The Crystal Stopper by Maurice Leblanc (good book club books .txt) 📗

have confidence, even at this moment... Be sure and let him know, won’t you?... I am positive that he will not let me die. I am certain of it...”

They guessed, from the fixed look in his eyes, that he saw Lupin, that he felt Lupin’s shadow prowling around and seeking an inlet through which to get to him. And never was anything more touching than the sight of that stripling—clad in the strait-jacket, with his arms and legs bound, guarded by thousands of men—whom the executioner already held in his inexorable hand and who, nevertheless, hoped on.

Anguish wrung the hearts of all the beholders. Their eyes were dimmed with tears:

“Poor little chap!” stammered some one.

Prasville, touched like the rest and thinking of Clarisse, repeated, in a whisper:

“Poor little chap!”

But the hour struck, the preparations were finished. They set out.

The two processions met in the passage. Vaurheray, on seeing Gilbert, snapped out:

“I say, kiddie, the governor’s chucked us!”

And he added a sentence which nobody, save Prasville, was able to understand:

“Expect he prefers to pocket the proceeds of the crystal stopper.”

They went down the staircases. They crossed the prison-yards. An endless, horrible distance.

And, suddenly, in the frame of the great doorway, the wan light of day, the rain, the street, the outlines of houses, while far-off sounds came through the awful silence.

They walked along the wall, to the corner of the boulevard.

A few steps farther Vaucheray started back: he had seen!

Gilbert crept along, with lowered head, supported by an executioner’s assistant and by the chaplain, who made him kiss the crucifix as he went.

There stood the guillotine.

“No, no,” shouted Gilbert, “I won’t... I won’t... Help! Help!”

A last appeal, lost in space.

The executioner gave a signal. Vaucheray was laid hold of, lifted, dragged along, almost at a run.

And then came this staggering thing: a shot, a shot fired from the other side, from one of the houses opposite.

The assistants stopped short.

The burden which they were dragging had collapsed in their arms.

“What is it? What’s happened?” asked everybody.

“He’s wounded...”

Blood spurted from Vaucheray’s forehead and covered his face.

He spluttered:

“That’s done it... one in a thousand! Thank you, governor, thank you.”

“Finish him off! Carry him there!” said a voice, amid the general confusion.

“But he’s dead!”

“Get on with it... finish him off!”

Tumult was at its height, in the little group of magistrates, officials and policemen. Every one was giving orders:

“Execute him!... The law must take its course!... We have no right to delay! It would be cowardice!... Execute him!”

“But the man’s dead!”

“That makes no difference!... The law must be obeyed!... Execute him!”

The chaplain protested, while two warders and Prasville kept their eyes on Gilbert. In the meantime, the assistants had taken up the corpse again and were carrying it to the guillotine.

“Hurry up!” cried the executioner, scared and hoarse-voiced. “Hurry up! ... And the other one to follow... Waste no time...”

He had not finished speaking, when a second report rang out. He spun round on his heels and fell, groaning:

“It’s nothing... a wound in the shoulder... Go on... The next one’s turn!”

But his assistants were running away, yelling with terror. The space around the guillotine was cleared. And the prefect of police, rallying his men, drove everybody back to the prison, helter-skelter, like a disordered rabble: the magistrates, the officials, the condemned man, the chaplain, all who had passed through the archway two or three minutes before.

In the meanwhile, a squad of policemen, detectives and soldiers were rushing upon the house, a little old-fashioned, three-storied house, with a ground-floor occupied by two shops which happened to be empty. Immediately after the first shot, they had seen, vaguely, at one of the windows on the second floor, a man holding a rifle in his hand and surrounded with a cloud of smoke.

Revolver-shots were fired at him, but missed him. He, standing calmly on a table, took aim a second time, fired from the shoulder; and the crack of the second report was heard. Then he withdrew into the room.

Down below, as nobody answered the peal at the bell, the assailants demolished the door, which gave way almost immediately. They made for the staircase, but their onrush was at once stopped, on the first floor, by an accumulation of beds, chairs and other furniture, forming a regular barricade and so close-entangled that it took the aggressors four or five minutes to clear themselves a passage.

Those four or five minutes lost were enough to render all pursuit hopeless. When they reached the second floor they heard a voice shouting from above:

“This way, friends! Eighteen stairs more. A thousand apologies for giving you so much trouble!”

They ran up those eighteen stairs and nimbly at that! But, at the top, above the third story, was the garret, which was reached by a ladder and a trapdoor. And the fugitive had taken away the ladder and bolted the trapdoor.

The reader will not have forgotten the sensation created by this amazing action, the editions of the papers issued in quick succession, the newsboys tearing and shouting through the streets, the whole metropolis on edge with indignation and, we may say, with anxious curiosity.

But it was at the headquarters of police that the excitement developed into a paroxysm. Men flung themselves about on every side. Messages, telegrams, telephone calls followed one upon the other.

At last, at eleven o’clock in the morning, there was a meeting in the office of the prefect of police, and Prasville was there. The chief-detective read a report of his inquiry, the results of which amounted to this: shortly before midnight yesterday some one had rung at the house on the Boulevard Arago. The portress, who slept in a small room on the ground-floor, behind one of the shops pulled the rope. A man came and tapped at her door. He said that he had come from the police on an urgent matter concerning to-morrow’s execution. The portress opened the door and was at once attacked, gagged and bound.

Ten minutes later a lady and gentleman who lived on the first floor and