“You lie!” he cried, striking himself on the breast with his fist.
“I do not lie! You shed crocodile tears at our evidence and made game of it.… There were moments when I almost wished to believe you more than our evidence.… Oh, you are a good actor!… But now I won't believe you, even should blood flow from your eyes instead of these play-actor's false tears! Say that you killed Kuz'ma!”
“You are either drunk or are laughing at me! Sergei Petrovich, all patience and submissiveness has its limits; I can bear this no longer!”
And Urbenin, with flashing eyes, struck the table with his clenched fist.
“Yesterday I had the imprudence to give you more liberty,” I continued, “by allowing you that which no other prisoner is allowed, to walk about the corridors. And now it appears, out of gratitude you went to the door of that unfortunate Kuz'ma and suffocated a sleeping man! Do you know that you have destroyed not only Kuz'ma; the warders will also be ruined on your account.”
“What have I done, good God?” Urbenin said, seizing hold of his head.
“Do you want the proofs? I will give them.… By my orders your door was left open.… The foolish warders opened the door and forgot to hide the lock.… All the cells are opened with the same key.… In the night you took your key and going into the corridor, you opened your neighbour's door with it.… Having smothered him, you locked the door and put the key into your own lock.”
“Why should I smother him? Why?”
“Because he denounced you.… If yesterday I had not given you this news, he would have been alive now.… It is sinful and shameful, Pëtr Egorych!”
“Sergei Petrovich, young man,” the murderer suddenly said in a soft, tender voice, seizing me by the hand, “you are an honest and respectable man! Do not ruin and stain yourself with false suspicions and over-hasty accusations! You cannot understand how cruelly and painfully you have wounded me by casting upon my soul, which is in no way guilty, a new accusation.… I am a martyr, Sergei Petrovich! Fear to wrong a martyr! The time will come when you will have to beg my pardon, and that time will be soon.… You can't really want to accuse me! But this pardon will not satisfy you.… Instead of assailing me so terribly with insults, it would have been better if in a humane—I will not say a friendly—way (you have already renounced all friendly relations) you had questioned me.… As a witness and your assistant, I would have brought more profit to justice than in the role of the accused. If we even take this new accusation … I could tell you much. I did not sleep last night, and heard everything.”