“Upon my word, but he has signed his name! So he must have been in the hall. Has he been?”

“No, he hasn’t, your Excellency.”

“How could he have signed his name without being there?”

“I can’t tell.”

“Who is to tell, then? You sit gaping there in the hall. Try and remember, perhaps someone you didn’t know came in? Think a minute!”

“No, your Excellency, there has been no one I didn’t know. Our clerks have been, the baroness came to see her Excellency, the priests have been with the Cross, and there has been no one else.⁠ ⁠…”

“Why, he was invisible when he signed his name, then, was he?”

“I can’t say: but there has been no Fedyukov here. That I will swear before the holy image.⁠ ⁠…”

“It’s queer! It’s incomprehensible! It’s extraordinary!” mused Navagin. “It’s positively ludicrous. A man has been signing his name here for thirteen years and you can’t find out who he is. Perhaps it’s a joke? Perhaps some clerk writes that name as well as his own for fun.”

And Navagin began examining Fedyukov’s signature.

The bold, florid signature in the old-fashioned style with twirls and flourishes was utterly unlike the handwriting of the other signatures. It was next below the signature of Shtutchkin, the provincial secretary, a scared, timorous little man who would certainly have died of fright if he had ventured upon such an impudent joke.

“The mysterious Fedyukov has signed his name again!” said Navagin, going in to see his wife. “Again I fail to find out who he is.”

Madame Navagin was a spiritualist, and so for all phenomena in nature, comprehensible or incomprehensible, she had a very simple explanation.