“I should think so,” said Zossimov.
“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.”
“How did they get there? How did they get there?” cried Razumihin. “How can you, a doctor, whose duty it is to study man and who has more opportunity than anyone else for studying human nature—how can you fail to see the character of the man in the whole story? Don’t you see at once that the answers he has given in the examination are the holy truth? They came into his hand precisely as he has told us—he stepped on the box and picked it up.”
“The holy truth! But didn’t he own himself that he told a lie at first?”
“Listen to me, listen attentively. The porter and Koch and Pestryakov and the other porter and the wife of the first porter and the woman who was sitting in the porter’s lodge and the man Kryukov, who had just got out of a cab at that minute and went in at the entry with a lady on his arm, that is eight or ten witnesses, agree that Nikolay had Dmitri on the ground, was lying on him beating him, while Dmitri hung on to his hair, beating him, too. They lay right across the way, blocking the thoroughfare. They were sworn at on all sides while they ‘like children’ (the very words of the witnesses) were falling over one another, squealing, fighting and laughing with the funniest faces, and, chasing one another like children, they ran into the street. Now take careful note. The bodies upstairs were warm, you understand, warm when they found them! If they, or Nikolay alone, had murdered them and broken open the boxes, or simply taken part in the robbery, allow me to ask you one question: do their state of mind, their squeals and giggles and childish scuffling at the gate fit in with axes, bloodshed, fiendish cunning, robbery? They’d just killed them, not five or ten minutes before, for the bodies were still warm, and at once, leaving the flat open, knowing that people would go there at once, flinging away their booty, they rolled about like children, laughing and attracting general attention. And there are a dozen witnesses to swear to that!”
“Of course it is strange! It’s impossible, indeed, but...”
“No, brother, no buts. And if the ear-rings being found in Nikolay’s hands at the very day and hour of the murder constitutes an important piece of circumstantial evidence against him—although the explanation given by him accounts for it, and therefore it does not tell seriously against him—one must take into consideration the facts which prove him innocent, especially as they are facts that cannot be denied. And do you suppose, from the character of our legal system, that they will accept, or that they are in a position to accept, this fact—resting simply on a psychological impossibility—as irrefutable and conclusively breaking down the circumstantial evidence for the prosecution? No, they won’t accept it, they certainly won’t, because they found the jewel-case and the man tried to hang himself, ‘which he could not have done if he hadn’t felt guilty.’ That’s the point, that’s what excites me, you must understand!”
“Oh, I see you are excited! Wait a bit. I forgot to ask you; what proof is there that the box came from the old woman?”