"I did not bawl, but spoke plainly; it is you that bawl. I am a student, and am not going to have you speak to me in that fashion."The officer became enraged, and fumed so that only splutters flew out of his mouth. He jumped up from his place. "Please keep silence. You are in court. Don't be insolent.""And so are you in court; and, besides bawling, you are smoking, so you are wanting in politeness to the whole company." As he said this, Raskolnikoff felt an inexpressible delight at his maliciousness. The clerk looked up with a smile. The choleric officer was clearly nonplused.
"That is not your business, sir," he cried at last, unnaturally loud. "Make the necessary declaration. Show him, Alexander Gregorivitch. Complaints have been made about you! You don't pay your debts! You know how to fly the kite evidently!"Raskolnikoff did not listen, but greedily seized the paper. He read it through more than once, and could make nothing of it.
"What is this?" he asked of the clerk.
"It is a writ for recovery on a note of hand of yours. Please write," said the clerk.
"Write what?" asked he rudely.
"As I dictate."
The clerk stood near and dictated to him the usual form of declaration: that he was unable to pay, that he would not quit the capital, dispose of his goods in any way, etc., etc.
"You cannot write, your pen is falling from your fingers," said the clerk, and he looked him in the face. "Are you ill?""Yes, my head swims. Go on."
"That is all. Now sign it."
Raskolnikoff let fall the pen, and seemed as if about to rise and go; but, instead of doing so, he laid both elbows on the table and supported his head with his hands. A new idea formed in his mind:
to rise immediately, go straight to Nicodemus Thomich the ward officer and tell him all that had occurred; then to accompany him to his room, and show him all the things hidden away in the wall behind the paper. His desire to do all this was of such strength that he got up from the table to carry his design into execution.
"Reflect, reflect a moment!" ran in his head. "No, better not think, get it off my shoulders." Suddenly he stood still as if shot. Nicodemus Thomich was at this moment hotly discussing something with Elia Petrovitch, the inspector of police, and the words caught Raskolnikoff's anxious attention. He listened.
"It cannot be, they will both be released. In the first place, all is contradictory. Consider. Why did they call the porter if it were their work? To denounce themselves? Or out of cunning? Not at all, that would be too much! Besides, did not the porter see the student Pestriakoff at the very gate just as he came in, and he stood there some time with three friends who had accompanied him.
And Koch: was he not below in the silversmith's for half an hour before he went up to the old woman's? Now, consider.""But see what contradictions arise! They say they knocked and found the door closed; yet three minutes after, when they went back with the porter, it was open.""That's true. The murderer was inside, and had bolted the door, and certainly he would have been captured had not Koch foolishly run off to the porter. In the interval HE, no doubt, had time to escape downstairs. Koch explains that, if he had remained, the man would have leaped out and killed him. He wanted to have a Te Deum sung. Ha, ha!""Did nobody see the murderer?"
"How could they? The house is a perfect Noah's ark," put in the clerk, who had been listening.
"The thing is clear, very clear," said Nicodemus Thomich decisively.
"Not at all! Not at all!" cried Elia Petrovitch, in reply.
Raskolnikoff took up his hat and made for the door, but he never reached it. When he came to himself he found he was sitting on a chair, supported on the right by some unknown man, while to his left stood another, holding some yellow water in a yellow glass.
Nicodemus Thomich, standing before him, was looking at him fixedly.
Raskolnikoff rose.
"What is it? Are you ill?" asked the officer sharply.
"He could hardly hold the pen to sign his name," the clerk explained, at the same time going back to his books.
"Have you been ill very long?" cried Elia Petrovitch from his table; he had run to see the swoon and returned to his place.
"Since yesterday," murmured Raskolnikoff in reply.
"You went out yesterday?"
"I did."
"Ill?"
"Ill!"
"At what time?"
"Eight o'clock in the evening."
"Where did you go, allow me to ask?"
"In the streets."
"Concise and clear."
Raskolnikoff had replied sharply, in a broken voice, his face as pale as a handkerchief, and with his black swollen eyes averted from Elia Petrovitch's scrutinizing glance.
"He can hardly stand on his legs. Do you want to ask anything more?" said Nicodemus Thomich.
"Nothing," replied Elia Petrovitch.
Nicodemus Thomich evidently wished to say more, but, turning to the clerk, who in turn glanced expressively at him, the latter became silent, all suddenly stopped speaking. It was strange.
Raskolnikoff went out. As he descended the stairs he could hear an animated discussion had broken out, and above all, the interrogative voice of Nicodemus Thomich. In the street he came to himself.
"Search, search! they are going to search!" he cried. "The scoundrels, they suspect me!" The old dread seized him again, from head to foot.
Here was the room. All was quiet, and no one had, apparently, disturbed it--not even Nastasia. But, heavens! how could he have left all those things where they were? He rushed to the corner, pushed his hands behind the paper, took out the things, and thrust them in his pockets. There were eight articles in all: two little boxes with earrings or something of that description, then four little morocco cases; a chain wrapped up in paper, and something else done up in a common piece of newspaper--possibly a decoration.
