"A scandal-monger! Why not say a spy while you're about it? It's all very well for you, Alexey Nilitch, to criticise when you stand aloof from everything. But you wouldn't believe it, Stepan Trofimovitch--take Captain Lebyadkin, he is stupid enough, one may say... in fact, one's ashamed to say how stupid he is; there is a Russian comparison, to signify the degree of it; and do you know he considers himself injured by Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, though he is full of admiration for his wit. 'I'm amazed,' said he, 'at that man. He's a subtle serpent.' His own words. And I said to him (still under the influence of my conversation, and after I had spoken to Alexey Nilitch), 'What do you think, captain, is your subtle serpent mad or not?' Would you believe it, it was just as if I'd given him a sudden lash from behind. He simply leapt up from his seat. 'Yes,' said he, '... yes, only that,' he said, 'cannot affect...' 'Affect what?' He didn't finish. Yes, and then he fell to thinking so bitterly, thinking so much, that his drunkenness dropped off him. We were sitting in Filipov's restaurant. And it wasn't till half an hour later that he suddenly struck the table with his fist. 'Yes,' said he, 'maybe he's mad, but that can't affect it....' Again he didn't say what it couldn't affect. Of course I'm only giving you an extract of the conversation, but one can understand the sense of it. You may ask whom you like, they all have the same idea in their heads, though it never entered anyone's head before. 'Yes,' they say, 'he's mad; he's very clever, but perhaps he's mad too.'" Stepan Trofimovitch sat pondering, and thought intently. "And how does Lebyadkin know?" "Do you mind inquiring about that of Alexey Nilitch, who has just called me a spy? I'm a spy, yet I don't know, but Alexey Nilitch knows all the ins and outs of it, and holds his tongue." "I know nothing about it, or hardly anything," answered the engineer with the same irritation. "You make Lebyadkin drunk to find out. You brought me here to find out and to make me say. And so you must be a spy." "I haven't made him drunk yet, and he's not worth the money either, with all his secrets. They are not worth that to me. I don't know what they are to you. On the contrary, he is scattering the money, though twelve days ago he begged fifteen kopecks of me, and it's he treats me to champagne, not I him. But you've given me an idea, and if there should be occasion I will make him drunk, just to get to the bottom of it and maybe I shall find out... all your little secrets," Liputin snapped back spitefully. Stepan Trofimovitch looked in bewilderment at the two disputants. Both were giving themselves away, and what's more, were not standing on ceremony. The thought crossed my mind that Liputin had brought this Alexey Nilitch to us with the simple object of drawing him into a conversation through a third person for purposes of his own--his favourite manoeuvre.