“But what are you talking about?” all at once exclaimed Razoumikhin, who, till that moment, had attentively listened; “it was on the very day of the murder that painters were busy in that room, while he came there two days previously!  Why are you asking that question?”

“Right!  I have confused the dates!” cried Porphyrius, tapping his forehead.  “Deuce take me!  That job makes me lose my head!” he added by way of excuse, and speaking to Raskolnikoff.  “It is very important that we should know if anybody saw them in that room between seven and eight.  I thought I might have got that information from you without thinking any more about it.  I had positively confused the days!”

“You ought to be more attentive!” grumbled Razoumikhin.

These last words were uttered in the anteroom, as Porphyrius very civilly led his visitors to the door.  They were gloomy and morose on leaving the house, and had gone some distance before speaking.  Raskolnikoff breathed like a man who had just been subjected to a severe trial.

When, on the following day, precisely at eleven o’clock, Raskolnikoff called on the examining magistrate, he was astonished to have to dance attendance for a considerable time.  According to his idea, he ought to have been admitted immediately; ten minutes, however, elapsed before he could see Porphyrius Petrovitch.  In the outer room where he had been waiting, people came and went without heeding him in the least.  In the next room, which was a kind of office, a few clerks were at work, and it was evident that not one of them had even an idea who Raskolnikoff might be.  The young man cast a mistrustful look about him.  “Was there not,” thought he, “some spy, some mysterious myrmidon of the law, ordered to watch him, and, if necessary, to prevent his escape?” But he noticed nothing of the kind; the clerks were all hard at work, and the other people paid him no kind of attention.  The visitor began to become reassured.  “If,” thought he, “this mysterious personage of yesterday, this specter which had risen from the bowels of the earth, knew all, and had seen all, would they, I should like to know, let me stand about like this?  Would they not rather have arrested me, instead of waiting till I should come of my own accord?  Hence this man has either made no kind of revelation as yet about me, or, more probably, he knows nothing, and has seen nothing (besides how could he have seen anything?):  consequently I have misjudged, and all that happened yesterday was nothing but an illusion of my diseased imagination.”  This explanation, which had offered itself the day before to his mind, at the time he felt most fearful, he considered a more likely one.