He raised his eyes, gave them all a thoughtful look, smiled, and took his cap. He was too calm, compared with when he had first come, and he felt it. Everyone rose.

“Well, sir, curse me if you like, be angry if you like, but I cannot help myself,” Porfiry Petrovich rounded off again. “Allow me one more little question (I really am bothering you, sir!); I would like to introduce just one little idea, simply so as not to forget, sir...”

“Very well, tell me your little idea,” Raskolnikov stood expectantly before him, pale and serious.

“Now then, sir...I really don't know how best to express it...it's such a playful idea...a psychological idea...Now then, sir, it really cannot be—heh, heh, heh!—that when you were writing your little article you did not regard yourself—say, just the tiniest bit—as one of the 'extraordinary' people, as saying a new word—in your sense, I mean...Isn't that so, sir?”

“It's quite possible,” Raskolnikov replied disdainfully.

Razumikhin stirred.

“And if so, sir, can it be that you yourself would venture—say, in view of certain worldly failures and constraints, or somehow for the furtherance of all mankind—to step over the obstacle?...well, for instance, to kill and rob? . . .”

And he somehow suddenly winked at him again with his left eye and laughed inaudibly—exactly as earlier.

“If I did, I would certainly not tell you,” Raskolnikov answered with defiant, haughty disdain.

“No, sir, it's just that I'm interested, properly speaking, in understanding your article, in a literary sense only, sir . . .”

“Pah, how obvious and insolent!” Raskolnikov thought in disgust.

“Allow me to observe,” he answered dryly, “that I do not consider myself a Muhammad or a Napoleon... or any such person whatsoever, and am consequently unable, not being them, to give you a satisfactory explanation of how I would act.”

“But, my goodness, who in our Russia nowadays doesn't consider himself a Napoleon?” Porfiry suddenly pronounced with horrible familiarity. There was something particularly clear this time even in the tone of his voice.

“Might it not have been some future Napoleon who bumped off our Alyona Ivanovna with an axe last week?” Zamyotov suddenly blurted out from his corner.

Raskolnikov was silent, looking firmly and fixedly at Porfiry. Razumikhin frowned gloomily. He seemed to have begun noticing something even earlier. He looked wrathfully around him. A moment of gloomy silence passed. Raskolnikov turned to leave.

“Leaving already!” Porfiry said kindly, holding out his hand with extreme affability. “I'm very, very glad to have made your acquaintance. And concerning your request, do not be in any doubt. Simply write as I told you. Or, best of all, come to my office yourself...one of these days...tomorrow, even. I'll be there around eleven o'clock for certain. We can settle everything...and talk...Since you were one of the last to be there, you might be able to tell us something . . .” he added, with a most good-natured air.

“You want to question me officially, with all the trimmings?” Raskolnikov asked sharply.

“What for, sir? There's no need of that as yet. You misunderstand me. You see, I never let an opportunity go by, and...and I've already talked with all the other pawners...taken evidence from some...and since you're the last one...Oh, yes, by the way!” he exclaimed, suddenly happy about something, “by the way, I've just remembered—what's the matter with me! . . .” He turned to Razu-mikhin. “You were carping at me all the time about this Nikolashka...well, I know, I know myself that the lad is clear,” he turned back to Raskolnikov, “but there was no help for it; we had to bother Mitka as well...The thing is, sir, the whole point is: going up the stairs that time...excuse me, you were there before eight, sir?”

“Before eight,” Raskolnikov answered, at the same time with an unpleasant feeling that he need not have said it.

