A group of women, with untidy hair and dirty aprons, stopped their chatter and nudged each other significantly with great, coarse, bare elbows, as they caught sight of the police uniform; and one or two heads appeared at some of the windows, as the heavy steps of Sergeant Meyer and his followers echoed on the stone pavement of the courtyard.
Having reached the dark and narrow staircase leading to the floors above, Sergeant Meyer turned to Iván.
“I do not see either of our fellows anywhere about, so I conclude the woman has gone out.”
“So much the better,” said Volenski, “we need have no disturbance then; I suppose the people of the house are used to this sort of thing, for they took very little heed of your uniform or our presence.”
The sergeant shrugged his shoulders, intimating that he cared little for any disturbance that might arise, and he added—
“This house is one of the worst-famed in this part of Vienna; it is almost entirely tenanted by women of Grete Ottlinger’s class. A police inspection of their premises is a very frequent occurrence, and the inhabitants have, I think, one and all, spent some time in prison or hospital.”
The three men now began cautiously ascending the dark stone stairs, guiding themselves by the narrow, iron hand-rail, and feeling their way with utmost care. Sergeant Meyer, who was in front, seemed to be very sure of where he was going, for it was without any hesitation that he stopped somewhere about the fifth floor, and crossing a dark passage, tried the handle of one of the doors that opened thereon.
The door, however, seemed to be locked, and after one or two repeated loud knocks, the sergeant applied his broad shoulders to the feebly resisting timber, and broke it open without any difficulty.
The room, in which the three men now found themselves, was but dimly illumined by a glimmer of light, that came in through the window from the courtyard below. The sergeant struck a match and lighted his lantern; the aspect of that room then presented itself in all its squalor and hideousness: an iron bedstead, covered with a ragged, coloured counterpane, stood out from the centre of the wall opposite; to the right as they entered, an earthenware stove with the tiles mostly cracked and loose; then a coarsely-painted chest, the drawers of which were mostly open, displaying a medley of dirty laces and faded ribbons; two or three chairs in a rickety condition propped against the walls, and a table with a broken ewer and cracked basin, completed the furniture of this abode of misery and degradation; the floor was bare, the boards unwashed and rough, on the window-sill stood a mirror and two or three pots of powder and cosmetics, while on the chest of drawers lay a litter of papers and two or three faded photographs.
Iván stood gazing round in horror. It had never been his misfortune to witness the type of misery, sordid and abject, that was depicted by this bare room, by the tawdry scraps of ribbon, the half-empty, evil-smelling pots of cosmetics, and his mind reverted to the exalted notion he and his comrades had of the “people,” of the poor, who were in the future to frame laws and rule empires, the “people” about whom they talked so much, and knew so little, the “people” whose men and women lived like this.