No one on the stairs! Nor in the gateway. He quickly walked through the gateway and turned left onto the street.
He knew very well, he knew perfectly well, that at that moment they were already in the apartment, that they were very surprised at finding it open, since it had just been locked, that they were already looking at the bodies, and that it would take them no more than a minute to realize and fully grasp that the murderer had just been there and had managed to hide somewhere, slip past them, get away; they would also realize, perhaps, that he had been there in the empty apartment while they were going upstairs. And yet by no means did he dare to quicken his pace, though there were about a hundred steps to go before the first turning. “Shouldn't I slip through some gate and wait somewhere on an unfamiliar stairway? No, no good. Shouldn't I throw the axe away somewhere? Shouldn't I take a cab? No good! No good!”
Here at last was the side street; he turned down it more dead than alive; now he was halfway to safety, and he knew it—not so suspicious; besides, there were many people shuttling along there, and he effaced himself among them like a grain of sand. But all these torments had weakened him so much that he could barely move. Sweat rolled off of him in drops; his whole neck was wet. “There's a potted one!” someone shouted at him as he walked out to the canal.
He was hardly aware of himself now, and the farther he went the worse it became. He remembered, however, that on coming out to the canal he had felt afraid because there were too few people and it was more conspicuous there, and had almost wanted to turn back to the side street. Though he was nearing collapse, he nevertheless made a detour and arrived home from the completely opposite side.
He was not fully conscious when he entered the gates of his house; at least he did not remember about the axe until he was already on the stairs. And yet a very important task was facing him: to put it back, and as inconspicuously as possible. Of course, he was no longer capable of realizing that it might be much better for him not to put the axe in its former place at all, but to leave it, later even, somewhere in an unfamiliar courtyard.
Yet everything worked out well. The caretaker's door was closed but not locked, meaning that the caretaker was most likely there. But by then he had so utterly lost the ability to understand anything that he went straight up to the door and opened it. If the caretaker had asked him, “What do you want?” he might simply have handed him the axe. But once again the caretaker was not there, and he had time to put the axe in its former place under the bench; he even covered it with a log, as before. He met no one, not a single soul, from then on all the way to his room; the landlady's door was shut. He went into his room and threw himself down on the sofa just as he was. He did not sleep, but was as if oblivious. If anyone had come into his room then, he would have jumped up at once and shouted. Bits and scraps of various thoughts kept swarming in his head; but he could not grasp any one of them, could not rest on any one, hard as he tried . . .
Part Two
I
He lay like that for a very long time. Occasionally he seemed to wake up, and in those moments noticed that night had come long ago, yet it did not occur to him to get up. Finally he noticed light, as if it were already daytime. He was lying on his back on the sofa, still stupefied from his recent oblivion. Terrible, desperate screams came to him sharply from the street—which, by the way, he heard under his window every night between two and three o'clock. They were what wakened him now. “Ah! So the drunks are coming out of the taverns,” he thought, “it's past two.” And suddenly he jumped up as if someone had torn him from the sofa. “What! Past two already!” He sat down on the sofa and—remembered everything! Suddenly, in an instant, he remembered everything!
At first he thought he would lose his mind. A terrible chill seized him; but the chill was also caused by a fever that had begun long ago in his sleep. Now, however, he was suddenly stricken with such shivering that his teeth almost flew out and everything in him came loose. He opened the door and began to listen: the whole house was fast asleep. He looked with amazement at himself and everything in the room around him, unable to understand how, when he came back yesterday, he could forget to put the door on the hook, and throw himself on the sofa not only without undressing but even still wearing his hat: it had rolled off and was lying right there on the floor near his pillow. “If anyone had come in, what would he have thought? That I'm drunk, but...” He dashed to the window. There was light enough, and he hurriedly began looking himself all over, from head to foot, all his clothes: were there any traces? But that was no way to do it. Chilled and shivering, he began taking everything off and examining it all again more thoroughly. He turned everything over and over, to the last thread and scrap, and, not trusting himself, repeated the examination three times. But there seemed to be nothing, no traces, except in one place, where the cuff of his trousers was frayed and hung down like a fringe; there were thick traces of caked blood on this fringe. He seized a big clasp knife and cut the fringe off. There seemed to be nothing else. Suddenly he remembered that the purse and the things he had taken from the old woman's trunk were still in his pockets! Until now he had not even thought of taking them out and hiding them! He had not even remembered about them while he was examining his clothes! What was wrong with him? He rushed at once, took them out, and threw them on the table. Having taken everything out, and even reversed the pockets to make sure nothing was left, he carried the whole pile into a corner. There, in the very corner, low down, the wallpaper was coming away and was torn in one place: he at once began stuffing everything into this hole behind the paper. “It all fits! Everything, out of sight, and the purse, too!” he thought joyfully, straightening up and staring dumbly at the hole in the corner, which bulged more than ever. Suddenly he shook all over with horror: “My God,” he whispered in despair, “what's wrong with me? Do you call that hidden? Is that any way to hide things?”
True, he had not been counting on things; he thought there would only be money and therefore did not prepare a place ahead of time. “But now, why was I rejoicing now? Is that any way to hide things? Reason truly is abandoning me!” Exhausted, he sat down on the sofa and was seized at once by an unbearable shivering. Mechanically, he pulled at his former student's greatcoat, warm but now almost in rags, which was lying next to him on a chair, covered himself with it, and once more sleep and delirium took hold of him. He sank into oblivion.
Not more than five minutes later he jumped up again, and immediately, in a frenzy, rushed again to his clothes. “How could I have fallen asleep again, when nothing has been done! That's it, that's it—the loop under the armhole—I haven't removed it yet! I forgot! Such a thing, such evidence, and I forgot!” He pulled the loop off and quickly began tearing it into pieces, stuffing them under the pillow among his linen. “Pieces of torn cloth will never arouse suspicion; no, probably not, probably not!” he repeated, standing in the middle of the room, and with painfully strained attention he began looking around again, on the floor and everywhere, to see if he had forgotten anything else. The conviction that everything, even memory, even simple reasoning-power was abandoning him, began to torment him unbearably. “What, can it be starting already, can the reckoning come so soon? See, see— there it is!” Indeed, the shreds of fringe he had cut off his trousers were simply lying on the floor, in the middle of the room, for the first comer to see! “What can be wrong with me!” he cried out again, like a lost man.