A Sharpness on the Neck

'You have not been decapitated. Nor have you yet been honored with induction into the illustrious ranks of the nosferatu—though I fear,' I added as I peered into his eyes, 'that Constantia may have brought you rather closer to that goal than I intended. Yes, I see. Never mind, now I begin to understand. Where is she, by the way?' And I glared around angrily in search of my sometimes deranged assistant.

'How in hell should I know?' Radcliffe stared at me. Then his voice began to break, with the relief of strain. 'But I remember—the scaffold—'

When I thought about it, the way my client must have perceived the process of his rescue, I had to admit to myself that he really had been under a tremendous strain, that all the details of my plan had not been executed to perfection, and that he was perhaps entitled to some consideration on that account. I launched into a hasty explanation of the key points of the seeming miracle:

'You remember that you stumbled and fell, even as you stepped up onto the platform?'

'I… yes.' His hands were trembling now, and he was looking for a place to sit down.

'You fell because you were tripped. You tumbled into one of the long baskets, which was practically concealed from the onlookers behind another basket whose lid stood open.'

Radcliffe, who had found a stool, was listening, open-mouthed.

'The body that was lifted out of the basket, slammed on the plank, and bound in place, then shoved into the machine, was not yours. It was one of these!' And my open hand thumped one of the anonymous dummies standing nearby. To which this'—a long forefinger stabbed at the ghastly head on its low shelf—'had been attached.'

At the museum, Marie and Melanie had done all the work on Radcliffe's head with their own hands, pouring the molten wax into the plaster mold Marie had brought back from the prison. Then, knowing that the young man's life depended on their skill, they had painstakingly attached some of Radcliffe's own hair, inserted the glass eyes, and administered the final touches with shaping tools and paint. None of the other workers in the shop had questioned Marie's orders or concerned themselves with her behavior. They were perfectly willing to take orders from the woman who was about to inherit—dare I say it?—the whole ball of wax.

In the museum storeroom the young American was beginning to weep—tears were somewhat more common then—with the relief of strain. 'But I felt someone pulling on my hair—lifting my head—'

'You are confused,' I explained in a soothing voice. 'That was a little earlier, when I tripped you and threw you into the basket.'

'You!'

The intricate performance on the scaffold of course had required the secret cooperation of the whole crew of executioners who happened to be present on the platform.

'But there were only two of us, as you undoubtedly remember.' I smiled modestly, proud of what I still considered a well-nigh perfect stratagem.

'You—!' He repeated, staring at me.

'Yes, of course I was one of them! You had not seen me in daylight before, and you certainly were not expecting to see me there, in that costume. Also I had allowed myself to age a couple of decades in as many days—we have that privilege, you know.'

'And the other executioner?'

'Oh, that was Citizen Sanson, right enough. One of them—a member of the younger generation, who have now completely taken over the family profession. One of them and one of us. Once Constantia and I hit on the proper sort of bribery, he proved quite susceptible—much easier to deal with than the elder head of the family would have been.'

And in fact poor Gabriel Sanson had been quite madly in love with Constantia by that time, ready to risk everything for her, as poor foolish breathers so often are. Radu's people, his spies, for all their cunning efforts, did not get wind of the great plot involving a key person in the matter of executions: the executioner himself.

Methodically I provided my trembling client with more details of the deception. My vampiric strength had enabled me to handle the box containing his live, unconscious body as if it were empty. To prevent onlookers from noticing that Radcliffe's 'corpse' still had a head, that wicker box was transported with its contents directly to the cemetery rather than being dumped into a cart at the base of the guillotine, where its contents would have been exposed.

The cart driver, who was partially in on the plot, had dumped Radcliffe's body, still living and intact, in a place somewhat apart from that where he conveyed the quieter majority of his load.

'I suppose you may have been starting to come round by the time they put you in the tumbril, or maybe even a little before that. My intention was to spare you that, but… I suppose Constantia failed to give you any clear explanation of our plan.'

'You mean I'm not a… a…'

I bowed to him slightly. 'I trust you will survive the disappointment. You have not yet been honored with the opportunity to join the illustrious race of the nosferatu.'

The plan as designed had called for either Melanie or Marie to pick up the wax head in the cemetery, as well as seek out Radcliffe there, and, if he was in sufficient possession of his wits, give him his forged papers and some new clothes. But the panicky wagon driver, working in darkness, had dumped him in the wrong place. Then Philip, on recovering his wits, had taken himself away, and Marie, arriving an hour or so late, unavoidably delayed, hadn't been able to find him.

Radcliffe, listening in the storeroom, was not yet wholly satisfied. He kept feeling his neck, turning and nodding his head, as if he feared they might still somehow come apart. 'But… there was blood spurting, gushing… I remember that.'

'Your eyes were easily deceived; and so were my brother Radu's, in glaring daylight and at a little distance. What you saw was not exactly blood. Just now when you were looking at your head, there on the shelf—no doubt you took notice of the tubes.'

They had been fabricated from what was then called caoutchouc, an early form of industrial rubber. With such tubes and a couple of bladders inside the dummy, it had proven eminently possible to create the appropriate brief jets of 'blood.'

And of course the wax model of Radcliffe's head had been provided with an internal cavity, filled with a liquid having much the appearance of fresh blood. So that when the executioner's tall assistant lifted it out carefully, by the short dark hair, the red flow drained out visibly for the crowd to watch.

'Real blood of course would have coagulated and changed color long before we were ready to use it. Coming up with a good substitute required some effort, but Constantia and I know something of the subject. We settled on the reddish juice of blood oranges, darkened with a little something else.'

I thumped the wax head familiarly on the temple. 'Now that this object has served its primary purpose, and perhaps after it is carried in some parade as an illustration of Revolutionary justice, there seems no reason why it should not go on display along with the others in the museum. Perhaps as the head of some minor anonymous figure in one of the groupings. But I believe Marie still wanted to do some retouching on it first. The tubes, of course, should go. They might make someone suspicious.'

Today, as on most days, the museum opened early in the morning, and already there were customers out in the public rooms. Radcliffe, listening to them from the storeroom, thought it plain that they took seriously their concerns about whether the wax effigies were really up-to-date and accurate. The political correctness of the display was of perhaps vital importance to the proprietors.

'The day quickly grows bright, and it is time for me to seek a deeper shadow—where I can wait.' I looked about thoughtfully.

Radcliffe was on the point of asking, but did not, just what his mentor was intending to wait for.

Before dropping into obscurity, I reminded Radcliffe of the next step in the plan, and handed him some money and a set of beautifully forged identity papers; he was now Citizen Joseph Tallien, a native of Martinique. A wardrobe in the storeroom provided him with a change of clothes.

The young man's eyes grew wide as he looked at the money—gold coin, as well as Revolutionary assignats; the latter were almost worthless, but good Revolutionary patriots carried them about. For the purpose of bribes, the old gold coin was much preferred—even though possession of it was seriously illegal. Only precious stones were more readily accepted.