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men! Do make haste and finish it. I meant to shoot myself
not far from here, beyond the village, and I’d planned to
do it at five o’clock in the morning. And I had a note in
my pocket already. I wrote it at Perhotin’s when I loaded
my pistols. Here’s the letter. Read it! It’s not for you I tell
it,’ he added contemptuously. He took it from his waistcoat
pocket and flung it on the table. The lawyers read it with
curiosity, and, as is usual, added it to the papers connected
with the case.
‘And you didn’t even think of washing your hands at Per-
hotin’s? You were not afraid then of arousing suspicion?’
‘What suspicion? Suspicion or not, I should have gal-
loped here just the same, and shot myself at five o’clock, and
you wouldn’t have been in time to do anything. If it hadn’t
been for what’s happened to my father, you would have
known nothing about it, and wouldn’t have come here. Oh,
it’s the devil’s doing. It was the devil murdered father, it was
through the devil that you found it out so soon. How did
you manage to get here so quick? It’s marvellous, a dream!’
‘Mr. Perhotin informed us that when you came to him,
you held in your hands... your blood-stained hands... your
money... a lot of money... a bundle of hundred-rouble notes,
and that his servant-boy saw it too.’
‘That’s true, gentlemen. I remember it was so.’
‘Now, there’s one little point presents itself. Can you
inform us,’ Nikolay Parfenovitch began, with extreme gen-
tleness, ‘where did you get so much money all of a sudden,
when it appears from the facts, from the reckoning of time,
that you had not been home?’

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