“That’s enough! Leave off,” Ivan said peremptorily, sitting down again. “Don’t put me out of all patience.”
Smerdyakov took the rag from his eyes. Every line of his puckered face reflected the insult he had just received.
“So you thought then, you scoundrel, that together with Dmitri I meant to kill my father?”
“I didn’t know what thoughts were in your mind then,” said Smerdyakov resentfully; “and so I stopped you then at the gate to sound you on that very point.”
“To sound what, what?”
“Why, that very circumstance, whether you wanted your father to be murdered or not.”
What infuriated Ivan more than anything was the aggressive, insolent tone to which Smerdyakov persistently adhered.
“It was you murdered him?” he cried suddenly.
Smerdyakov smiled contemptuously.
“You know of yourself, for a fact, that it wasn’t I murdered him. And I should have thought that there was no need for a sensible man to speak of it again.”
“But why, why had you such a suspicion about me at the time?”
“As you know already, it was simply from fear. For I was in such a position, shaking with fear, that I suspected everyone. I resolved to sound you, too, for I thought if you wanted the same as your brother, then the business was as good as settled and I should be crushed like a fly, too.”