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At twenty paces farther, he remembered his cloak, but on the bridge were now clustered several shadows vying with Baboushka in picking up the coin before raising the unfortunate Von Sendlingen. Not a light had appeared at the windows of the houses, not a window had opened for a night-capped head to be thurst forth, not a voice had echoed the Jewess's call for the watch.
They were discussing the ascending star, about which one had a deeper knowledge than the subjects of Baboushka. "She is the cause of the disgrace of the Grand-Chamberlain of a northern kingdom," said this well-informed man. "He has been obliged to send in his grand cross of the Royal Order and his rank in the Holy Empire, after what was almost a revolution in the palace.
It was true she had made her an offer and she had connived at the police being made to think she had accompanied the eccentric dame. But she had remained in Munich to help the man who was endeared to her. Not a word about Baboushka and a fear to break the spell kept Claudius quiet on that point.
The startled dancer, for all her aristocratic self-command, stopped immediately for explanation, and, riveting her glances on the female head of the intruders, whom she recognized that was clear stood stupor-stricken. Claudius, following her hint, turned to the center and had no difficulty in recognizing in the woman arrayed in the Polish pelisse, the chief of the beggars, Baboushka.
Questions and answers were uttered in a thieve's jargon which were sealed letters to the eavesdropper, but it seemed to him that they all addressed her as Baboushka! This struck him as more odd from its being a Slavonic title, meaning "grandmother."
Relying on her good angel, apparently, the witch boldly passed him, and it seemed to the watcher that a sign of understanding was rapidly exchanged between them. Baboushka seemed to enjoin caution for the stranger hooked up his trailing sabre, wrapped his cloak around him and came on less noisily. Certainly the old hag did not beg of him, but hastened to leave the street.
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.
"Murder!" and the audience rose to their feet like one man. "Stand up here," said the functionary, pointing to a place on a bench which a timid spectator had vacated, and pushing Baboushka roughly, "and point out the man who has made away with the honorable Major von Sendlingen."
The majority of the spectators seemed to be of the tradesman and workman class, with their wives and daughters, but the stranger, who had been so surreptitiously "passed in," was not blind to the presence of a more offensive element. There were faces as villainous as any under the immediate command of Grandmother "Baboushka;" and their dress was not much better.
This time, it was the stouter and more brutal man who played cautiously and the younger and more refined who was spurred into recklessness by the contiguity of the fair Helen or, rather, Esther who had caused the fray. The girl stood at the end of the bridge, opposite to Baboushka at hers, there making them simple lookers-on.
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