Pathway to Japanese Literature

1

He was a tall, gentle-mannered, and refined man.
His hair was black, his cheekbones high, forming a fierce face that at first glance suggested mixed Tatar blood.

It was the beginning of spring in 1912.

About four miles from Budapest, the capital of Hungary, lay the scenic summer resort of Czinkota.
An ideal spot for weekend excursions, Czinkota stood at the heart of numerous scenic attractions—Visegrád, Nagyoros, Budafok—places whose ominous-sounding names belied their beauty. Sundays brought throngs drawn to this central hub.
To this town of Czinkota came an unfamiliar man from the capital Budapest, accompanied by his young and beautiful wife.

His name was Bela Kiss, and he was around forty years old.
His wife was about fifteen years younger.
After searching through residential areas in Czinkota, they finally rented a rather large house facing Matyasfold Street.
In front was a spacious garden, a house that seemed somewhat set apart from its surroundings.
The address was Matyasfold Street 129—a gray brick building with a pointed roof that incorporated the style of an old castle.
There, the couple lived happily and uneventfully for about seven months, at least on the surface.
Bela Kiss would go into Budapest once or twice a week.
He never stayed overnight.
He was the owner of a fairly extensive metalworking factory and, according to neighborhood rumor, had retired from actual business dealings.

He kept to himself, not interacting closely with anyone.
Kiss was a man with an unsettling air about him; according to rumors, he would constantly engage his wife in debates about spiritualism and similar subjects.
He also seemed to have an interest in astronomy, and his study was filled with books on the subject.
Perhaps due to his influence, his wife, Mrs. Norma Kiss, had also become a woman with a penchant for all things mystical.
A Gypsy fortune-teller or someone of that sort would often gaze into a glass orb and claim to read people’s destinies within it.
This was called crystal gazing and considered a sacred practice among certain Western devotees, but Norma too treasured a fist-sized glass orb, gazing into it intently as she conducted solitary fortune-telling.
The couple got along well and always went out together in their rattling private automobile.
Even when her husband Bela Kiss went out alone to Budapest, he drove himself there in that automobile.

This master of a Hungarian metalworking shop, Bela Kiss, remains to this day regarded as Europe's foremost grotesque entity.
It was an event without precedent in history, and though relatively recent, it remains surprisingly unknown.
At the time of the incident, it was because the police had exerted all their efforts to cover it up.

Mrs. Norma Kiss was a great beauty.
Could that be why her husband Kiss burned with jealousy, strictly forbidding his wife from forming close friendships with men?
In southern Hungary along the Danube's banks lay Zimony, a region long famed as a breeding ground for beauties.
Norma had been born in this Zimony—a beauty herself, yet undeniably prone to flirtation.
In Budapest there existed her lover: a painter named Paul Bihari.
Such became the town's gossip.
Whenever Kiss was away, this Paul Bihari would journey from Budapest—to an area rich with acacia woods—where the pair would stroll through those very groves playing at romance.
They'd affect picnics deep in the forest, sitting on grassy clearings while losing themselves in conversation.
Bihari was a youth of striking handsomeness with sharply defined features, a painter of some renown in Budapest.
That same city housed an influential association called the Otton Club, uniting writers, painters and journalists from across Hungary.
Its grand hall hosted nightly gatherings where bohemians congregated to exchange idle talk.
Paul Bihari held membership in this Otton Association.

The only one unaware was the husband, and this situation persisted for over half a year.
Paul Bihari made frequent visits to the Czinkota residence, escorting Norma to tour what passed for local landmarks and historic sites throughout the area.

One evening, after about seven months had passed, when Bela Kiss returned from Budapest, he found the house locked and could not enter. He paced restlessly around the garden until nearly midnight waiting, but when Norma still showed no sign of returning no matter how late it grew, he smashed a window and entered the house. On the dining table lay a scrap of paper. I beg you to give up on me and not think ill of me, for I am running away with my lover—it was Norma's farewell note. Bela Kiss, nearly driven mad with rage, burned the letter and then rushed out to the house of a banker named Litman who lived nearby. Litman was one of Kiss's few acquaintances. He woke him from sleep and spent the entire night pouring out his shock. Litman found this whole affair rather troublesome, but he went to great lengths to console and appease him until morning.

By morning, this news had spread throughout Czinkota—among gossip-loving Hungarian farmers, no—it became a tremendous uproar.
Among them were those who claimed to have foreseen this outcome all along, nodding sagely and repeatedly as they proudly flaunted their foresight.

