It was still dark.
In the keen morning air a crowd came hurrying along the pavements,
flowing over into the roadways. The boulevards were black with people,
all marching briskly towards one common goal. And it was a
light-hearted, singing crowd, chanting the choruses of popular songs and
swarming into the open restaurants and wine-shops and drinking dens.
And it was noticeable that all these late birds belonged to one of two
sharply divided classes. They were either rich, or miserably poor; they
either came from the night clubs, or they were the poor devils with no
homes or hearths who roam about the city from one year's end to another.
There were crooks whose faces shone with the evil excitement of alcohol,
out-of-works of all kinds, beggars, and young men--all young men--with
sleek oiled hair and shiny boots, in whose eyes and demeanour theft and
crime could be seen.
By a curious coincidence the great news seemed to have reached all,
toffs and crooks alike, at exactly the same time. About midnight the
rumour had run round the town; it was certain, definite this time; the
official steps had been taken, and the guillotine was going to raise her
blood-stained arms towards the sky; at earliest dawn, Gurn, the man who
had murdered Lord Beltham, was to undergo the supreme punishment, and
expiate his murder with his life.
No sooner had the great news become known than all prepared, as for a
holiday, to go to see the man's head fall. At Montmartre carriages were
requisitioned and taxi-cabs were at a premium. Women in gorgeous
toilets and sparkling with jewels streamed from the open doors into the
carriages which should bear them swiftly towards the Santé prison, and
the place of execution. In the faubourgs likewise, the bars were emptied
of their customers, and men and women, linked arm-in-arm, set forth on
foot, with songs and ribaldries upon their lips, for the spectacle of
blood and the boulevard Arago.
Around the Santé prison an atmosphere of pleasure reigned as the people,
massed together in tight ranks, produced bottles of wine, and ate
sausages, and gaily enjoyed an improvised supper in the open air, while
speculating about the details of the sight they had come to see. And so
the crowd amused itself, for Gurn's head was going to fall.
Worming his way through the crowd, François Bonbonne, the landlord of
the Saint-Anthony's Pig, led a little company of friends who took
advantage of his great stature to find the best path to take.
The landlord was half-drunk already in honour of the occasion.
"Come along, Billy Tom," he shouted. "Catch hold of the tail of my coat
and then you won't lose us. Where is Hogshead Geoffroy?"
"He's coming along with Bouzille."
"Good! Just fancy if Bouzille had tried to get through here with his
train! There are some people about, eh?"
Two men passed the landlord of the market inn just then.
"Come along," said one of them, and as the other caught him up, Juve
added: "Didn't you recognise those fellows?"
"No," said Fandor.
Juve told him the names of the men whom they had passed.
"You will understand that I don't want them to recognise me," he said,
and as Fandor smiled Juve went on: "It's a queer thing, but it is always
the future customers of the guillotine, apaches and fellows like that,
who make a point of seeing this ghastly spectacle." The detective
stopped and laid a hand upon the journalist's shoulder. "Wait," he said,
"we are right in front now: only the men who are holding the line are
ahead of us. If we want to get through and avoid the crush we must make
ourselves known at once. Here is your pass."
Jérôme Fandor took the card which Juve held out to him, and had got for
him as a special favour.
"What do we do now?" he asked.
"Here come the municipal guards," Juve replied; "I can see their sabres
flashing. We will get behind the newspaper kiosks and let them drive the
crowd back, and then we will go through."
Juve had correctly anticipated the manoeuvre which the officer in
command of the squadron immediately proceeded to execute. Grave and
imposing, and marvellously mounted on magnificent horses, a large number
of municipal guards had just arrived on the boulevard Arago, by the side
of the Santé prison, and just where the detective and the journalist
were standing. A sharp order rang out, and the guards deployed fan-wise
and, riding knee to knee, drove the crowd back irresistibly to the end
of the avenue, utterly disregarding the angry murmur of protest, and the
general crushing that ensued.
The municipal guards were followed by troops of infantry, and these
again by gendarmes who, holding hands, moved on all who by some means or
other had managed to worm their way between the horses of the guards and
the infantry, determined at any cost to keep in the front row of
spectators.
Juve and Fandor, armed with their special passes which admitted them to
the enclosure where the guillotine actually stood, had no difficulty in
getting through the triple line. They found themselves in the centre of
a large portion of the boulevard Arago, entirely clear of spectators,
and bounded on one side by the walls of the prison, and on the other by
those of a convent.
In this clear space about a dozen individuals in black coats and silk
hats were walking about, affecting a complete indifference to what was
going to happen, although really they were profoundly affected by it.
"Chief detective-inspectors," Juve said, pointing them out: "my
colleagues. Some of yours too: do you see them? Chief reporters of the
big dailies. Are you aware that you are uncommonly lucky to have been
selected, at your extremely youthful age, to represent your paper at
this lugubrious function?"
Jérôme Fandor made an odd grimace.
"I don't mind admitting to you, Juve, that I am here because I am like
you in wanting to see Gurn's head fall; you have satisfied me beyond all
doubt that Gurn is Fantômas, and I want to be sure that Fantômas is
really dead. But if it were not the execution of that one particular
wretch,--the only thing that can make society safe,--I should certainly
have declined the honour of reporting this event."
"It upsets you?"
"Yes."
Juve bent his head.
