"_Voyons_! It must have been some twenty years ago, when the bombs were
going off in Russia! There was a notion--mistaken, as it proved--that a
revolution could be brought about by means of them. Fired with
enthusiasm, and having an idea for a bomb of a new sort, I threw a few
necessaries, including a manifesto, into my portmanteau, and started for
the scene of action. But I never reached it. The machinations of the
police frustrated me. Let me draw you the picture of the moment when I
first learnt that the emissaries of the Third Section were on my track.
"It was at Warsaw. I had arrived there late in the afternoon, and had
dined well at the best hotel, toasting the cause silently in the
sparkling wine of the Widow Clicquot. After the meal I strolled out
into the street to smoke my cigar, contemplatively, by moonlight.
"The hour was late. Few loiterers were abroad except myself. But
presently, after I had taken several turns, I became aware of a quick,
stealthy step, as of a man from nowhere, following behind me, and heard
a clear but subdued voice speaking to me.
"'Whatever you do, don't look round. Walk straight on, and listen to
what I say. Is your name Kosnapulski?'
"'That is part of my name,' I answered, without turning my head. 'The
full name is Jean Antoine Stromboli----'
"'Right! You're the man I'm looking for,' the stranger interrupted.
'But I mustn't speak to you here. Turn up the next side street and keep
in the shadow.'
"I hesitated. It might be the greeting of a comrade, or it might be the
trick of a vulgar assassin. I resolved to take the risk, and turned
sharply to the left, the stranger following me into the dark.
"'Don't stop,' he continued, 'and don't answer, but listen to what I
say.'
"So we walked on as though we did not know each other, and he talked to
me as a man speaking to himself.
"'Kosnapulski must on no account go back to his hotel. The police are
there, waiting to arrest him on his return. Kosnapulski knows best
whether he desires to meet them; whether there is anything compromising
in his portmanteau, for example----'
"'Heavens! My manifesto!' I ejaculated. 'I've signed it in full, Jean
Antoine----'
"'Hush! You mustn't speak. The manifesto must be sacrificed. The
better way will be to travel on foot to the Prussian frontier. I have a
little parcel here, which I am placing on a window-ledge. When I have
gone, come back and fetch it. It contains a few things that will help
you on your way. Walk more slowly while I pass you, and then turn.
Farewell!'
"He quickened his pace and glided by me--a cloaked and hooded figure. I
gripped his hand silently as he passed me. It was the least--and the
most--that I could do. Then I returned and found the little parcel
resting in the place that he had indicated.
"I opened it in the darkest corner that I could find. It contained a
false beard and a pair of spectacles, in which I disguised myself upon
the spot; and a small handful of paper money, a note scrawled in pencil,
which it was too dark to read; a flask of _vodki_, and a little bread
and meat.
"Such was the whole of my provision for my pilgrimage. It was a
terrible journey. I travelled only by night, hiding myself in the woods
by day. But I need not dwell upon the details.
"My warning of peril was contained in the pencilled letter in which my
mysterious friend had wrapped my bread and meat. I read it in the
woods, while I was hiding in my disguise. I read it again by
candle-light, in the first Prussian inn in which I found shelter after I
had passed the frontier. Cheered and emboldened by generous draughts of
Rhenish wine, I even went so far as to read it aloud in the _cafe_ of
the inn.
"'Listen! my comrades,' I exclaimed. 'How many of you have ever received
a letter of this sort? Admire the epistolary style of those who
correspond with Jean Antoine Stromboli Kosnapulski.'
"And I read--
"'Be on your guard! The Third Section means to have you. Its arm is
long and it strikes unscrupulously. No country is so remote that it
will not pursue you there. It will stoop to any means, even to poison
and the dagger. This time I have warned you. Another time you may get
no warning. If you would be safe, hide yourself until your name has
been forgotten.'
"There was laughter at that, as you may guess, and a stamping of feet
and a clapping of hands. I leapt upon a chair, and waved the precious
missive above my head, and shouted in my exultation.
"'You see what happens. The cause prospers. Even in the Third Section
itself the cause has found a friend who protects the leaders of the
people.'
"They cheered me to the echo; for I was paying for the Rhenish wine.
But the landlord's daughter--flaxen-haired Fraeulein Minna, who was
serving the refreshments--plucked me by the sleeve and signed to me to
follow her. I did so.
"'Suppose,' she said, 'there were a spy of the Third Section in the
_cafe_!"
"'Show him to me,' I replied, 'I will undertake that he leaves quickly
and with no desire whatever to return.'
