“ Mr. Perhotin informed us that when you came to him, you held in your hands … your bloodstained 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 gentleness, “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?”
The prosecutor’s brows contracted at the question being asked so plainly, but he did not interrupt Nikolay Parfenovitch.
“No, I didn’t go home,” answered Mitya, apparently perfectly composed, but looking at the floor.
“Allow me then to repeat my question,” Nikolay Parfenovitch went on as though creeping up to the subject. “Where were you able to procure such a sum all at once, when by your own confession, at five o’clock the same day you—”
“I was in want of ten roubles and pledged my pistols with Perhotin, and then went to Madame Hohlakov to borrow three thousand which she wouldn’t give me, and so on, and all the rest of it,” Mitya interrupted sharply. “Yes, gentlemen, I was in want of it, and suddenly thousands turned up, eh? Do you know, gentlemen, you’re both afraid now ‘what if he won’t tell us where he got it?’ That’s just how it is. I’m not going to tell you, gentlemen. You’ve guessed right. You’ll never know,” said Mitya, chipping out each word with extraordinary determination. The lawyers were silent for a moment.