"What is it?" cried Raskolnikov.
"I have sinned," the man articulated softly.
"How?"
"By evil thoughts."
They looked at one another.
"I was vexed. When you came, perhaps in drink, and bade the porters go to the police-station and asked about the blood, I was vexed that they let you go and took you for drunken. I was so vexed that I lost my sleep. And remembering the address we came here yesterday and asked for you. . . ."
"Who came?" Raskolnikov interrupted, instantly beginning to recollect.
"I did, I've wronged you."
"Then you come from that house?"
"I was standing at the gate with them . . . don't you remember? We have carried on our trade in that house for years past. We cure and prepare hides, we take work home . . . most of all I was vexed. . . ."
And the whole scene of the day before yesterday in the gateway came clearly before Raskolnikov's mind; he recollected that there had been several people there besides the porters, women among them. He remembered one voice had suggested taking him straight to the police-station. He could not recall the face of the speaker, and even now he did not recognise it, but he remembered that he had turned round and made him some answer. . . .
So this was the solution of yesterday's horror. The most awful thought was that he had been actually almost lost, had almost done for himself on account of such a trivial circumstance. So this man could tell nothing except his asking about the flat and the bloodstains. So Porfiry, too, had nothing but that delirium, no facts but this psychology which cuts both ways, nothing positive. So if no more facts come to light (and they must not, they must not!) then . . . then what can they do to him? How can they convict him, even if they arrest him? And Porfiry then had only just heard about the flat and had not known about it before.
"Was it you who told Porfiry . . . that I'd been there?" he cried, struck by a sudden idea.
