“It's impossible; they'll both be released! First of all, everything's against it; just consider, why would they call the caretaker if it was their doing? To give themselves away, or what? Out of cunning? No, that would be much too cunning! And, finally, both caretakers and the tradeswoman saw the student Pestryakov just by the gate, the very moment he came in: he was walking with three friends and parted with them just by the gate, and he asked the caretakers about lodgings while his friends were still with him. Now, would such a man ask about lodgings if he had come there with such an intention? As for Koch, he spent half an hour with the silversmith downstairs before he went to the old woman's, and left him to go upstairs at exactly a quarter to eight. Think, now . . .”

“But, excuse me, how did they end up with this contradiction: they assure us that they knocked and the door was locked, but when they came back with the caretaker three minutes later, it turned out that the door was not locked.”

“That's just it: the murderer must have been there inside and put the door on the hook; and he would certainly have been caught there if Koch hadn't been fool enough to go for the caretaker himself. And it was precisely during that interval that he managed to get down the stairs and somehow slip past them. Koch keeps crossing himself with both hands: 'If I'd stayed there,' he says, 'he would have jumped out and killed me with an axe.' He wants to have a Russian molieben served, heh, heh! . . .”^[43]

“And no one even saw the murderer?”

“But how could they, really? That house is like Noah's ark,” observed the clerk, who was listening in from where he sat.

“The case is clear, quite clear!” Nikodim Fomich repeated hotly.

“No, the case is very unclear,” Ilya Petrovich clinched.

Raskolnikov picked up his hat and made for the door, but he did not reach it . . .

When he came to his senses he saw that he was sitting in a chair, that some man was supporting him from the right, that another man was standing on his left holding a yellow glass filled with yellow water, and that Nikodim Fomich was standing in front of him, looking at him intently. He got up from the chair.

“What, are you ill?” Nikodim Fomich asked rather curtly.

“He could hardly hold the pen to sign his name,” the clerk observed, sitting down in his place and going back to his papers.

“And how long have you been ill?” Ilya Petrovich called out from where he sat, also sorting through his papers. He, too, had of course looked at the sick man when he fainted, but stepped away at once when he came to.

“Since yesterday . . .” Raskolnikov muttered in reply.

“And did you go out yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Though you were ill?”

“Though I was ill.”

“At what time?”

“After seven in the evening.”

“And where, may I ask?”

“Down the street.”

“Plain and simple.”

Raskolnikov answered curtly, abruptly; he was white as a sheet and refused to lower his dark, feverish eyes before the gaze of Ilya Petrovich.

“He can barely stand on his feet, and you . . .” Nikodim Fomich began.

“Not-at-all!” Ilya Petrovich pronounced somehow specially. Nikodim Fomich was about to add something, but, having glanced at the clerk, who was also looking very intently at him, he fell silent. Everyone suddenly fell silent. It was strange.

“Very well, sir,” Ilya Petrovich concluded, “we are not keeping you.”

Raskolnikov walked out. After his exit an animated conversation began, which he could still hear, the questioning voice of Nikodim Fomich rising above the others...In the street he recovered completely.

“A search, a search, an immediate search!” he repeated to himself, hurrying to get home. “The villains! They suspect me!” His former fear again came over him entirely, from head to foot.

II

“And what if there has already been a search? What if I find them there now?”

But here was his room. Nothing and nobody; no one had been there. Even Nastasya had not touched anything. But, Lord! How could he have left all those things in that hole?

He rushed to the corner, thrust his hand under the wallpaper, and began pulling the things out and loading them into his pockets. There turned out to be eight articles altogether: two small boxes with earrings or something of the sort—he did not look closely; then four small morocco cases. One chain was simply wrapped in newspaper. There was something else in newspaper, apparently a medal.

He stowed them all in different pockets of his coat and in the remaining right pocket of his trousers, trying to make them less conspicuous. He took the purse as well, together with the things. Then he went out of the room, this time leaving the door wide open.

He walked quickly and firmly, and though he felt broken all over, his consciousness remained with him. He was afraid of being followed, afraid that within half an hour, within a quarter of an hour, instructions would be issued to keep a watch on him; so meanwhile he had at all costs to cover his traces. He had to manage it while he still had at least some strength and some judgment...But where to go?

He had long since decided: “Throw everything into the canal, and the water will wash away all traces, and that will be the end of it.” He had decided so during the night, in delirium, in those moments when, as he remembered, he had made several attempts to rise up and go “quickly, quickly, and throw it all away.” But throwing it away turned out to be very difficult.

He wandered along the embankment of the Ekaterininsky Canal for half an hour, perhaps longer, and several times cast an eye at the landing steps as he passed by them. But he could not even think of carrying out his intention: either rafts were standing there and washerwomen were doing laundry on them, or boats were moored there, and people were simply swarming all over the place; besides, he could be seen, he could be noticed from anywhere along the embankments, from all sides: a man coming down on purpose, stopping and throwing something into the water, would look suspicious. And what if the cases floated instead of sinking? Yes, of course they would float. Everyone would see them. Indeed, they all kept staring at him as it was, looking him over, as if he were their only concern. “Why is that? Or does it just seem so to me?” he thought.

Finally it occurred to him that it might be better to go somewhere along the Neva. There were fewer people, it would not be so conspicuous, in any case it was more convenient, and, above all—it was farther away from those parts. And suddenly he was amazed: how could he have wandered for a whole half hour in anguish and anxiety, and in dangerous places, and not thought of it before! And he had killed a whole half hour over such a foolhardy matter simply because he had decided on it in his sleep, in delirium! He was becoming extremely distracted and forgetful, and he knew it. He decidedly had to hurry!

He walked along the V------y Prospect in the direction of the Neva;

but on the way another thought suddenly came to him: “Why the Neva? Why in the water? Wouldn't it be better to go somewhere very far away, even to the Islands again, and there somewhere, in some solitary place, in the woods, under a bush, to bury it all, and maybe also make note of the tree?” And though he felt he could not consider it all clearly and soberly at that moment, it seemed a flawless idea.

But he was not destined to get to the Islands either; something else happened: coming out from the V------y Prospect to the square, he saw on his left the entrance to a courtyard, surrounded by completely blank walls. To the right, immediately inside the gateway, the blank, un-whitewashed wall of the four-storied house next door stretched back deep into the yard. To the left, parallel to the blind wall, and also just beyond the gate, a wooden fence extended about twenty paces into the yard and only then broke to the left. This was a fenced-off, out-of-the-way spot where some materials were lying about. Deeper into the yard, from behind the fence, the angle of a low, sooty stone shed peeked out—evidently part of some workshop. It was probably a carriage-maker's or a metalworker's shop, or something of the sort; everything, starting almost from the gate, was covered with black coal dust. “Why not abandon it here and go away!” suddenly crossed his mind. Not noticing anyone in the yard, he stepped through the gate and saw, just inside, a trough set up next to the fence (such as one often finds in places where there are many factory workers, teamsters, coachmen, and so on), and written in chalk on the fence above the trough was the inevitable witticism in such circumstances: “no loidering hear.”^[44]That was already a good thing; it meant there would be nothing suspicious about his going in and loitering. “Just dump it all in a heap somewhere, and get out!”