“I’d made a fair record with the Canadians, and had a couple of good friends in the War Department, so I drew a consolation prize in the form of a captaincy of infantry with assignment to liaison duty with the Censure Militaire.
“The French officers in the bureau were first-rate scouts and we got along famously. One day one of ’em told me of a queer case they’d had passed along by the British M.I. It seemed there was a queer sort of bird, a Russian by the name of Konstantin, who’d been making whoopee for some time, but covering up his tracks so skillfully they’d never been able to put salt on his tail. He’d been posing as an émigré and living in the Russian colony in Paris, always with plenty of money, but no visible employment. After the way the Bolshies had let the Allies down everything Russian was regarded with suspicion, and this bird had been a source of several sleepless nights for the French Intelligence. Finally, it seemed, they’d got deadwood on him.
“An elderly Russian who’d been billeted in the censor’s bureau and always been above suspicion had been found dead in the streets one morning, a suicide, and the police had hardly got his body to the morgue when a letter from him came to the chief. In it he confessed that he’d been systematically stealing information from censored documents and turning it over to Konstantin, who was really an agent for the Soviets working with the Heinies. Incidentally, the old fellow named several other Russians who’d been corrupted by Konstantin. It seemed his game was to lend them money when they were hard up, which they generally were, then get them to do a little innocuous spying for him in return for the loan. After that it was easy. He had only to threaten to denounce them in order to keep them in his power and make them go on gathering information for him, and of course the poor fish were more and more firmly entangled in the net with each job they did for him.
“Just why old Captain Malakoff chose to kill himself and denounce Konstantin wasn’t clear, but the Frenchman figured that his conscience had been troubling him for some time and he’d finally gotten to the point where he couldn’t live with it any longer.
“I’d been sitting back, not paying much attention to Lieutenant Fouchet’s story, but when he mentioned the suicide’s name my interest was roused. Of course, Malakoff isn’t an unusual Russian name, but this man had been an officer in the Imperial army in his younger days, and had been taken in the French service practically as an act of charity. The details seemed to fit my case. ‘I used to know a girl named Malakoff,’ I said. ‘Her father was in the censorship, too, I believe.’
“Fouchet smiled in that queer way he had, showing all his teeth at once beneath his little black mustache. I always suspected he was proud of the bridge work an American dentist had put in for him. ‘Was the young lady’s name Sonia, by any chance?’ he asked.
“That brought me up standing. ‘Yes,’ I answered.
“‘Ah? It is doubtless the daughter of our estimable suicide, in that case,’ he replied. ‘Attend me: Two weeks ago she married with this Konstantin while she was on furlough from her unit at the front. Almost immediately after her marriage she rejoined her unit, and each day she has written her husband a letter detailing minutely the regiments and arms of service to which the wounded men she carried have belonged. These letters have, of course, been held for us by the British, and voilà, our case is complete. We are prepared to spring our trap. Captain Malakoff we buried with full military honors; no one suspects he has confessed. Tonight or tomorrow we all arrest this Konstantin and his accomplices.’ He paused and smiled unpleasantly; then: ‘It is dull work for the troops stationed here in Paris,’ he added. ‘They will appreciate a little target practice.’
“‘But—but what of Sonia—Madame Konstantin?’ I asked.
“‘I think that we can let the lady go,’ he said. ‘Doubtless she was but a tool in her husband’s hands; the same influence which drove her father from his loyalty may have been exerted on her; he is a very devil with the women, this Konstantin. Besides, several of his aides have confessed, so we have ample evidence on which to send him to the firing-party without the so pitiful little spy-letters his wife wrote to him. She must be dismissed from the service, of course, and never may she serve in any capacity, either with the civil or military governments, but at least she will be spared a court-martial and public disgrace. Am I not kind, my friend?’
“A few days later he came to me with a serious face. ‘The man Konstantin has been arrested,’ he said, ‘but his wife, hélas, she is no more. The night before last she died in their apartment—fell down the stairs and broke her lovely neck, I’m told—and yesterday they buried her in Saint Sébastien. Courage, my friend!’ he added as he saw my face. ‘These incidents are most regrettable, but—there is much sorrow in the world today—c’est la guerre.’
