Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  Jacques darted into the courtyard to discover what had happened. What had happened was that the game which he believed was won was in fact lost. He was expecting Mabel, and it was Flottard, Mabel’s chief, and Hérisson, the President of the Council, who had appeared: two men still representing the established Government while he represented merely an adventure that had failed owing to a delay — a delay of five minutes.

  If he had only met Mabel in the Place de l’Etoile at the appointed hour!...

  Tears of despair filled his eyes. What could his battalion do against the troops brought by Flottard, against the two squadrons of gendarmery moving at the other end of the courtyard in front of the infantry which had not stirred, which would never stir until a General, and a General who had the right, lifted his sword?

  Hérisson had even now given an order to close every gate, every outlet. He was determined to allow no single person to escape. He would know how to avenge outraged liberty. And his first victim was indicated. It meant the arrest of Major Jacques. But it was no easy task in face of the battalion of colonial troops ready to die for their old leader.

  It was the War Minister who stepped forward. He addressed himself to Daniel. He ordered him to hand over Major Jacques.

  “Never, monsieur le Ministre, I am a soldier. I am not a policeman.”

  In the courtyard every eye was fixed on the tragic scene. Major Jacques, realizing that all was lost, folded his arms across his breast, and impassive, stern, stood waiting the last blow of fate. His companions in arms pressed round him and swore never to desert him, but to follow him to the end of the world.

  “Daniel, the end of the world for me is the firing party,” he said in a calm voice. “We have both done our duty, and you are sufficiently compromised, my dear friend. Your fate, I fear, will scarcely be more fortunate than mine. Hand me over, Daniel.”

  “Never! Listen to the mutterings of my men.”

  “The game is up. I entreat you to let me pass. I would have no unnecessary blood shed on my account. And you cannot imagine that I should allow French soldiers to fight French soldiers.... Good-bye, my friends.”

  Then Daniel took his sword and broke it across his knee and strode over and threw it at the feet of the War Minister and M. Flottard, the civil head of the military government of Paris.

  “Here is my sword and here is your prisoner.”

  Jacques took a step nearer. Two gendarmes put the handcuffs on.

  Meantime Pagès, Coudry and the extremist majority, assembled in the Orangery, appointed the members of a Committee of Public Safety, and restored the death penalty for political offences.

  CHAPTER XX

  THE NEW TERROR

  WHEN THE FIRST “tumbril” containing a group of prisoners sentenced to death, hands bound behind their backs, hair cut to lay bare their necks, emerged on the quay from the gate of the Conciergerie Prison, the immense hum of the populace that had resounded from the river’s banks since dawn that morning was suddenly hushed. Paris became silent.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon. The sun was pouring down like a furnace. Oh, the death penalty was no longer carried out in the dusk of early morn! Now it dealt its blows in broad daylight, and the procession made a sort of mourning retinue to the Place de la Concorde, once more called the Place de la Revolution.

  The only difference was that the ‘tumbril” was a motor lorry of forty horse-power. It was drawn by no worn-out hack, and a chauffeur drove slowly, very slowly, this lorry of death. Civic guards with fixed bayonets stood on this moving platform with the prisoners. Other guards, but these mounted guards, led the way and brought up the rear.

  And blood was about to flow — a great deal of blood. “The Republic needs a little blood-letting or it is done for,” said Coudry; and in spite of Pagès’s efforts the National Assembly meeting in the Orangery at Versailles after the arrest of Major Jacques and his chief accomplices proclaimed the Republic in danger at its first sitting, and restored the death penalty for enemies of the State and the guillotine as a permanent structure in the heart of Paris.

  It was in vain that Pagès, the great orator of the Extreme Left, raised his voice against a sanguinary law which would be a law aimed at suspects; it was in vain that he implored them not to “stain the robe of Republican victory on that great day,” Mulot made answer that the robe was red and the blood on it would not be seen. The utmost concession that he was able to obtain was that prisoners should not be executed wholesale by machine-gun fire, and their trial should retain some appearance of legal form. Pagés who had carried a vote establishing a Committee of Public Safety, and been elected its President, was obliged to remain silent to avoid an immediate downfall.

  For a fortnight the remnants of the National Assembly, organized into a sort of Convention, working day and night, passed law after law exceeding the worst memories of the Commune and even the first French Revolution. The Convention had no need to concern itself with the President of the Republic, who was ignored and on the first day resigned his office. Paris was split into sixty divisions, and the administration of these divisions handed over wholly to the clubs. In each division twelve Commissioners were elected, bound to render a daily account of their stewardship to their electors.

  The chief function of these Commissioners was to bring the names of suspected persons before the Vigilance Committee elected by the Assembly in Versailles, and sitting in Paris. These suspects were sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal on warrants which were issued by the Vigilance Committee.

  The members of the Revolutionary Tribunal, assembled in the great room of the Supreme Court in Paris, were selected by the Committee of Public Safety from a list furnished by the divisions, each division electing one of the members on this list. No appeal was allowed against sentences and executions were carried out within twenty-four hours.... Oh, the divisions had the game in their own hands!