"'I dare not--for reasons which I must not tell you. But suppose the
spy telegraphed a few words in cipher to St. Petersburg.'
"'_Eh bien_! Suppose he did. What could St. Petersburg do then?'
"'Apply for your extradition on some trumped-up charge of theft.'
"'Then are there no judges in Germany?' I asked.
"'Why, yes. But they can be bribed,' was Fraeulein Minna's answer.
"'You've known that happen, little guardian angel?"
"She nodded slowly, with a look full of meaning in her eyes.
"Then I was frightened--as frightened, at least, as I have ever allowed
myself to be. I began to realise the vast powers, the widespread nets,
of that terrible Third Section; but I was to realise them still more
vividly before many hours were over.
"At that moment her father, the landlord, burst upon the scene with
noisy German oaths.
"'Thunder and lightning!' he said (among other things), while she fled
in terror, before I had time to intervene.
"Then I drew myself up with dignity.
"'I must ask you to understand, sir,' I said, 'that the blame for this,
if there be any blame, in wholly mine. I was merely asking your
daughter a simple question which I will now address to you. Can you, at
once, provide me with a horse and carriage, that I may drive to the
nearest railway station?'
"The man's frown relaxed; he became comparatively civil.
"'It's a strange hour to start travelling,' he growled, 'but if you are
set upon it----'
"'I am absolutely set upon it.'
"'In that case I will drive you there myself.'
"'I thank you.'
"'Come round to the stables, then.'
"He led the way, and in ten minutes or so the carriage was duly
harnessed.
"'Here's something to keep you warm,' he said, offering me a flask.
'Better try to sleep a little.'
"Then he mounted the box, and drove off along the rough roads in the
dark.
"The liquor in the flask was _Kirsch-wasser_--a cordial for which I had
no great liking. I sipped at it and no more. Nevertheless, drowsiness
overcame me, my fatigue and the previous draughts of Rhenish wine
assisting, and I fell into a doze. How long I dozed I cannot tell you!
All that I know is that, when I woke with a start, owing to the jolting
and lurching of the carriage, the night was nearly over and the horizon
tinged with the pale lemon hues that precede dawn.
"'Where in the world am I now?' I murmured to myself, with a sudden
access of uneasiness.
"For the scenery that I looked out upon had a strange familiarity. One
after the other I recognised a hillock, a clump of trees, a group of
farm-buildings--all landmarks that I had noted in my wanderings of the
night before.
"'Heavens!' I ejaculated, as the whole truth flashed upon me.
"It was against her own father that the flaxen-haired Minna had wished
to warn me, in the village inn; it was he, and no other, who was the spy
in the pay of the Third Section. He had tried to drug me with his
_Kirsch_; and his plot was to drive me back over the frontier, before I
could know what was happening, and hand me over to the police. We might
cross the boundary line, for all that I could tell, at any instant.
Only by immediate action could I save myself.
"Standing up in my place, and leaning forward, I gripped the man by the
collar with my left hand, while with my right I drew his own revolver
from his side-pocket and held it to his head.
"'Scoundrel!' I roared at him, 'pull up the horse this instant, or I'll
shoot you!'
"He felt instinctively that I meant what I said, and that his game was
up.
"'What is it? What have I done?' he stammered feebly, bringing the
carriage to a standstill.
"Now that there was no further need for violence I recovered my
customary calm.
"'You have lost your way, Herr Landlord,' I replied. 'Turn round and
try to find it. Try very hard and very carefully, for this pistol of
yours seems to be loaded, and might go off at the slightest provocation.
Your destination, mind you, is not the Russian frontier, but the nearest
German railway station.'
"He obeyed me sullenly, without further words. It was a long, long
drive, over a dreary stretch of country; but it came to an end at last.
At midday the weary horse jogged slowly through a village street, and I
got down and paid my driver.
"'Sweep it up,' I said, scornfully tossing some coins into the gutter
for him. 'That is the proper way to pay men like you. Now go and boast
to your boon companions how you have driven Jean Antoine Stromboli
Kosnapulski to the railway station.'
"He slunk away, fearful lest I should denounce him to the porter and the
stationmaster--tall, sturdy men, who were likely to have little sympathy
with a Russian spy; while I, on my part, bought my ticket and began my
journey to my hiding-place.