“So, passing by on the stairs before eight o'clock, did you at least notice two workers in the open apartment—remember?—on the second floor? Or at least one of them? They were painting, didn't you see? This is very, very important for them! ... ”

“Painters? No, I didn't see . . .” Raskolnikov answered slowly, as if rummaging through his memories, at the same time straining his whole being and frozen with anguish trying to guess where precisely the trap lay, and how not to overlook something. “No, I didn't see, and I didn't notice any open apartment either...but on the fourth floor” (he was now in full possession of the trap and was triumphant) “I do remember there was an official moving out of the apartment. . . opposite Alyona Ivanovna's...yes...that I remember clearly...soldiers carrying out some sofa and pressing me against the wall...but painters—no, I don't remember any painters being there...and I don't think there was any open apartment anywhere. No, there wasn't . . .”

“But what's the matter with you!” Razumikhin exclaimed suddenly, as if coming to his senses and figuring things out. “The painters were working on the day of the crime itself, and he was there two days earlier! Why ask him?”

“Pah! I got it all mixed up!” Porfiry slapped himself on the forehead. “Devil take it, my mind stumbles all over itself with this case!” he said to Raskolnikov, as if in apology. “It's so important for us to find out if anyone saw them in the apartment between seven and eight, that I fancied just now you also might be able to tell us...I got it totally mixed up!”

“Well, so you ought to be more careful,” Razumikhin observed morosely.

These last words were spoken in the entryway. Porfiry Petrovich saw them right to the door, with extreme affability. They both came out to the street gloomy and sullen, and did not say a word for a few steps. Raskolnikov drew a deep breath . . .

VI

...I don't believe it! I can't believe it!” the puzzled Razumikhin repeated, trying his best to refute Raskolnikov's arguments. They were already approaching Bakaleev's rooming house, where Pulcheria Alexandrovna and Dunya had long been expecting them. In the heat of the conversation, Razumikhin kept stopping every moment, embarrassed and excited by the mere fact that they were talking openly about that for the first time.

“Don't, then!” Raskolnikov replied, with a cold and careless smile. “You noticed nothing, as is usual with you, but I weighed every word.”

“You're insecure, that's why...Hm...I must admit Porfiry's tone was rather strange, and that scoundrel Zamyotov especially! ...  You're right, there was something in him—but why? Why?”

“Changed his mind overnight.”

“But it's the opposite, the opposite! If they did have such a brainless idea, they'd try their best to conceal it and keep their cards hidden, so as to catch you later...But now—it was so insolent and reckless!”

“If they had any facts—real facts, that is—or somewhat well-founded suspicions at least, then they would indeed try to conceal their game, in hopes of bigger winnings (but then they would have made a search long ago!). They have no facts, however, not a one—it's all a mirage, all double-ended, just a fleeting idea—so they're using insolence to try to throw me off. Maybe he's angry himself that there are no facts, and his irritation broke through. Or maybe he has something in mind...It seems he's an intelligent man...Maybe he wanted to frighten me with his knowing...There's psychology for you, brother...But enough! It's disgusting to explain it all!”

“And insulting, insulting! I understand you! But...since we've started talking openly now (and it's excellent that we're talking openly; I'm glad!)—I will now confess to you straight out that I've noticed it in them for some time, this idea, all along; in the tiniest sense, naturally; a creeping suspicion—but why even a creeping one! How dare they! Where, where are its roots hidden? If you knew how furious I was! What, just because a poor student, crippled by poverty and hypochondria, on the verge of a cruel illness and delirium, which may already have begun in him (note that!), insecure, vain, conscious of his worth, who for six months has sat in his corner seeing no one, in rags, in boots without soles, is standing there in front of some local cops, suffering their abuse; and here there's an unexpected debt shoved in his nose, an overdue promissory note from the court councillor Chebarov, rancid paint, thirty degrees Reaumur,^[80] a stifling atmosphere, a crowd of people, a story about the murder of a person he'd visited the day before—and all this on an empty stomach! How could anyone not faint! And to base everything on that, on that! Devil take it! I know it's annoying, but in your place, Rodka, I'd burst out laughing in their faces; or, better—I'd spit in their mugs, and lay it on thick, and deal out a couple of dozen whacks all around—wisely, as it should always be done—and that would be the end of it. Spit on them! Cheer up! For shame!”