It was from this day that Bela Kiss's personality took an abrupt turn toward even deeper misanthropy.

World War I.
Hungary allied with Germany to oppose the Allied forces.
Even in the mountain countries of Central Europe, where peace had nestled like a dove’s breast, winds of steel and blood now raged.
Amid the nationwide upheaval, all able-bodied youths took up arms and gathered at the front lines.
Bela Kiss was also one of those conscripted, and thus had to leave the dreamlike town of Czinkota behind as he departed for the front.
But just before departing, he did something strange.
Simultaneous with his conscription being finalized, Kiss placed an order with the town blacksmith to have numerous iron bars made.
He meticulously attached these to the inside of every window.
He said it was a precaution to ensure burglars wouldn’t break in while he was away.
Since being abandoned by his wife Norma, Kiss had been leading a quiet—or rather, lonely and mundane—existence.
His life should have been empty; there didn’t seem to be anything worth stealing that would cause trouble.
Observing this robust fortification of the vacant house, the neighbors felt something amiss, but within about a week these strange preparations were completed, and the people of Czinkota saw off Bela Kiss—clad in heavy martial attire, joining the marching column as their town’s valiant warrior.

A year and a half passed, and World War I raged at its peak.

The regiment to which Bela Kiss belonged had been deployed to Serbia.
After the battle at Semendria along the Danube coast, a letter dispatched by Kiss from that encampment reached Litman remaining in Czinkota.
Litman was an elderly man approaching sixty who had been exempted from military conscription.
He promptly sent a reply addressed to Bela Kiss at Semendria, but four months later this letter returned from the regiment bearing a "recipient deceased" endorsement.
It was reported that Kiss had succumbed to abdominal wounds at a Belgrade field hospital.
Simultaneously an official notification arrived at Czinkota's town hall announcing this fact.
Bela Kiss had fallen in combat.
The townspeople collectively mourned - this Bela Kiss who endured such pitiable solitude after his wife's betrayal was now said to have sacrificed himself for his homeland.
Bela Kiss's name became engraved upon Czinkota's monument honoring its war dead.

Around that same time, a young woman's corpse was discovered by chance in an acacia forest along the road from Czinkota to Budapest.
Buried in a shallow pit about six sun deep, it had decomposed to near-unrecognizable bones.
A wedding ring remained on a finger bone, its inner surface engraved with initials.
Through this clue, the corpse was identified as a woman—the wife of a substantial Viennese fur trader—who had disappeared after eloping the year before the war with an unidentified middle-aged man, taking some two thousand pounds in cash and all her jewels.
A single letter from Budapest had reached her friend in Vienna; both her husband's family and her own had been conducting quiet searches.
But when authorities investigated thoroughly through identity inquiries, they found her fur trader husband had perished in combat within a week of war's outbreak.
With wartime demands overwhelming police resources, they closed the case.
Three months later however, another young woman's remains were excavated nearby.
Consulting missing persons registries again brought swift identification.
Isabelle Koblitz—that was her name—the niece of Hungary's Minister of Commerce.
Records showed she'd vanished from Vienna in July 1913 while deeply immersed in spiritualist practices.

The Budapest police began their investigation with some earnestness.
Then came a similar report from Belt City concerning a wealthy Swiss woman named Riniker who had arrived in Budapest from Lausanne and maintained ties to a sister in Geneva.
It was reported she had simply sent a letter to this Geneva-based sister before vanishing in Budapest during October 1913 and remaining missing.
A detailed physical description circulated through official channels noted a small red birthmark on her cheek and a slight deformity in her left leg that caused a mild limp.
Using these identifiers as reference points against all previously discovered unidentified corpses, authorities required only three days to conclusively match them to remains retrieved six months earlier from an abandoned well near Solymar—a village situated approximately twenty miles from Budapest.
Solymar had long been renowned as the annual host of the "Rose Queen Festival."

The police had become revitalized, yet even so, they did not link these women's gruesome corpses to the numerous other reported cases of missing women.
They traced investigative threads as separate cases.

