The Emperor's Candlesticks

It was in a narrow street, in one of the most squalid quarters of Vienna, that the _fiaker_ stopped, after some ten minutes' rattle over the cobbled streets of the city.

Sergeant Meyer jumped out, followed by Iván and the other police officer, and casting a quick, searching glance along the apparently deserted street, he walked unhesitatingly under one of the wide porticoes in front of him. The house was one of a row of tall buildings, ugly, square, and straight, with a balcony running along outside the first-floor fronts, the whole length of the street, and a wide, open _porte cochère_, leading, through a square courtyard, to the lodgings at the back of the buildings. There was a lodge for the _concierge_ on the right, at the foot of the wide stone staircase that leads up to the front of the house, but no one guarded the apartments that overlooked the courtyard: there was nothing there worth guarding, the inhabitants belonging mostly to the very poorest classes of Vienna, who had nothing worth stealing.