as though chiseling out each word separately. > “That is perfectly clear. The murder was committed in the room and not through the window ; that is absolutely certain from the examination that has been made, from the position of the body and everything. There can be no doubt of that
Mitya was absolutely dumbfounded.
“But that’s utterly impossible!” he cried, completely at a loss.
“I … I didn’t go in. … I tell you positively, definitely, the door was shut the whole time I was in the garden, and when I ran out of the garden. I only stood at the window and saw him through the window. That’s all, that’s all. … I remember to the last minute. And if I didn’t remember, it would be just the same. I know it, for no one knew the signals except Smerdyakov, and me, and the dead man. And he wouldn’t have opened the door to anyone in the world without the signals.”
“Signals? What signals?” asked the prosecutor, with greedy, almost hysterical, curiosity.
He instantly lost all trace of his reserve and dignity. He asked the question with a sort of cringing timidity.
He scented an important fact of which he had known nothing, and was already filled with dread that Mitya might be unwilling to disclose it.
“So you didn’t know!” Mitya winked at him with a malicious and mocking smile. “What if I won’t tell you? From whom could you find out? No one knew about the signals except my father, Smerdyakov, and me: that was all. Heaven knew, too, but it won’t tell you. But it’s an interesting fact. There’s no knowing what you might build on it. Ha ha! Take comfort, gentlemen, I’ll reveal it. You’ve