"That's true. The murderer was inside, and had bolted the door, and certainly he would have been captured had not Koch foolishly run off to the porter. In the interval he, no doubt, had time to escape downstairs. Koch explains that, if he had remained, the man would have leaped out and killed him. He wanted to have a Te Deum sung. Ha, ha!"
"Did nobody see the murderer?"
"How could they? The house is a perfect Noah's ark," put in the clerk, who had been listening.
"The thing is clear, very clear," said Nicodemus Thomich decisively.
"Not at all! Not at all!" cried Elia Petrovitch, in reply.
Raskolnikoff took up his hat and made for the door, but he never reached it. When he came to himself he found he was sitting on a chair, supported on the right by some unknown man, while to his left stood another, holding some yellow water in a yellow glass. Nicodemus Thomich, standing before him, was looking at him fixedly. Raskolnikoff rose.
"What is it? Are you ill?" asked the officer sharply.
"He could hardly hold the pen to sign his name," the clerk explained, at the same time going back to his books.
"Have you been ill very long?" cried Elia Petrovitch from his table; he had run to see the swoon and returned to his place.
"Since yesterday," murmured Raskolnikoff in reply.