  They were the masters of Paris, especially since Flottard, the civil head of the military government of Paris, had caused arms to be distributed to them with instructions to train as large a number of civic guards as could be relied upon.

  And while as far as possible they moved the regular army away from the great towns and massed it on the frontiers after issuing to the world a bombastic proclamation of peace, the Committee of Public Safety sent Departmental Commissioners into every district to organize, or attempt to organize, in the provinces the same system of divisions and civic guards.

  A number of large towns dominated by extremists at once followed Paris; but in other towns a strong opposition became manifest which declared its intention to save France from revolution.

  The Commissioners of the Committee of Public Safety complained that in these “centres of reaction” they could make no headway without appealing to the lowest elements of the population: “They do not believe in your power. They think your revolution will be short lived. Some sensational incident is necessary to galvanize the people.”

  The sensational incident occurred. It took the form of the first “tumbril.” And in order to reach the Place de la Revolution it made the tour of the Boulevards.

  At a corner of the extended Boulevard Haussman, in a room in the Café Werther, several leading lights of the day were gathered to observe, behind a raised curtain, the passage of the procession and the impression that it made. There was considerable argument and some uneasiness.

  Coudry fulminated against the Committee of Public Safety and in particular against Pagés whom he accused of moderatism. It was Pagés fault if they had not raised Paris to white heat, and if they had not organized the demonstrations which were essential at such a time.

  The rage of the young revolutionary only increased when Cravely, who came in to report upon the position to Mulot, now a delegate of the Ministry of the Interior in Hérisson’s place — there were no Ministers now — expatiated blissfully on the people’s calm. They were both sat upon.

  “Then you are satisfied!... True, the people are calm
.... They are nowhere to be seen. They are hiding behind their windows.... Then you think it is for this that we of the Vigilance Committee are working, do you! — to allow you to organize a procession in which those who follow it seem to be mourning the victims of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Damn it all, we must make the people gallop behind the tumbril. You must let your rowdy element break loose.... But I see only soldiers and civic guards. The Boulevards ought to be crammed with the mob.”

  He stormed. He foamed at the mouth. Accustomed to his outbursts, Mulot shrugged his shoulders, stroked his moustache, and sipped his brandy.

  Just then Pagès came in. He was very pale.

  “Ah, here comes the bourgeois,” greeted Coudry.

  “The bourgeois is yourself,” returned Pagès in a serious voice, taking a seat and wiping with his check handkerchief the icy perspiration that trickled down his pallid forehead. “It is you who bring about a bourgeois revolution and repeat all the blunders of the bourgeoisie.”

  “If you don’t like our revolution leave it,” retorted Coudry.

  “You terrify me, Coudry, you and your friends. You are rushing us along a path the end of which no man can see.”

  “That’s the nature of revolutions, my dear fellow,” returned Coudry. “I tell you again you are trying to put too much system into the Revolution. That will be your undoing. Ought not Subdamoun to have been the first to pay the penalty? Ought he not to have been sent in the first tumbril as a fitting homage to him? What are you waiting for? That is what the people of Paris do not understand. You have given them his accomplices and you seem to wish to spare the chief actor.”

  “Certainly I will give you Subdamoun, and even his chief supporters, the Lavobourgs and other traitors to the Republic,” said Pagès, “and I am not the man to delay their punishment for a moment.”

  “I am responsible for that,” said Mulot, “and you know quite well why. It is not to our interest to hand them over to the executioner until we have discovered everything about the plot. The prisoners may still be useful to us for confronting certain suspects. Moreover, everything will soon be finished — at least I hope so. Don’t you agree, Cravely?”

  The head of the Political Detective Service had been for a tour round the Boulevards and had just come in.

  “The one missing man whom we want, and badly want, is Baron d’Askof,” he said. “Baron d’Askof was the organizer of the whole thing at the beautiful Sonia’s house. Now, I’m pretty sure that we are going to lay hands on him to-day or at latest tomorrow. We shall learn also the whereabouts of the de Touchais family, and before a couple of days are over the Marchioness and her adopted daughter, Subdamoun’s fiancée, will be lodged with the Major in the Conciergerie Prison.”

  “What does Sonia in the Conciergerie Prison say?” asked Coudry.

  “It seems that she is making merry. Yes, she holds receptions, and they play charades and forfeits.”

  “Rotten play actress,” said Coudry with a look of disgust.

  “I hear she was d’Askof’s mistress.... As to d’Askof, I will give you a word of advice, Cravely. Try to hand him over bound hand and foot within twenty-four hours or I won’t answer for you.”

  “Oh,” said Cravely, turning pale, “I think I am pretty sure....”

  “Yes, what I am telling you is for your own good. I warn you that the Vigilance Committee and the Committee of the Detective Service have decided to ask the Committee of Public Safety for your dismissal and even an inquiry into your work if you have not arrested d’Askof by to-morrow night at latest.

  “We on the Committee are convinced that he is the key of the whole business. It was he who was the essential intermediary between Subdamoun and all the others.... If you do not hand him over to us you are making yourself his accomplice.”

