One evening—ah, how well do I remember that radiant summer sunset beneath which the lagoon lay like a fluid sheet of copper!—he met me on the Lido. He was morose and gloomy. He took from his pocket a black crumpled package. It was Elise's old satchel—the “white elephant,” tattered, empty, dead.
With a vehement movement he flung it into the water. Where it fell the sheet of copper shivered into a thousand splinters of red gold.
“Empty?” I asked in a low tone.
“Empty,” he replied.
“And now, what will you do?”
He shrugged his shoulders. It was then that the idea came to him—the execrable, the nefarious idea.
“Listen. As he”—with a movement of his head he indicated the absent Kamarowsky—“is doomed—I suppose he is doomed, isn't he?” he interposed.
I assented in a barely audible whisper: “Yes.”
“Well, his—his disappearance may as well be of some use. Do you not think so?”
Seeing the look of horror which I turned upon him, he continued: “For goodness' sake don't let us behave like romantic fools. We are not a pair of poetic assassins in a play, are we?”