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!”
Colophon
Fantômas
was published in 1911 by
Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain.
It was translated from French in 1915 by
Cranstoun Metcalfe.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Dylan Werner,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2009 by
Suzanne Shell and Distributed Proofreaders
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
HathiTrust Digital Library.
The cover page is adapted from
Fantômas,
a painting completed in 1911 by
Anonymous.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
April 21, 2025, 3:55 a.m.
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