So he agonized, trembling at the necessity of the plan and at his own indecision. Finally, he took the candle and again went up to the door, his revolver raised and ready; with his left hand, in which he was holding the candle, he pressed down on the handle of the latch. But the result was clumsy: the handle clicked, there was a noise and a creak. "He'll just go ahead and shoot!" flashed in Pyotr Stepanovich. He shoved the door as hard as he could with his foot, raised the candle, and thrust out the revolver; but there was no shot, no cry... No one was in the room.
He gave a start. It was an end room, there was no other door, no way of escape. He raised the candle higher and peered more attentively: exactly no one. He called Kirillov in a low voice, then once more, louder; no one answered.
"Can he have escaped through the window?"
Indeed, the vent pane was open in one window. "Absurd, he couldn't have escaped through the vent." Pyotr Stepanovich walked all the way across the room right to the window: "He simply couldn't have." All at once he turned quickly, and something extraordinary jolted him.
Against the wall opposite the windows, to the right of the door, stood a wardrobe. To the right of this wardrobe, in the corner formed by the wardrobe and the wall, Kirillov was standing, and standing very strangely—motionless, drawn up, his arms flat at his sides, his head raised, the back of his head pressed hard to the wall, in the very corner, as if he wished to conceal and efface all of himself. By all tokens, he was hiding, yet it was somehow not possible to believe it. Pyotr Stepanovich was standing slightly at an angle to the corner and could observe only the protruding parts of the figure. He did not yet dare move to the left so as to make out the whole of Kirillov and understand the riddle. His heart began to pound... And suddenly he was possessed by utter fury: he tore from his place, shouted, and, stamping his feet, rushed fiercely at the dreadful place.
But, coming close, he stopped again as if rooted, still more struck with horror. What struck him, above all, was that the figure, despite his shout and furious lunge, did not even move, did not even stir one of its members—as if it were made of stone or wax. The pallor of its face was unnatural, the black eyes were completely immobile, staring at some point in space. Pyotr Stepanovich moved the candle from up to down and up again, lighting it from all points and studying this face. He suddenly noticed that, although Kirillov was staring somewhere ahead, he could see him out of the corner of his eye, and was perhaps even watching him. Then it occurred to him to bring the flame right up to the face of "this blackguard," to burn it, and see what he would do. Suddenly he fancied that Kirillov's chin moved and a mocking smile seemed to flit over his lips—as though he had guessed his thought. He trembled and, beside himself, seized Kirillov hard by the shoulder.
Then there occurred something so hideous and quick that afterwards Pyotr Stepanovich could never bring his recollections into any kind of order. The moment he touched Kirillov, the man quickly bent his head down, and with his head knocked the candle from his hands; the candlestick fell to the floor with a clang, and the candle went out. At the same instant, he felt a terrible pain in the little finger of his left hand. He cried out, and all he could remember was that, beside himself, he had struck as hard as he could three times with the revolver on the head of Kirillov, who had leaned to him and bitten his finger. He finally tore the finger free and rushed headlong to get out of the house, feeling his way in the darkness. Terrible shouts came flying after him from the room:
"Now, now, now, now..."
Ten times or so. But he kept running and had already reached the front hall when there suddenly came a loud shot. At that he stopped, in the front hall, in the dark, and for about five minutes stood reflecting; finally, he went back to the rooms again. But he had to get himself a candle. It would be no trouble finding the candlestick that had been knocked out of his hands on the floor to the right of the wardrobe; but what would he light the candle end with? Suddenly a dim recollection flashed through his mind: he recalled that the day before, when he ran down to the kitchen to fall upon Fedka, he seemed to have glimpsed in passing, in the corner, on a shelf, a big red box of matches. He groped his way left towards the kitchen door, found it, crossed the landing, and went down the stairs. On the shelf, right in the very spot he had just recalled, his hand came in the darkness upon a full, as yet unopened box of matches. Without striking a light, he hastily went back upstairs, and only near the wardrobe, on the very spot where he had hit Kirillov with the revolver as he was biting him, did he suddenly remember his bitten finger and in that same instant felt an almost unbearable pain in it. Clenching his teeth, he managed somehow to light the candle end, put it back in the candlestick, and looked around: near the window with the open vent, feet towards the right-hand corner of the room, lay the corpse of Kirillov. The shot had gone into the right temple, and the bullet had come out higher up on the left side, piercing the skull. Spatters of blood and brains could be seen. The revolver had remained in the suicide's hand, which lay on the floor. Death must have occurred instantly. After examining everything carefully, Pyotr Stepanovich stood up and tiptoed out, closed the door, set the candle on the table in the front room, thought a minute, and decided not to put it out, judging that it would not cause a fire. Glancing once more at the document lying on the table, he grinned mechanically, and only then, still tiptoeing for some reason, left the house. He again got through Fedka's passage, and again carefully closed it up behind him.
III
Exactly at ten minutes to six, at the railway station, along the rather long, strung-out line of cars, Pyotr Stepanovich and Erkel were strolling. Pyotr Stepanovich was leaving, and Erkel was saying good-bye to him. His luggage had been checked, his bag taken to a second-class car, to the seat he had chosen. The first bell had already rung, they were waiting for the second. Pyotr Stepanovich looked openly all around him, observing the passengers entering the cars. But he did not meet any close acquaintances; only twice did he have to nod his head—to a merchant he knew distantly, and then to a young village priest, who was leaving for his parish two stations away. Erkel evidently would have liked to talk about something more serious during these last moments—though perhaps he himself did not know precisely what—but he did not dare begin. He kept fancying that Pyotr Stepanovich was as if burdened by him and was waiting impatiently for the remaining bells.
"You look so openly at everybody," he commented with a certain timidity, as though wishing to warn him.
"And why not? I shouldn't be hiding yet. It's too soon. Don't worry. I'm only afraid the devil may send Liputin; he'll get wind of things and come running."
"Pyotr Stepanovich, they're unreliable," Erkel spoke out resolutely.
"Liputin?"
"All of them, Pyotr Stepanovich."
"Nonsense, they're all bound by yesterday now. None of them will betray us. Who would face obvious ruin, unless he's lost his mind?"
"But, Pyotr Stepanovich, they will lose their minds."
This thought apparently had already entered Pyotr Stepanovich's head, and therefore Erkel's comment made him still more angry:
"You haven't turned coward, too, Erkel? I'm trusting in you more than all the rest of them. I see now what each of them is worth. Tell them everything today orally, I put them directly in your charge. Run around and see them in the morning. Read them my written instructions tomorrow or the day after, collectively, when they've become capable of listening again... but, believe me, they'll be capable by tomorrow, because they'll be terribly afraid and become obedient, like wax... Above all, don't you lose heart."