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a lot of questions I want to ask you, but I forget them... I
keep forgetting and getting mixed up. Yes. Tell me this at
least, why did you open the envelope and leave it there on
the floor? Why didn’t you simply carry off the envelope?...
When you were telling me, I thought you spoke about it as
though it were the right thing to do... but why, I can’t un-
derstand..’
‘I did that for a good reason. For if a man had known all
about it, as I did for instance, if he’d seen those notes before,
and perhaps had put them in that envelope himself, and had
seen the envelope sealed up and addressed, with his own
eyes, if such a man had done the murder, what should have
made him tear open the envelope afterwards, especially in
such desperate haste, since he’d know for certain the notes
must be in the envelope? No, if the robber had been some-
one like me, he’d simply have put the envelope straight in
his pocket and got away with it as fast as he could. But it’d
be quite different with Dmitri Fyodorovitch. He only knew
about the envelope by hearsay; he had never seen it, and if
he’d found it, for instance, under the mattress, he’d have
torn it open as quickly as possible to make sure the notes
were in it. And he’d have thrown the envelope down, with-
out having time to think that it would be evidence against
him. Because he was not an habitual thief and had never
directly stolen anything before, for he is a gentleman born,
and if he did bring himself to steal, it would not be regular
stealing, but simply taking what was his own, for he’d told
the whole town he meant to before, and had even bragged
aloud before everyone that he’d go and take his property