Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (famous ebook reader TXT) 📖

to go out, but suddenly, on the floor below, a door was noisily opened and someone began going downstairs humming a tune. ‘How is it they all make such a noise?’

flashed through his mind. Once more he closed the door and waited. At last all was still, not a soul stirring. He was just taking a step towards the stairs when he heard fresh footsteps.

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The steps sounded very far off, at the very bottom of the stairs, but he remembered quite clearly and distinctly that from the first sound he began for some reason to suspect that this was someone coming there to the fourth floor, to the old woman. Why? Were the sounds

somehow peculiar, significant? The steps were heavy, even and unhurried. Now he had passed the first floor, now he was mounting higher, it was growing more and more distinct! He could hear his heavy breathing. And now the third storey had been reached. Coming here! And it seemed to him all at once that he was turned to stone, that it was like a dream in which one is being pursued, nearly caught and will be killed, and is rooted to the spot and cannot even move one’s arms.

At last when the unknown was mounting to the fourth floor, he suddenly started, and succeeded in slipping neatly and quickly back into the flat and closing the door behind him. Then he took the hook and softly, noiselessly, fixed it in the catch. Instinct helped him. When he had done this, he crouched holding his breath, by the door. The unknown visitor was by now also at the door. They were now standing opposite one another, as he had just before been standing with the old woman, when the door divided them and he was listening.

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The visitor panted several times. ‘He must be a big, fat man,’ thought Raskolnikov, squeezing the axe in his hand.

It seemed like a dream indeed. The visitor took hold of the bell and rang it loudly.

As soon as the tin bell tinkled, Raskolnikov seemed to be aware of something moving in the room. For some seconds he listened quite seriously. The unknown rang again, waited and suddenly tugged violently and impatiently at the handle of the door. Raskolnikov gazed in horror at the hook shaking in its fastening, and in blank terror expected every minute that the fastening would be pulled out. It certainly did seem possible, so violently was he shaking it. He was tempted to hold the fastening, but he might be aware of it. A giddiness came over him again.

‘I shall fall down!’ flashed through his mind, but the unknown began to speak and he recovered himself at once.

‘What’s up? Are they asleep or murdered? D-damn them!’ he bawled in a thick voice, ‘Hey, Alyona Ivanovna, old witch! Lizaveta Ivanovna, hey, my beauty! open the door! Oh, damn them! Are they asleep or what?’

And again, enraged, he tugged with all his might a dozen times at the bell. He must certainly be a man of authority and an intimate acquaintance.

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At this moment light hurried steps were heard not far off, on the stairs. someone else was approaching.

Raskolnikov had not heard them at first.

‘You don’t say there’s no one at home,’ the new-comer cried in a cheerful, ringing voice, addressing the first visitor, who still went on pulling the bell. ‘Good evening, Koch.’

‘From his voice he must be quite young,’ thought Raskolnikov.

‘Who the devil can tell? I’ve almost broken the lock,’

answered Koch. ‘But how do you come to know me?

‘Why! The day before yesterday I beat you three times running at billiards at Gambrinus’.’

‘Oh!’

‘So they are not at home? That’s queer. It’s awfully stupid though. Where could the old woman have gone?

I’ve come on business.’

‘Yes; and I have business with her, too.’

‘Well, what can we do? Go back, I suppose, Aie—aie!

And I was hoping to get some money!’ cried the young man.

‘We must give it up, of course, but what did she fix this time for? The old witch fixed the time for me to come herself. It’s out of my way. And where the devil she can 159 of 967

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have got to, I can’t make out. She sits here from year’s end to year’s end, the old hag; her legs are bad and yet here all of a sudden she is out for a walk!’

‘Hadn’t we better ask the porter?’

‘What?’

‘Where she’s gone and when she’ll be back.’

‘Hm…. Damn it all! … We might ask…. But you

know she never does go anywhere.’

And he once more tugged at the door-handle.

‘Damn it all. There’s nothing to be done, we must go!’

‘Stay!’ cried the young man suddenly. ‘Do you see how the door shakes if you pull it?’

‘Well?’

‘That shows it’s not locked, but fastened with the hook! Do you hear how the hook clanks?’

‘Well?’

‘Why, don’t you see? That proves that one of them is at home. If they were all out, they would have locked the door from the outside with the key and not with the hook from inside. There, do you hear how the hook is clanking? To fasten the hook on the inside they must be at home, don’t you see. So there they are sitting inside and don’t open the door!’

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‘Well! And so they must be!’ cried Koch, astonished.

‘What are they about in there?’ And he began furiously shaking the door.

‘Stay!’ cried the young man again. ‘Don’t pull at it!

There must be something wrong…. Here, you’ve been ringing and pulling at the door and still they don’t open!

