HOW CHÉRI-BIBI DIED
The Nut in the dormitory attempted by a supreme effort to shake off his
bonds. He could not believe in Chéri-Bibi's death. For that matter his
opinion was shared by the convicts in general: "Do you think that
Chéri-Bibi would allow himself to peg out like that?"
The commotion outside the building drew still nearer. The convicts paid
no farther heed to the Nut. They were absorbed in the drama which was
being played in the darkness of the night, endeavoring to understand or
imagine its successive phases.
The horror of the position inspired the Nut with renewed energy. The
longing to have done with it either by escape or by some violent measure
which would involve the end of all, increased tenfold his energy which
for a moment had been flagging. Yes, death even at the hands of
Pernambouc or "Monsieur Désiré" would be better than to continue to
live like this.
His persistent and vigorous efforts at length loosened his bonds.
Slowly, with infinite precaution, and without anyone being able to
notice the least movement, he succeeded in ridding himself of the rope.
He lay in wait for the moment when he could spring from his hammock and
slip into the cavity, at the other end of which he hoped to meet
Chéri-Bibi.
He quickly dropped on to his feet. But just then the report of more
firing burst upon them from the outside, accompanied by a great hubbub.
The Nut hesitated for a second, which was long enough to bring all the
"lifers" round him.
"The deputy warders are firing on Chéri-Bibi. He's nabbed. Look out!
They're calling up the guard. Before five minutes are over we shall have
them here blaming the whole lot of us," exclaimed one of them.
They put away the rope and carefully adjusted the flagstone, the seams
of which they cemented with moistened bread-crumbs coated with dust.
Outside, the galloping of patrols, shouts, curses, calls for help and
the blowing of whistles could still be heard. Finally the commotion
approached the building and the door of the dormitory was opened.
A dozen warders, armed to the teeth, crowded in among the convicts, and
the Lieutenant's voice could be heard ordering the "fall-in." The
convicts lined up beside their hammocks.
The Lieutenant saw for himself that five men were missing: Chéri-Bibi,
the Burglar, the Parisian, the Caid and the Joker, for these men failed
to respond when their numbers were called. The Nut answered when his
turn came: Number 3213.
The Lieutenant left the dormitory in a towering rage. He gave orders for
two men to remain on guard inside, and the others to be stationed round
the building.
"This time I'm really cornered," said the Nut to himself.
Worn out by his struggles and the anxiety through which he had passed,
and overcome by the ruin of his last hope, he dropped on to his
convict's kitbag; and meantime the two warders left on guard in the
dormitory endeavored to discover the means by which the five men had
managed to get away.
The convicts laughed in their sleeves at the fruitlessness of these
investigations. One of them said loud enough to be heard:
"They won't catch Chéri-Bibi in a hurry. He'll make short work of
anyone standing in his way, you bet."
"Well, I tell you that he's lost the number of his mess," roared one of
the warders told off to keep watch on them. "I know what I'm talking
about, I suppose? I've seen his corpse."
"Did you hear what that warder said?" whispered "Monsieur Désiré" to
the Nut. "He said it's true that Chéri-Bibi has been done in. He's seen
his corpse."
A shudder passed through the Nut. He had a great liking for Chéri-Bibi.
This affection of a young man like the Nut for a convict built on the
lines of Chéri-Bibi--a man who seemed the embodiment of crime in this
world--was extraordinary. And yet it was not entirely incomprehensible.
The monster had shown him a compassion for his misfortunes which he had
sought in vain from anyone else in jail or out of jail. Beneath his
frightful exterior Chéri-Bibi proved that he was possessed of feelings
of an unsuspected degree of refinement. He treated and protected the Nut
like a younger brother.
The Nut had often thought that there was something beyond mere defiance
of fate in the use of the word _Fatalitas_ that the convict so
frequently hurled at the heavens. Chéri-Bibi's life was a secret whose
depths no one had ever plumbed but himself. What did anyone know of him?
. . . An arm that was upraised and struck home. But between the two
gleams of the knife which left behind it two pools of blood all was
darkness; as mysterious as the abyss of his soul. . . . Why was his path
stained with blood?
