Once I happened to be left alone in the house, Astafi and Agrafena having gone out on business. Suddenly I heard some one enter, and I felt that it must be a stranger; I went out into the corridor and found a man of short stature, and notwithstanding the cold weather, dressed very thinly and without an overcoat.
“What is it you want?”
“The Government clerk Alexandrov? Does he live here?”
“There is no one here by that name, little brother; good day.”
“The porter told me he lived here,” said the visitor, cautiously retreating toward the door.
“Go on, go on, little brother; be off!”
Soon after dinner the next day, when Astafi brought in my coat, which he had repaired for me, I once more heard a strange step in the corridor. I opened the door.
The visitor of the day before, calmly and before my very eyes, took my short coat from the rack, put it under his arm, and ran out.
Agrafena, who had all the time been looking at him in open-mouthed surprise through the kitchen door, was seemingly unable to stir from her place and rescue the coat. But Astafi Ivanich rushed after the rascal, and, out of breath and panting, returned empty-handed. The man had vanished as if the earth had swallowed him.
“It is too bad, really, Astafi Ivanich,” I said. “It is well that I have my cloak left. Otherwise the scoundrel would have put me out of service altogether.”