So either they’ve both fainted or …’

‘What?’

‘I tell you what. Let’s go fetch the porter, let him wake them up.’

‘All right.’

Both were going down.

‘Stay. You stop here while I run down for the porter.’

‘What for?’

‘Well, you’d better.’

‘All right.’

‘I’m studying the law you see! It’s evident, e-vi-dent there’s something wrong here!’ the young man cried hotly, and he ran downstairs.

Koch remained. Once more he softly touched the bell which gave one tinkle, then gently, as though reflecting and looking about him, began touching the door-handle pulling it and letting it go to make sure once more that it was only fastened by the hook. Then puffing and panting 161 of 967

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he bent down and began looking at the keyhole: but the key was in the lock on the inside and so nothing could be seen.

Raskolnikov stood keeping tight hold of the axe. He was in a sort of delirium. He was even making ready to fight when they should come in. While they were knocking and talking together, the idea several times occurred to him to end it all at once and shout to them through the door. Now and then he was tempted to swear at them, to jeer at them, while they could not open the door! ‘Only make haste!’ was the thought that flashed through his mind.

‘But what the devil is he about? …’ Time was passing, one minute, and another—no one came. Koch began to be restless.

‘What the devil?’ he cried suddenly and in impatience deserting his sentry duty, he, too, went down, hurrying and thumping with his heavy boots on the stairs. The steps died away.

‘Good heavens! What am I to do?’

Raskolnikov unfastened the hook, opened the door—

there was no sound. Abruptly, without any thought at all, he went out, closing the door as thoroughly as he could, and went downstairs.

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He had gone down three flights when he suddenly heard a loud voice below—where could he go! There was nowhere to hide. He was just going back to the flat.

‘Hey there! Catch the brute!’

Somebody dashed out of a flat below, shouting, and rather fell than ran down the stairs, bawling at the top of his voice.

‘Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Blast him!’

The shout ended in a shriek; the last sounds came from the yard; all was still. But at the same instant several men talking loud and fast began noisily mounting the stairs.

There were three or four of them. He distinguished the ringing voice of the young man. ‘They!’

Filled with despair he went straight to meet them, feeling ‘come what must!’ If they stopped him—all was lost; if they let him pass—all was lost too; they would remember him. They were approaching; they were only a flight from him—and suddenly deliverance! A few steps from him on the right, there was an empty flat with the door wide open, the flat on the second floor where the painters had been at work, and which, as though for his benefit, they had just left. It was they, no doubt, who had just run down, shouting. The floor had only just been painted, in the middle of the room stood a pail and a 163 of 967

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broken pot with paint and brushes. In one instant he had whisked in at the open door and hidden behind the wall and only in the nick of time; they had already reached the landing. Then they turned and went on up to the fourth floor, talking loudly. He waited, went out on tiptoe and ran down the stairs.

No one was on the stairs, nor in the gateway. He passed quickly through the gateway and turned to the left in the street.

He knew, he knew perfectly well that at that moment they were at the flat, that they were greatly astonished at finding it unlocked, as the door had just been fastened, that by now they were looking at the bodies, that before another minute had passed they would guess and completely realise that the murderer had just been there, and had succeeded in hiding somewhere, slipping by them and escaping. They would guess most likely that he had been in the empty flat, while they were going upstairs.

And meanwhile he dared not quicken his pace much, though the next turning was still nearly a hundred yards away. ‘Should he slip through some gateway and wait somewhere in an unknown street? No, hopeless! Should he fling away the axe? Should he take a cab? Hopeless, hopeless!’

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At last he reached the turning. He turned down it more dead than alive. Here he was half way to safety, and he understood it; it was less risky because there was a great crowd of people, and he was lost in it like a grain of sand.

But all he had suffered had so weakened him that he could scarcely move. Perspiration ran down him in drops, his neck was all wet. ‘My word, he has been going it!’

someone shouted at him when he came out on the canal bank.

He was only dimly conscious of himself now, and the farther he went the worse it was. He remembered however, that on coming out on to the canal bank, he was alarmed at finding few people there and so being more conspicuous, and he had thought of turning back. Though he was almost falling from fatigue, he went a long way round so as to get home from quite a different direction.

He was not fully conscious when he passed through the gateway of his house! he was already on the staircase before he recollected the axe. And yet he had a very grave problem before him, to put it back and to escape observation as far as possible in doing so. He was of course incapable of reflecting that it might perhaps be far better not to restore the axe at all, but to drop it later on in somebody’s yard. But it all happened fortunately, the door 165 of 967

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of the porter’s room was closed but not locked, so that it seemed most likely that the porter was at home. But he had so completely lost all power of reflection that he walked straight to