"This is a black prospect! I had better have quitted the hall and profited by the invitation of refuge which Herr Daniels offered me." For the moment, he could take no part, though he could not doubt that Baboushka would denounce him--a stranger, and the principal in the duel with canes.

His cloak would help toward the identification and unless the hag's crew had abstracted it, it would be forthcoming, he doubted not.
Indeed, elevated on her perch, able to see the faces of all around her, the hag's aged but brilliant eyes rapidly scanned those nearest her in wider and wider circles.

All at once they became fixed upon Claudius, and by instinct, the neighbors fell away from him so that he was isolated.

She extended her arm with an unnatural vigor, and in a voice also unexpectedly strong with malice, cried: "That is he! there you have the slayer of poor Major von Sendlingen!" At that very moment, a shrill, ear-splitting whistle sounded; and the gas-jets all over the hall went out too simultaneously for the act not to be that of a hand at the inlet from the street-main.

Claudius heard the soldiers and policemen buffeting the people to scramble over the benches toward him.