“I have already stated my reasons, and I will not go there,” Nekhludoff said angrily.

“I have the honor to salute you,” said the prosecutor, bowing, evidently desiring to rid himself of the strange visitor.

“Who was the man that just left your room?” asked one of the judges who entered the prosecutor’s cabinet after Nekhludoff had left.

“Nekhludoff.  You know, the one who made such strange suggestions in the Krasnopersk town council.  Just imagine, he is on the jury, and among the prisoners there was a woman, or girl, who was sentenced to penal servitude, and who, he says, was deceived by him.  And now he wishes to marry her.”

“It is impossible!”

“That is what he told me.  And how strangely excited he was!”

“There is something wrong with our young men.”

“He is not so very young.”

“What a bore your famous Ivasheukoff is, my dear!  He wins his cases by tiring us out—­there is no end to his talking.”

“They must be curbed, or they become real obstructionists.”

CHAPTER XXXVI.

From the public prosecutor Nekhludoff went straight to the detention-house.  But no one by the name of Maslova was there.  The inspector told him that she might be found in the old temporary prison.  Nekhludoff went there and found that Katherine Moslova was one of the inmates.

The distance between the detention-house and the old prison was great, and Nekhludoff did not arrive there until toward evening.  He was about to open the door of the huge, gloomy building, when the guard stopped him and rang the bell.  The warden responded to the bell.  Nekhludoff showed the pass, but the warden told him that he could not be admitted without authority from the inspector.  While climbing the stairs to the inspector’s dwelling, Nekhludoff heard the sounds of an intricate bravura played on the piano.  And when the servant, with a handkerchief tied around one eye, opened the door, a flood of music dazed his senses.  It was a tiresome rhapsody by Lizst, well played, but only to a certain place.  When that place was reached, the melody repeated itself.  Nekhludoff asked the servant if the inspector was in.

The servant said that he was not.

“Will he be in soon?”

The rhapsody again ceased, and with a noisy flourish again repeated itself.

“I will go and inquire.”  And the servant went away.

The rhapsody again went on at full speed, when suddenly, reaching a certain point, it came to a stand-still and a voice from within was heard.

“Tell him that he is not home, and will not come to-day.  He is visiting—­why do they bother us?” a woman’s voice was heard to say, and the rhapsody continued, then ceased, and the sound of a chair moved back was heard.  The angry pianist herself evidently wished to reprimand the importunate visitor who came at such a late hour.