Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com half, that fifteen hundred, like a locket round my neck, but
yesterday I undid it, and spent it. What’s left of it, eight hun-
dred roubles, is in your hands now, Nikolay Parfenovitch.
That’s the change out of the fifteen hundred I had yester-
day.’
‘Excuse me. How’s that? Why, when you were here a
month ago you spent three thousand, not fifteen hundred,
everybody knows that.’
‘Who knows it? Who counted the money? Did I let any-
one count it?’
‘Why, you told everyone yourself that you’d spent exactly
three thousand.’
‘It’s true, I did. I told the whole town so, and the whole
town said so. And here, at Mokroe, too, everyone reckoned
it was three thousand. Yet I didn’t spend three thousand,
but fifteen hundred. And the other fifteen hundred I sewed
into a little bag. That’s how it was, gentlemen. That’s where I
got that money yesterday...’
‘This is almost miraculous,’ murmured Nikolay Parfeno-
vitch.
‘Allow me to inquire,’ observed the prosecutor at last,
‘have you informed anyone whatever of this circumstance
before; I mean that you had fifteen hundred left about you
a month ago?’
‘I told no one.’
‘That’s strange. Do you mean absolutely no one?’
‘Absolutely no one. No one and nobody.’
‘What was your reason for this reticence? What was
your motive for making such a secret of it? To be more pre-