Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories

with other newly promoted officers in full dress uniform along the

embankment. The spring had come early that year, the Neva was melting;

the bigger blocks of ice had gone but the whole river was choked up

with a dense mass of thawing icicles. The young men were talking and

laughing ... suddenly one of them stopped: he saw a little dog some

twenty paces from the bank on the slowly moving surface of the river.

Perched on a projecting piece of ice it was whining and trembling all

over. 'It will be drowned,' said the officer through his teeth. The

dog was slowly being carried past one of the sloping gangways that led

down to the river. All at once Tyeglev without saying a word ran down

this gangway and over the thin ice, sinking in and leaping out again,

reached the dog, seized it by the scruff of the neck and getting

safely back to the bank, put it down on the pavement. The danger to

which Tyeglev had exposed himself was so great, his action was so

unexpected, that his companions were dumbfoundered--and only spoke all

at once, when he had called a cab to drive home: his uniform was wet

all over. In response to their exclamations, Tyeglev replied coolly

that there was no escaping one's destiny--and told the cabman to drive

on.

'You might at least take the dog with you as a souvenir,' cried one of

the officers. But Tyeglev merely waved his hand, and his comrades

looked at each other in silent amazement.

The second incident occurred a few days later, at a card party at the

battery commander's. Tyeglev sat in the corner and took no part in the

play. 'Oh, if only I had a grandmother to tell me beforehand what

cards will win, as in Pushkin's Queen of Spades,' cried a

lieutenant whose losses had nearly reached three thousand. Tyeglev

approached the table in silence, took up a pack, cut it, and saying

'the six of diamonds,' turned the pack up: the six of diamonds was the

bottom card. 'The ace of clubs!' he said and cut again: the bottom

card turned out to be the ace of clubs. 'The king of diamonds!' he

said for the third time in an angry whisper through his clenched

teeth--and he was right the third time, too ... and he suddenly turned

crimson. He probably had not expected it himself. 'A capital trick! Do

it again,' observed the commanding officer of the battery. 'I don't go

in for tricks,' Tyeglev answered drily and walked into the other room.

How it happened that he guessed the card right, I can't pretend to

explain: but I saw it with my own eyes. Many of the players present

tried to do the same--and not one of them succeeded: one or two did

guess one card but never two in succession. And Tyeglev had

guessed three! This incident strengthened still further his reputation

as a mysterious, fatal character. It has often occurred to me since

that if he had not succeeded in the trick with the cards, there is no

knowing what turn it would have taken and how he would have looked at

himself; but this unexpected success clinched the matter.

IV

It may well be understood that Tyeglev clutched at this reputation. It

gave him a special significance, a special colour ... 'Cela le

posait,' as the French express it--and with his limited

intelligence, scanty education and immense vanity, such a reputation

just suited him. It was difficult to acquire it but to keep it up cost