He who uttered these cries had just burst out of one of the lodgings, and was rushing down the stairs as fast as his legs would carry him, yelling the while: "Dmitri! Dmitri! Dmitri! May the devil take the fool!"The rest died away in the distance; the man who was uttering these cries had already left the house far behind. All was once more silent; but scarcely was this alarm over than a fresh one succeeded it: several individuals talking together in a loud tone of voice were noisily coming up the stairs. There were three or four of them. Raskolnikoff recognized the young man's sonorous accents.
"It is they!" No longer hoping to escape them, he advanced boldly to meet them: "Let happen what will!" said he to himself: "if they stop me, all is over; if they let me pass, all is over just the same: they will remember passing me on the stairs." They were about to encounter him, only one flight separated them--when suddenly he felt himself saved! A few steps from him, to the right, there was an empty lodging with the door wide open, it was that same one on the second floor where he had seen the painters working, but, by a happy chance, they had just left it. It was they, no doubt, who a few minutes before had gone off, uttering those shouts. The paint on the floors was quite fresh, the workmen had left their things in the middle of the room: a small tub, some paint in an earthenware crock, and a big brush. In the twinkling of an eye, Raskolnikoff glided into the deserted apartment and hid himself as best he could up against the wall. It was none too soon: his pursuers were already on the landing; they did not stop there, however, but went on up to the fourth floor, talking loudly among themselves. After waiting till they had got some distance off, he left the room on tiptoe and hurried down as fast as his legs would carry him. No one on the stairs! No one either at the street door! He stepped briskly outside, and, once in the street, turned to the left.
He knew very well, he knew without a doubt, that they who were seeking him were at that moment in the old woman's lodging, and were amazed to find that the door, which a little while before had been shut so securely, was now open. 'They're examining the corpses," thought he; "it won't take them a minute to come to the conclusion that the murderer managed to hide himself from them as they went up the stairs; perhaps they may even have a suspicion that he stowed himself away in the empty lodging on the second floor while they were hurrying to the upper part of the house."But, in spite of these reflections, he did not dare to increase his pace, though he still had a hundred steps or so to go before reaching the first turning. "Suppose I slipped into some doorway, in some out-of-the-way street, and waited there a few minutes? No, that would never do! I might throw my hatchet away somewhere? or take a cab? No good! no good!" At last he reached a narrow lane;he entered it more dead than alive. There, he was almost in safety, and he knew it: in such a place, suspicion could hardly be fixed upon him; while, on the other hand, it was easier for him to avoid notice by mingling with the crowd. But all these agonizing events had so enfeebled him that he could scarcely keep on his legs. Great drops of perspiration streamed down his face; his neck was quite wet. "I think you've had your fill!" shouted some one who took him for a drunken man as he reached the canal bank.
He no longer knew what he was doing; the farther he went, the more obscure became his ideas. However, when he found himself on the quay, he became frightened at seeing so few people there, and, fearing that he might be noticed on so deserted a spot, he returned to the lane. Though he had hardly the strength to put one leg before the other, he nevertheless took the longest way to reach his home. He had scarcely recovered his presence of mind even when he crossed the threshold; at least the thought of the hatchet never came to him until he was on the stairs. Yet the question he had to solve was a most serious one: it consisted in returning the hatchet to the place he had taken it from, and in doing so without attracting the least attention. Had he been more capable of considering his position, he would certainly have understood that, instead of replacing the hatchet, it would be far safer to get rid of it by throwing it into the yard of some other house.
Nevertheless he met with no mishap. The door of the porter's lodge was closed, though not locked; to all appearance, therefore, the porter was at home. But Raskolnikoff had so thoroughly lost all faculty of preparing any kind of plan, that he walked straight to the door and opened it. If the porter had asked him: "What do you want?" perhaps he would simply have handed him the hatchet. But, the same as on the previous occasion, the porter was absent, and this gave the young man every facility to replace the hatchet under the bench, exactly where he had found it. Then he went upstairs and reached his room without meeting a soul; the door of his landlady's apartments was shut. Once home again, he threw himself on his couch just as he was. He did not sleep, but lay in a sort of semiconsciousness. If anybody had then appeared before him, he would have sprung up and cried out. His head was swimming with a host of vague thoughts: do what he could, he was unable to follow the thread of one of them.
