Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (400 page)

“Really? But... it doesn’t matter to us.”

“Of course it doesn’t. We’re not masons! So I felt surprised at the general’s getting up on purpose in the night to wake me to tell me so.”

“Ferdyshtchenko has gone, you say?”

“At seven o’clock. He came in to see me on the way. I was sitting up with Ippolit. He said he was going to spend the day with Vilkin — there’s a drunken fellow here called Vilkin. Well, I’m off! And here’s Lukyan Timofeyitch. . . . The prince is sleepy,

Lukyan Timofeyitch, right about face!”

“Only for a moment, much honoured prince, on a matter of great consequence to me,” Lebedyev, coming in, pronounced in a forced undertone of great significance, and he bowed with dignity.

He had only just come in, and still held his hat in his hand. His face looked preoccupied and wore a peculiar, unusual expression of personal dignity. Myshkin asked him to sit down.

“You’ve inquired for me twice already? You are still anxious, perhaps, on account of what happened yesterday?”

“You mean on account of that boy, prince? Oh, no; yesterday my ideas were in confusion ... but to-day I don’t intend contrecarrying your propositions in anything whatever.”

“Contre — ? What did you say?”

“I said ‘contrecarrying,’ a French word, like many other words that have entered into the composition of the Russian language, but I don’t defend it.”

“What’s the matter with you this morning, Lebedyev? \bu’re so dignified and formal, and you speak with such solemnity and as if you were spelling it out,” said Myshkin, laughing.

“Nikolay Ardalionovitch!” Lebedyev addressed Kolya in a voice almost of emotion— “having to acquaint the prince with a matter affecting myself alone....”

“Of course, of course, it’s not my business! Goodbye, prince!” Kolya retired at once.

“I like the child for his tact,” pronounced Lebedyev, looking after him, “a quick boy, but inquisitive. I’ve encountered a severe calamity, respected prince, last night or this morning at daybreak; I hesitate to determine the precise hour.”

“What is it?”

“I have lost four hundred roubles from my coat-pocket, much honoured prince. We were keeping the day!” added Lebedyevwith a sour smile.

“You’ve lost four hundred roubles? That’s a pity.”

“Particularly for a poor man honourably maintaining his family by his own labour.”

“Of course, of course. How did it happen?”

“The fruits of drinking. I have come to you as my Providence, much honoured prince. I received a sum of four hundred roubles in silver from a debtor yesterday, at five o’clock in the afternoon, and I came back here bv train. I had mv pocket-book in mv pocket. When I changed my uniform for my indoor-coat, I put the money in the coat-pocket, intending that very evening to meet a call with it. ... I was expecting an agent.”

“By the way, Lukyan Timofeyitch, is it true you put an advertisement in the papers that you would lend money on gold or silver articles?”

“Through an agent; my own name does not appear, nor my address. The sum at my disposal is paltry, and in view of the increase of my family you will admit that a fair rate of interest....”

“Quite so, quite so. I only ask for information; forgive my interrupting.”

“The agent did not turn up. Meantime the wretched boy was brought here. I was already in an over-elevated condition, after dinner; the visitors came, we drank . . . tea, and . . . and I grew merry to my ruin. When Keller came in late and announced your fete day and the order for champagne, since I have a heart, dear and much-honoured prince (which you have probably remarked already, seeing that I have deserved you should), since I have a heart, I will not say feeling, but grateful — and I am proud of it — I

thought, well, to do greater respect to the coming festivity and, in expectation of congratulating you, by going to change my old housecoat, and putting on the uniform I had taken off on my return — which indeed I did, as you, prince, probably observed, seeing me the whole evening in my uniform. Changing my attire, I forgot the pocket-book in the coat-pocket ... so true it is that when God will chastise a man, He first of all deprives him of his reason; and only this morning, at half-past seven, on waking up, I jumped up like a madman, and snatched first thing at my coat — the pocket was empty! The pocket-book had vanished!”

“Ach, that is unpleasant!”

“Unpleasant indeed; and with true tact you have at once found the right word for it,” Lebedyev added, not without slyness.

“Well, but . . .” Myshkin said uneasily, pondering. “It’s serious, you know.”

“Serious indeed. Again, prince, you have found the word to describe....”

“Ach, don’t go on, Lukyan Timofeyitch. What is there to find? Words are not what matter. Do you think you could have dropped it out of your pocket when you were drunk?”

“I might have. Anything may happen when one is drunk, as you so sincerely express it, much honoured prince. But I beg you to consider if I had dropped the article out of my pocket when I changed my coat, the dropped article would have been on the floor. Where is that article?”

“Did you put it away perhaps in a drawer, in a table?”

“I’ve looked through everything, I’ve rummaged everywhere, though I hadn’t hidden it anywhere and hadn’t opened any drawer, as I distinctly remember.”

“Have you looked in your cupboard?”

“The first thing I did was to look in the cupboard, and I’ve looked there several times already. . . .And how could I have put it in the cupboard, truly honoured prince?”

“I must own, Lebedyev, this distresses me. Then some one must have found it on the floor?”

“Or picked it out of my pocket! Two alternatives.”

“This distresses me very much, for who. . . . That’s the question!”

“Not a doubt of it. That is the great question; you find the very word, the very notion, with wonderful exactitude, and you define the position, most illustrious prince.”

“Ach, Lukyan Timofeyitch, give over scoffing, this.

“Scoffing!” cried Lebedyev, clasping his hands.

“Well, well, that’s all right. I’m not angry. It’s quite another matter. ... I’m afraid for people. Whom do you suspect?”

“A most difficult and complicated question! The servant I can’t suspect; she was sitting in the kitchen. Nor my own children either....”

“I should think not!”

“One of the visitors then.”

“But is that possible?”

“Utterly, and in the highest degree impossible, but so it must be. I’m prepared to admit, however, I’m convinced, indeed, that it is a case of theft; it could not have been committed in the evening when we were all together, but in the night or even in the morning by some one who passed the night here.”

“Ach, my God!”

“Burdovsky and Nikolay Ardalionovitch I naturally exclude; and they didn’t even come into my room.”

“I should think so! Even if thev had come! Who spent the night there?”

“Counting me, there were four of us in two adjoining rooms: the general, Keller, Mr. Ferdyshtchenko, and I. So it must have been one of us four!”

“Of the three, then. But which?”

“I counted myself for correctness and accuracy; but you will admit, prince, that I could hardly have robbed myself, though such cases do happen....”

“Ach, Lebedyev, how wearisome this is!” cried Myshkin. “Come to the point. Why do you drag it out?”

“So that leaves three, and first, Mr. Keller, an unsteady, drunken fellow, and in certain respects liberal, that is, as regards the pocket, but in other respects rather with chivalrous than liberal tendencies. He slept here in the sick man’s room, and only in the night came in here on the pretext of the bare floor being hard to sleep on.”

“You suspect him?”

“I did suspect him. When at eight o’clock I jumped up like a madman and struck myself on the forehead with my hands, I at once waked the general, who was sleeping the sleep of innocence. Taking into consideration the strange disappearance of Ferdyshtchenko, which of itself had aroused our suspicions, we both resolved to search Keller, who was lying sleeping like a top. We searched him thoroughly: he hadn’t a farthing in his pockets, and we couldn’t find one pocket without a hole in it. He’d a blue check cotton handkerchief in a disgusting condition; then a love-letter from a housemaid, threatening him and asking for money, and some bits of the article you heard. The general decided that he was innocent. To complete our investigation we waked the man himself by poking him violently. He could hardly understand what was the matter. He opened his mouth with a drunken air; the expression of his face was absurd and innocent, foolish even — it was not he!”

“Well, I am glad!” Myshkin sighed joyfully. “I was so afraid for him!”

“You were afraid? Then you had some grounds for it?” Lebedyev screwed up his eyes.

“Oh, no, I meant nothing,” faltered Myshkin. “I was very stupid to say I was afraid for him. Do me the favour, Lebedyev, not to repeat it to anyone....”

“Prince, prince! Your words are in my heart... at the bottom of my heart! It is a tomb! . . ,” said Lebedyev ecstatically, pressing his hat to his heart.

“Good, good. . . . Then it must have been Ferdyshtchenko? That is, I mean you suspect Ferdyshtchenko?”

“Who else?” Lebedyev articulated softly, looking intently at Myshkin.

“To be sure. . . . Who else is there ... but I mean again, what evidence is there?”

“There is evidence. First his disappearance at seven o’clock, or before seven in the morning.”

“I know; Kolya told me that he went in to him, and said that he was going to spend the day with. ... I forget with whom ... some friend of his.”

“Vilkin. So Nikolay Ardalionovitch has told you already?”

“He told me nothing about the theft.”

“He doesn’t know, for I’ve kept it secret for the time being. And so he went to Vilkin’s. It would seem there’s nothing strange in a drunken man’s going to see another drunken fellow like himself, even before daybreak, and without any reason. But here we have a clue: as he went he left the address . . . Now,

prince, follow up the question: why did he leave an address? Why did he purposely go out of his way to Nikolay Ardalionovitch to tell him, ‘I’m going to spend the day at Vilkin’s.’ Who would care to know that he was going away and to Vilkin’s? Why announce it? No, here we have the cunning, the cunning of a thief! It’s as much as to say, ‘I purposely don’t cover up my traces, so how can I be a thief? Would a thief leave word where he was going?’ It’s an excess of anxiety to avert suspicion, and to efface, so to say, his footprints in the sand. ... Do you understand me, honoured prince?”

“I understand, I quite understand, but you know that’s not enough.”

“A second clue. The track turns out to be a false one, and the address given was not exact. An hour later, that is, at eight o’clock, I was knocking at Vilkin’s; he lives here in Fifth Street, and I know him too. There was no sign of Ferdyshtchenko, though I did get out of the servant who was stone deaf that some one really had knocked one hour before, and been pretty vigorous, too, so that he broke the bell. But the servant wouldn’t open the door, not wishing to wake Mr. Vilkin, and perhaps not anxious to qet up herself. It does happen so.”

“And is that all your evidence? It’s not much.”

“Prince, but who is there to suspect? Judge for yourself,” Lebedyev concluded, persuasively, and there was a gleam of something sly in his grin.

“You ought to search your rooms once more and look in every drawer,” Myshkin pronounced anxiously, after some pondering.

“I have searched them,” Lebedyev sighed, still more insinuating.

“H’m! . . . And what did you want to change that coat for?” cried Myshkin, thumping the table in vexation.

“That’s a question from an old-fashioned comedy. But, most kind prince, you take my misfortune too much to heart. I don’t deserve it. I mean I alone don’t deserve it; but you are worried about the criminal.... About that good-for-nothing Mr. Ferdystchenko?”

“Well, yes. You certainly have worried me,” Myshkin cut him short absently and with dissatisfaction. “So what do you intend to do ... if you are so convinced it is Ferdyshtchenko?”

“Prince, honoured prince, who else could it be?”

said Lebedyev, wriggling with growing persuasiveness. “You see, the lack of any other on whom to fix, and, so to say, the complete impossibility of suspecting anybody but Mr. Ferdyshtchenko, is, so to say, another piece of evidence, the third against Mr. Ferdyshtchenko. For, I ask again, who else could it be? “Vbu wouldn’t have me suspect Mr. Burdovsky, I suppose. He-he-he!”

“What nonsense!”

“Nor the general? He-he-he!”

“What folly!” Myshkin said, almost angrily, turning impatiently in his seat.

“Folly, and no mistake! He-he-he! And he amused me, too. I mean the general did! I went with him just now, while the track was fresh, to Vilkin’s .. . and you must note that the general was even more struck than I was when, first thing after finding out my loss, I waked him up. His face changed. He turned red and pale, and at last flew into violent and righteous indignation beyond anything I should have suspected of him. He is a most honourable man! He tells lies continually, from weakness, but he’s a man of the loftiest sentiments. A man, too, of no guile, who inspires the fullest confidence by his artlessness. I

have told you already, honoured prince, that I’ve more than a weakness, I’ve an affection for him. He suddenly stopped in the middle of the street, unbuttoned his coat, uncovered his chest. ‘Search me!’ he said. ‘\bu searched Keller. Why don’t you search me? That’s only justice!’ said he. And his arms and legs were trembling; he was quite pale; he looked so threatening. I laughed and said, ‘Listen, general, if anyone else had said such a thing about you, I’d have taken my head off with my own hands; I’d have put it on a big dish, and would have carried it myself to every one who doubted you: do you see this head? I would say. I’ll answer for him with this head, and not only so, but I’d go through fire for him. That’s what I’d do,’ said I. Then he threw his arms round me, there in the street, burst into tears, trembling, and squeezed me so tight that it made me cough. ‘You’re the only friend left me in my misfortunes,’ said he. He’s a man of feeling! Then, of course, he told me an anecdote on the spot, of how he had once been suspected of stealing five hundred thousand roubles in his youth, but that next day he had thrown himself into a house on fire, and had dragged out of the flames the count who had suspected him, and Nina Alexandrovna, who was a girl at the time. The count embraced him, and so his marriage followed with Nina Alexandrovna. And next day, in the ruins of the house, they found a box with the lost money in it. It was an iron box of English make, with a secret lock, and it had somehow got under the floor so that no one noticed it, and it was only found after the fire. A complete lie. But when he spoke of Nina Alexandrovna he positively blubbered. A most honourable lady, Nina Alexandrovna, though she is angry with me.”