"Hi there! hang it! stop!"
He who uttered these cries had just burst out of one of the lodgings, and was rushing down the stairs as fast as his legs would carry him, yelling the while: "Dmitri! Dmitri! Dmitri! May the devil take the fool!"
The rest died away in the distance; the man who was uttering these cries had already left the house far behind. All was once more silent; but scarcely was this alarm over than a fresh one succeeded it: several individuals talking together in a loud tone of voice were noisily coming up the stairs. There were three or four of them. Raskolnikoff recognized the young man's sonorous accents. "It is they!" No longer hoping to escape them, he advanced boldly to meet them: "Let happen what will!" said he to himself: "if they stop me, all is over; if they let me pass, all is over just the same: they will remember passing me on the stairs." They were about to encounter him, only one flight separated them—when suddenly he felt himself saved! A few steps from him, to the right, there was an empty lodging with the door wide open, it was that same one on the second floor where he had seen the painters working, but, by a happy chance, they had just left it. It was they, no doubt, who a few minutes before had gone off, uttering those shouts. The paint on the floors was quite fresh, the workmen had left their things in the middle of the room: a small tub, some paint in an earthenware crock, and a big brush. In the twinkling of an eye, Raskolnikoff glided into the deserted apartment and hid himself as best he could up against the wall. It was none too soon: his pursuers were already on the landing; they did not stop there, however, but went on up to the fourth floor, talking loudly among themselves. After waiting till they had got some distance off, he left the room on tiptoe and hurried down as fast as his legs would carry him. No one on the stairs! No one either at the street door! He stepped briskly outside, and, once in the street, turned to the left.
He knew very well, he knew without a doubt, that they who were seeking him were at that moment in the old woman's lodging, and were amazed to find that the door, which a little while before had been shut so securely, was now open. "They're examining the corpses," thought he; "it won't take them a minute to come to the conclusion that the murderer managed to hide himself from them as they went up the stairs; perhaps they may even have a suspicion that he stowed himself away in the empty lodging on the second floor while they were hurrying to the upper part of the house." But, in spite of these reflections, he did not dare to increase his pace, though he still had a hundred steps or so to go before reaching the first turning. "Suppose I slipped into some doorway, in some out-of-the-way street, and waited there a few minutes? No, that would never do! I might throw my hatchet away somewhere? or take a cab? No good! no good!" At last he reached a narrow lane; he entered it more dead than alive. There, he was almost in safety, and he knew it: in such a place, suspicion could hardly be fixed upon him; while, on the other hand, it was easier for him to avoid notice by mingling with the crowd. But all these agonizing events had so enfeebled him that he could scarcely keep on his legs. Great drops of perspiration streamed down his face; his neck was quite wet. "I think you've had your fill!" shouted some one who took him for a drunken man as he reached the canal bank.
He no longer knew what he was doing; the farther he went, the more obscure became his ideas. However, when he found himself on the quay, he became frightened at seeing so few people there, and, fearing that he might be noticed on so deserted a spot, he returned to the lane. Though he had hardly the strength to put one leg before the other, he nevertheless took the longest way to reach his home. He had scarcely recovered his presence of mind even when he crossed the threshold; at least the thought of the hatchet never came to him until he was on the stairs. Yet the question he had to solve was a most serious one: it consisted in returning the hatchet to the place he had taken it from, and in doing so without attracting the least attention. Had he been more capable of considering his position, he would certainly have understood that, instead of replacing the hatchet, it would be far safer to get rid of it by throwing it into the yard of some other house.
Nevertheless he met with no mishap. The door of the porter's lodge was closed, though not locked; to all appearance, therefore, the porter was at home. But Raskolnikoff had so thoroughly lost all faculty of preparing any kind of plan, that he walked straight to the door and opened it. If the porter had asked him: "What do you want?" perhaps he would simply have handed him the hatchet. But, the same as on the previous occasion, the porter was absent, and this gave the young man every facility to replace the hatchet under the bench, exactly where he had found it. Then he went upstairs and reached his room without meeting a soul; the door of his landlady's apartments was shut. Once home again, he threw himself on his couch just as he was. He did not sleep, but lay in a sort of semiconsciousness. If anybody had then appeared before him, he would have sprung up and cried out. His head was swimming with a host of vague thoughts: do what he could, he was unable to follow the thread of one of them.
Raskolnikoff lay on the couch a very long while. At times he seemed to rouse from this half sleep, and then he noticed that the night was very far advanced, but still it never entered his head to rise. Soon it began to brighten into day, and the dawn found him in a state of stupefaction, lying motionless on his back. A desperate clamor, and sounds of brawls from the streets below, rose to his ears. These awakened him thoroughly, although he heard them every morning early at the same hour. "Ah! two o'clock, drinking is over," and he started up as though some one had pulled him off the couch. "What! two o'clock already?" He sat on the edge of the couch and then recollected everything, in an instant it all came back! At first he thought he was going out of his mind, a strange chill pervaded his frame, but the cold arose from the fever which had seized upon him during his sleep. He shivered until his teeth chattered, and all his limbs fairly shook. He went to the door, opened it, and listened; all was silent in the house. With astonishment he turned and looked round the room. How could he have come home the night before, not bolted the door, and thrown himself on the couch just as he was, not only not undressed, but with his hat on? There it lay in the middle of the floor where it had rolled. "If anyone came in, what would he think? That I am drunk, of course."
He went to the window—it was pretty light—and looked himself all over from head to foot, to see if there were any stains on his clothes. But he could not rely upon that sort of inspection; so, still shivering, he undressed and examined his clothes again, looking everywhere with the greatest care. To make quite sure, he went over them three times. He discovered nothing but a few drops of clotted blood on the ends of his trousers which were very much frayed. He took a big clasp-knife and cut off the frayed edges. Suddenly he remembered that the purse and the things he had abstracted from the old woman's chest, were still in his pockets! He had never thought of taking them out and hiding them! indeed, it had never crossed his mind that they were in his pockets while examining his clothes! Was it possible? In a second he emptied all out on to the table in a heap. Then, turning his pockets inside out to make sure there was nothing left in them, he carried the things to a corner of the room. Just there, the paper was hanging loose from the wall; he bent down and commenced to stuff all the things into a hole behind the paper. "There, it's all out of sight!" thought he gleefully, as he stood gazing stupidly at the spot where the paper bulged out more than ever. Suddenly he began to shudder from terror. "Good heavens!" murmured he in despair, "what is the matter with me? Is that hidden? Is that the way to hide anything?"
Indeed, he had not reckoned on such spoil, he had only thought of taking the old woman's money; so he was not prepared with a hiding place for the jewels. "I have no cause to rejoice now," thought he. "Is that the way to hide anything? I must really be losing my senses!" He sunk on the couch again exhausted; another fit of intolerable shivering seized him, and he mechanically pulled his old student's cloak over him for warmth, as he fell into a delirious sleep. He lost all consciousness of himself. Not more than five minutes had elapsed before he woke up in intense excitement, and bent over his clothes in the deepest anguish. "How could I go to sleep again when nothing is done! For I have done nothing, the loop is still where I sewed it. I forgot all about that! What a convincing proof it would have been." He ripped it off and tore it into shreds which he placed among his underlinen under the pillow. "These rags cannot awaken any suspicions, I fancy; at least, so it seems to me," repeated he, standing up in the middle of the room, and, with an attempt rendered all the more painful by the effort it cost him, he looked all round, trying to make sure he had forgotten nothing. He suffered cruelly from this conviction, that everything, even memory, even the most elementary prudence, was abandoning him.
"Can this be the punishment already beginning? Indeed! indeed! it is!"