“No, not big.”
“How big, for instance?”
“If you fold a hundred-rouble note in half, that would be the size.”
“You’d better show us the remains of it. You must have them somewhere.”
“Damnation, what nonsense! I don’t know where they are.”
“But excuse me: where and when did you take it off your neck? According to your own evidence you didn’t go home.”
“When I was going from Fenya’s to Perhotin’s, on the way I tore it off my neck and took out the money.”
“In the dark?”
“What should I want a light for? I did it with my fingers in one minute.”
“Without scissors, in the street?”
“In the marketplace I think it was. Why scissors? It was an old rag. It was torn in a minute.”
“Where did you put it afterwards?”
“I dropped it there.”
“Where was it, exactly?”
“In the marketplace, in the marketplace! The devil knows whereabouts. What do you want to know for?”
“That’s extremely important, Dmitri Fyodorovitch. It would be material evidence in your favor. How is it you don’t understand that? Who helped you to sew it up a month ago?”