“Lord, he nearly killed me! What are you stomping around here for, hooligan!”

“What, is it you?” Mitya cried, recognizing the old woman in the darkness. It was the same old serving-woman who served Kuzma Samsonov, and whom Mitya had noticed only too well the day before.

“And you, who are you, my dear?” the old woman said in quite a different voice. “I can’t make you out in the dark.”

“You live at Kuzma Kuzmich’s, you’re a servant there?”

“That’s so, my dear, I’ve just run over to Prokhorich’s ... But how is it I still don’t recognize you?”

“Tell me, granny, is Agrafena Alexandrovna there now?” Mitya asked, beside himself with impatience. “I took her there some time ago.”

“She was, my dear, she came, she stayed for a while and left.”

“What? Left?” cried Mitya. “When?”

“Right then she left, she only stayed for a minute, told Kuzma Kuzmich some story, made him laugh, and ran away.”

“You’re lying, damn you!”yelled Mitya.

“Aiee!” cried the little old woman, but Mitya’s tracks were already cold; he ran as fast as he could to the widow Morozov’s house. It was exactly at the same time that Grushenka drove off to Mokroye, not more than a quarter of an hour after her departure. Fenya was sitting in the kitchen with her grandmother, the cook Matryona, when the “captain” suddenly ran in. Seeing him, Fenya screamed to high heaven.

“You’re screaming?” Mitya yelled. “Where is she?” And without giving the terror-stricken Fenya time to say a word, he suddenly collapsed at her feet:

“Fenya, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, tell me where she is!”

“My dear, I know nothing, dear Dmitri Fyodorovich, I know nothing, even if you kill me, I know nothing,” Fenya began swearing and crossing herself. “You took her yourself...”

“She came back...!”

“She didn’t, my dear, I swear to God she didn’t!”

“You’re lying,” roared Mitya. “I can see by how scared you are, you know where she is...!”

He dashed out. The frightened Fenya was glad to have gotten off so easily, but she knew very well that he simply had no time, otherwise it would have gone badly for her. But as he ran out, he still surprised both Fenya and old Matryona by a most unexpected act: on the table stood a brass mortar with a pestle in it, a small brass pestle, only seven inches long. As he was running out, having already opened the door with one hand, Mitya suddenly, without stopping, snatched the pestle from the mortar with his other hand, shoved it into his side pocket, and made off with it.

“Oh, Lord,” Fenya clasped her hands, “he’ll kill somebody!”

Chapter 4: In the Dark

Where did he run to? But of course: “Where could she be if not with Fyodor Pavlovich? She ran straight to him from Samsonov’s, it’s all clear now. The whole intrigue, the whole deception is obvious now . . .” All this flew like a whirlwind through his head. He did not even run over to Maria Kondratievna’s yard: “No need to go there, no need at all ... mustn’t cause any alarm ... they’ll all play and betray at once ... Maria Kondratievna is obviously in on the conspiracy, Smerdyakov, too, they’ve all been bought!” A different plan took shape in him: he ran down a lane, making a long detour around Fyodor Pavlovich’s house, ran along Dmitrovsky Street, then ran across the footbridge, and came straight to the solitary back lane, empty and uninhabited, bordered on one side by the wattle fence of the neighbor’s garden, and on the other by the strong, high fence surrounding Fyodor Pavlovich’s garden. There he chose a spot that seemed, according to the story he had heard, to be the same spot where Stinking Lizaveta had once climbed over the fence. “If she could climb over,” the thought flashed, God knows why, through his head, “surely I can climb over.” He jumped, and indeed managed at once to grasp the top of the fence with his hands, then he pulled himself up energetically, climbed right to the top, and sat astride the fence. There was a little bathhouse nearby in the garden, but from the fence the lighted windows of the house could also be seen. “Just as I thought, there’s a light in the old man’s bedroom—she’s there!” and he jumped down from the fence into the garden. Though he knew that Grigory was sick, and that Smerdyakov, perhaps, was indeed sick as well, and that there was no one to hear him, he instinctively hid himself, stood stock still, and began listening. But there was dead silence and, as if on purpose, complete stillness, not a breath of wind.

