The truth was that the Russian had attracted the attention of the police to such an extent by his striking flight, that without a moment’s hesitation they had bolted helter-skelter after him. They contented themselves with a parting shout or two at Kreisler. Duelling was a very venial offence; capture in these cases was not a matter of the least moment. But they were so impressed by the Russian’s businesslike way of disappearing that they imagined this must have been a curiously immoral sort of duel. That he was the principal they did not doubt for a moment. So they went after him in full cry, rousing two or three villagers in their passage, who followed at their heels, pouring with frantic hullabaloo in the direction of Paris. Bitzenko, however, with great resourcefulness, easily outwitted them. He crossed the Seine near St. Cloud, and got back to Paris in time to read the afternoon newspaper account of the duel and flight with infantile solemnity and calm. CHAPTER VI Five days after this, in the morning, Otto Kreisler mounted the steps of the police-station of a small town near the German frontier. He was going to give himself up. Bitzenko had pictured his principal, in the event of his succeeding against Soltyk, seeking rapidly by train the German frontier, disguised in some extraordinary manner. Had the case been suggested to him of a man in this position without sufficient money in his pocket to buy a ticket, he would then have imagined a melodramatic figure hurrying through France, dodging and dogged by the police, defying a thousand perils. Whether Kreisler were still under the spell of the Russian or not, this was the course, more or less, he took. He could be trusted not to go near Paris. That city dominated all his maledictions. The police disturbing the last act of his sanguinary farce was a similar contretemps to Soltyk’s fingers in his throat. At the last moment everything had begun to go wrong. He had not prepared for it, because, as though from cunning, the world had shown no tendency up till then to interfere. Soltyk had died when his back was turned, so to speak. He got the contrary of comfort out of the thought that he could claim to have done the deed. The police had rushed in and broken things off short, swept everything away, ended the banquet in a brutal raid. A deep sore, a shocked and dislocated feeling remained in Kreisler’s mind. He had been hurried so much! He had never needed leisure, breathing space, so much. The disaster of Soltyk’s death was raw on him! Had he been given time—only a little time—he might have put that to rights. (This sinister regret could only imply a possible mutilation of the corpse.) A dead man has no feeling. He can be treated as an object and hustled away. But a living man needs time!—time! Does not a _living man_ need so much _time_ to develop his movements, to lord it with his thoughtful body, to unroll his will? _Time_ is what he needs!