The old woman lets the feverish-looking Raskolnikov in. He presents her with a fake cigarette case wrapped with a difficult knot in order to distract her. As she turns away to undo the knot, he reaches for the ax. After several blows, Alyona lies dead on the floor in a bloody heap. Raskolnikov takes her keys and goes to the back room, overcoming an urge to give up and leave. He takes a purse that had hung on her neck but is unable to find more than a few trinkets in the back room. Just then, Lizaveta enters the apartment and is paralyzed with horror at the sight of her dead sister. Raskolnikov kills her with a single blow but then realizes that the door to the apartment has been open the whole time. Terrified and desperate, he washes the blood from his hands and the ax and locks the door. Two strange men come to the door, determined to enter. When they leave for a minute, Raskolnikov manages to escape by hiding in a vacant apartment in which two painters have been working until it is safe to leave the building through the front door. Feverish, Raskolnikov takes a circuitous route home and puts the ax back where he found it before returning to his room.