  “I have been telling him so for the last week,” corroborated Mulot. “Though Cravely handed over at Versailles in the course of the day about a hundred of Subdamoun’s supporters, not all small fry, and showed considerable zeal, and though he is my chief representative, as he used to be Carlier’s, the Committee of Public Safety would have sacked him before now had he not promised us d’Askof and the Marchioness de Touchais.”

  “You shall have them,” declared Cravely. “I swear, gentlemen, that I am doing my utmost. I am waiting here to see an agent who is to report when and how he can arrest the Baron, for he is still in Paris.”

  As he spoke three shrill whistles rang out in the Boulevard. Cravely went over to Coudry at the window.

  “I really believe that that’s my man,” said the head of the Political Detective Service in increasing agitation, for the thought of losing his position and an inquiry into his work had completely staggered him. He drew aside the curtain and made some sign. The next moment a squalid-looking street urchin threw his cap into the air as he turned his eyes towards the window, and after giving three loud whistles, ran off.

  “Is that young blackguard your agent?” asked Coudry.

  “No, that young blackguard is my agent’s scout. His name is Mazeppa, a hideous little beast who has been very useful to us. He has just given me the tip that it is important for me not to leave the café, for the agent himself will be coming to see me here at any moment.” Then, lowering his voice, he added: “I am anxious, M. Coudry, to satisfy you and be useful to you and the nation. I have a tremendously extensive staff for the maintenance of order. Every division is under arms, as you can see, and is lined up in every street. It is the people themselves who maintain order; they have to some extent been turned into soldiers and they cannot therefore join in demonstrations. But if you wish me to let loose my rowdy element I have them all ready at the Place de la Revolution.”

  “Your rowdy element! — we know them. There’s no reason to bring them in as long as the streets remain quiet, otherwise we shall be accused of provocation,” returned Coudry, drumming the window with his gnarled fingers.

  “Well, I have a counter-demonstration some three hundred yards from here waiting the course of events. I will send them the order to make a clamor when the tumbril passes.... Here’s my man,” he added suddenly, and quickly left the room.

  Coudry endeavored to pick out from the crowd which encumbered the pavements behind the double line of civic guards the man whom Cravely had called “my man,” but saw nothing that could enlighten him in any way.

  CHAPTER XXI

  WHEREIN WE MEET OLD FRIENDS AGAIN

  CRAVELY WAS STOPPED in the corridor by one of his agents, who had come to report progress. He took the opportunity to give him orders for the leader of the counter-demonstration: “Tell him that they must shout, ‘Down with the murderers! Long live Subdamoun!’ and let there be a scrimmage until you get to the Place de la Revolution, where you will let loose the rowdy element.”

  “What must these fellows shout?” asked the agent.

  “Long live the Commune!”

  “I understand,” said the agent, knowing that his chief had just left Coudry, who was beginning to change his views towards the Commune.

  Cravely went downstairs, but failed to discover the man for whom he was looking. He turned to one of the managers, who was no other than Lavobourg’s late manservant. The ex-flunkey had been forced by hard times into the public-house line. But he could give Cravely no information.

  “I am going up to the first floor,” said Cravely. “If you see Daddy Peanuts tell him where I am.”

  “Very good,” was the reply.

  Cravely did not stand on ceremony with the manager, who belonged to the police — had turned informer — and escaped his master’s fate by furnishing such particulars of Lavobourg’s life as the Vigilance Committee and Detective Service required, When Cravely went upstairs the manager dropped his napkin, and as he picked it up said to a customer, a curious-looking person, whose hair, beard, cap and general appearance suggested a student of the Russian revolutionary type, apparently dozing at a table on which lay the remnants of a frugal lunch:

  �
�Look out!”

  “What’s that?” said the customer with a start, opening his heavy, short-sighted eyes behind his huge spectacles.

  “Look out, Daddy is coming. He has an appointment with the head of the Detective Service.”

  The customer made a movement to slip away. “Don’t go. I assure you that no one will recognize you,” said the manager, clearing the table.

  “Oh, how can one tell with him,” returned the other. “Anyway, time will show — it’s worth risking it. If only the laundress would come. What can she be doing? She is more than half an hour late.”

  “It’s not easy to get through the streets just now.... Look, here she is!”

  And in fact a door at the other end of the café looking on to a back street had just opened and a little laundry-maid, wearing a cap over a wonderful mop of black hair, and carrying a large basket on her arm, came in, crossed the end of the room, and went down a staircase leading into the basement.

  The manager left the room for a while. He soon returned and said:

  “You are wanted on the telephone.”

  The customer rose from the table and also descended the staircase. But on the way to the telephone boxes a door stood slightly ajar, and he opened it, entered and closed it after him. He was in a small room serving as a lumber room for linen in which also laundry accounts were settled. He kissed the girl who stood before him.

  “I thought you were never coming, Vera.”

  “That’s a wonderful make-up,” said the Baroness. “Had you not spoken I shouldn’t have known you.”

  “I’m glad of that. Daddy is not far away.”

  “You don’t mean it,” she exclaimed excitedly.

  Her husband calmed her.