Its driver, like the majority of the drivers, was not standing by his cab. However, Marie’s pursuers hadn’t overlooked the possibility that she might jump into one of the cabs and drive off, and they wanted to forestall her manoeuvre. What they evidently didn’t know was which car she had got into. So they began to search the nearest cars by opening the doors and looking inside. They could no longer summon the strength to shout and draw attention, for they were completely out of breath.
They simply opened and closed the cab doors, with the result that one of the drivers approached them and asked them where they wanted to go. Needless to say, they didn’t reply.
In the meantime Marie tried to make herself inconspicuous in the back of the cab she had jumped into. She couldn’t ask the driver to take her anywhere for the simple reason that there was no driver about. However, presently the driver appeared with a group of people who were prepared to get into the taxi and gave him an address.
Five people were about to get in and soon noticed there was already someone crouching in the back. Normally one would, of course, have assumed that the taxi had already been taken, but Marie remained silent for so long, cowering in a corner, that it was not until someone had sat on her lap — the driver had switched on the light in the back only a couple of seconds after he had got into his seat — that it suddenly dawned on those getting into the taxi that something was not in order, and they immediately asked what the person was doing in the back. There was therefore nothing left for Marie but to jump out of the taxi onto the road, skirt round the vehicle and dash through the gates of the entertainment complex.
Her pursuers, who were by now quite close as they went through the cars, saw what she’d done and ran after her.
It must have been a private function, or rather the tail end of one — this was no longer the season for public ones. In the cloakroom, as Marie dashed through, people were already in the process of collecting their overcoats. Tickets at the entrance to the reception rooms were no longer being checked with the result that she was able to enter unchallenged. Here there was still a fairly large crowd of people among whom she could disappear. She tore off her coat and dived into the crowd. There were hundreds of women there, all looking much like one another and, indeed, no better dressed than she was.
Having burst into the hotel, it was while Haintl and the detective began accosting all the womenfolk in search of Marie, which naturally created the impression that both of them were drunk, and the staff were about to apprehend and eject them, that Marie managed to dash across the floor of the next reception room and reach the passageway between the private rooms and the coffee house, for she was familiar with the general layout, having already been there two or three times previously with Sponer. She hurried through the coffee house, back into the street and, half-running, half-walking, and set off in the direction of her house. She unlocked the front door, rushed up the stairs and entered her flat, completely exhausted.
However, Sponer was no longer there.
He had waited in the living room, nervously smoking and staring vacantly before him, and at first had thought for a few moments about Marie, but then his thoughts drifted to Mortimer and Mortimer’s murderer, and to the underworld from which they had both emerged and to which they had both returned — one living, the other dead.
Since the beginning of the world there was the upper world and the nether world — the underworld. Not just one, but two worlds — that then was the world. Since the beginning of mankind there were the obermenschen and the untermenschen, not just one mankind as such, but two — that then was mankind. As a consequence there were the high and the low, the noble and the ignoble, the saints and the sinners, the gods and the demons — that was mankind. But also, since the beginning of mankind it was not a question of noble or ignoble, upper or lower, evil or good; but rather noble, ignoble, upper, lower, evil and good, all rolled into one — that then was man.
Since time immemorial there were gods and demons, virtue and vice, saints and sinners, angels and beasts, lords and knaves. Oft were the lords the knaves, and the knaves the lords. Never were the lords and the knaves one and the same. But each had a touch of the lord and a touch of the knave in him, a touch of the reigning and a touch of the slaving, the conscientious and the ruthless, the animal and the spiritual, the loving and the hating, the shining and the darkening in him.
The underworld had again and again broken through the Earth’s ridiculously thin crust, and since time immemorial the demon would rear up in men’s hearts.
One believed it was possible to drive crime under the asphalt and the concrete of cities, under multi-storey buildings, roadways and churches. It could be confined, so it was thought, in canals, under bridges, in abandoned cellars… But that was not true at all. It rose, it penetrated into houses, stations, offices. It penetrated into Mortimer’s bank, settled at his writing desk; it travelled with him to Europe, followed him invisibly, like Satan followed Judas Iscariot, and dragged him down again into the underworld, without a sound, without a trace, without leaving a single clue. He had sat there dead, as dead as a doornail, in the taxi, with three bullet holes in him — that was all. No sound, no shadow, no sign of the murderer; the dead man had just sat there as though not dead at all, his eyes fixed in a sidelong indifferent stare, and it was only when Sponer shook him that he slumped forward and lay between the suitcase and the seat, and Sponer then realized that the man was in cahoots with the Devil, and that Mortimer was now trying to drag him, too, down into hell. How was he allowed to do so, who gave him the right, why had the guilty one gone free, why hadn’t Mortimer clung to the real murderer?…
Sponer looked up with a start. Fiala had entered from the adjoining room.
“Marie isn’t back yet?” he asked.
“No,” said Sponer, and he looked at him blankly.
“It’s already a quarter past three,” Fiala said.
“A quarter past three?”
“Where on earth have you sent her?”
“Who? Marie?”
“Yes. She’s been gone more than half an hour.”
It wouldn’t have taken her more than a few minutes to reach Sponer’s place, then another ten minutes at most to collect his things — for she knew, of course, where they were — and then another couple of minutes to return home. He had told her to come back, that it was urgent; she herself must, of course, have realized that. Why then wasn’t she back yet? Perhaps, he thought, perhaps…
“Well?” Fiala asked.
“What?” Sponer shouted nervously.
“Where is Marie?”
“I don’t know!” Sponer replied. “I’m waiting for her myself!”
Something must have happened, otherwise she’d have returned by now. Obviously the Montemayors had already called the police, and it was lucky for him that he hadn’t gone to his flat. If, however, they’d arrested Marie, he’d never be able to get his things, above all the money. How then would he escape? And besides, they’d ask Marie where he was, and although, of course, he had asked her not to say anything and she’d keep her mouth shut, nevertheless they would in any case come and search her flat, for it was likely that…
He jumped to his feet. “What’s the exact time?” he asked Fiala.
“Almost half past,” Fiala said. “Tell me, where’s Marie?”
“I’ll go and meet her,” Sponer said. “She must almost be here by now. I’ll ask her to come straight up.”