e
first sign of danger. Yet what saved "the scoundrels" for a short time
was something quite unexpected which they had not foreseen....

Towards eight o'clock in the evening (at the very time when the quintet
was meeting at Erkel's, and waiting in indignation and excitement for
Pyotr Stepanovitch) Shatov was lying in the dark on his bed with a
headache and a slight chill; he was tortured by uncertainty, he was
angry, he kept making up his mind, and could not make it up finally, and
felt, with a curse, that it would all lead to nothing. Gradually he sank
into a brief doze and had something like a nightmare. He dreamt that
he was lying on his bed, tied up with cords and unable to stir, and
meantime he heard a terrible banging that echoed all over the house, a
banging on the fence, at the gate, at his door, in Kirillov's lodge,
so that the whole house was shaking, and a far-away familiar voice that
wrung his heart was calling to him piteously. He suddenly woke and sat
up in bed. To his surprise the banging at the gate went on, though
not nearly so violent as it had seemed in his dream. The knocks were
repeated and persistent, and the strange voice "that wrung his heart"
could still be heard below at the gate, though not piteously but angrily
and impatiently, alternating with another voice, more restrained and
ordinary. He jumped up, opened the casement pane and put his head out.

"Who's there?" he called, literally numb with terror.

"If you are Shatov," the answer came harshly and resolutely from below,
"be so good as to tell me straight out and honestly whether you agree to
let me in or not?"

It was true: he recognised the voice!

"Marie!... Is it you?"

"Yes, yes, Marya Shatov, and I assure you I can't keep the driver a
minute longer."

"This minute... I'll get a candle," Shatov cried faintly. Then he rushed
to look for the matches. The matches, as always happens at such moments,
could not be found. He dropped the candlestick and the candle on the
floor and as soon as he heard the impatient voice from below again, he
abandoned the search and dashed down the steep stairs to open the gate.

"Be so good as to hold the bag while I settle with this blockhead," was
how Madame Marya Shatov greeted him below, and she thrust into his hands
a rather light cheap canvas handbag studded with brass nails, of Dresden
manufacture. She attacked the driver with exasperation.

"Allow me to tell you, you are asking too much. If