might listen in comfort.



CHAPTER V

When next morning at eleven o'clock punctually Raskolnikov went into the
department of the investigation of criminal causes and sent his name in
to Porfiry Petrovitch, he was surprised at being kept waiting so long:
it was at least ten minutes before he was summoned. He had expected
that they would pounce upon him. But he stood in the waiting-room, and
people, who apparently had nothing to do with him, were continually
passing to and fro before him. In the next room which looked like an
office, several clerks were sitting writing and obviously they had
no notion who or what Raskolnikov might be. He looked uneasily and
suspiciously about him to see whether there was not some guard, some
mysterious watch being kept on him to prevent his escape. But there was
nothing of the sort: he saw only the faces of clerks absorbed in petty
details, then other people, no one seemed to have any concern with him.
He might go where he liked for them. The conviction grew stronger in him
that if that enigmatic man of yesterday, that phantom sprung out of the
earth, had seen everything, they would not have let him stand and wait
like that. And would they have waited till he elected to appear at
eleven? Either the man had not yet given information, or... or simply
he knew nothing, had seen nothing (and how could he have seen anything?)
and so all that had happened to him the day before was again a phantom
exaggerated by his sick and overstrained imagination. This conjecture
had begun to grow strong the day before, in the midst of all his
alarm and despair. Thinking it all over now and preparing for a fresh
conflict, he was suddenly aware that he was trembling--and he felt a