When Duty Calls at Midnight — The Brothers Karamazov

After Mitya storms away from Grushenka's gate, Pyotr Ilyitch Perhotin cannot let the night go. At Fenya's he learns the worst: Mitya snatched the brass pestle, came back with hands smeared in blood, told the servant he had killed someone, and galloped toward Mokroe. Perhotin is no hero by temperament; he dreads scandal and awkwardness more than crime, yet he keeps following the trail to Fyodor Pavlovitch's house, where the porter's tale of dripping blood and a pestle only deepens his dread. He notes details with the fussy care of a man who fears being wrong in public.

Near eleven he forces himself to Madame Hohlakov in his dressing-gown. She shrieks that Mitya tried to murder her, insists she never lent him three thousand, and writes a sworn statement to that effect before sending the young official on to save the old man if he can. Perhotin rides to the police captain with Hohlakov's note in hand and the pestle story confirmed in his own notebook, scandal still gnawing at him but duty now ahead of it.

The narrator closes by saying this eccentric midnight errand, half cowardice and half conscience, became the foundation of Perhotin's whole official career: the night he could not look away.