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The doctor, however, demonstrated no special surprise–as well as the inspector with whom he, obviously, already shared his information.

"Poor Marie," Clavier echoed the words of Jeannette. "If only I had known that she would go there..."

"What are you trying to say?" Dubois impatiently ex
claimed. "Is this a suicide?"

"Undoubtedly."

"But the motive?"

"Yesterday Marie asked me to examine her... She was pregnant."

Dubois suddenly felt idiotic desire to exclaim: "I had nothing to do with it!" Instead he addressed Leblanc:

"But, Inspector, if your hypothesis about the avenger is true, he could hang the maid, imitating suicide."

"I quite agree with the doctor," Leblanc answered, finishing inspecting the body. "You see, when a person is hanged against his will, either his hands are tied or he is previously made unconscious. Obviously, in both cases the victim can't grasp the rope. On the contrary, suicides usually reflexively do it at the last moment, which leaves on their hands the corresponding traces present in this case... Certainly, without a motive it wouldn't be absolute proof, but the doctor's information..."

Dubois pity for Marie disappeared instantly.

"She shouldn't have done it in my house!" he angrily exclaimed.

"I do not think that she specially wanted to cause you trouble," the doctor shook his head. "Possibly, it was a sudden im
pulsive decision. Probably, the oppressive atmosphere of the house was a factor...”

"Leave my house alone! 'The oppressive atmosphere,' 'the house of death'–all this is idiotic malarkey, and I will prove to all of you that it is possible to live a fine life here!"

As soon as the visitors left, Jeannette asked with anxiety:

"Jacques, you aren't going to remain here?"

"Certainly, we will remain."

"But you promised!"

"I thought that we were dealing with a devilishly capable and artful killer. But it appears that nobody killed Marie, so there is no danger."

"No danger?! Five deaths in two weeks!"

"It's just an extremely unpleasant coincidence. Well, not absolutely a coincidence... Each subsequent incident plays on the nerves of people, thereby increasing the probability of new tragedies..."

"You can argue as much as you want with a clever look on your face, but I won't remain here any longer."

"Jeannette, it is necessary to endure just a day more. And then new servant will arrive, and life will return to normal. We should not flee now; it is necessary to stop this growing fear..."

"I'm leaving, Jacques, I will leave immediately. If you don't want to go, I'm going alone."

Dubois lost his patience.

"You may go anywhere. I don't need hysterical women. If you leave now, everything will be over between us."

"Jacques, don't speak so... I want to be with you... but only not in this house. I am scared, Jacques... so scared..."

"You are under my protection!"

"There are things over which even you have no control..."

"Well, enough of this superstitious bullshit! I ask... I de
mand that you stay. No? Have you thought about what you are losing? Still no?"

He stepped closer to her and slapped her cheek. He had done it before, though very seldom, when it was necessary to cor
rect her. Previously it had helped.

Jeannette turned away in tears.

"Farewell, monsieur Dubois," she said.

"Leroi! Leroi!" the enraged businessman cried. The alarmed majordomo arrived.

"Go to the village and hire somebody who will take the mademoiselle to the city. Right now."

"It's useless, monsieur. Now, at night, nobody will agree to render you services. Maybe, we'll wait till the morning?"

"I said now! If you can't hire anybody, you will drive her yourself! Enough, get out of my sight! Both of you!"

Dubois remained in the huge house alone. Black moonless night shrouded the estate, the gloomy forest, the road passing through the forest... The candle crackled and went out, leaving the owner of the house alone with darkness. Again from afar a wolf howl reached; this time, as it seemed to Dubois, not in anxiety but in triumph and at the same time a dreary threat sounded in it. He imagined how it would be for a lonely traveler to listen to this howl in the cold and unfriendly night, and that made him shudder.

The carriage rolled through the night forest. On the left and on the right, huge trunks of old trees, which probably re
membered yet the first count de Montreux, towered in gloom; their long clumsy branches here and there intertwined over the road. The cold night breeze whispered in foliage and moved in bushes; suddenly somewhere an eagle owl dully screeched. Leroi, who handled the reins, involuntarily shivered. It seemed improbable that somewhere there was Paris decked by lights, that in cabarets and restaurants people were having fun, that it was the pragmatic nineteenth century in the outer world. Here, in the forest, everything was as if impregnated with the spirit of antiquity, the spirit of times gone long ago–or more likely, of non-time at all, of a stiffened and hardened eternity. Leroi, probably, would not have been surprised much if from the nearest turn a knight in armor or a medieval monk in a hooded cowl had appeared. He already regretted that he had agreed to bring his master's concubine to the city at night—or, as he suspected, the former concubine; if he had simply informed Dubois that nobody would undertake this task, then, probably, his master would have told Jeannette: "Reach Paris yourself as best you can." She, facing such a prospect, probably would have tried for a reconciliation–maybe the master expected exactly that? Anyway, it was too late already for such thought, unless Jeannette herself would ask to turn back...

At this moment, a wolf howl distinctly sounded from be
hind. Here, in the forest, it sounded much more ominous than in the house. Jeannette put her head out of the window.

"Faster, Leroi! Do you hear?"

"Nothing to worry about. In these parts usually people hunt wolves, not vice versa," he answered, whipping up the horses, however.

In a few minutes the howl sounded again, this time much closer. Leroi marveled; if it was not a hearing deception, the an
imal moved with tremendous speed. Then he decided that it was, most likely, another wolf. The horses began to show appreciable anxiety.

The wolf raised a howl a third time–very close, literally just behind a turn. "Faster, faster!" Jeannette shouted, but the horses didn't need further urging. Leroi felt that he couldn't cope with them. Spurred on by ancient horror, the horses galloped at full speed; the coach groaned and shook on its springs. A low leaning branch scratched the carriage top, like a hand trying to hold the escaping prey.

