by Robert Bloch
The Secret Blade
Edward D. Hoch
It was Pierre Frayer’s job, that warm April morning in 1792, to bring forth the corpses that would be used in testing the machine. Two days earlier, on the fifteenth, several live sheep had been sacrificed in the initial experiments. Pierre had helped with those too, trussing the poor creatures and positioning them for the blade. Now, in the courtyard of the hospital at Paris’s Bicêtre prison, where the final test was to be held, Pierre wheeled out the fresh cadavers of two men and one woman.
The others were close at hand, of course. Dr. Joseph Guillotin, who had campaigned for a quick and painless method of capital punishment, stood to one side with Antoine Louis and others from the French Constituent Assembly. The chief surgeon of the prison hospital and delegates from other Paris hospitals were there as well. It was Granston from the Ministry of Justice who ordered Pierre about, barking commands with his loud voice for all to hear.
Pierre secured the first of the male cadavers to the movable plank or bascule upon which the condemned person was laid full-length. Then he fitted two semicircular pieces of wood around the head to hold it in place. In the background he could hear Dr. Guillotin expounding to the others about the device. “A mechanical machine somewhat like this was used for executions in Ireland nearly five hundred years ago,” he told them. “Even in France there have been decapitations by mechanical methods. This particular design was developed by Antoine Louis.”
At his side Louis started to protest, but already someone in the group murmured that the device should be christened “La louisette.” Pierre saw and heard all this as he went about the preliminary tasks, stepping back finally so that Charles-Henri Sanson, the city’s official executioner, could take over. Sanson’s son and two brothers made certain the cadaver was positioned properly, and then the executioner took a deep breath.
The rope was cut, the heavy blade released, and almost before Pierre realized what was happening the head of the dead man was severed from his body and dropped into a basket that had been placed to catch it. Though no one cheered, there was obvious satisfaction among the spectators. The next two bodies followed in rapid succession, the woman first and then the second man. Each time the falling blade did its job, almost faster than the eye could follow.
One of the men standing near Pierre grunted and turned away after the last one. “A blade so swift can do naught but harm,” he said. “Heads will roll in the gutter.”
The first one came eight days later in the Place de Grève at three in the afternoon. His name was Jacques Pelletier and he had been a thief. Pierre Frayer was in the front row among the spectators.
During the weeks that followed, Pierre never missed an execution. They quickly became more frequent during that long spring and summer of ’92. Gradually the word got around that it was not Antoine Louis but Joseph Guillotin himself who had played the major role in designing the machine. Paris started calling it by his name, and soon the city seemed in the grip of a mania for guillotines. Women wore miniature replicas for earrings, and children played with toy versions. Tiny dolls filled with sweet liqueur were decapitated with dessert at the dinner table.
It was during the heat of summer that Pierre bought one of the miniature mahogany guillotines and used it to cut the head off a chicken. He watched intently as the little blade fell, as the blood spurted. It was good, but the sheep had been better.
He decided to build himself a small guillotine in the dank basement of the old house he shared with his sister. Her name was Rosette and she earned a living by selling flowers at various locations around the city. Lately she had been selling them at the executions, because that was where the crowds gathered. He had spotted her two or three times, but they never spoke of it.
“What are you doing with the wood?” she asked him one afternoon when he’d begun assembling the raw materials for his basement project. When she asked him questions like that she sounded exactly like their mother, who’d died in an influenza outbreak when they were both children.
“Building a cabinet for my room,” he answered. “I need space for storage.”
“What storage? You don’t own anything but your clothes and that little guillotine you wasted money on.”
He continued down to the basement, ignoring her. It was a small area beneath the house, with a dirt floor and rough stone walls dating from the early years of the century. Pierre could reach the ceiling easily without standing on tiptoe, and he judged it to be no more than seven feet high. That would be a problem, ruling out the construction of a full-size machine. But if he scaled down the height of the uprights, he wondered if the blade would have enough distance for its deadly plunge.
After studying the question for some time he decided that two possibilities presented themselves. He could dig up part of the earthen floor to allow for a greater height, or he could weight the blade to give it more force when it hit. Finally he decided upon a combination of these two techniques.
The next day he purchased the remainder of the supplies he would need, everything but the heavy triangular blade itself, and he thought he knew where he could get one of those. In the earliest designs the blade was crescent-shaped, and it was said to be the King himself who had suggested it be triangular. Pierre knew that the carpenter named Guidon who’d built the machine had made a couple of false starts on the ironwork. One blade proved to be too small to fit neatly into the copper-lined grooves of the uprights, and had to be discarded. If he could locate it in the junkyard in back of the carpenter’s shop, it might be just what he needed.
That night, after Rosette was asleep, he went to the junkyard and prowled around among the old timbers and bits of metal behind the carpenter’s shop. Before long he found what he sought—a triangular piece of unsharpened iron, obviously meant for the guillotine but cut to the wrong size. Though it was heavy to carry, Pierre managed to get it back to his own dwelling. Knowing now the necessary width between his uprights, he set to work the next day on the actual construction. Rosette had gone out to sell her flowers, believing him to be doing some sort of manual labor for the Ministry of Justice.