He explained to the Nut in a few words, with what terrible irony fate
had compelled him to strike down the man whose life he was trying to
save. That was the beginning of it all.
The beginning of it all? The Nut sometimes felt an inclination to fathom
the mystery of that word _all._
"Don't look into it," Chéri-Bibi answered. "It would be hell let
loose."
And then he stood up and with a fierce cynicism said:
"You can't want me to account for all my murders. There are too many of
them." And he added with a boisterous laugh: "Take it from me that I am
past all forgiveness."
* * * * *
"Spot the Nut blubbing because he thinks Chéri-Bibi is dead," went on
"Monsieur Désiré" bent on making mischief.
The Nut wished only to remember Chéri-Bibi as the man who liked him and
often saved him from an act of desperation; as the man who by a
memorable action had saved himself from the guillotine. It seems that
after certain adventures of which one of the most sensational was the
capture of the vessel which was commissioned to take convicts to the
penal settlement in Guiana, he was rearrested in France, brought to
trial, and this time sentenced to death.
Chéri-Bibi told the Nut that he had not opened his lips during the
trial. His counsel defended him against his will; and when the dread
sentence was pronounced the prisoner thanked the jury for their service
to him as well as to society.
That very evening as a prison van was taking him back to the central
prison of the town in which he was tried, he heard a heart-rending
clamor, and as he was stepping out of the van, he saw that the hospital
which stood in the same square was on fire.
It was the work of a moment to free himself from his jailors and to leap
into the flames. That evening, single-handed, he saved the lives of
sixty.
"Fire!" he cried, "I'm used to fire."
He left the hospital only to return to it and to come out again with his
precious burdens. When the whole of the inmates had been rescued, he
gave himself up as a prisoner. His body was a mass of burns.
Throughout France there was but one opinion: He must be reprieved. Thus
the death penalty was commuted to penal servitude for life.
"_Fatalitas!_" said the prisoner when the news was broken to him. "So
there's still need for me to kill someone in the world!"
* * * * *
For a wonder the sight of the Nut's grief ended by softening the hearts
of those wild beasts.
"Don't take on, Nut. It's all rot. I tell you that Chéri-Bibi is right
enough. To begin with he can't kick the bucket. There are chaps like
that. The very sight of them makes death turn tail."
Twenty voices were ready to join with the one which had attempted to
hearten the unhappy Nut. The thought of a catastrophe of such magnitude
as the death of Chéri-Bibi did not enter the minds of a single one of
them. Only a warder--or a mischief-maker like "Monsieur Désiré," would
entertain such ridiculous nonsense. The man who could bring down
Chéri-Bibi was not yet born. Chéri-Bibi had always done what he had
set his mind to do.
When he longed to be off there was nothing more to be said. He knew how
to let himself out! The warders were well aware of that. They had seen
him subject to the most rigid discipline, never out of sight of a
convict guard whose sole duty was to keep watch on his movements, and
yet he had found means of getting the better of every obstacle. Moreover
he had declared beforehand that he was going away. At the appointed day
and hour, the thing was done.
Though he came back again and allowed himself to be recaptured, it was
undoubtedly because he could not do without the air of the Pré. As he
himself said: "A penal settlement is my hearth and home."
It was known that Chéri-Bibi invariably carried about with him his
"outfit;" that is to say, everything that was necessary to enable him to
escape when "it suited him." And no one knew how he managed to conceal
the things.
On one occasion he allowed himself to be caught. He put his "going away
kit" in a shoemaker's last over which he placed a piece of leather
studded with nails as if he intended to begin making a pair of boots but
the last was hollow and could be unscrewed, and it contained an
elaborate collection of "necessaries"--mustaches, whiskers, false hair,
a chisel, a small saw for sawing iron made from the spring of a watch, a
tiny hand mirror for dressing purposes, needles and thread, and pen and
paper.
He often let his shoemaker's last lie about on his bed, and sometimes he
folded it under his arm when he went on forced labor.
It was quite an event when one day the inspecting officer who had been
noticing the last for some time, ended by considering that the work of
making a pair of boots was taking too long and confiscated it.
