"I don't know if I wanted to or not..." Rogozhin replied drily, as if he even marveled somewhat at the question and could not comprehend it.
"You never brought the knife to Pavlovsk with you?"
"I never brought it.
I can only tell you this about the knife, Lev Nikolaevich," he added, after a pause. "I took it out of the locked drawer this morning, because the whole thing happened this morning, between three and four.
I kept it like a bookmark in a book . . . And . . . and this is still a wonder to me: the knife seemed to go in about three inches ... or even three and a half. . . just under the left breast. . . but only about half a tablespoon of blood came out on her nightshirt; no more than that ..."
"That, that, that," the prince suddenly raised himself up in terrible agitation, "that, that I know, that I've read about . . . it's called an internal hemorrhage . . . Sometimes there isn't even a drop.
If the blow goes straight to the heart . . ."
"Wait, do you hear?" Rogozhin suddenly interrupted quickly and sat up fearfully on his bed. "Do you hear?"
"No!" the prince said quickly and fearfully, looking at Rogozhin.
"Footsteps!
Do you hear?
In the big room . . ."
They both began to listen.
"I hear," the prince whispered firmly.
"Footsteps?"
"Footsteps."
"Should we shut the door or not?"
"Shut it..."
They shut the door, and both lay down again.
There was a long silence.
"Ah, yes!" the prince suddenly whispered in the same agitated and hurried whisper, as if he had caught the thought again and was terribly afraid of losing it again, even jumping up a little on his bed, "yes ... I wanted . . . those cards! cards . . . They say you played cards with her?"
"I did," Rogozhin said after some silence.
"Where are . . . the cards?"
"They're here ..." Rogozhin said after a still longer silence, "here . . ."
He pulled a used deck, wrapped in paper, out of his pocket and handed it to the prince.
The prince took it, but as if in perplexity.
A new, sad, and cheerless feeling weighed on his heart; he suddenly realized that at that moment, and for a long time now, he had not been talking about what he needed to talk about, and had not been doing what he needed to do, and that these cards he was holding in his hands, and which he was so glad to have, would be no help, no help at all now.
He stood up and clasped his hands. Rogozhin lay motionless, as if he did not see or hear his movements; but his eyes glittered brightly through the darkness and were completely open and motionless.
The prince sat on a chair and began to look at him in fear.
About half an hour went by; suddenly Rogozhin cried out loudly and abruptly and began to guffaw, as if forgetting that he had to talk in a whisper:
"That officer, that officer . . . remember how she horsewhipped that officer at the concert, remember, ha, ha, ha!
A cadet, too . . . a cadet . . . came running ..."
The prince jumped up from the chair in new fright.
When Rogozhin quieted down (and he did suddenly quiet down), the prince quietly bent over him, sat down beside him, and with a pounding heart, breathing heavily, began to examine him.
Rogozhin did not turn his head to him and even seemed to forget about him.
The prince watched and waited; time passed, it began to grow light.
Now and then Rogozhin sometimes suddenly began to mutter, loudly, abruptly, and incoherently; began to exclaim and laugh; then the prince would reach out his trembling hand to him and quietly touch his head, his hair, stroke it and stroke his cheeks . . . there was nothing more he could do!
He was beginning to tremble again himself, and again he suddenly lost the use of his legs.
Some completely new feeling wrung his heart with infinite anguish.
Meanwhile it had grown quite light; he finally lay down on the pillows, as if quite strengthless now and in despair, and pressed his face to the pale and motionless face of Rogozhin; tears flowed from his eyes onto Rogozhin's cheeks, but perhaps by then he no longer felt his own tears and knew nothing about them . . .
In any case, when, after many hours, the door opened and people came in, they found the murderer totally unconscious and delirious.
The prince was sitting motionless on the bed beside him, and each time the sick man had a burst of shouting or raving, he quietly hastened to pass his trembling hand over his hair and cheeks, as if caressing and soothing him.
But he no longer understood anything of what they asked him about, and did not recognize the people who came in and surrounded him.
And if Schneider himself had come now from Switzerland to have a look at his former pupil and patient, he, too, recalling the state the prince had sometimes been in during the first year of his treatment in Switzerland, would have waved his hand now and said, as he did then:
"An idiot!"
XII
Conclusion
The teacher's widow, having galloped to Pavlovsk, went straight to Darya Alexeevna, who had been upset since the previous day, and, having told her all she knew, frightened her definitively.
The two ladies immediately decided to get in touch with Lebedev, who was also worried in his quality as his tenant's friend and in his quality as owner of the apartment.
Vera Lebedev told them everything she knew.