After the announcement of the rank, Claudius knew that the officer would want for nothing.  He let the body fall into the large armchair and, taking advantage of the warder’s consternation at seeing the dead-like body sitting between him and the only exit, glided through the narrow space between the sliding rails and disappeared.

The boom of an alarm bell, set swinging over the gateway by the warder, added wings to his feet, for he feared that police and patrol would hurry to the cemetery from all quarters, and he wanted, above all, to reach the Jew’s hotel before morning.

CHAPTER VI.

TWO AUGURS.

Fortunately for the student, the night birds whom he met and to whom in asking information to arrive at the Persepolitan Hotel, he gave preference over the policemen, felt a fellow feeling for a man pallid, tottering, and in clothes which had suffered during his scramble through the exhausted mines underlaying Munich.

He reached the hotel before dawn and was not sorry to find it one of those old-fashioned hostelries continuing traditions of the posting-houses, where he might not expect to be challenged because of his appearance.  In the stable yard, between a half-awakened horse and a sleepy watchdog, who received the new guest with a blinking eye and affectionate tongue, an ostler was washing down a ramshackle chaise.  Claudius guessed that it was prepared for his flight and his heart warmed at this proof of the Jew having counted on his coming, though belated.  The shock-headed man, clattering over the rounded stones in wooden shoes, made to fit by the insertion of straw around his naked feet, no sooner heard him name Herr Daniels as the one expecting him, than he bade him welcome in a cordial tone which his surly face had not presaged.

“I suppose he is asleep,” he said, “but he left word that he was to be aroused at any hour on your coming.  I am not allowed within doors in my stable dress,” he added, “but you will have no trouble in finding the rooms.  It is that one where the candle burns, one floor above, numbers 11, 12 and 13—­the number is unlucky for a Christian, but that does not matter for the likes of them!—­and a lamp burns at the turn of the stairs.  The back door is on the latch.”

Claudius, with the satisfaction of having anchored in the harbor, crossed the yard and entered the house.  He was closing the door behind him when he heard a heavy tread at the street gate where he had come in. and the dog began to growl.  The ostler caught it by the collar as it made a bound, and cried out: 

“Who is there?”

The schutzman, who had dismounted, prudently held the door close, with one hand, to prevent the dog gliding through, while he showed his sword drawn in the other, and answered with affected joviality: 

“What, Karlchen, am I not known by you better than by your pagan of a hound?  But catch me putting silly questions to my boon-companion, my oldest friend!  It is not in here that I saw a suspicious shadow creep, eh?”