The Brothers Karamazovsave myself from death. For even if Agrafena Alexandrov-
na comes to see his father while I am ill, his honour can’t
blame a sick man for not telling him. He’d be ashamed to.’
‘Hang it all!’ Ivan cried, his face working with anger,
‘Why are you always in such a funk for your life? All my
brother Dmitri’s threats are only hasty words and mean
nothing. He won’t kill you; it’s not you he’ll kill!’
‘He’d kill me first of all, like a fly. But even more than
that, I am afraid I shall be taken for an accomplice of his
when he does something crazy to his father.’
‘Why should you be taken for an accomplice?’
‘They’ll think I am an accomplice, because I let him know
the signals as a great secret.’
‘What signals? Whom did you tell? Confound you, speak
more plainly.’
‘I’m bound to admit the fact,’ Smerdyakov drawled with
pedantic composure, ‘that I have a secret with Fyodor Pav-
lovitch in this business. As you know yourself (if only you
do know it) he has for several days past locked himself in
as soon as night or even evening comes on. Of late you’ve
been going upstairs to your room early every evening, and
yesterday you did not come down at all, and so perhaps you
don’t know how carefully he has begun to lock himself in at
night, and even if Grigory Vassilyevitch comes to the door
he won’t open to him till he hears his voice. But Grigory
Vassilyevitch does not come, because I wait upon him alone
in his room now. That’s the arrangement he made himself
ever since this to-do with Agrafena Alexandrovna began.
But at night, by his orders, I go away to the lodge so that I