This time the fat was in the fire. But Chéri-Bibi had no end of other
tricks up his sleeve. He would always get the better of them; that was
certain.
At this point in the discussion the door was opened and a deputy warder
entered. He came to inquire if they had yet discovered the way by which
the five convicts had escaped. His two colleagues replied by a shrug of
the shoulders.
"Say what you like, they can't have flown away," observed the newcomer.
"Ask Chéri-Bibi."
"Chéri-Bibi's dead."
"Ah, what did I tell you," exclaimed one of the warders. "Our customers
here refuse to believe it."
"He was killed in the bamboo plantation. The Commandant himself was
leading the battle. Bordière fired the shot. Chéri-Bibi was right up
against his rifle. Seems that he turned head over heels like a rabbit.
Oh, there's no mistake about it. It was bound to end like that. . . .
Good-by. I'm off. . . . Oh, it's made a great to do I can tell you. You
must have heard the firing on Devil's Island. There's a great stir among
the convicts. But there'll be some pickings for those who find the other
four. Bordière is in luck's way. He'll get extra pay this month over
this Chéri-Bibi job."
The man left the room. The door was closed behind him and a great uproar
of mingled amazement and incredulity arose, for the convicts found it
impossible to believe the monstrous story. Chéri-Bibi let himself be
knocked over like a rabbit!
Suddenly, while the warders were discussing the event at the far end of
the dormitory, a flagstone was quietly raised, and the Nut and the men
who were behind the warders saw Chéri-Bibi's terrible and distorted jaw
emerge from the cavity.
No, Chéri-Bibi was not dead. He was not even wounded. He had played his
trick of tumbling to the grounds as if he were shot dead when the warder
fired his rifle, so as to distract the guards' attention from the outlet
of his underground passage, which he determined to reach, whatever
happened, in order to meet the Nut.
What he reckoned on had come about, and when the guards recognized the
figure of Chéri-Bibi falling to the ground as he spun on his heels,
they made a rush towards him uttering a shout of triumph.
Bordière, the warder, climbed the bank with a light step calculating in
his mind the amount of the extra pay which a deed of this sort would be
worth to him. The authorities would undoubtedly be grateful to him for
relieving them of a brute whom it was so difficult to keep in his cage.
Men hurried up from all directions. The Commandant himself followed
close upon them, and the report gradually spread over the island that
Chéri-Bibi had at last returned to the lower regions. Some of the
warders, as we have said, declared that they had seen his corpse.
The truth was that they searched for him in vain. Bordière, the lucky
Bordière, who was responsible for so smart a piece of work, became
enraged when he could find no traces of Chéri-Bibi apart from the marks
among the bamboos. He offered his own explanation of the mystery: "I saw
him fall here. He gave a loud cry and collapsed. Look at all this blood.
He's certainly mortally wounded. He must have crawled away to croak a
little farther on."
The thing was inexplicable, something very like magic. The Commandant
stood silent, not knowing what to think. Had Chéri-Bibi any accomplices
among his men? Had he bought some of them? How was it possible to tell
with a man like that?
They related the story that he invariably carried gold-dust on him.
Where? How? They were never able to determine. Some of them went so far
as to maintain that he could hide at will thirty gold louis in his
stomach. He ate gold, swallowed it, got rid of it, secreted it, and
recovered it again as he pleased.
It was a pack of silly tales to which the authorities attached no
importance, but now the Commandant began to think that there might be
something in them.
Nevertheless what had really happened was capable of an extremely simple
explanation. Chéri-Bibi had slipped away through the undergrowth until
he came to his retreat and thence reached his opening; and the reason
why blood was found on the bamboos was because he had wiped his hands,
stained with Tarasque's blood, on them. While the warders were searching
for a dead body he was in his tunnel; and thus his head appeared in the
dormitory at the moment when the news of his death was exciting so much
talk.
He summed up the situation at a glance. He saw the warders. He saw the
Nut. He saw his brother "lifers" who, transfixed in amazement,
restrained the burst of laughter with which they were ready to greet the
startling vision that contradicted so flatly the warders' stories.
