Marie Tarnowska

How did we three hapless, terrified creatures manage to escape from the hotel that night?

Tioka, wakened out of his sleep at three o'clock, kept on whimpering.

“Where are we going? I am afraid. I want Papa Paul! Call Papa Paul.”

As we descended the dark staircase a night porter, dozing in the hall, started up and came towards us, blinking and yawning. When he caught sight of Elise, laden with shawls and medicine bottles—which constituted all our luggage—he seemed greatly astonished.

For a moment no one spoke. Then: “I am feeling ill,” I said. “We are going to the doctor. Please call a carriage for me.”

“But excuse me, madame,” stammered the man. “Had I not better telephone to the doctor to come to the hotel?” His eyes wandered suspiciously from me to the lachrymose Tioka, and from Tioka to Elise and her burdens.

“Open the door,” said Elise authoritatively, “and call a carriage, at once.”

The man shook his head.

Then I saw Elise gather all the shawls into a heap on her left arm, as with her right hand she searched for something under her cloak. She drew out a crumpled piece of paper, and with a gesture of solemn deliberation she proffered it to the man. It was a banknote of a hundred rubles.

The man took the note, stared at it, and turned it round and round in his fingers. Then he raised his eyes and gazed in stupefaction at Elise.

“Open that door and call a carriage,” commanded Elise, in a thin voice.

The man obeyed. As the large door swung back we could see that it was nearly dawn; the sound of distant church bells came to us across the clear, keen air. Elise raised her hand to her forehead and made the sign of the cross.... She had plundered the white elephant!

Oh, Elise Perrier, not least among my great pangs of remorse is the thought that I have dragged you down into my own dishonor. For me and through me, your honest hard-working hand and your innocent soul were stained with guilt.

While we stood waiting for the man to return, I thought I heard a door open and close overhead.

I started. “Could it be Prilukoff?” I gasped to Elise.

She shook her head.

“Elise, what have you done to him?”

“I put chloral into everything—into everything,” and Elise shuddered.

“Oh, Elise! What if he were to die?”

She made no answer.

“And if we were to be sent to prison?”

The bells were ringing joyfully in the limpid Easter dawn.

Elise closed her eyes, and her lips moved: “Dear God of Eastertide, give us Thy blessing.”

Tioka stopped crying to look at her. Then with an enchanting smile he did as she had done. He closed his blue eyes, which were still full of tears, and said: “Dear God of Eastertide, give us Thy blessing.”

The days swung forward.

Prilukoff was the first to discover us. We had been hidden in Vienna, in the little Hotel Victoria, less than a week, when one morning he stood before our terror-stricken eyes.

He was derisive and sarcastic; but finding us alone—without Kamarowsky, without Naumoff—the maleficent frenzy that possessed him at Orel seemed to have vanished. He was soon quite genial and good-humored; he was once more the Prilukoff we had known at Moscow, the trusty knight—Elise's Lohengrin!

He did not speak of the past; he made no allusion to the chloral. Neither did he ever recall his murderous purposes; and sometimes I thought that I had dreamt it all. Cheerful and light-hearted, he took us out for drives in carriages and motors, to the Prater, to the Brühl, to the Semmering; he insisted upon our going with him to theaters, concerts and cabarets.

And to pay for it all we had recourse to the black leather satchel. When any money was required, we found it there. No accounts were kept. Simply, and as a matter of course, we dipped into the lacerated body of the white elephant and took what we needed.

I let myself drift with the tide; I gave no thought either to the future or the past, but yielded myself passively to my fate like a straw afloat on the water....

One day I saw in the newspapers that Kamarowsky was putting in motion the police of every city in Europe in his efforts to find me. Then, on Prilukoff's advice, I sent Elise to Neuchâtel to telegraph to him from there in my name, in order to tranquilize him and mislead his inquiries.

No sooner was the name of Kamarowsky mentioned between us than Prilukoff became sullen and gloomy again. He sulked and glowered at me, and passed the whole day without speaking a word.

On this particular day we had taken a box at the Theater An der Wien, having promised Tioka that he should hear “The Merry Widow.” Long before it was time to go, the little fellow was dressed and ready, jumping up and down in front of the window.

“Let us make haste,” he cried. “The carriage will be tired of waiting. Let us make haste!”

Suddenly he uttered a shriek of joy. “Mother, mother, look! There is Papa Paul! I can see him—he has just passed. Papa Paul!” he shouted with all his might.

Prilukoff caught him by his little jacket and drew him roughly from the window. Then he himself looked out.

“Sure enough,” he said, shutting the window and looking at me with that terrible crooked smile I had learned to dread. “It is Kamarowsky.”

There was a moment's silence. Then he said: “And now I have had enough of this. We will end it.” Murder gleamed in his eyes.

I clasped Tioka in my arms—the child was quite sad and hurt by Prilukoff's sudden rudeness—and as I kissed his soft curls I breathed Elise's prayer: “Dear God of Eastertide, give us Thy blessing.”

But alas! it was Easter no longer.

In spite of what had happened, we went to the theater that night. And there, while the music swayed us in the undulating rhythm of the waltz, and little Tioka gazed enraptured at the stage, Prilukoff, sitting behind me in the shadow, formulated his plans for the crime.

“You have sworn it on your child, remember. If you break your oath, he will be the sufferer.”

Tioka turned to us with shrill laughter. “Oh, look, mama, how beautiful it all is! Look at that fat policeman dancing.”

“When Kamarowsky finds you here—” Prilukoff went on; but I interrupted him.

“No, no. Let us leave Vienna at once.”

“It is useless. He will find us all the same. You are too striking,” he added, “to pass unobserved.” And with a cynical laugh he surveyed me from head to foot. “He had better not find me with you. I shall remain at the Hotel Victoria; but you and Tioka must go to the Bristol, and when that man joins you, this is what you must do—”

His iniquitous suggestions floated on the buoyant waltz music like carrion on the surface of a sparkling stream.

I shuddered in horror. “No, no,” I murmured. “Have pity! No … no!”

Oh! that music of Lehar's, that every one knows and every one whistles, and that is played by every organ at every street-corner—what monstrous secrets does it murmur to my heart!

Ich gehe zu Maxim,