"Do you think that it was cowardly of me to wish to hide myself? Not,
surely, after my warning and my experiences of the vast powers and the
vindictive malice of that great and unscrupulous organisation which was
endeavouring to hunt me down. Consider! Even kings have found it
necessary to hide themselves sometimes; and if a king may hide himself
without loss of dignity in an oak-tree, then surely it is no shame for a
revolutionist to conceal himself, for a period, in a Swiss _chalet_.
The king who hid in the oak-tree would doubtless have preferred the
_chalet_ if he could have got to it.
"'_Reculer pour mieux sauter_,' I said to myself, 'must be my motto. I
have my idea for a new bomb, and I will work it out in the friendly
solitude of the pine forests.'
"So I lost no time, but journeyed day and night until I reached one of
those little villages that lie high up in the hills above Montreux, on
the blue waters of Lake Leman.
"These villages--Chailly, Saint Legier, and the rest--are, I should tell
you, the usual hiding-places of Russian refugees. I do not say, of
course, that to have a 'usual hiding-place' is the wisest course that
prudence could devise. The practice, as I now see clearly, must
simplify the task of those who seek. But, at the time, I did not think
of this. The shores of the Lake of Geneva seemed to me, as it were, an
Alsatia where even the Third Section could not seize its victims.
"And oh! the life I lived there! It was a strange and welcome interlude
of peace, to which I still sometimes look back with deep regret when I
am tired.
"My _chalet_ was high up, in a lonely place, on the very verge of a
great pine forest. I used to rise early and wander for a mile among the
meadows. Behind me towered the dark crags of the Rochers de Nave; below
me gleamed the lake; before me were the black Savoy Hills, with the
white dome of the Velan in the distance. The sight of these things, and
of the deepening autumn tints upon the vineyards, stirred all the
deep-seated poetry of my nature, until it was with difficulty that I
pulled myself together, saying--
"'It is time that I was getting on with my bomb.'
"Nor was I absolutely bereft of company. In the _chalet_ itself, indeed,
there was no one but a deaf old woman--the widow of a woodcutter--who
cooked my dinners. But, every now and again I met tourists from the
Montreux hotels and entered into conversation with them. I was a
mystery to them; they christened me the hermit of Saint Legier. But they
invited me to refresh myself with them in the _cafes_, and I did so the
more willingly that my own store of silver coin was scanty. And
sometimes, when the white wine flowed, I told them stories of my
revolutionary adventures, such stories as I now tell to you.
"'You do not know who I am,' I would say. 'What will you think when I
tell you that I am here in hiding from the Russian secret police? Yes,
so it is! I am no other than Jean Antoine Stromboli Kosnapulski.'
"And I would go on to tell them the story of my adventure in the streets
of Warsaw, and other stories which I have told you, or may tell you
later. It was the only return that I could make for the extensive
hospitality of those knickerbockered youths.
"One day, moreover--the most memorable day of all--I made the
acquaintance of a lady. Let me endeavour to recall that day.
"It was away towards Blonay, at some distance from my temporary home.
She was tall and elegant, wearing a white blouse, a dark skirt, and a
sailor hat; her hair was auburn; her eyes were beautifully blue. She
looked about her anxiously, as though in doubt of the direction that she
ought to take. Revolving the situation rapidly in my mind, I said to
myself--
"'I am favourably impressed. In the absence of more serious adventure,
this is emphatically an adventure to be pursued.'
"And to the lady herself I said, raising my hat with a very courteous
flourish--
"'Pardon me, madam. You seem to me to have lost your way. May I place
myself at your disposition and direct you?'
"From her dress and demeanour I had judged that she was English, but
from her reply it appeared that she was American.
"'Now, I call that real nice of you,' was her simple answer.
"'Your destination?'
"'Way down at Territet. Grand Hotel des Alpes.'
"'We are at some distance from the high road. You will permit me,
perhaps, to guide you.'
"'I guess a white man couldn't do less,' she replied, smiling, and we
strolled on together.
"Do not think me boastful or vainglorious if I tell you that, as your
phrase is, I 'made the running quickly.' A revolutionist must needs do
so. He is a busy man, with little leisure on his hands; he never knows
what an hour may bring forth for him; gallantry is seldom possible for
him, save on the condition that he makes haste with it and does not
dally over the preliminaries. Besides, he enjoys advantages denied to
most of you; he dazzles by virtue of the mystery which surrounds him;
like the soldier, he carries his life in his hands. Such things appeal
to women. It did not surprise me, therefore, that my beautiful American
grew confidential.
"'I'm Daisy van Bean,' she said, 'the daughter of the railroad king, and
I'm stopping with poppa at Territet. But say, now. You've walked all
this way with me and you haven't yet told me what your name is.'
