“Oh, yes! Well, here’s the story. Early on the third day after the murder, when they were still dandling Koch and Pestryakov⁠—though they accounted for every step they took and it was as plain as a pikestaff⁠—an unexpected fact turned up. A peasant called Dushkin, who keeps a dram-shop facing the house, brought to the police office a jeweller’s case containing some gold earrings, and told a long rigamarole. ‘The day before yesterday, just after eight o’clock’⁠—mark the day and the hour!⁠—‘a journeyman house-painter, Nikolay, who had been in to see me already that day, brought me this box of gold earrings and stones, and asked me to give him two roubles for them. When I asked him where he got them, he said that he picked them up in the street. I did not ask him anything more.’ I am telling you Dushkin’s story. ‘I gave him a note’⁠—a rouble that is⁠—‘for I thought if he did not pawn it with me he would with another. It would all come to the same thing⁠—he’d spend it on drink, so the thing had better be with me.