In a flash the Nut crept into the cavity and vanished from sight, while
Chéri-Bibi kept the other convicts at bay by the ferocity of his look.
The flagstone fell back in its place.
When the convict guards turned round nothing seemed changed in the
dormitory. Stay! There was one convict the fewer.
Some time elapsed before they noticed it. It was "Monsieur Désiré" who
called their attention to it by saying under his breath so that he could
be heard only by them:
"Hullo, where's the Nut?"
Then they began their search.
Their personal responsibility was directly involved in this case. They
had no inclination to treat it as a joke. And when they made certain
that the Nut also had escaped, they fell into a sudden rage. Once more
they turned everything upside down and bullied the men in the dormitory,
uttering a thousand threats and oaths. They grew violent when a look
from "Monsieur Désiré" told them what they wanted to know.
His look pointed to a flagstone, and as the stone was not properly in
its place, and the seams were sprinkled with dust, they at once
discovered the secret. They ordered the flagstone to be cleared,
whereupon the cavity lay open before them. One of them descended into
it, requesting the other to remain at his post.
Almost at once the echo of two, three, four shots was heard. The warder
running forward in the little tunnel was firing on the fugitives.
The entire staff of the Penitentiary Administration was called into
action. By the Lieutenant's orders the clerical staff telephoned to the
deputy-chiefs on the other islands, informing them of the escape of six
convicts, and instructing them to take the necessary measures to
recapture them before they could, by some unforeseen means, reach the
mainland.
The gun on the roof of the tower which dominated the penitentiary huts
on Devil's Island, placed in position at the time of Dreyfus's
imprisonment, was fired, thus proclaiming that the roadstead was closed.
All the convict guards and forces in the islands which the authorities
had at their command were set to work hunting for the absent men.
The Inspecting Officer, whom the "lifers" had nicknamed "Haversack,"
threw himself into the fray with furious ardor; and his exasperation was
entirely comprehensible, for Chéri-Bibi had already played tricks on
him; but the peculiar incidents of this last trick which had been
carried out under his very nose were more than he could bear. The
miscreant had killed Tarasque by the light of his cigar!
He worked himself up into a fury when, on returning from his rounds in
the dormitories, he learned that other convicts had followed Chéri-Bibi
in his flight, while nothing was known of the means by which they had
escaped.
He went with his men to meet the Commandant, who had finished his
beating-up of the game and, like himself, had not obtained a glimpse of
even Chéri-Bibi's shadow. Of course no one now believed in his death.
When the Commandant was informed of the extent of the disaster, he
exclaimed to the Lieutenant:
"We must warn Cayenne, Kourou, Sinnamarie, St. Laurent and the other
stations on the coast. I look upon it as most unfortunate, but we
mustn't lose time. The convicts must have felt certain of being able to
leave the roadstead or they wouldn't have attempted such a stroke, and
possibly they have made terms with some vessel passing through. What's
that Dutch schooner which dropped anchor off the harbor last night?
Perhaps she has lowered a boat, or perhaps the men have joined some
small craft by swimming out to her."
"Let's hope the sharks will get 'em!" returned the Lieutenant.
"Meantime, while we are looking for Chéri-Bibi here, the other convicts
have probably already got outside our waters. Go and telephone to
Cayenne and Kourou at once."
"I suggest, Commandant, that it might be better while our people are
telephoning to Cayenne for me to go in the motor-launch to the mainland.
I should get to Kourou very quickly, for it is only about eight miles
from here, and I could convey orders to Sinnamarie and St. Laurent, and
see personally that the steps which have to be taken are carried out.
Not forgetting that if I meet our 'jail-birds' on the way I can bring
them back to you at once."
"I agree. Take a couple of well-armed overseers with you, and shoot at
sight anyone you may meet who refuses to obey orders."
The Lieutenant saluted and hurriedly made for the jetty.