"So it does me! Just think: for more than five years I have been
fighting Fantômas! For more than five years I have believed in his
existence, in spite of all ridicule and sarcasm! For more than five
years I have been working for this wretch's death, for death is the only
thing that can put a stop to his crimes!" Juve paused a moment, but
Fandor made no comment. "And I am rather sick and sorry, too: because,
although I have reached this certainty that Gurn is Fantômas, and have
succeeded in convincing intelligent people, who were ready to study my
work in good faith, I have nevertheless not succeeded in establishing
legal proof that Gurn is Fantômas. Deibler and the Public Prosecutor,
and people generally, think that it is merely Gurn who is going to be
decapitated now. I may have secured this man's condemnation, but none
the less he has beaten me and deprived me of the satisfaction of having
brought him, Fantômas, to the scaffold! I have only consigned Gurn to
the scaffold, and that is a defeat!"
The detective stopped. From the boulevard Arago, from the end to which
the crowd had been driven back, cheers and applause and joyous shouts
broke out; it was the mob welcoming the arrival of the guillotine.
Drawn by an old white horse, a heavy black van arrived at a fast trot,
escorted by four mounted police with drawn swords. The van stopped a few
yards from Juve and Fandor; the police rode off, and a shabby brougham
came into view, from which three men in black proceeded to get out.
"Monsieur de Paris and his assistants," Juve informed Fandor: "Deibler
and his men." Fandor shivered, and Juve went on with his explanations.
"That van contains the timbers and the knife. Deibler and his men will
get the guillotine up in half an hour, and in an hour at the outside,
Fantômas will be no more!"
While the detective was speaking, the executioner had stepped briskly to
the officer in charge of the proceedings and exchanged a few words with
him. He signified his approval of the arrangements made, saluted the
superintendent of police of that division, and turned to his men.
"Come along, lads; get to work!" He caught sight of Juve and shook hands
with him. "Good morning," he said, adding, as though his work were of
the most commonplace kind: "Excuse me: we are a bit late this morning!"
The assistants took from the van some long cases, wrapped in grey canvas
and apparently very heavy. They laid these on the ground with the utmost
care: they were the timbers and frame of the guillotine, and must not be
warped or strained, for the guillotine is a nicely accurate machine!
They swept the ground thoroughly, careful to remove any gravel which
might have affected the equilibrium of the framework, and then set up
the red uprights of the scaffold. The floor timbers fitted one into
another and were joined by stout metal clamps fastened together by a
bolt; next the men set the grooved slides, down which the knife must
fall, into holes cut for the purpose in the middle of the floor. The
guillotine now raised its awful arms to the sky.
Hitherto Deibler had merely watched his men at work. Now he took a hand
himself.
With a spirit-level he ascertained that the floor was absolutely
horizontal; next he arranged the two pieces of wood, from each of which
a segment is cut so as to form the lunette into which the victim's neck
is thrust; then he tested the lever, to make sure that it worked freely,
and gave a curt order.
"The knife!"
One of the assistants brought a case which Deibler opened, and Fandor
instinctively shrank as a flash from the bright steel fell full in his
eyes, that sinister triangular knife that presently would do the work of
death.
Deibler leant calmly against the guillotine, fitted the shank into the
grooves in the two uprights, and, setting the mechanism to work, hoisted
up the knife which glittered strangely; he looked the whole thing over
and turned again to his assistants.
"The hay!"
A truss was arranged in the lunette, and Deibler came up to the
instrument and pressed a spring. Like a flash the knife dropped down the
uprights and severed the truss in two.
The rehearsal was finished. Now for the real drama!
While the guillotine was being set up Juve had stood by Fandor nervously
chewing cigarettes.
"Everything is ready now," he said to the lad. "Deibler has only got to
put on his coat and take delivery of Fantômas."
The assistants had just arranged two baskets filled with bran along each
side of the machine; one was destined to receive the severed head, the
other the body when that was released from the plyer. The executioner
pulled on his coat, rubbed his hands mechanically, and then strode
towards a group of officials who had arrived while the guillotine was
being erected, and were now standing by the entrance to the prison.
"Gentlemen," said Deibler, "it will be sunrise in a quarter of an hour.
We can proceed to awaken the prisoner."
Slowly, in single file, the officials went inside the prison.
* * * * *
There were present the Attorney General, the Public Prosecutor, his
deputy, the Governor of the prison, and behind these, M. Havard,
Deibler, and his two assistants.
The little company passed through the corridors to the third floor,
where the condemned cells are.
The warder Nibet came forward with his bunch of keys in his hand.
Deibler looked at the Public Prosecutor.
"Are you ready, sir?" and as that gentleman, who was very white, made a
sign of assent, Deibler looked at the Governor of the prison.
"Unlock the cell," the Governor ordered.
Nibet turned the key noiselessly and pushed open the door.
The Public Prosecutor stepped forward. He had hoped to find the
condemned man asleep, and so have had a moment's respite before
announcing the fatal news. But he drew back; for the man was awake and
dressed, sitting ready on his bed with mad, haggard eyes.
"Gurn," said the Public Prosecutor. "Be brave! Your appeal has been
rejected!"
The others, standing behind him, were all silent, and the words of the
Public Prosecutor fell like a knell. The condemned man, however, had not
stirred, had not even seemed to understand: his attitude was that of a
man in a state of somnambulism. The Public Prosecutor was surprised by
this strange impassivity and spoke again, in strangled tones.
"Be brave! Be brave!"
A spasm crossed the face of the condemned man, and his lips moved as
though he were making an effort to say something.
"I'm not----" he murmured.
But Deibler laid his hands upon the man's shoulders and cut the horrid
moment short.
"Come now!"
The chaplain came forward in his turn.
"Pray, my brother," he said; "do you wish to hear mass?"
At the touch of the executioner the prisoner had trembled; he rose, like
an automaton, with dilated eyes and twitching face. He understood what
the chaplain said and took a step towards him.
"I--not----"