“Wait! Hear the end. Of course they sought high and low for Nikolay; they detained Dushkin and searched his house; Dmitri, too, was arrested; the Kolomensky men also were turned inside out. And the day before yesterday they arrested Nikolay in a tavern at the end of the town. He had gone there, taken the silver cross off his neck and asked for a dram for it. They gave it to him. A few minutes afterwards the woman went to the cowshed, and through a crack in the wall she saw in the stable adjoining he had made a noose of his sash from the beam, stood on a block of wood, and was trying to put his neck in the noose. The woman screeched her hardest; people ran in. ‘So that’s what you are up to!’ ‘Take me,’ he says, ‘to such-and-such a police officer; I’ll confess everything.’ Well, they took him to that police station— that is here—with a suitable escort. So they asked him this and that, how old he is, ‘twenty-two,’ and so on. At the question, ‘When you were working with Dmitri, didn’t you see anyone on the staircase at such-and-such a time?’—answer: ‘To be sure folks may have gone up and down, but I did not notice them.’ ‘And didn’t you hear anything, any noise, and so on?’ ‘We heard nothing special.’ ‘And did you hear, Nikolay, that on the same day Widow So-and-so and her sister were murdered and robbed?’ ‘I never knew a thing about it. The first I heard of it was from Afanasy Pavlovitch the day before yesterday.’ ‘And where did you find the ear-rings?’ ‘I found them on the pavement. “Why didn’t you go to work with Dmitri the other day?’ ‘Because I was drinking.’ ‘And where were you drinking?’ ‘Oh, in such-and-such a place.’ ‘Why did you run away from Dushkin’s?’ ‘Because I was awfully frightened.’ ‘What were you frightened of?’ ‘That I should be accused.’ ‘How could you be frightened, if you felt free from guilt?’ Now, Zossimov, you may not believe me, that question was put literally in those words. I know it for a fact, it was repeated to me exactly! What do you say to that?”
“Well, anyway, there’s the evidence.”
“I am not talking of the evidence now, I am talking about that question, of their own idea of themselves. Well, so they squeezed and squeezed him and he confessed: ‘I did not find it in the street, but in the flat where I was painting with Dmitri.’ ‘And how was that?’ ‘Why, Dmitri and I were painting there all day, and we were just getting ready to go, and Dmitri took a brush and painted my face, and he ran off and I after him. I ran after him, shouting my hardest, and at the bottom of the stairs I ran right against the porter and some gentlemen—and how many gentlemen were there I don’t remember. And the porter swore at me, and the other porter swore, too, and the porter’s wife came out, and swore at us, too; and a gentleman came into the entry with a lady, and he swore at us, too, for Dmitri and I lay right across the way. I got hold of Dmitri’s hair and knocked him down and began beating him. And Dmitri, too, caught me by the hair and began beating me. But we did it all not for temper but in a friendly way, for sport. And then Dmitri escaped and ran into the street, and I ran after him; but I did not catch him, and went back to the flat alone; I had to clear up my things. I began putting them together, expecting Dmitri to come, and there in the passage, in the corner by the door, I stepped on the box. I saw it lying there wrapped up in paper. I took off the paper, saw some little hooks, undid them, and in the box were the ear-rings. …’”
“Behind the door? Lying behind the door? Behind the door?” Raskolnikov cried suddenly, staring with a blank look of terror at Razumihin, and he slowly sat up on the sofa, leaning on his hand.
“Yes … why? What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” Razumihin, too, got up from his seat.
“Nothing,” Raskolnikov answered faintly, turning to the wall. All were silent for a while.
“He must have waked from a dream,” Razumihin said at last, looking inquiringly at Zossimov. The latter slightly shook his head.
“Well, go on,” said Zossimov. “What next?”
“What next? As soon as he saw the ear-rings, forgetting Dmitri and everything, he took up his cap and ran to Dushkin and, as we know, got a rouble from him. He told a lie saying he found them in the street, and went off drinking. He keeps repeating his old story about the murder: ‘I know nothing of it, never heard of it till the day before yesterday.’ ‘And why didn’t you come to the police till now?’ ‘I was frightened.’ ‘And why did you try to hang yourself?’ ‘From anxiety.’ ‘What anxiety?’ ‘That I should be accused of it.’ Well, that’s the whole story. And now what do you suppose they deduced from that?”
“Why, there’s no supposing. There’s a clue, such as it is, a fact. You wouldn’t have your painter set free?”
“Now they’ve simply taken him for the murderer. They haven’t a shadow of doubt.”
“That’s nonsense. You are excited. But what about the ear-rings? You must admit that, if on the very same day and hour ear-rings from the old woman’s box have come into Nikolay’s hands, they must have come there somehow. That’s a good deal in such a case.”
