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The fog seemed to have found its way into my brain and I wandered like one dazed, simply shouting from time to time, "Tyeglev! Tyeglev!" "Here!" I heard suddenly in answer. Holy saints, how relieved I was! How I rushed in the direction from which the voice came.... A human figure loomed dark before me.... I made for it. At last!
We were both silent. The fantastic beauty of the night worked upon us: it put us into the mood for the fantastic. Tyeglev was the first to speak and talked with his usual hesitating incompleted sentences and repetitions about presentiments ... about ghosts.
"Someone is knocking again!" I could not help laughing. "No, excuse me, Ilya Stepanitch! This time it is your nerves. You see, it is getting light. In ten minutes the sun will be up it is past three o'clock and ghosts have no power in the day." Tyeglev cast a gloomy glance at me and muttering through his teeth "good-bye," lay down on the bench and turned his back on me.
Come in. Is the door locked?" Tyeglev shook his head. "I do not intend to come in," he pronounced in a hollow tone. "I only want to ask you to give this letter to the commanding officer to-morrow." He gave me a big envelope sealed with five seals. I was astonished however, I took the envelope mechanically. Tyeglev at once walked away into the middle of the road. "Stop! stop!" I began.
I promised to tell you the story. Lieutenant Tyeglev belonged precisely to the class of those "fatal" individuals, though he did not possess the exterior commonly associated with them; he was not, for instance, in the least like Lermontov's "fatalist."
"Why, what is it?" I asked, yawning. "Do you mean to say you don't hear anything? There is someone knocking." "Well, what if there is?" I answered and again pretended to be asleep and even snored. Tyeglev subsided. "Knock ... knock ... knock!" "Who is there?" Tyeglev shouted. "Come in!" No one answered, of course. "Knock ... knock ... knock!"
The moon stood, a pale blur in the sky but its light was not, as on the evening before, strong enough to penetrate the smoky density of the fog and hung, a broad opaque canopy, overhead. I made my way out on to the open ground and listened.... Not a sound from any direction, except the calling of the marsh birds. "Tyeglev!" I cried. "Ilya Stepanitch!! Tyeglev!!"
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.
As I was getting up, leaning on the ground, I felt something rough under my hand: it was a chased brass comb on a cord, such as peasants wear on their belt. Further search led to nothing and I went back to the hut with the comb in my hand, and my cheeks tingling. I found Tyeglev sitting on the bench.
In the letter to the colonel he asked him, in the first place, to have the name of Ilya Tyeglev removed from the list of officers, as he had died by his own act, adding that in his cash-box there would be found more than sufficient money to pay his debts, and, secondly, to forward to the important personage at that time commanding the whole corps of guards, an unsealed letter which was in the same envelope.
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