There stood a woman with a lamp. She was a middle-aged woman with an egg-shaped face, fat and white and puffy, and pale, crafty eyes. She was in her outdoor clothes, with an enormous vulgar-looking hat and an old-fashioned sealskin cape with a high collar. The cape which was glistening with rain was half open, and displayed a vast bosom tightly compressed into a white silk blouse. In one hand she carried an oil lamp. "Frau Schratt," she said by way of introduction, and raised the lamp to look more closely at me. Then I saw her face change. She was looking past me into the room, and I knew that the lamplight was falling full upon the ghastly thing that lay upon the floor. I realized the woman was about to scream, so I seized her by the wrist. She had disgusting hands, fat and podgy and covered with rings. "Quiet!" I whispered fiercely in her ear, never relaxing my grip on her wrist. "You will be quiet and come in here, do you understand?" She sought to shrink from me, but I held her fast and drew her into the room. She stood motionless with her lamp, at the head of the corpse. She seemed to have regained her self-possession. The woman was no longer frightened. I felt instinctively that her fears had been all for herself, not for that livid horror sprawling on the floor. When she spoke her manner was almost business-like. "I was told nothing of this," she said. "Who is it? What do you want me to do?" Of all the sensations of that night, none has left a more unpleasant odour in my memory than the manner of that woman in the chamber of death. Her voice was incredibly hard. Her dull, basilisk eyes, seeking in mine the answers to her questions, gave me an eerie sensation that makes my blood run cold whenever I think of her. Then suddenly her manner, arrogant, insolent, cruel, changed. She became polite. She was obsequious. Of the two, the first manner became her vastly better. She looked at me with a curious air, almost with reverence, as it seemed to me. She said, in a purring voice: "Ach, so! I did not understand. The gentleman must excuse me." And she purred again: "So!" It was then I noticed that her eyes were fastened upon my chest. I followed their direction. They rested on the silver badge I had stuck in my braces. I understood and held my peace. Silence was my only trump until I knew how the land lay. If I left this woman alone, she would tell me all I wanted to know. In fact, she began to speak again. "I expected _you_," she said, "but not... _this_. Who is it this time? A Frenchman, eh?" I shook my head. "An Englishman," I said curtly. Her eyes opened in wonder. "Ach, nein!" she cried--and you would have said her voice vibrated with pleasure--"An Englishman! Ei, ei!" If ever a human being licked its chops, that woman did. She wagged her head and repeated to herself: "Ei, ei!" adding, as if to explain her surprise, "he is the first we have had.