The Brothers Karamazov
and screaming incoherently, managed to tell them the main
fact, and to beg for assistance. It happened that Foma had
come back from his wanderings and was staying the night
with them. They got him up immediately and all three ran
to the scene of the crime. On the way, Marya Kondratyevna
remembered that at about eight o’clock she heard a dreadful
scream from their garden, and this was no doubt Grigory’s
scream, ‘Parricide!’ uttered when he caught hold of Mitya’s
leg.
‘Some one person screamed out and then was silent,’
Marya Kondratyevna explained as she ran. Running to the
place where Grigory lay, the two women with the help of
Foma carried him to the lodge. They lighted a candle and
saw that Smerdyakov was no better, that he was writhing in
convulsions, his eyes fixed in a squint, and that foam was
flowing from his lips. They moistened Grigory’s forehead
with water mixed with vinager, and the water revived him
at once. He asked immediately:
‘Is the master murdered?’
Then Foma and both the women ran to the house and
saw this time that not only the window, but also the door
into the garden was wide open, though Fyodor Pavlovitch
had for the last week locked himself in every night and did
not allow even Grigory to come in on any pretext. Seeing
that door open, they were afraid to go in to Fyodor Pav-
lovitch ‘for fear anything should happen afterwards.’ And
when they returned to Grigory, the old man told them to
go straight to the police captain. Marya Kondratyevna ran
there and gave the alarm to the whole party at the police