CHAPTER IV.
Dr.Tromfszky had just returned from a _visum repertum_ in a criminal case, and had concluded that he would go to bed so soon as he had finished his supper.

The rain fell in torrents on the roof, and rushed through the gutters with a roaring noise.
"Now just let any one send again for me this night!" he exclaimed, when his housekeeper came to remove the remnants of cheese from the supper-table.

"I would n't go--not if the primate himself got a fish-bone fast in his throat; no, not for a hundred ducats.

I swear it!" At that moment there came a knock at the street door, and a very peremptory one, too.
"There! did n't I know some one would take it into his head to let the devil fetch him to-night?
Go to the door, Zsuzsa, and tell them that I have a pain in my foot--that I have just applied a poultice, and can't walk." Frau Zsuzsa, with the kitchen lamp in her hand, waddled into the corridor.

After inquiring the second time through the door, "Who is it ?" and the one outside had answered: "It is I," she became convinced, from the musical feminine tone, that it was not the notorious robber, Satan Laczi, who was seeking admittance.
Then she opened the door a few inches, and said: "The Herr Doctor can't go out any more to-night; he has gone to bed, and is poulticing his foot." The door was open wide enough to admit a delicate feminine hand, which pressed into the housekeeper's palm a little heap of money.