This house was let out in tiny tenements and was inhabited by working people of all kinds--tailors, locksmiths, cooks, Germans of sorts, girls picking up a living as best they could, petty clerks, etc.
There was a continual coming and going through the two gates and in the two courtyards of the house.

Three or four door-keepers were employed on the building.

The young man was very glad to meet none of them, and at once slipped unnoticed through the door on the right, and up the staircase.

It was a back staircase, dark and narrow, but he was familiar with it already, and knew his way, and he liked all these surroundings: in such darkness even the most inquisitive eyes were not to be dreaded.
"If I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow came to pass that I were really going to do it ?" he could not help asking himself as he reached the fourth storey.

There his progress was barred by some porters who were engaged in moving furniture out of a flat.