He set the axe down on the floor by the dead woman, and immediately put his hand into her pocket, trying not to smear himself with the flowing blood—that same right pocket from which she had taken her keys the last time. He was in full possession of his reason, the clouding and dizziness had ceased, but his hands were still trembling. He recalled afterwards that he was even very attentive, careful, tried to be sure not to stain himself... He immediately pulled out the keys; they were all in one bunch, as before, on a steel ring. He immediately ran to the bedroom with them. This was a very small room; there was a huge stand with icons and, against the opposite wall, a large bed, quite clean, covered with a silk patchwork quilt. Against the third wall stood a chest of drawers. Strangely, as soon as he began applying the keys to the drawers, as soon as he heard their jingling, it was as if a convulsion ran through him. He again wanted suddenly to drop everything and leave. But only for a moment; it was too late to leave. He even grinned to himself, but then another anxious thought struck his mind. He suddenly fancied that the old woman might still be alive, and might still recover her senses. Abandoning both the keys and the chest of drawers, he ran back to the body, seized the axe and raised it one more time over the old woman, but did not bring it down. There was no doubt that she was dead. Bending over and examining her again more closely, he saw clearly that the skull was shattered and even displaced a little to one side. He was about to feel it with his finger, but jerked his hand back; it was obvious enough without that. Meanwhile a whole pool of blood had already formed. Suddenly he noticed a string around her neck; he tugged at it, but the string was strong and refused to snap; besides, it was soaked with blood. He tried simply pulling it out from her bodice, but something was in the way and it got stuck. Impatiently, he raised the axe again to cut the string where it lay on the body, but he did not dare, and with difficulty, smearing both his hands and the axe, after two minutes of fussing over it, he cut the string without touching the body with the axe, and took it off; he was not mistaken—a purse. There were two crosses on the string, one of cypress and the other of brass, besides a little enamel icon; hanging right there with them was a small, greasy suede purse with a steel frame and ring. The purse was stuffed full; Raskolnikov shoved it into his pocket without looking, dropped the crosses on the old woman's chest, and, taking the axe with him this time, rushed back to the bedroom.

He was terribly hurried, snatched up the keys, and began fumbling with them again. But somehow he had no luck: they would not go into the keyholes. It was not so much that his hands were trembling as that he kept making mistakes: he could even see, for instance, that the key was the wrong one, that it would not fit, and he still kept putting it in. Suddenly he recalled and realized that the big key with the toothed bit, which was dangling right there with the other, smaller ones, must certainly not be for the chest of drawers at all (as had also occurred to him the last time) but for some other trunk, and that it was in this trunk that everything was probably hidden. He abandoned the chest of drawers and immediately looked under the bed, knowing that old women usually keep their trunks under their beds. Sure enough, there stood a sizeable trunk, about two and a half feet long, with a bowed lid, upholstered in red morocco, studded with little steel nails. The toothed key fitted perfectly and opened it. On top, under a white sheet, lay a red silk coat lined with rabbit fur; beneath it was a silk dress, then a shawl, and then, deeper down, there seemed to be nothing but old clothes. First of all he began wiping his blood-stained hands on the red silk. “It's red; blood won't be so noticeable on red,” he began to reason, but suddenly came to his senses: “Lord! Am I losing my mind?” he thought fearfully.

But no sooner had he disturbed these old clothes than a gold watch suddenly slipped out from under the fur coat. He hastened to turn everything over. Indeed, various gold objects were stuffed in among the rags—all of them probably pledges, redeemed and unredeemed— bracelets, chains, earrings, pins, and so on. Some were in cases, others simply wrapped in newspaper, but neatly and carefully, in double sheets, and tied with cloth bands. Without the least delay, he began stuffing them into the pockets of his trousers and coat, not choosing or opening the packages and cases; but he did not have time to take much . . .

Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps in the room where the old woman lay. He stopped, still as death. But everything was quiet; he must have imagined it. Suddenly there came a slight but distinct cry, or more as if someone softly and abruptly moaned and then fell silent. Again there was a dead silence for a minute or two. He sat crouched by the trunk and waited, barely breathing, then suddenly jumped up, seized the axe, and ran out of the bedroom.

Lizaveta was standing in the middle of the room, with a big bundle in her hands, frozen, staring at her murdered sister, white as a sheet, and as if unable to utter a cry. Seeing him run in, she trembled like a leaf, with a faint quivering, and spasms ran across her whole face; she raised her hand, opened her mouth, yet still did not utter a cry, and began slowly backing away from him into the corner, staring at him fixedly, point-blank, but still not uttering a sound, as if she did not have breath enough to cry out. He rushed at her with the axe; she twisted her lips pitifully, as very small children do when they begin to be afraid of something, stare at the thing that frightens them, and are on the point of crying out. And this wretched Lizaveta was so simple, so downtrodden, and so permanently frightened that she did not even raise a hand to protect her face, though it would have been the most necessary and natural gesture at that moment, because the axe was raised directly over her face. She brought her free left hand up very slightly, nowhere near her face, and slowly stretched it out towards him as if to keep him away. The blow landed directly on the skull, with the sharp edge, and immediately split the whole upper part of the forehead, almost to the crown. She collapsed. Raskolnikov, utterly at a loss, snatched up her bundle, dropped it again, and ran to the entryway.

Fear was taking hold of him more and more, especially after this second, quite unexpected murder. He wanted to run away from there as quickly as possible. And if he had been able at that moment to see and reason more properly, if he had only been able to realize all the difficulties of his situation, all the despair, all the hideousness, all the absurdity of it, and to understand, besides, how many more difficulties and perhaps evildoings he still had to overcome or commit in order to get out of there and reach home, he might very well have dropped everything and gone at once to denounce himself, and not even out of fear for himself, but solely out of horror and loathing for what he had done. Loathing especially was rising and growing in him every moment. Not for anything in the world would he have gone back to the trunk now, or even into the rooms.

But a sort of absentmindedness, even something like revery, began gradually to take possession of him: as if he forgot himself at moments or, better, forgot the main thing and clung to trifles. Nevertheless, glancing into the kitchen and seeing a bucket half full of water on a bench, it did occur to him to wash his hands and the axe. His blood-smeared hands were sticky. He plunged the axe blade straight into the water, grabbed a little piece of soap that was lying in a cracked saucer on the windowsill, and began washing his hands right in the bucket. When he had washed them clean, he also took the axe, washed the iron, and spent a long time, about three minutes, washing the wood where blood had gotten on it, even using soap to try and wash the blood away. Then he wiped it all off with a piece of laundry that was drying there on a line stretched across the kitchen, and then examined the axe long and attentively at the window. There were no traces, only the wood was still damp. He carefully slipped the axe into the loop under his coat. Then, as well as the light in the dim kitchen allowed, he examined his coat, trousers, boots. Superficially, at first glance, there seemed to be nothing, apart from some spots on his boots. He wet the rag and wiped them off. He knew, however, that he was not examining himself well, that there might indeed be something eye-catching which he had failed to notice. He stood pensively in the middle of the room. A dark, tormenting thought was rising in him—the thought that he had fallen into madness and was unable at that moment either to reason or to protect himself, and that he was perhaps not doing at all what he should have been doing...”My God! I must run, run away!” he muttered, and rushed into the entryway. But there such horror awaited him as he had surely never experienced before.