"It was my chance for the great _coup_ which was to fascinate her
imagination, if not to win her heart. I answered--
"'Beautiful Daisy, I will surprise you. I am Jean Antoine Stromboli
Kosnapulski--the revolutionist--the fugitive--the inventor.'
"'The inventor? Say, now, what have you invented?'
"'I have just invented a new bomb.'
"She clapped her hands.
"'That's just too lovely for anything,' she said. 'Tell me all about
it.'
"I hesitated; you would have done the same. Such secrets are not
lightly to be babbled of. But was there ever an inventor who did not
delight to talk of his invention--even before it was provisionally
protected? So I told.
"'Beautiful Daisy, it is a bomb of which I think I have every reason to
be proud. The principal ingredient is fulminate of mercury. It will
make a terrible noise, but do no harm worth speaking of. You wonder;
but I will explain. What is the object of a bomb? To terrorise. What
is the most effective cause of terror? Noise. By noise, far more than
by any other means, shall we frighten governments into conceding our
demands.'
"She was not indignant, as some women would have been, but only curious.
"'I'd just love to have a look at that bomb,' she said.
"'But, beautiful Daisy,' I replied, 'even if you saw it, you would never
know that it was a bomb. That is another of its merits. It can be made
up to look like anything--like a cigar-case, for example, or a
photograph album, or a purse.'
"'How clever!'
"'Still,' I said, 'if you would deign to accept the humble hospitality
of a bachelor's roof----'
"She was emancipated--even for an American. The usual proprieties
seemed to have no hold upon her.
"'I will,' she said, 'and if I'm alive to-morrow, I'll be passing here
about this time.'
"And then we said good-bye. If only I had known! But I must not
anticipate.
"I prepared a feast for my beautiful Daisy--such a feast as my modest
means permitted. We had tea and fruits, and bread and butter, and cream,
and honey--real honey, not the poisonous stuff they make at Zurich.
Imagine, then, my consternation when she burst into a flood of tears,
exclaiming--
"'Oh! I feel mean, I do. I feel real mean.'
"I imagined, of course, that she was ashamed of the advantage that she
was taking of the confidence which her parents had reposed in her, and I
tried to comfort her upon that supposition. But she was inconsolable.
"'No, no, it isn't that,' she said. 'Why I feel mean is that I deceived
you. I'm not Daisy van Bean, and my poppa isn't a railroad king.'
"I tried to assure her that I was superior to all foolish prejudices
about her social station; but she interrupted me again--
"'Listen! There's no time to lose. I'm just a spy and a decoy of the
Third Section. They heard of you, and they sent me up to make sure, and
they're following me--six of them--this very afternoon. I didn't intend
telling you; but when you looked at me just then, I felt real mean.'
"'I must not stay here another moment,' I said. 'Come with me. Let us
fly together.'
"'Too late! too late!' she murmured. 'I hear them coming.'
"And, sure enough, there was the sound of footsteps on the gravel. But
a thought struck her.
"'What's the matter with getting out of the window?' she asked eagerly.
"'They are all barred,' I answered. 'With my own hands I fixed the bars,
so that the Third Section might not break in by night. How was I to
know that the Third Section would attempt to enter in broad daylight by
the door?'
"She gasped.
"'Great snakes! As if, in a lonesome place like this, it wasn't the
easiest thing in the world to rush the house!'
"'Rush the house!' I repeated, for the Americanism was new to me.
"But Daisy only went into hysterics on the sofa, and ten seconds later I
had grasped the meaning of her words.
"The door opened and the intruders entered. There were six of them, all
dressed in black, as men who go to funerals. I should have wondered at
this if I had had the time to wonder, but I had none. There was no
parley, no attempt at parley. They knew their _role_ and I knew mine.
I hurled the teacup at the foremost of them and gashed his forehead
badly. The milk-jug followed, breaking the front teeth of the second.
Then they ran in upon me and we fought at close quarters.
[Illustration: "I hurled the teacup at the foremost of them."]
"Such a fight as it was! Kicking upwards, I caught one of them under
the chin, so that he lay for dead upon the floor. A second, getting the
sole of my boot in the pit of his stomach, fell, doubled up, in the
remotest corner of the room. A third, however, with fiendish ingenuity,
hurled a chair between my legs. I tripped and fell, half dazed with the
blow that my head got as I tumbled. They rushed upon me, pinioned me,
and tied my hands and feet. The fight had hardly lasted a minute, and,
conquered by superior numbers, I was at their mercy.