“And naught but the silence whispers,”^[240] the little verse for some reason flashed through his head, “that is, if no one heard me jump over; and it seems no one did.” Having paused for a minute, he quietly walked across the garden, over the grass; he walked for a long time, skirting thetrees and bushes, concealing each step, listening himself to each of his own steps. It took him about five minutes to reach the lighted window. He remembered that there, right under the window, there were several large, high, thick bushes of elder and snowball. The door from the house into the garden on the left side of the house was locked—he purposely and carefully checked it as he passed by. At last he reached the bushes and hid behind them. He held his breath. “I must wait now,” he thought, “till they reassure themselves, in case they heard my footsteps and are listening ... if only I don’t cough, or sneeze...”

He waited for about two minutes, but his heart was pounding terribly, and he felt at moments as if he were suffocating. “No, my heart won’t stop pounding,” he thought, “I can’t wait any longer.” He was standing behind a bush in the shadow; the front part of the bush was lighted from the window. “Snowball berries, how red they are!” he whispered, not knowing why. Quietly, with careful, noiseless steps, he approached the window and stood on tiptoe. Before him lay the whole of Fyodor Pavlovich’s bedroom. It was a small room, divided all the way across by red screens, “Chinese,” as Fyodor Pavlovich called them. “Chinese” raced through Mitya’s mind, “and behind the screens—Grushenka.” He began examining Fyodor Pavlovich. He was wearing his new striped silk dressing gown, which Mitya had never seen on him before, tied with a tassled cord also of silk. Clean, stylish linen, a fine Dutch shirt with gold studs, peeped out from under the collar of the gown. On his head Fyodor Pavlovich had the same red bandage Alyosha had seen him wearing. “All dressed up,” thought Mitya. Fyodor Pavlovich stood near the window, apparently deep in thought; suddenly he jerked his head up, listened for a moment, and, having heard nothing, went over to the table, poured half a glass of cognac from a decanter, and drank it. Then he heaved a deep sigh, paused again for a moment, absentmindedly went up to the mirror on the wall between the windows, lifted the red bandage from his forehead a little with his right hand, and began to examine his scrapes and bruises, which had still not gone away. “He’s alone,” thought Mitya, “most likely he’s alone.” Fyodor Pavlovich stepped away from the mirror, suddenly turned to the window, and looked out. Mitya instantly jumped back into the shadow.

“Maybe she’s behind the screen, maybe she’s already asleep,” the thought needled his heart. Fyodor Pavlovich stepped away from the window. “He was looking for her from the window, so she must not be there: why else would he stare into the dark ... ? So he’s eaten up with impatience . . .”Mitya at once jumped closer and began looking through the window again. The old man was now sitting at the table, obviously feeling dejected. Finally he leaned on his elbow and put his right hand to his cheek. Mitya stared greedily. “Alone, alone!” he again repeated. “If she were here, his face would be different.” Strangely, some weird and unreasonable vexation suddenly boiled up in his heart because she was not there. “Not because she’s not here,” Mitya reasoned and corrected himself at once, “but because I have no way of knowing for certain whether she’s here or not. “ Mitya himself later recalled that his mind at that moment was remarkably clear and took in everything to the last detail, grasped every smallest feature. But anguish, the anguish of ignorance and indecision, was growing in his heart with exceeding rapidity. “Is she here, finally, or is she not?” boiled angrily in his heart. And he suddenly made up his mind, reached out his hand, and tapped softly on the windowpane. He tapped out the signal agreed upon between the old man and Smerdyakov: twice slowly, then three times more quickly, tap-tap-tap—the signal meaning “Grushenka is here.” The old man gave a start, jerked his head up, jumped quickly to his feet, and rushed to the window. Mitya jumped back into the shadow. Fyodor Pavlovich opened the window and stuck his head all the way out.