"It struck me that he was trying to cover his disbelief with sarcasm. Both of us were without sleep that night. At dawn there was silence in his room. I bitterly thought, 'When will I go to rest?' When I went into his room in the morning he was lying in his bed. All was over. He had taken poison, and written his farewell on a piece of paper. His last wish was that no one should ever know under what circumstances he died."

Balint left off speaking and gazed with outstretched eyes toward the window in the darkness. I slowly went to him and put my hand upon his shoulder. He started at my touch.

"I more than once thought of the woman who could be the mother of my son. How many times have I been tempted to fulfill my father's last wish! But at such a time it has always come to my mind that I too might have such a son, who would cast into his father's teeth that he was a coward and a selfish man; that he sacrificed a life for his illusive hopes.

"No! I won't do it. I won't do it. I am the last of the Orzos. With me this damned family will die out. My fathers were cowards and rascals. I do not want anybody to curse my memory."

I kissed Balint's wet forehead; I knew that this was the last time I would see him. The next day I left the castle, and the day after, his death was made public. He committed suicide, like his father. He was the last Orzo, and I turned about the coat of arms above his head.

1

Said of a card when it wins or loses in the quickest possible time.

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2

Diminutive of Lizaveta (Elizabeth).

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3

(At the risk of shocking the reader, it has been decided that the real permanent detective stories of the world were ill represented without Dostoyevsky's terrible tale of what might be called "self-detection." If to sensitive readers the story seems so real as to be hideous, it is well to recall that Dostoyevsky in 1849 under-went the agony of sentence to death as a revolutionist. Although the sentence was commuted to hard labor in Siberia, and although six years later he was freed and again took up his writing, his mind never rose from beneath the weight of horror and hopelessness that hangs over offenders against the Great White Czar. Dostoyevsky, sentenced as a criminal, herded with criminals, really became a criminal in literary imagination. Add to this a minute observation, a marvelous memory, ardent political convictions—and we can understand why the story here, with others of his, is taken as a scientific text by criminologists.—EDITOR.)

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4

1,000 yards.

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5

Janitors.

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6

little father

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7

Cabbage soup.

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8

There is a race of the Hungarians in the Carpath who, unlike the Hungarians of the plain, have blue eyes and often fair hair.

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9

Part of the free corps raised in 1848.

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10

Blue and gold are the colors of Transylvania.

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11

Transylvania.

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12

Klausenburg.

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13

The Wallachians were, in the days of Trajan, subdued by the Romans, with whom they became intermixed, and are also called Roumi.

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14

Everything on which a double-headed eagle—the emblem of the Austrian Government—was painted, engraved or sculptured, the Wallachians called paszura.

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15

Olah, Wallachian—ok, plural.

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16

Brasso, or Kyonstadt, a town in the southeast of Transylvania, on the frontier of Wallachia.

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17

A district inhabited by a colony of Saxons.

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18

Czine mintye!—A Wallachian term signifying revenge.

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The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales

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