It was a most unpleasant journey.  There was some kind of choral society on the train, occupying seven or eight compartments of the third-class coach in which I was travelling.  For the first few hours they made night hideous with part-songs, catches and glees chanted with a volume of sound that in that confined place was simply deafening.  Then the noise abated as one by one the singers dropped off to sleep.  Presently silence fell, while the train rushed forward in the darkness bearing me towards fresh perils, fresh adventures.

* * * * *

A gust of fresh air in my face, the trample of feet, loud greetings in guttural German, awoke me with a start.  It was broad daylight and through my compartment, to which I had crept in the night, weary with standing, filed the jovial members of the choral society, with bags in their hands and huge cockades in their buttonholes.  There was a band on the platform and a huge choir of men who bawled a stentorian-voiced hymn of greeting.  “Duesseldorf” was the name printed on the station lamps.

All the passengers, save the members of the choral society, had left the train, apparently, for every carriage door stood open.  I sprang to my feet and let myself go with the stream of men.  Thus I swept out of the train and right into the midst of the jostling crowd of bandsmen, singers and spectators on the platform.  I stood with the new arrivals until the hymn was ended and thus solidly encadres by the Duesseldorfers, we drifted out through the barrier into the station courtyard.  There brakes were waiting into which the jolly choristers, guests and hosts, clambered noisily.  But I walked straight on into the streets, scarcely able to realize that no one had questioned me, that at last, unhindered, I stood before my goal.

Duesseldorf is a bright, clean town with a touch of good taste in its public buildings to remind one that this busy, industrial city has found time even while making money to have called into being a school of art of its own.  It was a delightful morning with dazzling sunshine and an eager nip in the air that spoke of the swift, deep river that bathes the city walls.  I revelled in the clear, cold atmosphere after the foulness of the drinking-den and the stifling heat of the journey.  I exulted in the sense of liberty I experienced at having once more eluded the grim clutches of Clubfoot.  Above all, my heart sang within me at the thought of an early meeting with Francis.  In the mood I was in, I would admit no possibility of disappointment now.  Francis and I would come together at last.

I came upon a public square presently and there facing me was a great, big cafe, white and new and dazzling, with large plate-glass windows and rows of tables on a covered verandah outside.  It was undoubtedly a “kolossal” establishment after the best Berlin style.  So that there might be no mistake about the name it was placarded all over the front of the place in gilt letters three feet high on glass panels—­Cafe Regina.