By nightfall when she returned he had completed the basic framework for the machine. He covered it over with a paint-stained sheet and went up to greet her. “What have you been doing?” she asked. “Working on your cabinet?”
“That’s right.” He poured water from the pitcher into the basin and washed the grime from his hands. “How was business today?”
“I made a little. It’s always better when there’s an execution. They draw the biggest crowds.”
“There’s one tomorrow,” he told her, almost casually. “An execution.”
“Are you going?”
“I might.”
The crowd that day was unusually restless, with rumors everywhere that the monarchy would soon be overthrown.
Pierre listened to a cheer go up as the cart carrying the condemned man, a convicted forger, came into view. Most executions these days were performed on the Place du Carrousel, under a hot August sky that showed no mercy. Some of the spectators were fanning themselves. He looked around for some glimpse of Rosette and her flowers, but he could see her nowhere.
Sometimes as he watched the executions, Pierre’s gaze stayed fixed on the blade, other times he kept his eyes on their faces. He was unable to decide which was the more exciting. In the case of the forger, his eyes were on the blade. He watched it fall, as if it had been slowed just for him, and he could almost feel its sharpness at the moment of impact.
That night he went home and worked on his own machine with renewed vigor. The blade fit well into its grooves and when at last he was finished he stood back to admire his workmanship. He’d been able to dig out nearly two feet of dirt from the cellar floor, and though the uprights still weren’t as tall as the real guillotine, its overall height approached nine feet. He’d never measured the machine in the Place du Carrousel, but he estimated it to be about twelve feet tall. His blade wou
ld have three feet less to drop. Would it be heavy enough to make a clean cut?
He spent all the following day sharpening his blade, knowing how important that was. He barely heard when Rosette returned that night with word that the monarchy had at last been overthrown and Louis XVI had been imprisoned, along with the Queen, his sister and his two children. There was talk that if Louis went to the guillotine, that particular blade would never be used again. This last bit of rumor did manage to penetrate the walls of Pierre’s preoccupation, and for a time he considered the possibilities. If he could manage to steal the very blade with which the King had been decapitated—
But he put it out of his mind. The execution, if there ever was one, might be months away. His machine was complete and waiting only to be tested. The following morning he went in search of a sheep. He finally located one in the big open-air farmers’ market, but as soon as he saw it he rejected the idea. A sheep was too large and too expensive for him to handle, and its smell would be quickly detected by his sister.
He remembered the scrawny stray dogs he sometimes saw going through garbage behind a café near his house. One of those would serve his purpose as well as a sheep, and it would be easier all around. But today, as luck would have it, he saw none of the stray dogs. There was only a boy playing by himself in the mud of a dried-up puddle.
“Where are the dogs?” Pierre asked the youth.
“Away. The owner of the café beat them and drove them away.”
“Old Arnoux? I can’t believe he’d do such a thing.”
The boy shrugged, uncaring. “Believe what you want.”
“What is your name?”
“Gustave Hune.”
“Could you find one of the dogs for me, Gustave, and bring it to me? I live near here, and I will give you a coin.”
After a bit of bickering a price was agreed upon and Gustave went off in search of a stray dog. He returned in less than an hour with a sickly-looking mongrel in tow. “This is the best I could do,” he told Pierre.
“Fine, that will be fine!” He gave the lad two coins and took the dog in tow. Getting it to the basement proved a bit more difficult. Finally he clubbed it with a piece of timber and dragged it down the steps.
He tied it to the board in the event it regained consciousness, though he was beginning to suspect the dog was dead. Then he positioned the head into the lunette and took a deep breath before releasing the blade.
It fell with a swiftness that delighted him, and though there was not as much blood as there’d been with the sheep, he was satisfied. It had been only a test, and it had worked well. The next one would be the real thing.
Through that August the revolutionary fervor grew. There was talk of all sorts of changes—even renaming the days and months—and almost every official of government was marked for the guillotine at one time or another. The executions became so frequent that some spoke of a Reign of Terror, and Pierre was giddy with delight on those frequent days when the horse-drawn tumbrel would come into view carrying five or six victims bound for the guillotine. Most were thieves, forgers and arsonists, though the vague phrase “crimes against the state” was being heard with increasing regularity.
The guillotine was moved frequently now, from one city square to another. For five days it might be placed before the ruins of the Bastille, then for a month it might do its work at the Barrière du Trône Renversé. Whenever he could, Pierre accompanied it. Occasionally he was in the work party that transported it. More frequently he stayed away from his job and went on his own to view the executions. Once when the executioner’s wicker basket fell from the cart almost at his feet, he managed to dip his hand into the blood before it was taken away.
One day Pierre saw the boy Gustave playing on the road. “I need another dog,” he said. “Bring it to my house.”
“It will cost you three coins this time.”
