Mr. Timm shrugged his shoulders in reply, and pulled out the empty pockets of his trousers.
Mrs. Pape was of choleric nature, and the failure of such magnificent expectations filled her with just indignation, to which she gave vent in a flood of oaths and vile invectives, some of which were aimed at the detective. "But I will pay Schmenckel, with his big paunch," she said. "Let him come here again and have no money to pay for his beer; I'll show him home, the old rascal!"
At that moment the firing was heard as the troops charged the barricade in Broad street; and almost immediately afterwards a great noise was heard at the windows. They began building the barricade which was to close up Gertrude street. The detective and Timm, who looked stealthily out at the window, saw Oswald, Berger, Schmenckel, and other men, hard at work. They withdrew, following their landlady to the remoter depths of the basement.
"That is a charming trap," said the detective. "We are hemmed in on all sides, and if they find us here the rascals will kill us."
"It is not quite so bad as that," said the woman. "I can get you out safely. Come along."
She led the two men through the last room and a hidden door down a few steps into a deep cellar, which was used as a store-room. On the wall a thin little gas-flame was burning. The woman screwed it up.
"Now," she said, "you go through that door!"--she pointed out an iron door on the opposite side; "then you get into a narrow court-yard; keep to the left, and thus you can get through my brewer's house into Brother street. Good-by!"
"Is it always open? asked Timm, when he found the iron door was not locked.
"Only to-day," replied Rose; "we expect more beer that way. The fellows are like sponges to-day."
When the two gentlemen had safely passed through the door, the little court-yard, and the brewery, into the space above the barricade in Brother street, they stopped and looked at each other. The same thought was uppermost in the mind of both.