Soltyk had made up his mind. He would never have armed himself and shot Kreisler in the street. That would have been too ridiculous. It would have had the touch of passion and intimacy of a crime passionel. It would only have been dignified for an inhabitant of Nevada.
He did not regard this as a duel, but a brawl, ordered by the rules of “affairs of honour.” If a drunken man or an apache attacked you the best thing to do would be to fight. If he offered to “fight you fair”—putting it in that way—then that would be the best thing, too, no doubt.
But Bitzenko really had brought him to this. Kreisler alone could never have hoped to compass anything approaching a duel with him.
Stephen Staretsky overwhelmed him with expostulation—even reproaches. His voice rose and fell in a microscopic stream of close-packed sound. His face became shiny and the veins appeared in it. He begged Soltyk to think of his friends! He gathered his arguments up in the tips of his fingers in little nervous bunches and held them under his friend’s nose, as though asking him to smell them. And then, with a spasm of the body, a vibrating twang on some deep chord in his throat, he dashed his gathered fingers towards the floor.
In face of this attack it was impossible, even had he wished to do so, for Soltyk to reconsider his decision. The others, too, sat for the most part watching him.
Bitzenko appeared again. Soltyk became pale at the sight of this sinister figure, so bourgeois, prepossessing, and bearded, with its legend of blindings and blood and uncanny tenacity as a second.
He turned to a good-looking, sleek, sallow companion at his elbow.
“Khudin, will you act for me, as Stephen won’t?”
Stephen Staretsky rose. A superfine sweat moistened his skin. His extraordinary volubility was tucked away somewhere in him in a flash, in a satisfied and polished acrobatic, and he faced the Russian. Khudin rose at the same time. Bitzenko had won.
Tarr was astonished at the rapid tragic trend of these farcical negotiations.