IVAN MIRONOV had to spend the night in the police-station, in the
company of drunkards and thieves. It was noon of the next day when he
was summoned to the police officer; put through a close examination,
and sent in the care of a policeman to Eugene Mihailovich’s shop. Ivan
Mironov remembered the street and the house.
The policeman asked for the shopkeeper, showed him the coupon and
confronted him with Ivan Mironov, who declared that he had received the
coupon in that very place. Eugene Mihailovich at once assumed a very
severe and astonished air.
“You are mad, my good fellow,” he said. “I have never seen this man
before in my life,” he added, addressing the policeman.
“It is a sin, sir,” said Ivan Mironov. “Think of the hour when you will
die.”
“Why, you must be dreaming! You have sold your firewood to some one
else,” said Eugene Mihailovich. “But wait a minute. I will go and ask my
wife whether she bought any firewood yesterday.” Eugene Mihailovich left
them and immediately called the yard-porter Vassily, a strong, handsome,
quick, cheerful, well-dressed man.
He told Vassily that if any one should inquire where the last supply of
firewood was bought, he was to say they’d got it from the stores, and
not from a peasant in the street.
“A peasant has come,” he said to Vassily, “who has declared to the
police that I gave him a forged coupon. He is a fool and talks nonsense,
but you, are a clever man. Mind you say that we always get the firewood
from the stores. And, by the way, I’ve been thinking some time of giving
you money to buy a new jacket,” added Eugene Mihailovich, and gave the
man five roubles. Vassily looking with pleasure first at the five rouble
note, then at Eugene Mihailovich’s face, shook his head and smiled.
“I know, those peasant folks have no brains. Ignorance, of course. Don’t
you be uneasy. I know what I have to say.”
Ivan Mironov, with tears in his eyes, implored Eugene Mihailovich over
and over again to acknowledge the coupon he had given him, and the
yard-porter to believe what he said, but it proved quite useless; they
both insisted that they had never bought firewood from a peasant in the
street. The policeman brought Ivan Mironov back to the police-station,
and he was charged with forging the coupon. Only after taking the advice
of a drunken office clerk in the same cell with him, and bribing the
police officer with five roubles, did Ivan Mironov get out of jail,
without the coupon, and with only seven roubles left out of the
twenty-five he had the day before.
Of these seven roubles he spent three in the public-house and came home
to his wife dead drunk, with a bruised and swollen face.
His wife was expecting a child, and felt very ill. She began to scold
her husband; he pushed her away, and she struck him. Without answering a
word he lay down on the plank and began to weep bitterly.
Not till the next day did he tell his wife what had actually happened.
She believed him at once, and thoroughly cursed the dastardly rich man
who had cheated Ivan. He was sobered now, and remembering the advice
a workman had given him, with whom he had many a drink the day before,
decided to go to a lawyer and tell him of the wrong the owner of the
photograph shop had done him.