"He mentioned to me once," he added, as
if making an effort of memory, "a house of that sort. He used to visit
some workmen there."
"Exactly."
Sophia Antonovna triumphed. Her correspondent had discovered that fact
quite accidentally from the talk of the people of the house, having
made friends with a workman who occupied a room there. They described
Haldin's appearance perfectly. He brought comforting words of hope into
their misery. He came irregularly, but he came very often, and--her
correspondent wrote--sometimes he spent a night in the house, sleeping,
they thought, in a stable which opened upon the inner yard.
"Note that, Razumov! In a stable."
Razumov had listened with a sort of ferocious but amused acquiescence.
"Yes. In the straw. It was probably the cleanest spot in the whole
house."
"No doubt," assented the woman with that deep frown which seemed to draw
closer together her black eyes in a sinister fashion. No four-footed
beast could stand the filth and wretchedness so many human beings were
condemned to suffer from in Russia. The point of this discovery was that
it proved Haldin to have been familiar with that horse-owning peasant--a
reckless, independent, free-living fellow not much liked by the other
inhabitants of the house. He was believed to have been the associate of
a band of housebreakers.
Pages:
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349