2

Kiss, who had been made to taste bitter disappointment after being abandoned by his wife Norma—though he had always had such inclinations—became a complete eccentric, shutting himself in his home and never stepping outside.
As a husband crushed by despair, he lived like a dead man.
No longer did he go out to Budapest, nor did he keep even a single servant; he took care of his own needs, cooking his meals with fussy precision while living like a hermit.
He had developed a fierce aversion to women and immersed himself in psychometry, spiritualism, and similar pursuits.
The people of Czinkota had all known from the beginning that he was an eccentric person, but at night only the light in his bedroom window would appear, and the house remained tightly shut for months on end.
Kiss himself never showed his face.
Rumors spread that he seemed to be ill, and the neighbors grew concerned.
When they knocked on the door in unison, a pale and frail Bela Kiss emerged with something draped over his nightclothes.
He explained that he had been sick in bed.
“Since I can’t manage alone, I’ll have someone come to take care of me.”
“We must call a doctor too—” When the neighbors said this,

“Whether I live or die, it’s all the same.”
“Even now, I’m already half-dead, you know.”
“With her gone, what reason do I have to keep living? There’s no purpose anymore.”

Saying spineless things, the forty-year-old man had become as sentimental as a schoolgirl.
The crowd comforted him and, despite his protests that it wasn’t necessary, forcibly summoned a physician.
They decided to have an elderly woman named Kalman—who did day labor—nurse him.

Kiss’s display of grief at that time bordered on madness.
In one room he had arranged the kimonos, shoes, and other belongings left behind by his absconded wife Norma—a space even Granny Kalman was strictly forbidden to enter.
Granny Kalman nursed him kindly for about three weeks while feeling unsettled.
As the illness gradually improved, Kalman took her leave, and Kiss resumed his solitary existence.

He began making occasional trips to Budapest. He would leave his house in Czinkota by automobile in the afternoon, returning either late at night or early in the morning. Since Granny Kalman had stayed at this mysterious residence that had become the focus of interest, gossip-loving people naturally gathered—their longstanding curiosity now mingled with sympathy for Kiss, who had been struck by sorrow—and attempted to pry out various details. Granny Kalman, feeling as though she had suddenly become a star performer, was immensely pleased with herself. She chattered away enthusiastically. Before long, she said something like this.

“You folks might not know a thing, but I’ve seen every nook and cranny of that house. Up on the second floor, there’s a room where his runaway wife’s kimonos and such are carefully displayed—they told me never to enter that room no matter what, but being told that just made me want to peek even more! While the master was sleeping, I sneaked in for a look. There’s nothing special in that room itself, but there’s another hidden chamber on the far side with its door locked tight. When I peeked through the keyhole, five big metal drums stood lined up against the back wall. What do you suppose could be inside them—?”

“Granny, were the drums really that big—”

“Ah, big enough to need both arms to hug—what could be inside them, I wonder—”

“What could really be inside them—”

In the nearby mountains, there were not a few people engaged in illicit brewing.
He must be obtaining it from such places and drowning his despair in drink—so they all said to one another.
Perhaps he was keeping his house shut like that to secretly brew wine himself and discreetly supply it to cafés in Budapest.
This rumor reached Litman—the only one on familiar terms with Kiss—and one day Litman told Kiss about the five drums Granny Kalman had seen and the townspeople’s gossip surrounding them.

Kiss answered with a laugh.

“You do say amusing things.”
“Illicit brewing? I’m not the sort to walk such a dangerous path.”
Truly, he was meticulous to the point of neurosis.
“That is gasoline, you see.”
“Since it’s dangerous, I stored the volatile fuel for automobiles in five metal drums and kept them upstairs like that.”
“An oil merchant acquaintance in Budapest went bankrupt, you see. Since I needed it anyway and the price was quite reasonable, I took about five barrels—though to be honest, they’ve become something of a burden.”

This helped quell the town’s gossip, and soon people drifted into oblivion regarding the five large metal drums in Kiss’s house.

Once Litman conveyed news of the runaway, Kiss responded nonchalantly,

“I hear she’s living happily in Vienna.”
“That is what matters most.”
“I still love her, so I have no intention of interfering.”
“However, I was a fool.”
“That’s all.”

After that, he diverted the conversation elsewhere.

Yet the suspicious eyes of Czinkota’s people regarding Kiss’s actions grew ever more intense.
His frequent trips to Budapest during this period struck them as deeply suspicious.
They were a profoundly superstitious folk who retained vestiges of medieval thinking.
The women whispered among themselves that Bela Kiss practiced dark magic.
It was said he gathered astrology-believing women to draw mysterious natal charts for each.
These charts diagrammed one’s fate and lifespan through celestial alignments at birth.
As such rumors proliferated, Bela Kiss became increasingly regarded as an eerie eccentric.