“Very well. Make it quick.”
An hour later the boy arrived on his doorstep with a mangy black cat. “I could not find a dog today. Will this cat do?”
Pierre hesitated only an instant. “All right. Come in and I will pay you.”
The boy followed him inside. He was still looking at the cat when Pierre brought the wooden club down across his right temple. As he fell the cat jumped from his arms and ran out the door. No matter, Pierre thought. It is the boy I want anyhow.
He dragged the limp body down the steps to the basement, avoiding the hole he’d dug earlier. He’d reached a decision with the dog that it was too great a risk to remove the bodies, even after dark. The dirt floor seemed a natural burial ground. Rosette had not set foot in the basement in months, and he could find excuses to keep her out of there.
Sometimes he wondered if the crowd was part of the ecstasy he felt, if that helped explain why the dog had not been quite so good as the others. But as he released the blade now he knew differently. He had never felt anything like this tingling that ran through his entire body, right down to his toes. It was better than the sheep, better than all those forgers and thieves.
Better because he’d done it himself.
The following day he went out to work as usual, with only a few words to Rosette over breakfast. As it happened he was assigned to a work detail at the home of Jacques Granston from the Ministry of Justice. The overbearing Granston came out of the house himself to supervise as they began to clean out a carriage house adjacent to the main living quarters.
“Move that trash out of there!” he shouted in his familiar loud voice. “We need the space for a new carriage.”
He was about to depart when his sharp eyes settled on Pierre. “You there! Weren’t you at Bicêtre the day we tested the guillotine, back in the spring?”
“I was,” Pierre admitted, wondering if he was marked somehow for life.
“I thought I recognized you,” he said with a nod of his head, as if pleased with this confirmation of his excellent memory. “We have been busy since then. Madame Guillotine has been busy.”
“Yes, sir,” Pierre murmured and moved away.
Granston stared after him for just a moment and then moved on.
Two days later Rosette returned home earlier than expected, while Pierre was still in the basement. She called out to him from the doorway and when he made his way upstairs, she asked, “What is it you do so much down there? What is that foul odor I smell sometimes?”
“I smell no odor.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” She went about the task of preparing supper for them both.
Pierre brooded all through the meal, wondering just how much she knew or suspected. When she went off to work the following day he rigged a simple trap, running a thin piece of string loosely across the top step leading to the basement. It would not trip anyone, but if it was disturbed, he’d know Rosette was spying on his activities.
It had taken him a long time to clean the blood from the blade and the mechanism. He hadn’t realized this would be such a problem, and he wondered if the revolutionary government was having the same trouble with its full-sized machine. Finally it was clean again, the blade sparkling, the grooved track free of impediments. He was ready.
There was no work that day, but he didn’t care. An execution was scheduled for the Place de Grève at noon, and he wanted to be there. He stepped carefully over his telltale string as he left the basement and let himself out the front door.
At the Place de Grève a crowd had already gathered well before the scheduled execution. Some of the faces were familiar from other days, and one he recognized was old Arnoux, owner of the café down the street from his house. “Is that you, Pierre Frayer? Come to watch another head roll?”
Pierre moistened his lips and managed a nod.
“It’s said we may get a bonus today. Three heads instead of one. Multiple executions are becoming commonplace.”
He had barely spoken when the red tumbrel came into view, pulled by two horses. One prisoner was sobbing, another had his eyes closed, his lips moving in
silent prayer. The third stood stoically. They were quickly unloaded from the cart and lined up with their backs to the guillotine. Another red cart stood waiting nearby to remove the bodies after execution. Someone in the crowd hurled a head of cabbage at the condemned men, and the spectators laughed.
The crowd was so large today that getting a good view of the scaffold was difficult. Some had climbed onto ladders, others stood on carriages and carts. Pierre had to move away from Arnoux to find a spot for himself that commanded a better view.
The first man shouted something as he was laid on the wooden plank and had his neck imprisoned by the collar. But the roar of the crowd drowned him out, swelling to almost deafening proportions as the heavy blade fell.
It was good. The second and third were even better. But they still did not match the moment of ecstasy he felt when he’d done it himself.
Watching them load the bodies into the red cart, he suddenly became aware that a pair of eyes were upon him. He turned and saw Jacques Granston from the Ministry of Justice, watching from about fifty feet away. Granston’s expression was indecipherable, but there was no doubt he had recognized Pierre.
Time to leave, he decided, heading quickly in the opposite direction. The crowd was dispersing and before he knew it he found himself in step with old Arnoux. “I couldn’t really see it when the blade fell,” the café owner told him. “The crowd was too big today.”
“Big,” Pierre agreed.
“How is your sister? I haven’t seen her lately.”
“Rosette is well.”
Arnoux spoke of their neighbors and of the effect the revolutionary activity was having on his business. “More people come for a bottle of wine or a brandy in the evenings,” he said. “They come to celebrate the changes, but they are worried, too. Some fear the revolution is getting out of hand. What do you think?”