"'Run for help, Marie,' I had shouted to my old housekeeper at the
beginning of the struggle, and, though she was deaf and could not hear
me, what she saw sufficed to send her, screaming loudly, down the hill.
"One of my assailants, however, pursued her, caught her, put his hand
over her mouth, lifted her in his arms, and brought her back and locked
her in her bedroom. I saw her kicking, as he carried her past the open
door, and then my senses left me.
"How long I lay stunned I cannot tell you. Wholly unconscious at first,
I must have continued for hours in a state of semi-consciousness,
vaguely aware, like a man in a dream, of the strange things that were
going on around me. I perceived dimly that night fell and that the
lamps were lighted. As it were through a mist, I saw the figures of men
watching me. From time to time I heard muffled voices that I could make
nothing of. At last if seemed as if a cloud had suddenly lifted, and my
senses returned to me with a flash.
"Horror of horrors! I was sitting--in an open coffin--with the lid
lying on the floor beside it, ready to be fixed on!
"'A thousand thunders!' I yelled, trying to struggle to my feet. 'What
are you doing? I am----'
"But, with my hands and feet fastened, I could scarcely move.
"A rough hand thrust me back, and one of my enemies--he with the damaged
forehead--held a piece of stamped paper before my eyes, saying
jeeringly--
"'You are Jean Antoine Stromboli Kosnapulski, are you? Then read that,
my friend!'
"'Good Heavens!' I ejaculated.
"The paper was my _acte de deces_--my death certificate, bearing the
signature--forged, of course--of the leading physician of Montreux.
"So the scheme of these ruffians of the Third Section was--to bury me
alive! I could have no doubt of it, and I could do nothing to help
myself. There was just a chance that Daisy might find a means of saving
me; but it was a very faint chance. The others would almost certainly
look too sharply after her for that. I felt my face blanch and great
beads of sweat stand out upon my forehead. I made a desperate effort to
free myself, but with no result.
"The men stood round and laughed at me, and then one of them advanced
and clapped a pad over my mouth.
"'Here's something to keep you quiet, my friend,' he said derisively.
"Those were the last words I heard. There followed the sickly smell of
chloroform, the insufferable sense of suffocation, and then a blank
unconsciousness, drifting into weird and wonderful dreams. At
last--after how long a period I cannot say--consciousness and
recollection stole back to me together. I grasped the meaning of the
incessant rattling and jolting which had been with me in my dreams, and
still continued now that all my faculties were once more awakened.
"'The fiends!' I ejaculated, as the awful truth came home to me. The
Third Section had kidnapped me and locked me in the coffin, for the
purpose of conveying me back to Russia, where, without doubt, the
hangman's rope awaited me. They had forged the death certificate in
order to be able to pass the coffin, without question or investigation,
through the various custom-houses. It was a better fate than being
buried alive, as I had expected; but only because it gave the chapter of
accidents an opening.
"'Let me out! I have no business here. I am Jean Antoine Stromboli
Kosnapulski.'
"But no answer came. If any sound had issued from my narrow prison, the
rumbling of the train had drowned it. If I were ever to get out of it,
I must find the way myself, by my own strength and ingenuity.
"By luck my hands were not so securely fastened as they might have been.
Confident in the strength of the coffin itself, my captors had evidently
been guilty of carelessness in this respect. I was able to get my hands
to my mouth, and, after half an hour's patient work, to undo the knot
with my teeth.
"'Now let me see if they have left me any sort of tool,' I said to
myself.
"So I first rescued my feet from their bonds and then fumbled in my
pockets. The fools had not taken the trouble to empty them, thinking,
no doubt, that it would be time enough to do this when I reached my
destination; but they contained little enough, all the same. A few
coins, a few notes of the Geneva Bank, a box of matches, some letters, a
key, a small pocket-knife, and a cigar-case--such was the full list of
the implements that I had to work with.
"'First for the cigar-case,' I mused. 'If only I knew whether that was
the bomb cigar-case!'
"For I knew that, in one of my cigar-cases, I had packed one of my noisy
but harmless bombs; though whether it was in the one that I had in my
pocket, or in the one that I had left upon the mantelpiece, I could not
recollect. In the former event my course was clear. I had only to wait
until the train stopped and then fire it. The terrific din would
doubtless break the drums of both my ears; the flame might even scorch
my face. But at least the train would be searched after the explosion,
and when smoke was seen issuing from the coffin, through the
breathing-holes that had been bored for me, it would be opened.
