I judged it,
therefore, of the first importance to discover who was in the house,
or, if they had escaped from it, who had been in the house before I
entered it. I had seen one man leave it; but all I could tell of him
was that he was a young man, that he was in evening dress, and that
he had fled in such haste that he had not stopped to close the door
behind him.
"The Russian servant I had found apparently asleep, and, unless he
acted a part with supreme skill, he was a stupid and ignorant boor,
and as innocent of the murder as myself. There was still the Russian
princess whom he had expected to find, or had pretended to expect to
find, in the same room with the murdered man. I judged that she must
now be either upstairs with the servant, or that she had, without his
knowledge, already fled from the house. When I recalled his
apparently genuine surprise at not finding her in the drawing-room,
this latter supposition seemed the more probable. Nevertheless, I
decided that it was my duty to make a search, and after a second
hurried look for the weapon among the cushions of the divan, and upon
the floor, I cautiously crossed the hall and entered the dining-room.
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