At last, and then only when the visitor started climbing to the fourth floor, he roused himself suddenly and had just time enough to slip quickly and adroitly from the landing back into the apartment and close the door behind him. Then he grasped the hook and quietly, inaudibly placed it through the eye. Instinct was helping him. Having done all that, he cowered, without breathing, just at the door. By then the uninvited visitor was also at the door. They now stood opposite each other, as he and the old woman had done earlier, with the door between them, but it was he who was listening.
The visitor drew several heavy breaths. “He must be big and fat,” Raskolnikov thought, clutching the axe in his hand. Indeed, it was as if he were dreaming. The visitor grasped the bell-pull and rang firmly.
As soon as the bell gave its tinny clink, he suddenly seemed to fancy there was a stirring in the room. For a few seconds he even listened seriously. The stranger gave another clink of the bell, waited a bit, and suddenly began tugging impatiently at the door handle with all his might. Horrified, Raskolnikov watched the hook jumping about in the eye, and waited in dull fear for it to pop right out any moment. Indeed, it seemed possible: the door was being pulled so hard. It occurred to him to hold the hook in place, but then he might suspect. His head seemed to start spinning again. “I'm passing out!” flashed through him, but the stranger spoke, and he immediately recovered himself.
“What's up in there, are they snoring, or has somebody wrung their necks? Cur-r-rse it!” he bellowed, as if from a barrel. “Hey, Alyona Ivanovna, you old witch! Lizaveta Ivanovna, you indescribable beauty! Open up! Ohh, curse it all! Are they asleep, or what?”
And again, enraged, he pulled the bell ten times in a row as hard as he could. He was certainly an imperious man, and a familiar of the house.
At that same moment there was a sound of rapid, hurrying footsteps close by, on the stairs. Someone else was coming up. Raskolnikov did not even hear him at first.
“What, nobody home?” the newcomer cried in a ringing and cheerful voice, directly addressing the first visitor, who was still pulling the bell. “How do you do, Koch!”
“He must be very young, judging by his voice,” Raskolnikov suddenly thought.
“Devil knows, I almost broke the lock,” answered Koch. “And how do you happen to know me?”
“Well, I like that! Didn't I just beat you three times straight at billiards, the day before yesterday, at Gambrinus's?”
“A-a-ah . . .”
“So they're not there? Strange. Terribly stupid, though. Where could the old woman have gone? I'm here on business.”
“I'm also here on business, my friend.”
“Well, what's there to do? Go home, I guess. Bah! And I was hoping to get some money!” the young man cried.
“Go home, of course—but then why make an appointment? The old witch told me when to come herself. It's far out of my way. And where the devil she can have taken herself is beyond me. The old witch sits rotting here all year round with her bad legs, and all of a sudden she goes for an outing!”
“Maybe we should ask the caretaker?”
“Ask him what?”
“Where she's gone and when she'll be back?”
“Hm...the devil... ask him...But she never goes anywhere...” and he tugged at the door handle again. “Ah, the devil, nothing to be done; let's go!”
“Wait!” the young man suddenly shouted. “Look: do you see how the door gives when you pull?”
“So?”
“That means it's not locked, it's just latched, I mean hooked! Hear the hook rattling?”
“So?”
“But don't you understand? That means one of them is home. If they'd all gone out, they would have locked it from outside with a key, and not hooked it from inside. There, can you hear the hook rattling? And in order to fasten the hook from inside, someone has to be home, understand? So they're sitting in there and not opening the door!”
“Hah! Why, of course!” the astonished Koch exclaimed. “But what are they up to in there!” And he began to tug violently at the door.
“Wait!” The young man shouted again. “Don't tug at it! Something's not right here...you rang, you pulled...they don't open the door; it means they've both fainted, or . . .”
“Or what?”
“Listen, let's go get the caretaker; let him wake them up.”
“Good idea!” They both started down the stairs.
“Wait! You stay here, and I'll run down and get the caretaker.”
“Why stay?”
“You never know . . .”
“Maybe . . .”
“I'm studying to be a public investigator! It's obvious, ob-vi-ous that something's not right here!” the young man cried hotly, and went running down the stairs.
Koch stayed. He gave one more little tug at the bell, and it clinked once; then quietly, as if examining and reflecting, he began to move the door handle, pulling it and letting it go, to make sure once more that it was only hooked. Then he bent down, puffing, and tried to look through the keyhole; but there was a key in it, on the inside, and therefore nothing could be seen.
Raskolnikov stood there clutching the axe. He was as if in delirium. He was even readying himself to fight with them when they came in. Several times, while they were knocking and discussing, the idea had suddenly occurred to him to end it all at once and shout to them from behind the door. At times he wanted to start abusing them, taunting them, until they opened the door. “Just get it over with!” flashed through his head.
“Ah, the devil, he . . .”
Time was passing—one minute, two—no one came. Koch began to stir.
“Ah, the devil! ... ” he suddenly cried, and impatiently, abandoning his post, he, too, set off down the stairs, hurrying and stomping his feet as he went. His steps died away.
“Lord, what shall I do!”
Raskolnikov unfastened the hook, opened the door a little—not a sound. And suddenly, now without thinking at all, he went out, closed the door behind him as tightly as he could, and started down the stairs.
He had already gone three flights when a loud noise suddenly came from below—where could he go? There was nowhere to hide. He was turning to run back to the apartment again.
“Hey, you hairy devil! Stop him!”
With a shout, someone burst from one of the apartments below, and did not so much run as tumble down the stairs, shouting at the top of his lungs:
“Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Damn your eyes!”
The cry ended in a shriek; the last sounds already came from outside; then it was quiet. But at the same moment, several men, talking loudly and quickly, began noisily climbing the stairs. There were three or four of them. He heard the ringing voice of the young one. “It's them!”
In utter despair he marched straight to meet them: come what may! If they stopped him, all was lost; if they let him pass, all was lost anyway—they would remember him. In a moment they would come face to face; there was only one flight between them—and suddenly, salvation! A few steps away from him, on the right, was an empty and wide open apartment, that same second-floor apartment where the painters had been working and which, as if by design, they had now left. Surely it was they who had just run out with so much shouting. The floors were freshly painted; in the middle of the room was a small bucket of paint and a potsherd with a brush on it. He slipped through the open door in an instant and cowered behind the wall, and not a moment too soon: they were already on that very landing. Then they passed by and headed upstairs to the fourth floor, talking loudly. He waited, tiptoed out, and ran downstairs.