“Is he really mad?” Stavrogin wondered smiling. The front door was opened.
“Stavrogin—is America ours?” said Verhovensky, seizing his hand for the last time.
“What for?” said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, gravely and sternly.
“You don’t care, I knew that!” cried Verhovensky in an access of furious anger. “You are lying, you miserable, profligate, perverted, little aristocrat! I don’t believe you, you’ve the appetite of a wolf!… Understand that you’ve cost me such a price, I can’t give you up now! There’s no one on earth but you! I invented you abroad; I invented it all, looking at you. If I hadn’t watched you from my corner, nothing of all this would have entered my head!”
Stavrogin went up the steps without answering.
“Stavrogin!” Verhovensky called after him, “I give you a day … two, then … three, then; more than three I can’t—and then you’re to answer!”
CHAPTER IX. A RAID AT STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH’S
Meanwhile an incident had occurred which astounded me and shattered Stepan Trofimovitch. At eight o’clock in the morning Nastasya ran round to me from him with the news that her master was “raided.” At first I could not make out what she meant; I could only gather that the “raid” was carried out by officials, that they had come and taken his papers, and that a soldier had tied them up in a bundle and “wheeled them away in a barrow.” It was a fantastic story. I hurried at once to Stepan Trofimovitch.
I found him in a surprising condition: upset and in great agitation, but at the same time unmistakably triumphant. On the table in the middle of the room the samovar was boiling, and there was a glass of tea poured out but untouched and forgotten. Stepan Trofimovitch was wandering round the table and peeping into every corner of the room, unconscious of what he was doing. He was wearing his usual red knitted jacket, but seeing me, he hurriedly put on his coat and waistcoat—a thing he had never done before when any of his intimate friends found him in his jacket. He took me warmly by the hand at once.