t the student no pang now to retrace the steps he had painfully
counted, to reach the building, out of the cellars of which he had so
gladly climbed. On thus facing it, he knew by a window being lighted
that his goal was there.

He had found fresh energy in his mission, rather than the scanty
refreshment, and in three minutes was at the door. Heavy with iron
banding the oak, it was not made for the hand of the dying to move it,
but Claudius dragged it open with violence. He sprang inside with the
vivacity of a bridegroom invading the nuptial chamber, although here was
no agreeable sight.

A long plain hall, of grey stone, the seams defined with black cement;
all the windows high up, small and grated; only the one door, never
locked. Two rows of slate beds, three of which only were occupied; two
men and a boy, nude save a waistcloth; over their heads--sluggishly
swayed by the air the new-comer had carelessly admitted--their clothes
were hung like shapeless shadows. They had been dredged up in the Isar's
mud, found at a corner, dragged from under a cartwheel. No one
identifying them, they were deposited here; their fate? dissection for
the benefit of science, and interment of the detached portions in the
pauper's hell.

Which had rung the bell?

Claudius investigated the three: the boy had been crushed by the
sludge-basket of the steam-dredge; not a spark of life was left there,
his companion was green and horrible; he, too, had passed the bourne.

But on the other row, alone, a robust man with disfigured face, and red
whiskers, looked like a fresh cut alabaster statue. Cold had blanched
him; but a faint steam arose from his armpits, in the sepulchral light
of a green-shaded gas-jet. There heat remained to prove that the great
furnace in the frame had not ceased to be fed.

The student bent over him to feel the heart, when, as promptly, he
sprang back. Spite of the maltreated face, he recognized his combatant
in the duel with canes; it was Major Von Sendlingen, who had been flung
on the slab in the public dead-house.

Had Baboushka commanded his death to prevent her complicity in the
assault on Daniels and his daughter being published, and had she
suggested the stripping which caused the police to confound the noble
officer with the victim of the "pickers-up" of drunkards?

But the major shivered in the blast from the door left open, and a brief
flush ran over the icy skin.

If his enemy did not extend relief t