Page 750 - the-brothers-karamazov

er confirmed her evidence as far as she was capable. After
asking some further questions, Pyotr Ilyitch left the house,
even more upset and uneasy than he had been when he en-
tered it.
The most direct and the easiest thing for him to do would
have been to go straight to Fyodor Pavlovitch’s, to find out
whether anything had happened there, and if so, what; and
only to go to the police captain, as Pyotr Ilyitch firmly in-
tended doing, when he had satisfied himself of the fact. But
the night was dark, Fyodor Pavlovitch’s gates were strong,
and he would have to knock again. His acquaintance with
Fyodor Pavlovitch was of the slightest, and what if, after he
had been knocking, they opened to him, and nothing had
happened? Fyodor Pavlovitch in his jeering way would go
telling the story all over the town, how a stranger, called
Perhotin, had broken in upon him at midnight to ask if any-
one had killed him. It would make a scandal. And scandal
was what Pyotr Ilyitch dreaded more than anything in the
world.
Yet the feeling that possessed him was so strong, that
though he stamped his foot angrily and swore at himself,
he set off again, not to Fyodor Pavlovitch’s but to Madame
Hohlakov’s. He decided that if she denied having just given
Dmitri Fyodorovitch three thousand roubles, he would go
straight to the police captain, but if she admitted having
given him the money, he would go home and let the matter
rest till next morning.
It is, of course, perfectly evident that there was even more
likelihood of causing scandal by going at eleven o’clock at