"I waited patiently until we reached a station. Then, holding the case
carefully behind my back, so as to save my face as much as possible, I
jerked it open.
"But nothing happened--nothing, that is to say, except that the cigars
fell out of it!
"'Let me see how far the knife will help me,' was my next idea.
"It was quite a little knife, as I have said. But the journey to the
Russian frontier was a long one. I had plenty of time in front of me.
It seemed just possible that, if I worked diligently, I might at least
carve a hole in the lid through which I could put out a finger, if not a
hand, and make a signal of distress. I opened the little pocket-knife
and set to work.
"At first things went quite easily. The interior of the coffin was
lined with a thick felting, designed, no doubt, to muffle any noise that
its occupant might make. I worked diligently and succeeded in stripping
off a patch of it. But I could get no further. Alas! and alas! Behind
the padding I encountered, not wood, but solid lead, upon which the
knife made no impression.
"Beaten again!'
"I gasped out the words in the bitterness of my despair and fainted.
For an hour or two, as I conjecture, I lay senseless on my back. My
last hope, apparently, was gone. My one chance of escaping the hangman
was to die before I reached him. But then, suddenly--
"Crash! Bang!
"The noise reached me even in my leaden box. I felt the train slowing
down immediately afterwards, and knew exactly what must have happened.
"'The Third Section! They stole the cigar-case from my mantelpiece.
They've opened it to try the cigars and fired the bomb themselves.'
"But depression followed quickly on the heels of exultation. The firing
of the bomb, though it stopped the train and caused the Russian spies to
be arrested, would hardly help me to declare my presence in the coffin.
The chance was that I should be left there till I starved, or else put
hastily underground because no one knew who I was. What was I to do to
arrest the attention of the officials, who were even now beginning to
search the train from end to end.
"I thought hard, as though my brain were packed in ice, and then the
inspiration came to me.
"'I have it! The cigars! If they see smoke coming through the
air-holes, they'll think it was the bomb!'
"Did you ever try to smoke a cigar when you had just come round after
having been under chloroform? If not, then you may take my word for it
that it needs more heroism than to charge a battery or defend a
barricade. I choked and coughed. I was seized by the most hideous
nausea. I would have preferred the torture of the rack or thumbscrew.
But I bit my lips and stuck to it, smoking for dear life's sake.
"It seemed whole weeks before my signal was discovered, though from the
length of the ash upon my _Vevey fine_ I knew that it could not have
been more than five minutes at the outside. At last I began to hear
voices, though I failed to distinguish the words, and realised that
tools were at work upon my living tomb. In spite of the awful nausea, I
puffed away harder than ever, pressing upwards with my hand, so as to
lift the lid the very moment it was loosened.
"At last it yielded. I thrust it off, not waiting for it to be lifted,
and with the stump of my cigar still between my fingers sprang to my
feet, exclaiming--
"'It is time that I was out of this. I have no business here.'
"The guards and porters and policemen who were standing round turned
pale, as though they had seen a ghost, and nearly fell into each other's
arms.
"'Who the----' one of them ejaculated in his consternation, and I
answered reassuringly--
"'Fear nothing! No harm will happen to you. I am Jean Antoine
Stromboli Kosnapulski.'
"Then I stepped out of my box and looked around me. We were at Basle.
On the platform I saw my old enemy of the Third Section--the same man
whose forehead I had gashed--offering explanations to two policemen, who
held him fast and did not seem at all disposed to listen to him.
"I pointed at him with the finger of denunciation.
"'There he is,' I cried. 'That is the culprit; that is the man who
fired the bomb. He was making bombs in the woods near Montreux, and
because I caught him at it he kidnapped me and threatened me with this
living death. It is a voice from the dead that now convicts him of his
crime.'
"You can imagine the effect that followed from my words. The crowd
rushed forward as one man, vowing that it would tear the miscreant limb
from limb; the police, as one man, formed up to save him for more formal
and deliberate justice, and I found myself standing alone and unobserved
upon the platform.
"'This is a good opportunity of retiring unobtrusively,' I said to
myself, 'If I remain to give evidence, I shall be the mark of the
vengeance of the Third Section for the remainder of my life. Better
that an ocean should roll between us; better that I should disappear
mysteriously and leave no trace behind.'
"So, taking advantage of the confusion, I bought a ticket and slipped
unnoticed into the Paris train _en route_ for Havre and America.
"Afterwards, from the papers, I learnt that my enemy of the Third
Section--whose Government naturally could not help him--had been
sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour."