"I can't print 'A Noble Personality' here, and in fact I can do nothing; print it abroad."
Lembke looked intently at Pyotr Stepanovitch.
Varvara Petrovna had been right in saying that he had at times the expression of a sheep.
"You see, it's like this," Pyotr Stepanovitch burst out. "He wrote this poem here six months ago, but he couldn't get it printed here, in a secret printing press, and so he asks to have it printed abroad.... That seems clear."
"Yes, that's clear, but to whom did he write? That's not clear yet," Lembke observed with the most subtle irony.
"Why, Kirillov, of course; the letter was written to Kirillov abroad.... Surely you knew that?
What's so annoying is that perhaps you are only putting it on before me, and most likely you knew all about this poem and everything long ago!
How did it come to be on your table?
It found its way there somehow!
Why are you torturing me, if so?"
He feverishly mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.
"I know something, perhaps." Lembke parried dexterously. "But who is this Kirillov?"
"An engineer who has lately come to the town. He was Stavrogin's second, a maniac, a madman; your sub-lieutenant may really only be suffering from temporary delirium, but Kirillov is a thoroughgoing madman—thoroughgoing, that I guarantee.
Ah, Andrey Antonovitch, if the government only knew what sort of people these conspirators all are, they wouldn't have the heart to lay a finger on them.
Every single one of them ought to be in an asylum; I had a good look at them in Switzerland and at the congresses."
"From which they direct the movement here?"
"Why, who directs it? Three men and a half.
It makes one sick to think of them.
And what sort of movement is there here?
Manifestoes!
And what recruits have they made? Sub-lieutenants in brain fever and two or three students!
You are a sensible man: answer this question. Why don't people of consequence join their ranks? Why are they all students and half-baked boys of twenty-two?
And not many of those.
I dare say there are thousands of bloodhounds on their track, but have they tracked out many of them?
Seven!
I tell you it makes one sick."
Lembke listened with attention but with an expression that seemed to say,
"You don't feed nightingales on fairy-tales."
"Excuse me, though. You asserted that the letter was sent abroad, but there's no address on it; how do you come to know that it was addressed to Mr. Kirillov and abroad too and... and... that it really was written by Mr. Shatov?"
"Why, fetch some specimen of Shatov's writing and compare it.
You must have some signature of his in your office.
As for its being addressed to Kirillov, it was Kirillov himself showed it me at the time."
"Then you were yourself..."
"Of course I was, myself.
They showed me lots of things out there.
And as for this poem, they say it was written by Herzen to Shatov when he was still wandering abroad, in memory of their meeting, so they say, by way of praise and recommendation—damn it all... and Shatov circulates it among the young people as much as to say,
'This was Herzen's opinion of me.'
"Ha ha!" cried Lembke, feeling he had got to the bottom of it at last. "That's just what I was wondering: one can understand the manifesto, but what's the object of the poem?"
"Of course you'd see it.
Goodness knows why I've been babbling to you.
Listen. Spare Shatov for me and the rest may go to the devil—even Kirillov, who is in hiding now, shut up in Filipov's house, where Shatov lodges too.
They don't like me because I've turned round... but promise me Shatov and I'll dish them all up for you.
I shall be of use, Andrey Antonovitch!
I reckon nine or ten men make up the whole wretched lot.
I am keeping an eye on them myself, on my own account.
We know of three already: Shatov, Kirillov, and that sub-lieutenant.
The others I am only watching carefully... though I am pretty sharp-sighted too.
It's the same over again as it was in the X province: two students, a schoolboy, two noblemen of twenty, a teacher, and a half-pay major of sixty, crazy with drink, have been caught with manifestoes; that was all—you can take my word for it, that was all; it was quite a surprise that that was all.
But I must have six days.
I have reckoned it out—six days, not less.