a chair, moved it quickly to the table and sat down. Smerdyakov managed to sit down on his bench before him.
“To begin with, are we alone?” Ivan asked sternly and impulsively. “Can they overhear us in there?”
“No one can hear anything. You’ve seen for yourself: there’s a passage.”
“Listen, my good fellow; what was that you babbled, as I was leaving the hospital, that if I said nothing about your faculty of shamming fits, you wouldn’t tell the investigating lawyer all our conversation at the gate? What do you mean by all ? What could you mean by it? Were you threatening me? Have I entered into some sort of compact with you? Do you suppose I am afraid of you?”
Ivan said this in a perfect fury, giving him to understand with obvious intention that he scorned any subterfuge or indirectness and meant to show his cards. Smerdyakov’s