"What are you doing, we will crash!" Jeannette cried. At the next moment a spasm seized her throat: having looked back, she saw the predators.

Seven or eight large wolves chased the carriage; they seemed terribly huge to the frightened Jeannette. The biggest one ran ahead of the others; it was a magnificent beast with fur of a rare silvery shade. Its eyes shone red in the darkness, which is usual for animals of this species, but it seemed to Jeannette that in those eyes hellfire sparkled. The wolves ran absolutely silently, like ghosts, and the distance between them and their potential vic
tims, despite the horses' mad run, decreased every minute. Leroi didn't try to manage the horses any longer; he just sat, grasping the reins and staring into the darkness with eyes wide open from fear.

The dull crash sounded, and the carriage, which had lost a wheel, jerkily fell sidewards. The door swung open, and Jean
nette, who had no time to grab any support, fell out on the road. The crazed horses dragged the overturned carriage further.

When Jeannette came to her senses after falling, she saw the wolves had surrounded her in a semicircle. The leader wrinkled its nose in a snarl, baring its canines which dimly shone in the light of stars. Jeannette felt hair stand on her head; para
lyzed by horror, she couldn't resist, couldn't shout–she only looked at the slowly approaching beast...

"I am sorry, monsieur Dubois," Inspector Leblanc said, "but you should participate in the identification. The body is very mutilated..."

"Yes," Dubois said, dully staring ahead, "yes, of course." After a a short pause, he asked: "And did Leroi escape?"

"It is hardly possible to call it escape," the inspector answered. "He was found near the wreckage of the coach. The wolves didn't touch him, but what he endured had a pernicious effect on him... He was sitting, absolutely gray-haired, stupidly staring at one point; in this condition he still stays now. The poor man lost his mind."

"It looks like all this doesn't much fit your hypothesis about an avenger," gloomily noted Dubois. "Would you say that the wolves were trained?"

"Yes, it would sound ridiculous... Wolves generally aren't tamable. Though, on the other hand, there are breeds of dogs very similar to wolves. And an attack of a wolf pack on a coach is so unusual at this time... They actually behaved more like dogs: bit the victim to death, but didn't gobble her up. Besides, the wheel–why did it suddenly fall off? It might be an accident... or the axle might have been weakened The examination doesn't allow me to say unequivocally now."

"You don't abandon your idea?" Dubois was surprised.

"I don't know, monsieur Dubois; I simply don't know. If this is a crime, then it is devilishly, improbably cunning and difficult to accomplish; otherwise, it is an improbable chain of coincidences. We have to choose between two improbabilities. Well, are you ready? The doctor waits for us."

When the uneasy formalities were finished, Clavier expressed a desire to talk to Dubois. The latter mechanically nodded.

For some time both kept silence.

"She was very valuable to you, wasn't she?" the doctor began at last.

"Yes... probably she was," the businessman answered, "though I never thought about it before."

"Now will you leave?"

"No!" Dubois gritted his teeth. "Now I especially won't leave under any circumstances! Nobody in the world will expel me from my house!”

"Excuse me, monsieur, but this has become a kind of obsession. Certainly, all that you had to suffer..."

"Spare me this nonsense, doctor! I am as clear-headed as always. The laws of probability are on my side. Coincidences can't proceed eternally—that means, I am not in danger. Or do you, like the inspector, see in all this a malicious intention?"

"Leblanc still considers that we deal with an ordinary criminal?"

"Not with anyone ordinary; however, he isn't sure about the possibilities. He theorizes that in the last tragedy dogs could have been used as murder weapons."

"As far as I can judge, they were wolves."

"Then why... why didn't they eat her?"

"Well, here a very simple explanation is possible. Wolves are very sensitive to smells; the smell of perfume could stave off their appetite. Excuse me for such details..."

"On the contrary, you calmed me. Now I precisely know that we deal only with coincidences."

"You see, monsieur Dubois... that's what I wanted to talk to you about. As well as Leblanc, I don't believe in too a large number of coincidences... but in this case I also doubt that an ordinary human being could arrange all this."

"Then who?" Dubois grinned. "The angered ghost of count de Montreux?"

"You are wrong to treat it so lightly."

"What?!" Dubois stared at the doctor in astonishment. "You don't really mean to say that you believe in such bullshit?! You, a man of science!"

"Yes, certainly, we live in the nineteenth century when it seems that in the temple of science only a few last bricks need to be laid... But it is a superficial view. I am afraid that what we built is only an entrance to the real temple. Factually, we still know almost nothing about fundamental things: life and death. It is considered nowadays that a human being is a machine: the heart is a motor, the stomach is a fire chamber, the arms and legs are levers, and so on. But then why can't we assemble this machine from separate parts? Why, having stopped, can't it be started again when what stopped it is eliminated?"

"Obviously, the parts instantly spoil and nothing more," Dubois answered with irritation.

"But why does it occur? Why are the complex and diverse chemical processes of life quickly and irreversibly replaced by the chemical processes of decomposition? Why does an injury to the brain turn an absolutely healthy organism into inert decaying protoplasm? The heart after all has its own nerve system; it doesn't need orders from the brain to work. Theoretically the body could live without the head as it lives without a foot or a hand; but it doesn't occur."

"I am sure that science will find answers to these ques
tions."

"I am sure of it, too; but how can we know what these an
swers will be? Why not assume that there is a certain substance, call it soul or mind, which is connected to the body, but is capable of leaving it? And if this substance interacts with its own body, it can interact also with other objects of the material world."