They were already half-way along the field when a car passed them on the other side of the hedge at full tilt.
The Russian was once more in his element. His face cleared. He looked ten years younger. In the occupants of the car he had recognized members of the police force!
Calling “Run!” to Kreisler he took to his heels, followed by his young fellow-second, whose neck shot in and out, and whose great bow-legs could almost be heard twanging as he ran. They reached a hedge, ran along the farther side of it. Bitzenko was bent double as though to escape a rain of bullets. Eventually he was seen careering across an open space quite near the river, which lay a couple of hundred yards beyond the lower end of the field. There he lay ambushed for a moment, behind a shrub. Then he darted forward again, and eventually disappeared along the high road in a cloud of dust. His athletic young friend made straight for the railway station, which he reached without incident and returned at once to Paris. Kreisler conformed to Bitzenko’s programme of flight. He scrambled through the hedge, crossed the road and escaped almost unnoticed.
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.