“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.