“The officer was not killed,” remarked the Jew, and before his new acquaintance could express his relief, he added gravely, “but he has been spirited away.”

“Then it’s those vagabonds—­”

“Of whom that old Tausend-Kunstlerin (witch of a thousand tricks) is in the position of parent?  I guess as much.  He said he had connived with her, one who is the actual though occult ruler of the filthy region.  We have had to pay her blackmail regularly, like the other artists, for we are obliged to go home after midnight.  Well, if he is in their hands, it is among congenial spirits.  Tell me your name and as much of your affairs as you please to enlighten me with.  I am bound to assist you as far as possible—­though my debt to you will ever remain uncanceled.  I am Daniel Daniels, of Odessa, Marseilles, and elsewhere, and an introduction to my correspondent nearest where you sojourn is not to be despised.”

Impressed with his tone, the young man related his life-story succinctly.

He had a dreamy remembrance of a long journey, lastly in a sledge, buried in fur robes, his clearer later memories were of a happy home in Poland, in the country, where, though strangers, all were kind to the lonely orphan.  There was a mystery about his parentage; his mother was probably a native as he acquired the language as easily as the art of eating, the peasants said.  His father had been killed, he thought, on one of those riots which, in a small way, repeat the olden revolutions of Poland against the triumvirate of oppression, Austria, Prussia and Russia.  But he had heard a tutor say, when he was not supposed in hearing, that he had perished by the executioner’s steel.

“A death honorable as under the bullets,” said Claudius, but half doubtingly.

As became a man who abhorred homicide in any shape, Daniels made no reply.

“At the age of eighteen, while at the University, I was given a private tutor in art and architecture, to which I had a bent.  He was a Frenchman and I acquired his elegant tongue with that well-known facility of us Poles in attaining proficiency in the Western ones.  Armed with that and Italian—­”

“Which you speak with finish,” interrupted the Jew.

“I expect my Italian and French tour to be delightful.  But I am not over the frontier yet, and hardly will be soon if my passport is commented upon by an authority cognizant of this night’s adventure.”

“I regret to find that it was deliberately planned,” resumed Daniels.  “My daughter’s virtue has raised more hostility under this roof than even her talent.  The proprietor is a notorious rascal, but he is too useful to the profligate among the town officials to be reprimanded.  The police, too, wink at his personal misdoings, because he is always their friend to deliver the criminals who make this haunt their rendezvous.  All those painted women, as well as the waiter-girls, are spies and Dalilahs