I replied in the same language, I wanted a room.

He shot a glance at me through his little slits of eyes on hearing my good Bonn accent, but his manner did not change.

“The hotel is full.  The gentleman cannot have a bed here.  The proprietress is out at present.  I regret....”  He spat this all out in the offhand insolent manner of the Prussian official.

“It was Franz, of the Bopparder Hof, who recommended me to come here,” I said.  I was not going out again into the rain for a whole army of Prussian waiters.

“He told me that Frau Schratt would make me very comfortable,” I added.

The waiter’s manner changed at once.

“So, so,” he said—­quite genially this time—­“it was Franz who sent the gentleman to us.  He is a good friend of the house, is Franz.  Ja, Frau Schratt is unfortunately out just now, but as soon as the lady returns I will inform her you are here.  In the meantime, I will give the gentleman a room.”

He handed me a candlestick and a key.

“So,” he grunted, “No. 31, the third floor.”

A clock rang out the hour somewhere in the distance.

“Ten o’clock already,” he said.  “The gentleman’s papers can wait till to-morrow, it is so late.  Or perhaps the gentleman will give them to the proprietress.  She must come any moment.”

As I mounted the winding staircase I heard him murmur again: 

“So, so, Franz sent him here!  Ach, der Franz!”

As soon as I had passed out of sight of the lighted hall I found myself in complete darkness.  On each landing a jet of gas, turned down low, flung a dim and flickering light a few yards around.  On the third floor I was able to distinguish by the gas rays a small plaque fastened to the wall inscribed with an arrow pointing to the right above the figures:  46-30.

I stopped to strike a match to light my candle.  The whole hotel seemed wrapped in silence, the only sound the rushing of water in the gutters without.  Then from the darkness of the narrow corridor that stretched out in front of me, I heard the rattle of a key in a lock.

I advanced down the corridor, the pale glimmer of my candle showing me as I passed a succession of yellow doors, each bearing a white porcelain plate inscribed with a number in black.  No. 46 was the first room on the right counting from the landing:  the even numbers were on the right, the odd on the left:  therefore I reckoned on finding my room the last on the left at the end of the corridor.

The corridor presently took a sharp turn.  As I came round the bend I heard again the sound of a key and then the rattling of a door knob, but the corridor bending again, I could not see the author of the noise until I had turned the corner.

I ran right into a man fumbling at a door on the left-hand side of the passage, the last door but one.  A mirror at the end of the corridor caught and threw back the reflection of my candle.