On Litman’s advice, he hired a maid.
Her name was Helena Bitef.
After working for about two months without receiving wages, when she demanded payment, Kiss became enraged and attempted to kill the maid.

Helena said.

“He took out something he called a 'mirror of mystic arts' from the bookshelf drawer and placed it on the table.”
“Then he told me that if I stared fixedly at that mirror for one minute, the face of my future husband would emerge there.”
“Since anyone would naturally want to know what kind of man they’re destined to marry, I leaned over the mirror and stared at it endlessly.”
“Then, suddenly sensing some imminent danger approaching me, I turned around to look.”
“Mr. Kiss was standing behind me.”
“He was quietly trying to place a rope formed into a noose around my neck.”
“In a frenzy, I jumped up screaming and pushed him away with all my strength.”
“Mr. Kiss staggered back two or three steps but glared at me with terrifying eyes—then suddenly burst into mad laughter and said ‘You seem quite startled! It was just a joke—a joke!’ before throwing the rope onto the floor.”
“But that it was by no means a threat or prank was something I knew full well.”
“Mr. Kiss truly tried to kill me.”
“I desperately fled the house and managed to save my life, but I’ve never been through anything so horrifying.”

In addition to the previous Granny Kalman, there was another old woman living on Czinkota's outskirts who did laundry work; she came every Friday to clean Kiss's house.
Given the house's notoriety, this laundress too was driven by curiosity to peek through the attic's ventilation window.
In the disputed room stood five large metal drums in a row, purportedly containing volatile fuel.
This discovery might have passed unnoticed had Kiss not caught her spying—the washerwoman was promptly ejected.
Once more arose whispers that the drums held pilfered liquor rather than fuel, though these were but revivals of forgotten gossip. This occurred in May 1914; by August's outbreak of war, even tiny Czinkota found Bela Kiss trivial compared to global conflagrations.
Soon Kiss himself marched off to battle amid townsfolk's cheers.
All remained as he left it.
Yet before departing, he had—as noted earlier—barred windows with interior iron rods and fastened both front and rear doors with absurdly meticulous nailing.

Until May 1916—two years later—the house remained sealed shut.

Whenever he went to Budapest twice weekly, he always returned at two or three in the morning while Czinkota lay sound asleep.
To call it a private car flattered the truth—it was a rattletrap automobile.
Its ferocious engine roar as it tore down the main street often jolted townspeople awake.
Financially, Kiss appeared well-endowed.
Hearing persistent rumors, Czinkota police discreetly assigned detectives to follow him.
These investigators skillfully befriended Kiss through gradual conversations that revealed not just innocence but an exceedingly courteous and affable man.
They grew genuinely close.
They spent hours conversing at the town café.
They stayed up late playing karuta cards at Kiss’s house alongside Litman and two others.
Given such rapport, police abandoned all suspicion.
Thus life in Czinkota continued undisturbed for Bela Kiss—eccentricity his only distinguishing mark.

In January 1914, an unseasonably warm winter sun illuminated the acacia forest along the road from Czinkota to Budapest.
It was a desolate spot about half a mile from town.
Bela Kiss, resplendently dressed, walked intimately with a young woman clad in an exquisite fur coat.
Someone witnessed this, sparking gossip that he—having been abandoned by his wife—must have found a new lover.
But after that single occasion, there was no sign their association continued.
No one else ever saw the woman.
She must have simply come from Budapest for a day's stroll in the woods with Kiss—or so townsfolk conjectured. Yet as they traded rumors, about a month later Litman glimpsed Kiss walking arm-in-arm with an unknown woman through the woods along the road four miles from Czinkota toward Bakosfalva.
Unaware of being watched, Kiss spoke earnestly to her about something.
Nearby beneath the trees sat his usual mud-caked automobile, abandoned.

Speaking of Karoly Kerut, it was Budapest’s Ginza.
There, a twenty-two-year-old woman named Luisa Ruszt—daughter of a silk merchant—filed a report with the Josefvaros district police in the same city, saying something bizarre.

