The pair seemed to expect him to join them, but as he was about to do so, at the mouth of a narrow and unlighted alley, he heard the measured tramp of feet indicating the patrol.

Already the character of the streets and houses changed:  there were vistas of those large buildings which give one the impression that Munich is planned on too generous a scale for its population.  Only here and there was a roof or front suggestive of the Middle Ages, and they may have been in imitation; the others were stately and were classical, and the avenues became spacious.

All at once, while the student was watching the semi-military constables approach, he heard an uproar toward the bridge.  The major had been discovered by quite another sort of folk than the allies of Baboushka, and the alarm was given.

To advance was to invite an arrest which would result in no pleasant investigation.

He had tarried too long as it was.  The watchman’s horn—­tute-horn—­sounded at the bridge and the squad responded through their commander; whistles also shrilled, being police signals.  The student was perceived.  It was a critical moment.  The next moment he would be challenged, and at the next, have a carbine or sabre levelled at his breast.  He retired up the alley, precipitately, wondering where the persons whom he befriended had disappeared so quickly.

A very faint light gleamed from deeply within, at the end of a crooked passage through a lantern-like projection at a corner.  A number of iron hooks bristled over his head as if for carcasses at a butchers, although their innocent use was to hang beds on them to air.  On a tarnished plate he deciphered “ARTISTES’ entrance,” and while perplexed, even as the gendarmes appeared at the mouth of this blind-alley, a long and taper hand was laid on his arm and a voice, very, very sweet, though in a mere murmur, said irresistibly: 

“Come! come in, or you will be lost!” He yielded, and was drawn into a corridor under the oriel window, where the air was pungent with the reek of beer, tobacco-smoke, orange-peel, cheese and caraway seeds.

CHAPTER III.

“The jingle-jangle.”

The person to whom the shapely hand and musical voice belonged, conducted the student along the narrow passage to a turning where she halted, under a lamp with a reflector which threw them in that position into the shade.  The passage was divided by the first lobby, and on the lamp was painted, back to back:  “Men,” “Ladies;” besides, a babble of feminine voices on the latter side betrayed, as the intruder suspected from the previous placard, that he had entered a place of entertainment by the stage-door, a Tingel-Tangel, or Jingle-Jangle, as we should say.