He was even smiling at having for a moment entertained such a thought, when he was suddenly seized with a terrible anxiety:  suppose the old woman were still alive, suppose she recovered consciousness.  Leaving at once the keys and the drawers, he hastened to the corpse, seized the hatchet, and prepared to strike another blow at his victim, but he found there was no necessity to do so.  Alena Ivanovna was dead beyond all doubt.  Leaning over her again to examine her closer, Raskolnikoff saw that the skull was shattered.  He was about to touch her with his fingers, but drew back, as it was quite unnecessary.  There was a pool of blood upon the floor.  Suddenly noticing a bit of cord round the old woman’s neck, the young man gave it a tug, but the gory stuff was strong, and did not break.  The murderer then tried to remove it by drawing it down the body.  But this second attempt was no more successful than the first, the cord encountered some obstacle and became fixed.  Burning with impatience, Raskolnikoff brandished the hatchet, ready to strike the corpse and sever the confounded string at the same blow.  However, he could not make up his mind to proceed with such brutality.  At last, after trying for two minutes, and staining his hands with blood, he succeeded in severing the cord with the blade of the hatchet without further disfiguring the dead body.  As he had imagined, there was a purse suspended to the old woman’s neck.  Besides this there was also a small enameled medal and two crosses, one of cypress wood, the other of brass.  The greasy purse, a little chamois-leather bag, was as full as it could hold.  Raskolnikoff thrust it in his pocket without examining the contents.  He then threw the crosses on his victim’s breast, and hastily returned to the bedroom, taking the hatchet with him.

His impatience was now intense, he seized the keys, and again set to work.  But all his attempts to open the drawers were unavailing, and this was not so much owing to the shaking of his hands as to his continual misconceptions.  He could see, for instance, that a certain key would not fit the lock, and yet he continued to try and insert it.  All on a sudden he recalled a conjecture he had formed on the occasion of his preceding visit:  the big key with the toothed wards, which was attached to the ring with the smaller ones, probably belonged, not to the drawers, but to some box in which the old woman, no doubt, hoarded up her valuables.  Without further troubling about the drawers, he at once looked under the bed, aware that old women are in the habit of hiding their treasures in such places.  And there indeed was a trunk with rounded lid, covered with red morocco and studded with steel nails.  Raskolnikoff was able to insert the key in the lock without the least difficulty.  When he opened the box he perceived a hareskin cloak trimmed with red lying on a white sheet; beneath the fur was a silk dress, and then a shawl, the rest of the contents appeared to be nothing but rags.  The young man commenced by wiping his bloodstained hands on the red trimming.  “It will not show so much on red.”  Then he suddenly seemed to change his mind:  “Heavens! am I going mad?” thought he with fright.