“And you didn’t even think of washing your hands at Perhotin’s? You were not afraid then of arousing suspicion?”
“What suspicion? Suspicion or not, I should have galloped here just the same, and shot myself at five o’clock, and you wouldn’t have been in time to do anything. If it hadn’t been for what’s happened to my father, you would have known nothing about it, and wouldn’t have come here. Oh, it’s the devil’s doing. It was the devil murdered father, it was through the devil that you found it out so soon. How did you manage to get here so quick? It’s marvelous, a dream!”
“Mr. Perhotin informed us that when you came to him, you held in your hands ... your blood‐stained hands ... your money ... a lot of money ... a bundle of hundred‐rouble notes, and that his servant‐boy saw it too.”
“That’s true, gentlemen. I remember it was so.”
“Now, there’s one little point presents itself. Can you inform us,” Nikolay Parfenovitch began, with extreme gentleness, “where did you get so much money all of a sudden, when it appears from the facts, from the reckoning of time, that you had not been home?”
The prosecutor’s brows contracted at the question being asked so plainly, but he did not interrupt Nikolay Parfenovitch.
“No, I didn’t go home,” answered Mitya, apparently perfectly composed, but looking at the floor.
“Allow me then to repeat my question,” Nikolay Parfenovitch went on as though creeping up to the subject. “Where were you able to procure such a sum all at once, when by your own confession, at five o’clock the same day you—”
“I was in want of ten roubles and pledged my pistols with Perhotin, and then went to Madame Hohlakov to borrow three thousand which she wouldn’t give me, and so on, and all the rest of it,” Mitya interrupted sharply. “Yes, gentlemen, I was in want of it, and suddenly thousands turned up, eh? Do you know, gentlemen, you’re both afraid now ‘what if he won’t tell us where he got it?’ That’s just how it is. I’m not going to tell you, gentlemen. You’ve guessed right. You’ll never know,” said Mitya, chipping out each word with extraordinary determination. The lawyers were silent for a moment.
“You must understand, Mr. Karamazov, that it is of vital importance for us to know,” said Nikolay Parfenovitch, softly and suavely.