn't amount to anything, your worship! I was cutting a chicken's throat. I was doing it quite simply, in the usual way, when all of a sudden it broke away and started to run. That is where the blood came from."
Ephraim declared that Nicholas did kill a chicken every evening, and always in some new place, but that nobody ever heard of a half-killed chicken running about the garden, though of course it wasn't impossible.
"An alibi," sneered Dukovski; "and what an asinine alibi!"
"Did you know Aquilina?"