“Sell it,” suggests a friend, and at once he despatches the offending candelabrum to Madame Smirnoff, the old woman who deals in antiques. Two days later Dr. Koshelkoff sat peacefully in his study--when suddenly the door of his room flew open, and Alexander Smirnoff burst upon his sight. His face beamed with joy, he fairly shone, and his whole body breathed inexpressible content. In his hands he held an object wrapped in a newspaper. “Doctor,” he began breathlessly, “imagine my joy! What good fortune! Luckily for you, my mother has succeeded in obtaining a companion piece to your candelabrum. You now have the pair complete. Mother is so happy. I am her only son, you know. You saved my life.” Trembling with joy and with excess of gratitude, young Smirnoff placed the candelabrum before the doctor. The physician opened his mouth, attempted to say something, but the power of speech failed him--and he said nothing. Again in a different vein is “The Safety Match.” Lieutenant Klausoff, a retired officer of the Horse Guards, who has separated from his wife, Olga, on account of his own dissipations and her shrewish temper, is reported as missing by Psyekoff, the lieutenant’s agent. The examining magistrate, Chubikoff, and Dukovski, his ambitious assistant, learn that Klausoff has not been seen for a week, and when they break open his room all signs suggest a murder. Young Dukovski, who is a disciple of induction as a means of arriving at the facts of crime, discovers in the room one boot, a burned safety-match, marks of teeth on a pillow, signs of struggle about the bed, an unfastened window, footprints beneath it, the mark of a knee on the window-sill, and some threads of blue cloth caught in a burdock bush near-by. All these lead him to conclude that the murderers, one of whom wore blue trousers, climbed in the window, sprang upon Klausoff while he was taking off his boots, smothered him with a pillow, and dragged him away. The second boot is at length found near-by, and the investigators now seek for the criminals. The shrewd Dukovski, who is continually laughed at by his superior Chubikoff, infers that two of the murderers are the valet and Psyekoff, the agent, because it developed that first the valet and then Psyekoff had loved the same woman, whom their master had finally won. Besides, Psyekoff wears blue trousers. Jealousy must have been the cause, for the victim’s watch and money still lay upon his table. When confronted with these facts and a reconstruction of the deed, neither can make effective denial. A third conspirator is found in the victim’s sister, who is a religious enthusiast and intensely indignant that her rakish brother should be living apart from his wife, Olga.