The Missing Money Mystery — The Idiot

Mrs. Epanchin drags Prince Myshkin home exhausted, then recovers enough to interrogate him while Alexandra and Adelaida watch. The prince answers plainly about the seven o'clock bench meeting; Aglaya enters, thanks him for not lying, and sweeps out while her mother dismisses the prince with stiff courtesy. At home he seeks sleep on the verandah, but Lebedeff arrives with a grave face: four hundred roubles vanished from his coat pocket during last night's party. Lebedeff methodically clears the servant, his children, and Keller after a search, then builds a case against Ferdishenko through early departure, a false address, and what he calls thieves' finesse. The conversation swerves into Lebedeff's adoration of General Ivolgin and a scheme to catch the general visiting a widow, which he dresses as generous tenderness and surveillance for the man's own good. The prince reluctantly agrees to help only if Lebedeff keeps quiet, then learns Colia's warning about Ferdishenko came from the general at dawn, suggesting planted suspicion rather than proof. Lebedeff laughs at the scent he helped manufacture while the prince realizes how easily a crisis becomes leverage. The chapter shows how helpful investigators can pursue hidden agendas, and how a missing sum can justify controlling someone else's private life.