The latter dragged me out, more dead than alive, while the others ransacked my room from top to bottom.
I went down, held up by my armpits, like a man in the third stage of consumption…my hair flapping about my face and tripping with each step I took.
They threw me into a hansom next to two strapping fellows who were kind enough to show me the ends of two clubs attached to their wrists by a leather strap….then the carriage set off.
I could hear following on behind us the running footsteps of all the town's youngsters.
"What have I done?" I asked one of my guards.
He looked at his companion with a strange smile and said:
"Hans…he's asking what he's done!"
That smile made my blood run cold.
Soon the carriage was enveloped in deep shadow and the hooves of the horses echoed under a vault. We were entering the Raspelhaus or Penitentiary…I was escaping Rap's tender mercies only to end up in a dungeon from which not many poor devils have had the opportunity to extricate themselves.
Big dark courtyards; lines of windows just like in a hospital decked with guttering; not so much as a tuft of grass or a festoon of ivy, not even a weathervane in prospect…such were my new lodgings. It was enough to make you tear your hair out by the fistful.