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- 90 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
mons from the district police station to appear that day at half
past nine at the ofiice of the district superintendent.
"But when has such a thing happened? I never have anything
to do with the police! And why just to-day?" he thought in
agonising bewilderment. "Good God, only get it over soon!"
He was flinging himself on his knees to pray, but broke into
laughter — not at the idea of prayer, but at himself.
He began, hurriedly dressing, "if I'm lost, I am lost, I don't
care! Shall I put the sock on?" he suddenly wondered, "it will
get dustier still and the traces will be gone."
But no sooner had he put it on than he pulled it off again in
loathing and horror. He pulled it off, but reflecting that he had
no other socks, he picked it up and put it on again — and again
he laughed.
"That's all conventional, that's all relative, merely a way of
looking at it," he thought in a flash, but only on the top surface
of his mind, while he was shuddering all over, "there, I've got
it on! I have finished by getting it on!"
But his laughter was quickly followed by despair.
"No, it's too much for me ..." he thought. His legs shook.
"From fear," he muttered. His head swam and ached with fever,
"It's a trick! They want to decoy me there and confound me
over everything,'' he mused, as he went out on to the stairs —
"the worst of it is I'm almost light-headed. ... I may blurt out
something stupid ..."
On the stairs he remembered that he was leaving all the things
just as they were in the hole in the wall, "and very likely, it's on
purpose to search when I'm out," he thought, and stopped short.
But he was possessed by such despair, such cynicism of misery,
if one may so call it, that with a wave of his hand he went on.
"Only to get it over!"
In the street the heat was insufferable again; not a drop of
rain had fallen all those days. Again dust, bricks and mortar,
again the stench from the shops and pot-houses, again the
drunken men, the Finnish pedlars and half-broken-down cabs.
The sun shone straight in his eyes, so that it hurt him to look out
of them, and he felt his head going round — as a man in a fever
is apt to feel when he comes out into the street on a bright
tunny day.
When he reached the turning into the street, in an agony of
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