Fantômas by Pierre Souvestre (best ereader under 100 .TXT) 📕

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——"

M. Havard intervened, and spoke to the chaplain.

"Really, sir, no: it is time."

Deibler nodded approval.

"Let us be quick; we can proceed; the sun has risen."

The Public Prosecutor was still bleating "Be brave! Be brave!"

Deibler took the man by one arm, a warder took him by the other, and between them they half-carried him to the office for his last toilette. In the little room, dimly lighted by a winking lamp, a chair had been set close to a table. The executioner and his assistant pushed the condemned man into the chair, and Deibler took up a pair of scissors.

The Public Prosecutor spoke to the prisoner.

"Would you like a glass of rum? Would you like a cigarette? Is there anything you wish to have done?"

Maître Barberoux, who had not arrived in time for the awakening of the prisoner, now approached his client; he, too, was ghastly white.

"Is there anything else that I can do for you? Have you any last wish?"

The condemned man made another effort to rise from the chair, and a hoarse groan escaped from his throat.

"I—I——"

The prison doctor had joined the group, and now drew the Public Prosecutor's deputy aside.

"It is appalling!" he said. "The man has not articulated a single word since he was awakened. He is as though sunk in a stupefied sleep. There is a technical word for his condition: he is in a state of inhibition. He is alive, and yet he is a corpse. Anyhow he is utterly unconscious, incapable of any clear thought, or of saying a word that has any sense. I have never seen such complete stupefaction."

Deibler waved aside the men who were pressing round him.

"Sign the gaol book, please, M. Havard," he said, and while that gentleman affixed a shaky signature to the warrant authorising the delivery of Gurn to the public executioner, Deibler took the scissors and cut a segment out of the prisoner's shirt and cut off a wisp of hair that grew low down on his neck. Meanwhile an assistant bound the wrists of the man who was about to die. Then the executioner looked at his watch and made a half-bow to the Public Prosecutor.

"Come! Come! It is the time fixed by law!"

Two assistants took the wretch by the shoulders and raised him up. There was a horrible, deep, unintelligible rattle in his throat.

"I—I——"

But no one heard him, and he was dragged away. It was practically a corpse that the servants of the guillotine bore down to the boulevard Arago.

Outside, the first rosy tints of early dawn were waking the birds, and playing on the great triangular knife, drawing gleams from it. The time was ten minutes past five. And now the supreme moment was at hand.

The crowd, momentarily growing denser, was crushed behind the cordon of troops that had difficulty in keeping it at a distance from the guillotine. The soldiers, unheeding the oaths and curses and entreaties with which they were assailed, carried out their orders and permitted no one to take up his stand anywhere in the near neighbourhood of the guillotine, except the few rare individuals who had a special pass.

A sudden murmur ran through the crowd. The mounted police, stationed opposite the guillotine, had just drawn their sabres. Fandor gripped Juve's hand nervously. The detective was very pale.

"Let us get over there," he said, and led Fandor just behind the guillotine, to the side where the severed head would fall into the basket. "We shall see the poor devil get out of the carriage, and being fastened on to the bascule, and pulled into the lunette." He went on talking as if to divert his own mind from the thing before him. "That's the best place for seeing things: I stood there when Peugnez was guillotined, a long time ago now, and I was there again in 1909 when Duchémin, the parricide, was executed."

But he came to an abrupt stop. From the great door of the Santé prison a carriage came rapidly out. All heads were uncovered, all eyes were fixed, and a deep silence fell upon the crowded boulevard.

The carriage passed the journalist and the detective at a gallop and pulled up with a jerk just opposite them, on the other side of the guillotine, and at the very foot of the scaffold. M. Deibler jumped down from the box, and opening the door at the back of the vehicle let down the steps. Pale and nervous, the chaplain got out backwards, hiding the scaffold from the eyes of the condemned man, whom the assistants managed somehow to help out of the carriage.

Fandor was shaking with nervousness and muttering to himself.

But things moved quickly now.

The chaplain, still walking backwards, hid the dread vision for yet a few seconds more, then stepped aside abruptly. The assistants seized the condemned man, and pushed him on to the bascule.

Juve was watching the unhappy wretch, and could not restrain a word of admiration.

"That man is a brave man! He has not even turned pale! Generally condemned men are livid!"

The executioner's assistants had bound the man upon the plank; it tilted upwards. Deibler grasped the head by the two ears and pulled it into the lunette, despite one last convulsive struggle of the victim.

There was a click of a spring, the flash of the falling knife, a spurt of blood, a dull groan from ten thousand breasts, and the head rolled into the basket!

But Juve had flung Fandor aside and sprang towards the scaffold. He thrust the assistants away, and plunging his hands into the bran that was all soaked with blood, he seized the severed head by the hair and stared at it.

Horrified by this scandalous action the assistants rushed upon the detective.

Deibler forced him backwards.

"You must be mad!"

"Get away!"

Fandor saw that Juve was staggering and seemed about to swoon. He rushed towards him.

"Good God!" he cried in tones of anguish.

"It isn't Gurn who has just been put to death!" Juve panted brokenly. "This face has not gone white because it is painted! It is made up—like an actor's! Oh, curses on him! Fantômas has escaped! Fantômas has got away! He has had some innocent man executed in his stead! I tell you Fantômas is alive!"