Most Interesting Stories of All Nations Part 14

"Well, what's to be done? I suppose we must go back to whence we came. I wanted to borrow some money of her!" exclaimed the young man.

"Of course we must go back again; but why then did she make an appointment? She herself, the old witch, told me to come at this hour. And it's a long way to where I live. Where the deuce can she be? I don't understand it. She never stirs from one year's end to the other, the old witch; she quite rots in the place, her legs have always got something the matter with them, and now all on a sudden she goes gallivanting about!"

"Suppose we question the porter?"

"What for?"

"To find out where she's gone and when she will be back."

"Hum!--the deuce!--question!--but she never goes anywhere." And he again tugged at the door handle. "The devil take her! there's nothing to be done but to go."

"Wait!" suddenly exclaimed the young man, "look!--do you notice how the door resists when we pull it?"

"Well, what then?"

"Why, that shows that it's not locked, but bolted! Hark how it clinks!"

"Well?"

"Don't you understand? That shows that one of them must be at home. If both were out, they would have locked the door after them, and not have bolted it inside. Listen, don't you hear the noise it makes? Well, to bolt one's door, one must be at home, you understand. Therefore it follows that they are at home, only for some reason or other they don't open the door!"

"Why, yes, you're right!" exclaimed the astonished Koch. "So they're there, are they?" And he again shook the door violently.

"Stay!" resumed the young man, "don't pull like that. There's something peculiar about this. You've rung, you've pulled at the door with all your might, and they haven't answered you; therefore, they've either both fainted away, or--"

"What?"

"This is what we had better do: have the porter up, so that he may find out what's the matter."

"That's not a bad idea!"

They both started downstairs.

"Stop! you stay here; I'll fetch the porter."

"Why stay here?"

"Well, one never knows what might happen--"

"All right."

"You see, I might also pa.s.s for an examining magistrate! There's something very peculiar about all this, that's evident, e-vi-dent!"

said the young man excitedly, and he hastily made his way down the stairs.

Left alone, Koch rang again, but gently this time; then, with a thoughtful air, he began to play with the door handle, turning it first one way, then the other, so as to make sure the door was only bolted. After this, with a great deal of puffing and blowing, he stooped down to look through the keyhole, but the key was in the lock, and turned in such a way that one could not see through.

Standing up on the other side of the door, Raskolnikoff still held the hatchet in his hands. He was almost in a state of delirium and was preparing to attack the two men the moment they forced an entrance. More than once, on hearing them knocking and planning together, he had felt inclined to put an end to the matter there and then by calling out to them. At times he experienced a desire to abuse and defy them, while awaiting their irruption. "The sooner it's over the better!" he kept thinking.

"The devil take them!" The time pa.s.sed; still no one came. Koch was beginning to lose patience. "The devil take them!" he muttered again, and, tired of waiting, he relinquished his watch to go and find the young man. By degrees the sound of his heavy boots echoing on the stairs ceased to be heard.

"Heavens! What shall I do?"

Raskolnikoff drew back the bolt and opened the door a few inches.

Rea.s.sured by the silence which reigned in the house, and, moreover, scarcely in a fit state at the time to reflect on what he did, he went out on to the landing, shut the door behind him as securely as he could and turned to go downstairs. He had already descended several steps when suddenly a great uproar arose from one of the floors below. Where could he hide? Concealment was impossible, so he hastened upstairs again.

"Hi there! hang it! stop!"

He who uttered these cries had just burst out of one of the lodgings, and was rushing down the stairs as fast as his legs would carry him, yelling the while: "Dmitri! Dmitri! Dmitri! May the devil take the fool!"

The rest died away in the distance; the man who was uttering these cries had already left the house far behind. All was once more silent; but scarcely was this alarm over than a fresh one succeeded it: several individuals talking together in a loud tone of voice were noisily coming up the stairs. There were three or four of them. Raskolnikoff recognized the young man's sonorous accents.

"It is they!" No longer hoping to escape them, he advanced boldly to meet them: "Let happen what will!" said he to himself: "if they stop me, all is over; if they let me pa.s.s, all is over just the same: they will remember pa.s.sing me on the stairs." They were about to encounter him, only one flight separated them--when suddenly he felt himself saved! A few steps from him, to the right, there was an empty lodging with the door wide open, it was that same one on the second floor where he had seen the painters working, but, by a happy chance, they had just left it. It was they, no doubt, who a few minutes before had gone off, uttering those shouts. The paint on the floors was quite fresh, the workmen had left their things in the middle of the room: a small tub, some paint in an earthenware crock, and a big brush. In the twinkling of an eye, Raskolnikoff glided into the deserted apartment and hid himself as best he could up against the wall. It was none too soon: his pursuers were already on the landing; they did not stop there, however, but went on up to the fourth floor, talking loudly among themselves. After waiting till they had got some distance off, he left the room on tiptoe and hurried down as fast as his legs would carry him. No one on the stairs! No one either at the street door! He stepped briskly outside, and, once in the street, turned to the left.

He knew very well, he knew without a doubt, that they who were seeking him were at that moment in the old woman's lodging, and were amazed to find that the door, which a little while before had been shut so securely, was now open. 'They're examining the corpses," thought he; "it won't take them a minute to come to the conclusion that the murderer managed to hide himself from them as they went up the stairs; perhaps they may even have a suspicion that he stowed himself away in the empty lodging on the second floor while they were hurrying to the upper part of the house."

But, in spite of these reflections, he did not dare to increase his pace, though he still had a hundred steps or so to go before reaching the first turning. "Suppose I slipped into some doorway, in some out-of-the-way street, and waited there a few minutes? No, that would never do! I might throw my hatchet away somewhere? or take a cab? No good! no good!" At last he reached a narrow lane; he entered it more dead than alive. There, he was almost in safety, and he knew it: in such a place, suspicion could hardly be fixed upon him; while, on the other hand, it was easier for him to avoid notice by mingling with the crowd. But all these agonizing events had so enfeebled him that he could scarcely keep on his legs. Great drops of perspiration streamed down his face; his neck was quite wet. "I think you've had your fill!" shouted some one who took him for a drunken man as he reached the ca.n.a.l bank.

He no longer knew what he was doing; the farther he went, the more obscure became his ideas. However, when he found himself on the quay, he became frightened at seeing so few people there, and, fearing that he might be noticed on so deserted a spot, he returned to the lane. Though he had hardly the strength to put one leg before the other, he nevertheless took the longest way to reach his home. He had scarcely recovered his presence of mind even when he crossed the threshold; at least the thought of the hatchet never came to him until he was on the stairs. Yet the question he had to solve was a most serious one: it consisted in returning the hatchet to the place he had taken it from, and in doing so without attracting the least attention. Had he been more capable of considering his position, he would certainly have understood that, instead of replacing the hatchet, it would be far safer to get rid of it by throwing it into the yard of some other house.

Nevertheless he met with no mishap. The door of the porter's lodge was closed, though not locked; to all appearance, therefore, the porter was at home. But Raskolnikoff had so thoroughly lost all faculty of preparing any kind of plan, that he walked straight to the door and opened it. If the porter had asked him: "What do you want?" perhaps he would simply have handed him the hatchet. But, the same as on the previous occasion, the porter was absent, and this gave the young man every facility to replace the hatchet under the bench, exactly where he had found it. Then he went upstairs and reached his room without meeting a soul; the door of his landlady's apartments was shut. Once home again, he threw himself on his couch just as he was. He did not sleep, but lay in a sort of semiconsciousness. If anybody had then appeared before him, he would have sprung up and cried out. His head was swimming with a host of vague thoughts: do what he could, he was unable to follow the thread of one of them.

Raskolnikoff lay on the couch a very long while. At times he seemed to rouse from this half sleep, and then he noticed that the night was very far advanced, but still it never entered his head to rise. Soon it began to brighten into day, and the dawn found him in a state of stupefaction, lying motionless on his back. A desperate clamor, and sounds of brawls from the streets below, rose to his ears. These awakened him thoroughly, although he heard them every morning early at the same hour. "Ah! two o'clock, drinking is over," and he started up as though some one had pulled him off the couch. "What! two o'clock already?" He sat on the edge of the couch and then recollected everything, in an instant it all came back! At first he thought he was going out of his mind, a strange chill pervaded his frame, but the cold arose from the fever which had seized upon him during his sleep. He shivered until his teeth chattered, and all his limbs fairly shook. He went to the door, opened it, and listened; all was silent in the house. With astonishment he turned and looked round the room. How could he have come home the night before, not bolted the door, and thrown himself on the couch just as he was, not only not undressed, but with his hat on? There it lay in the middle of the floor where it had rolled. "If anyone came in, what would he think? That I am drunk, of course."