3

There was a vaudeville theater called Somosui Theater.
She stated they had met in front of it.
He was a middle-aged gentleman with a kindly appearance.
When he asked if she would care to go for a drive, she readily agreed.
The man drove them about aimlessly.
Near Margit Bridge stood his apartment, where he led her inside.
He proposed to read her fortune.
Though women generally enjoy fortune-telling, when Luisa playfully said "Go ahead," the man laughed—"Then first drink this"—and poured out a yellowish liquid.
The acrid smell overwhelmed her senses, but she drank it down.
Following his instructions, she settled at the table for crystal gazing.
Clutching the glass orb he gave her in both hands, she peered into its depths.
"Your future husband's face appears here."
The man spoke with mock solemnity.
As she strained to focus on the orb, a strange dizziness overtook Luisa.
Perhaps that yellow drink was to blame.
Raising her eyes slightly to the nearby mirror, she saw a transformed visage looming behind her.
In his hands lay a green silk cord.
One end formed a sliding noose.
Gently, he began lowering it toward her neck.
When consciousness returned, Luisa found herself beneath a tree in Erzsébet Park—her jewelry and gold vanished without trace.

Since she had provided detailed descriptions of the man’s features and the apartment, the police conducted a search; yet when they actually inspected the premises, not only was the man nowhere to be found—the very apartment she claimed to have been taken to remained utterly unidentifiable.
They dismissed it as the romantic-natured woman having read too many novels and likely spouting fanciful tales.

However, three weeks later, another woman came to the police in Budapest's Belvaros district with an identical story.
She was the wife of a man of some standing residing on Franz Joseph Quay facing the Danube, having casually become acquainted with him at Telecsfalus Church on a Sunday.
He had introduced himself as Franz Hoffmann, a mild-mannered middle-aged gentleman.
He was a traveling jewelry salesman who said he had an interest in spiritualism.
After two or three rendezvous, the woman visited Hoffmann at his apartment, and the same thing as before occurred.
The police also made a commotion and searched for the apartment, but due to the woman's uncertain memory, it was again not discovered.
When the same incident was reported for the third time and police across Budapest began acting in earnest, it was the Great War.
Everything was abandoned.

May 1916.
Bela Kiss had long since died of a gunshot wound to the abdomen at the Belgrade Field Hospital.

As petroleum grew scarce in Hungary, the army issued an emergency requisition order for oil.
It was wartime.
It was for military use.

Compliance was mandatory.
Nationwide, all those who possessed petroleum—factories and garages of course, but even private individuals with the smallest quantity—were required to bring it to designated locations for government purchase.
Initially conducted in cities, this proved insufficient, and three months later extended to every corner of the countryside.
Oil requisition officers rushed to every corner of the land, not overlooking even the smallest amounts of oil.
The requisition team arrived in the town of Czinkota as well.

There were those who remembered—Litman, Kalman, and others who had been relatively close to Kiss. In the attic of that house had stood five large metal drums lined up. When the townspeople had been in an uproar, suspecting moonshine, Kiss had claimed they contained gasoline. The owner had been killed in action after all, and that much gasoline would prove a substantial asset under these circumstances.

When this information reached the requisition officers, they immediately headed to the house on Mateasvolt Street, broke the window bars, and forced their way in.

Sure enough, seven large metal drums stood placed in an upstairs room.
When Kalman had seen them and they became the town's talking point, there had been five drums; it appeared Kiss had added two more before his conscription.
There were seven now.
The requisition officers were thoroughly delighted to find two more barrels than reported.
Having been sealed for two years, the house brimmed with spiderwebs, the barrels coated in dust, the stagnant air thick with dampness—a dreadful spectacle.
This couldn't be gasoline.
They supposed it must be smuggled brandy stored there.
Fetching a cup from the kitchen, they drilled a hole in a drum's side to catch some liquid, cautiously tasting it.
It wasn't brandy.
Nor gasoline—it was alcohol.
Heavy they were; moving each required two men working in tandem.

When they opened the lid, women's clothes were packed inside. Beneath them lay the naked corpse of a woman. Preserved in alcohol, the bodies showed little decay, their faces remaining clearly identifiable. Red marks encircled their necks, evidence of strangulation. The ligature had undoubtedly been tightened by sliding the knot. Their hands were bound hand to hand, feet to feet, then folded double like chickens and crammed inside. Following an urgent police alert, the remaining six barrels were opened one by one. Each contained a naked woman curled in fetal position. A house search revealed numerous payment receipts for personal column advertisements placed in Vienna and Budapest newspapers within Kiss's study desk drawer—the man had preserved everything with strange fastidiousness, evidently planning to return. Using these receipts as leads, investigators found this advertisement running for ten consecutive days in one newspaper—

A forty-year-old lonely bachelor.
A self-employed merchant with an annual income of approximately three thousand pounds.

