childish scuffling at the gate fit in with axes, bloodshed, fiendish cunning, robbery? They’d just killed them, not five or ten minutes before, for the bodies were still warm, and at once, leaving the flat open, knowing that people would go there at once, flinging away their booty, they rolled about like children, laughing and attracting general attention. And there are a dozen witnesses to swear to that!”

“Of course it is strange! It’s impossible, indeed, but...”

“No, brother, no buts. And if the ear-rings being found in Nikolay’s hands at the very day and hour of the murder constitutes an important piece of circumstantial evidence against him — although the explanation given by him accounts for it, and therefore it does not tell seriously against him —