“No one helped me. I did it myself.”
“Can you sew?”
“A soldier has to know how to sew. No knowledge was needed to do that.”
“Where did you get the material, that is, the rag in which you sewed the money?”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Not at all. And we are in no mood for laughing, Dmitri Fyodorovitch.”
“I don’t know where I got the rag from—somewhere, I suppose.”
“I should have thought you couldn’t have forgotten it?”
“Upon my word, I don’t remember. I might have torn a bit off my linen.”
“That’s very interesting. We might find in your lodgings to‐morrow the shirt or whatever it is from which you tore the rag. What sort of rag was it, cloth or linen?”