“Over a thousand went to them, Mitri Fyodorovich,” Trifon Borisovich countered firmly. “You were throwing it away for nothing, and they were picking it up. They’re pilfering folk, cheats, horse thieves, they were driven away from here, otherwise they’d testify themselves to how much they profited from you. I saw the amount you had in your hands myself—I didn’t count it, you didn’t let me, that’s true, but I could tell by eye, and I remember it was much more than fifteen hundred ... Fifteen hundred, hah! I’ve seen money enough, I can tell ...”
As for the amount yesterday, Trifon Borisich testified outright that Dmitri Fyodorovich himself had announced to him, as soon as he dismounted, that he had brought three thousand.
“Come now, did I say that, Trifon Borisich,” Mitya objected, “did I really announce so positively that I had brought three thousand?”
“You did, Mitri Fyodorovich. You said it in front of Andrei. Andrei’s still here, he hasn’t gone yet, call him in. And in the main room there, when you were giving treats to the chorus, you shouted right out that you were leaving your sixth thousand here—including the ones before, that’s what it means. Stepan and Semyon heard it, and Pyotr Fomich Kalganov was standing next to you then, maybe the gentleman also remembers...”
The evidence concerning the sixth thousand was received with remarkable impression by the interrogators. They liked the new version: three and three makes six, meaning that three thousand then and three thousand now would take care of all six, the result was clear.
All the peasants pointed out by Trifon Borisovich were interrogated, Stepan and Semyon, the coachman Andrei, and Pyotr Fomich Kalganov. The peasants and the coachman confirmed without hesitation the evidence of Trifon Borisich. Besides that, special note was taken, in his own words, of Andrei’s conversation with Mitya on the way there, about “where do you think I, Dmitri Fyodorovich, will go: to heaven or hell? And will I be forgiven in that world or not?” The “psychologist” Ippolit Kirillovich listened to it all with a subtle smile, and in the end recommended that this evidence about where Dmitri Fyodorovich would go should be “filed with the case.”
The summoned Kalganov came in reluctantly, sullen and peevish, and spoke with the prosecutor and Nikolai Parfenovich as if he were seeing them for the first time in his life, whereas they were long-standing and everyday acquaintances. He began by saying that he “knows nothing of it and does not want to know.” But it turned out that he, too, had heard about the sixth thousand, and admitted that he had been standing nearby at that moment. In his view, Mitya had “I don’t know how much money” in his hands. With regard to the Poles cheating at cards, he testified in the affirmative. He also explained in reply to repeated questions, that once the Poles were banished, Mitya’s affairs with Agrafena Alexandrovna changed for the better, and that she herself had said she loved him. About Agrafena Alexandrovna he expressed himself with reserve and respect, as if she were a lady of the best society, and did not once allow himself to call her “Grushenka.” Despite the repugnance the young man obviously felt at giving evidence, Ippolit Kirillovich interrogated him for a long time, and from him alone learned all the details of what constituted Mitya’s “romance,” so to speak, that night. Mitya did not once stop Kalganov. At last the young man was dismissed, and he withdrew with unconcealed indignation.
The Poles were interrogated as well. Though they had tried to go to sleep in their little room, they had not slept all night, and, with the arrival of the authorities, had hastened to get dressed and put themselves in order, realizing that they would certainly be sent for. They made their appearance with dignity, though not without a certain fear. The chief one—that is, the little pan— turned out to be a retired official of the twelfth grade,[274] had served in Siberia as a veterinarian, and his last name was Pan Mussyalovich. And Pan Vrublevsky turned out to be a free-lance dentist—in Russian, a tooth doctor. Both of them, upon entering the room, despite the questions put to them by Nikolai Parfenovich, at once began addressing their answers to Mikhail Makarovich, who was standing to one side, through ignorance taking him to be the person of highest rank and authority there, and addressing him at every word as “Panie Colonel.” And only after several times, and on instructions from Mikhail Makarovich himself, did they realize that they ought to address their answers only to Nikolai Parfenovich. It turned out that they could speak Russian quite correctly, except perhaps for the pronunciation of some words. About his relations with Grushenka, past and present, Pan Mussyalovich began declaiming hotly and proudly, so that Mitya lost his temper at once and shouted that he would not allow “the scoundrel” to talk like that in his presence. Pan Mussyalovich instantly called attention to the word “scoundrel” and asked that it be put in the record. Mitya flew into a rage.
“And a scoundrel he is! A scoundrel! Put it down, and put down that in spite of the record I’m still shouting that he’s a scoundrel!” he shouted.
Nikolai Parfenovich, though he did put it in the record, also displayed, on this unpleasant occasion, a most praiseworthy efficiency and administrative skilclass="underline" after severely reprimanding Mitya, he at once put an end to all further inquiry into the romantic side of the case and quickly moved on to the essential. And there emerged as essential a particular piece of evidence from the pans, which aroused unusual curiosity in the investigators: namely, how Mitya, in that little room, had been trying to bribe Pan Mussyalovich and had offered to buy him out for three thousand, with the understanding that he would give him seven hundred roubles on the spot and the remaining twenty-three hundred “tomorrow morning, in town,” swearing on his word of honor, and declaring that he did not have so much money with him there, in Mokroye, but that the money was in town. Mitya remarked, in the heat of the moment, that he had not said he would certainly pay it in town tomorrow morning, but Pan Vrublevsky confirmed the evidence, and Mitya himself, after thinking for a minute, glumly agreed that it must have been as the pans said, that he was excited then and might well have said it. The prosecutor simply fastened on this evidence: it was becoming clear to the investigation (as was indeed concluded afterwards) that half or a part of the three thousand that had come into Mitya’s hands might indeed have been hidden somewhere in town, or perhaps even somewhere there, in Mokroye, thus clarifying the circumstance, so ticklish for the investigation, that only eight hundred roubles had been found in Mitya’s possession—the one circumstance, though the only one and rather negligible at that, that so far had been some sort of evidence in Mitya’s favor. But now this only evidence in his favor was breaking down. To the prosecutor’s question as to where he would have found the remaining twenty-three hundred to give to the pan the next day, if he himself asserted that he had only fifteen hundred, though he had assured the pan on his word of honor, Mitya firmly replied that he intended to offer the “little Polack” not the money, but a formal deed for his rights to the Chermashnya estate, the very same rights he had offered to Samsonov and Madame Khokhlakov. The prosecutor even smiled at the “innocence of the ruse.”
“And you think he would have agreed to take these ‘rights’ instead of twenty-three hundred roubles in cash?”
“Certainly he would have agreed,” Mitya snapped hotly. “My God, he might have got not just two, but four, even six thousand out of it! He’d immediately gather his little lawyers together, little Polacks and Yids, and they’d take the old man not just for three thousand but for the whole of Chermashnya.”