Beschrijving

Corcoran’s bed was hot. He slipped from the bed to the floor and lay there. The wind stirred at the window, died, then stirred again. Suddenly, he heard a prolonged rustling, and Corcoran saw, outlined in the window, the faint figure of something crouched on the sill, peering into the room! Slowly, it dissolved into the body of a man waiting and watching…

The man from the night advanced a leg over the window sill. So infinite was his caution that it was a full minute before his foot touched the floor. Corcoran drew his gun. Finally, the visitor stood erect inside the room and began to move toward the outline of the bed. In the meantime, Corcoran quietly rose to his knees. He circled behind the stranger, and as the man reached the bed, rose softly to his feet.

Then, Corcoran leaped at the intruder, swinging his heavy weapon up and down. The trespasser fell in a crumpled heap! After kindling the lamp, Corcoran prepared to look into the face of his night assailant…

Beschrijving

The Gambler is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. The novella reflects Dostoyevsky’s own addiction to roulette, which was in more ways than one the inspiration for the book: Dostoyevsky completed the novella under a strict deadline to pay off gambling debts. The Gambler treated a subject Fyodor Dostoyevsky himself was familiar with—gambling. The first-person narrative is told from the point of view of Alexei Ivanovich, a tutor working for a Russian family living in a suite at a German hotel. The patriarch of the family, The General, is indebted to the Frenchman De Grieux and has mortgaged his property in Russia to pay only a small amount of his debt. Upon learning of the illness of his wealthy aunt, \