There was only this new about it: he saw a criminal with shaved head and grey trousers swinging before him, and by a sequence of ideas he began to look for a ventilator to which he could attach a rope. Intolerable hatred that demanded expression, burned in Mezhenétsky’s heart. He could not lie still, could not grow calm, and could not get rid of his thoughts.

“How?” he began to ask himself. “By cutting an artery? I might not succeed.⁠ ⁠… Hanging?⁠ ⁠… Of course! That’s the simplest!” He remembered that he had seen a bundle of logs tied together by a cord in the corridor. “Get up on the logs, or on a stool?⁠ ⁠… The watchman is pacing up and down the corridor, but he will fall asleep or go away.⁠ ⁠… I shall have to wait, and then take the rope and fasten it to the ventilator.”

Standing at his door, Mezhenétsky listened to the watchman’s steps, and now and then, when the latter was at the far end of the corridor, he looked out through the chink. But the watchman did not go away nor fall asleep, and still Mezhenétsky listened eagerly to the sound of his footsteps, and waited.