erge of horror and laughter.

Nikita, surnamed Necator, with a sinister aptness of alliteration!
Razumov had heard of him. He had heard so much since crossing the
frontier of these celebrities of the militant revolution; the legends,
the stories, the authentic chronicle, which now and then peeps out
before a half-incredulous world. Razumov had heard of him. He was
supposed to have killed more, gendarmes and police agents than any
revolutionist living. He had been entrusted with executions.

The paper with the letters N.N., the very pseudonym of murder,
found pinned on the stabbed breast of a certain notorious spy (this
picturesque detail of a sensational murder case had got into
the newspapers), was the mark of his handiwork. "By order of the
Committee.--N.N." A corner of the curtain lifted to strike the
imagination of the gaping world. He was said to have been innumerable
times in and out of Russia, the Necator of bureaucrats, of provincial
governors, of obscure informers. He lived between whiles, Razumov had
heard, on the shores of the Lake of Como, with a charming wife, devoted
to the cause, and two young children. But how could that creature, so
grotesque as to set town dogs barking at its mere sight, go about on
those deadly errands and slip through the meshes of the police?

"What now? what now?" the voice squeaked. "I am only sincere. It's not
denied that the other was the leading spirit. Well, it would have been
better if he had been the one spared to us. More useful. I am not a
sentimentalist. Say what I think...only natural."

Squeak, squeak, squeak, without a gesture, without a stir--the horrible
squeaky burlesque of professional jealousy--this man of a sinister
alliterative nickname, this executioner of revolutionary verdicts, the
terrifying N.N. exasperated like a fashionable tenor by the attention
attracted to the performance of an obscure amateur. Sophia Antonovna
shrugged her shoulders. The comrade with the martial red moustache
hurried towards Razumov full of conciliatory intentions in his strong
buzzing voice.

"Devil take it! And in this place, too, in the public street, so to
speak. But you can see yourself how it is. One of his fantastic sallies.
Absolutely of no consequence."

"Pray don't concern yourself," cried Razumov, going off into a long fit
of laughter. "Don't mention it."

The other, his hectic flush like a pair of burns on his cheek-bones,
stared for a moment and burst out laughing