We left the Parisian, the Burglar, the Caid and the Joker hiding in the
fore deck-house on the launch. They still remained there in a frame of
mind that it is easy to picture. Sufficient time had elapsed for them to
realize that their escape was no longer a secret to anyone. The
commotion in the island, the galloping of patrols, and finally the
firing of the gun on Devil's Island, sufficed to put them in possession
of the facts.
"We're badly done," the Burglar said aloud. "There's no hope for us with
this caboodle as we can't make her go. If Chéri-Bibi and the Nut turn
up we may be able to come to an understanding."
Instead of Chéri-Bibi and the Nut they saw the Lieutenant and two
warders, armed to the teeth, hurrying towards them. The three men
boarded the launch.
The runaways had not stirred. In the pitchy darkness which shrouded them
they might hope to escape observation for a while. Their last chance
depended upon none of the men coming in to the deck-house for a length
of rope or any article necessary for the working of the launch.
They held their breath. Fortunately for them the engineer was not on
board and the officer would have to put off without him. He would have
his hands full attending to the engine during the journey. He had
already taken from his pocket the special part of the machinery and
placed it in position.
The convicts had more to fear from the warders, but at the word of
command the latter climbed to the top of the deck-house, where they
remained, rifle in hand, keeping watch, and peering into the night. The
convicts could hear the sound of their movements above them.
The officer himself unmoored the chains and threw them into the
deck-house, where they fell on the Burglar and the Joker, who did not
dare even to make an exclamation!
And the launch put off.
They first sailed round the island at full speed. Obviously the officer
had no intention of leaving those waters without first making this
circular tour which might, if he had the least luck and discovered
anything unusual, put him on the track of the fugitives or reveal to him
some part of their scheme.
Finding nothing suspicious, he returned to the roadstead, hailed the
Dutch schooner, jumped aboard her, and quickly learned that all was in
order and that her ship's boat and dinghy had not been lowered. After
exchanging a few words with the captain he returned to the launch.
During his short absence the four convicts were greatly tempted to dash
out of their retreat and attack the warders.
But it would have been a risky enterprise, offering very little prospect
of success. The warders were armed and would have shot them down like
dogs. Moreover, it would have been difficult to take them by surprise.
At the least sound coming from below they would have been on their guard
and realized that the game for which they were to go hunting so far away
was close at hand! Not to mention that they were in the roadstead and
assistance would be forthcoming immediately. If the convicts wished to
attempt an onset of that character it would be better to wait until they
were under way.
The launch was now steering for the mainland and fast leaving the
islands behind her.
The crossing was rapid. The launch cut through the water in excellent
style. No incident occurred during the brief passage.
The adventure was shaping so splendidly for the four convicts that they
had but to let things take their course. They would very soon see what
was what. An immense hope began to dawn in them.
The launch came-to alongside the pontoon at Kourou. It was here that the
drama for the Parisian and his gang would reach its climax. They were
nearing the crucial moment.
The chains with which the launch was moored were in the deck-house,
resting on the convicts' knees! Could they suppose that the officer and
the warders would lay hold of them without discovering the men in their
lair?
They had every reason to hope so, because the ends of the chains were
outside the deck-house, and all the warders had to do was to stoop and
pick up these ends and the rest of the chains would be at their
disposal. That was what actually did happen.
A warder stooped and even turned his head towards the retreat in which
the miscreants stood ready to leap forth at the least incident, but he
failed to observe them.
The officer, as was his custom, made the engine unworkable by removing
the special part, and after mooring the launch, climbed on to the
pontoon, ordering his two men to follow him. The three of them soon
vanished into the darkness.
The Parisian, the Burglar, the Caid and the Joker heaved a tremendous
sigh of relief. During the last half-hour they had scarcely dared to
breathe.
The Burglar took off his cap, and bowing in the direction taken by the
"Haversack," said with an intonation of mingled excitement and
gratitude: "Good-by, and thank you."
Soon they were crouching on the pontoon on the look-out for the guard
who was stationed at this point. As they could not see him, they partly
rose and began to run for the shore, when suddenly they heard behind
them loud shouts and the order to halt.
Of course they ran for all they were worth. A shot was fired after them.
"Look out," grunted the Parisian. "Now for the forest, and in less than
no time!"