Wishes to correspond with elegant women who have an intention to marry.
Please direct inquiries to the address below.

De Koller, Poste Restante, Granatos, Budapest.

It was the Budapest Post Office’s poste restante.

In Vienna’s newspapers, the following had appeared.

First know thyself—those who would determine their future path through divination should visit Budapest’s renowned astrologer Professor Hoffmann.

This one’s address was set to the Vienna post office’s poste restante.
All the advertisements were either for matchmaking or fortune-telling.
An immediate investigation revealed fifty-three unopened replies from "elegant women" addressed to "the lonely bachelor De Koller" accumulating at the Budapest post office's poste restante, while twenty-three letters from women seeking fortune-telling had been deposited for "Professor Hoffmann" at the Vienna office and left untouched.
Kiss's method was to lure women through matchmaking and fortune-telling advertisements and entice them to his apartment in Budapest or his house in Czinkota.
He must have systematically strangled them one after another, stealing their gold, jewels, clothing, and other valuables.
He must have preserved them in alcohol with the intention of burying them elsewhere when the opportunity arose.
When they dug up the garden, ten female corpses emerged, and it became clear that Kiss was indeed a professional killer.
They summoned Serbian and Russian prisoners of war to Czinkota and conducted a large-scale search centered around the nearby acacia forest.
In total, twenty-six corpses were discovered.
They were all young women.
One hundred sixty pawn tickets emerged from beneath the dining room carpet—these were all items pawned from the victims' belongings and clothing.
Through this avenue, the identities of fourteen women were established.
They were mostly wives and daughters from middle-class or better households.
One of the corpses excavated from the garden was that of Mrs. Norma Kiss, who was supposed to have eloped with the painter Paul Bihari—a revelation that doubled the townspeople’s shock.
They searched for Bihari’s whereabouts and discovered he had fled to America to escape conscription when the war broke out, but ultimately failed to locate him.
The first drum contained Emilia Riis—a young woman from the Czinkota Hotel who had disappeared in November 1913; the second was unidentified; the third held a Viennese woman; and the rest were daughters from respectable Budapest families.

And the criminal Bela Kiss?
To answer that—as previously stated—he had met an honorable death in combat in Serbia.
There was no way to investigate any further.
With wartime turmoil unsettling public sentiment, the police eagerly rushed their investigation and wrapped it up hastily.
Yet as a procedural formality, Inspector Resch of the Budapest Police—Resch—was dispatched to the Belgrade field hospital to verify the circumstances of Kiss’s death.
Kiss was indeed dead.
The records stated he had succumbed to typhus alongside an abdominal wound.
The death certificates, military notebook, and all other documents—bearing the name Bela Kiss and Czinkota residence—stood perfectly in order to satisfy Mr. Resch.

On his way back, having met a nurse who claimed to have witnessed Kiss's final moments, he casually asked, "Did he leave any last words?"

“I’m still reeling from what I’ve just been told,” she said. “Goodness, how could such a gentle boy have committed such a dreadful crime? I can’t believe it.”

“A boy?” he countered sharply. “Who’s a boy? Bela Kiss was forty-two or forty-three years old.”

“Oh! That’s not the case at all,” she insisted. “The Mr. Bela Kiss who died here was a petite and beautiful person of nineteen or twenty years old.”

It was an entirely different person. When they re-examined the documents, the one who had died in that bed was indeed listed as Bela Kiss of Czinkota. Without a doubt, the real Kiss had switched names and documents with a dying young man and deserted. It was later discovered that Mackaree was the real name of the young man who had become his substitute. Given the extreme chaos of the field hospital, such tricks must have been possible. Thus, Bela Kiss successfully slipped away.

Inspector Resch flew back to Budapest and frantically issued orders.
Photographs of Kiss and telegrams requesting his arrest were dispatched to police forces across Europe.
When it was said he had fled to London, Scotland Yard was thrown into uproar; when word came he was hiding in Paris, the Sûreté sprang into action—but all were false alarms, and Bela Kiss remains uncaptured to this day.
They hadn't given up.
Even now in Europe and America, detectives on the case scour every shadow for Kiss—this true undesirable foreigner—who may well be prowling Ginza in pursuit of modern girls.