He went to the window--it was pretty light--and looked himself all over from head to foot, to see if there were any stains on his clothes. But he could not rely upon that sort of inspection; so, still shivering, he undressed and examined his clothes again, looking everywhere with the greatest care. To make quite sure, he went over them three times. He discovered nothing but a few drops of clotted blood on the ends of his trousers which were very much frayed. He took a big clasp-knife and cut off the frayed edges.

Suddenly he remembered that the purse and the things he had abstracted from the old woman's chest, were still in his pockets!

He had never thought of taking them out and hiding them! indeed, it had never crossed his mind that they were in his pockets while examining his clothes! Was it possible? In a second he emptied all out on to the table in a heap. Then, turning his pockets inside out to make sure there was nothing left in them, he carried the things to a corner of the room. Just there, the paper was hanging loose from the wall; he bent down and commenced to stuff all the things into a hole behind the paper. "There, it's all out of sight!" thought he gleefully, as he stood gazing stupidly at the spot where the paper bulged out more than ever. Suddenly he began to shudder from terror. "Good heavens!" murmured he in despair, "what is the matter with me? Is that hidden? Is that the way to hide anything?"

Indeed, he had not reckoned on such spoil, he had only thought of taking the old woman's money; so he was not prepared with a hiding place for the jewels. "I have no cause to rejoice now," thought he. "Is that the way to hide anything? I must really be losing my senses!" He sunk on the couch again exhausted; another fit of intolerable shivering seized him, and he mechanically pulled his old student's cloak over him for warmth, as he fell into a delirious sleep. He lost all consciousness of himself. Not more than five minutes had elapsed before he woke up in intense excitement, and bent over his clothes in the deepest anguish. "How could I go to sleep again when nothing is done! For I have done nothing, the loop is still where I sewed it. I forgot all about that! What a convincing proof it would have been." He ripped it off and tore it into shreds which he placed among his underlinen under the pillow. "These rags cannot awaken any suspicions, I fancy; at least, so it seems to me," repeated he, standing up in the middle of the room, and, with an attempt rendered all the more painful by the effort it cost him, he looked all round, trying to make sure he had forgotten nothing. He suffered cruelly from this conviction, that everything, even memory, even the most elementary prudence, was abandoning him.

"Can this be the punishment already beginning? Indeed! indeed! it is!"

And indeed the frayed edges he had cut from the bottom of his trousers were lying on the floor, in the middle of the room, exposed to the view of the first comer. "But what can I be thinking of?" exclaimed he in utter bewilderment. Then a strange idea came into his head; he thought that perhaps all his clothes were saturated in blood, and that he could not see this because his senses were gone and his perception of things lost. Then he recollected that there would be traces on the purse, and his pockets would be wet with blood. It was so. "I am bereft of my reason, I know not what I am doing. Bah! not at all!--it is only weakness, delirium. I shall soon be better." He tore at the lining. At this moment the rays of the morning streamed in and shone on his left boot. There were plain traces, and all the point was covered. "I must have stepped in that pool. What shall I do now? Boot, lining, rags, where shall they go?" He rolled them up and stood thinking in the middle of the room. "Ah, the stove.

Yes, burn them. No, I cannot, I have no match. Better throw them away. Yes, yes, that is the thing," said he, again sitting on the couch. "At once, and without delay too, quick." But, instead, his head fell back upon the pillow, and chilly shiverings again came over him. He covered himself with his cloak and slept again. It appeared hours to him, and many a time in his sleep he tried to rise to hasten to throw away his bundle, but he could not, he seemed chained to the bed. At last he awoke, as he heard a loud knock at his door.

"Eh, open, will you?" cried Nastasia. "Don't lie there like a dog.

It's eleven o'clock."

"Perhaps he is not in," said a man's voice.

"The porter's voice. What does he want?" Raskolnikoff rose, and sat on the couch listening. His heart throbbed violently.

"Who has bolted the door then?" exclaimed the servant. "Open, will you?"

"All must be discovered?" He rose a little and undid the bolt, and fell back again on his bed. There stood the porter and Nastasia.

The servant looked strangely at Raskolnikoff, while he fixed a despairing glance upon the porter.

"Here is a notice for you from the office," said the latter.

"What office?"