anton chekov Archives

The Safety Match (Pt. 2)

January 14, 2019 By Anton Chekov in Serials Tags: russia, murder, marriage, anton chekov, detective stories, mystery

Part 2 A fortnight passed. It was morning. The magistrate Nicholas Yermolaïyevitch was sitting in his office before a green table, turning over the papers of the “Klausoff case”; Dukovski was striding restlessly up and down like a wolf in a cage. In the second part of Chekov’s story of murder and investigation, the authorities press the suspects to confess and follow the trail to an unlikely co-conspirator. Read more tales like this in Masterpieces of Mystery in Four Volumes: Detective Stories, which is available at Project Gutenberg. “You are convinced of the guilt of Nicholas and Psyekoff,” he said, [Read More]

The Safety Match

January 11, 2019 By Anton Chekov in Serial Pilots, Serials Tags: anton chekov, detective stories, mystery, vodka

Part 1 On the morning of October 6, 1885, in the office of the Inspector of Police of the second division of S— District, there appeared a respectably dressed young man, who announced that his master, Marcus Ivanovitch Klausoff, a retired officer of the Horse Guards, separated from his wife, had been murdered. While making this announcement the young man was white and terribly agitated. His hands trembled and his eyes were full of terror. Anton Chekov famously advised storytellers that a gun introduced in the first act should go off by the third. Here it’s a safety match, and [Read More]

At Christmas Time

December 23, 2018 By Anton Chekov in Old Stories Tags: public domain stories, christmas, marriage, anton chekov, family, letters

I “What shall I write?” said Yegor, and he dipped his pen in the ink. Vasilisa had not seen her daughter for four years. Her daughter Yefimya had gone after her wedding to Petersburg, had sent them two letters, and since then seemed to vanish out of their lives; there had been no sight nor sound of her. And whether the old woman were milking her cow at dawn, or heating her stove, or dozing at night, she was always thinking of one and the same thing—what was happening to Yefimya, whether she were alive out yonder. She ought to [Read More]