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DIAMONDS TO SIT ON

Not believing that the door was locked, he pulled at the handle, but the door would not yield. The engineer tugged at the door several times and listened with a beating heart. It was dark by now and the house was unusually quiet. ‘ What a situation to be in !’ he thought. He could hear voices downstairs, then a dog began to bark and a perambulator was taken downstairs. Ernest Pavlovich walked up and down the landing. ‘ It’s enough to make a man go mad ! ’ he exclaimed. Again he went up to the door and again he listened. This time he heard a curious new sound. At first it seemed as if there were somebody walking about in the flat. ‘ Perhaps some one has got in from the back stair­ case,’ he thought; but then he remembered that the door leading to the back staircase was locked. The monotonous sound persisted and the engineer held his breath, for he suddenly realized that the noise was coming from running water. It was evidently running out of all the taps in the flat. He was almost weeping, for he was in a terrible position. Here, in the centre of Moscow, on the top landing of a nine-story house, was a full-grown man, a man of good education, standing absolutely naked except for a layer of soap. There was nowhere for him to go, and he would have rather sat in prison than be seen in such a condition. The soap was beginning to dry and was making his face and back itch. Half an hour passed, during which the engineer tried several times to break the door open. He looked dirty and most forbidding. At last he decided to pluck up courage and go down to the house porter. ,, There s no other way out of it,’ he said to himself. 111 have to hide in the porter’s room.’ Feeling terribly nervous and trembling all over, Ernest Pavlovich began to creep very slowly down-