means nothing. I talked rot, and everyone began repeating it.”
“But what need had you to ‘talk rot,’ as you call it?”
“The devil knows. From bravado perhaps … at having wasted so much money. … To try and forget that money I had sewn up, perhaps … yes, that was why … damn it … how often will you ask me that question? Well, I told a fib, and that was the end of it, once I’d said it, I didn’t care to correct it. What does a man tell lies for sometimes?”
“That’s very difficult to decide, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, what makes a man tell lies,” observed the prosecutor impressively. “Tell me, though, was that ‘amulet,’ as you call it, on your neck, a big thing?”
“No, not big.”
“How big, for instance?”
“If you fold a hundred-rouble note in half, that would be