But to what work?
Now, as though to spite him, it eluded him.
"Good God, only tell me one thing: do they know of it yet or not?
What if they know it and are only pretending, mocking me while I am laid up, and then they will come in and tell me that it's been discovered long ago and that they have only...

What am I to do now?
That's what I've forgotten, as though on purpose; forgotten it all at once, I remembered a minute ago." He stood in the middle of the room and gazed in miserable bewilderment about him; he walked to the door, opened it, listened; but that was not what he wanted.

Suddenly, as though recalling something, he rushed to the corner where there was a hole under the paper, began examining it, put his hand into the hole, fumbled--but that was not it.

He went to the stove, opened it and began rummaging in the ashes; the frayed edges of his trousers and the rags cut off his pocket were lying there just as he had thrown them.

No one had looked, then! Then he remembered the sock about which Razumihin had just been telling him.