“He looked at me a moment; then: ‘You loved her?’ he asked softly.
“‘Better than my life,’ I answered. ‘It was only the thought of her that brought me through—she dragged me in and saved my life one night out by Lens when the Jerries knocked me over with an air-bomb.’
“‘Mon pauvre garçon!’ he sympathized. Then: ‘Consider me, my friend, there is a rumor—oh, a very unsubstantiated rumor, but still a rumor, that poor Madame Konstantin did not die an entirely natural death. An aged widow-neighbor of hers has related stories of a woman’s cries for mercy, as though she were most brutally beaten, coming from the Konstantin apartment. One does not know this is a fact. The old talk much, and frequently without good reason, but—’
“‘The dog!’ I interrupted. ‘The cowardly dog, if he hit Sonia I’ll—’
“Fouchet broke in. ‘I shall attend the execution tomorrow,’ he informed me. ‘Would not you like to do the same?’
“Why I said yes I’ve no idea, but something, some force outside me, seemed to urge me to accept the invitation, and so it was arranged that I should go.
“A few hooded street lamps were battling ineffectually with the foggy darkness when we arrived at the Santé Prison a little after three next morning. Several motor cars were parked in the quadrangle and a sergeant assigned us seats in one of them. After what seemed an interminable wait, we saw a little knot of people come from one of the narrow doors leading into the courtyard—several officers in blue and black uniforms, a civilian handcuffed to two gendarmes, and a priest—and enter a car toward the head of the procession. In a moment we were under way, and I caught myself comparing our motorcade to a funeral procession on its way to the cemetery.
“A pale streak of dawn was showing in the east, bringing the gabled roofs and towers out in faint silhouette as we swung into the Place de la Nation. The military chauffeurs put on speed and we were soon in the Cours de Vincennes, the historic old fortification looming gloomy and forbidding against the sky as we dashed noiselessly on to the champ d’execution, where two companies of infantry in horizon blue were drawn up facing each other, leaving a narrow lane between. At the farther end of this aisle a stake of two-by-four had been driven into the turf, and behind and a little to the left stood a two-horse black-curtained van, from the rear of which could be seen protruding the butt of a deal coffin, rough and unfinished as a hardware merchant’s packing-case. A trio of unshaven workmen in black smocks lounged beside the wagon, a fourth stood at the horses’ heads.
“As our party alighted a double squad of musicians stationed at the lower end of the files of troops tossed their trumpets upward with a triple flourish and began sounding a salute and the soldiers came to present arms. I could see the tiny drops of misty rain shining like gouts of sweat on the steel helmets and bayonet blades as we advanced between the rows of infantry. A chill of dread ran up my spine as I glanced at the soldiers facing us on each side. Their faces were grave and stern, their eyes harder than the bayonets on their rifles. Cold, implacable hatred, pitiless as death’s own self, was in every countenance. This was a spy, a secret enemy of France, who marched to his death between their perfectly aligned ranks. The wet and chilly morning air seemed surcharged with an
emanation of concentrated hate and ruthlessness.
“When the prisoner was almost at the stake he suddenly drew back against the handcuffs binding him to his guard and said something over his shoulder to the colonel marching directly behind him. The officer first shook his head, then consulted with a major walking at his left, finally nodded shortly. ‘Monsieur le Capitaine,’ a dapper little sub-lieutenant saluted me, ‘the prisoner asks to speak with you. It is irregular, but the colonel has granted permission. However, you may talk with him only in the presence of a French officer’—he looked coldly at me, as though suspecting I were in some way implicated in the spy’s plots—‘you understand that, of course?’
“‘I have no wish to talk with him—’ I began, but Fouchet interrupted.
“‘Do so, my friend,’ he urged. ‘Who knows, he may have news of Madame Sonia, your morte amoureuse. Come.
“‘I will act as witness to the conversation and stand surety for Captain Tanis,’ he added to the subaltern with frigid courtesy.
“They exchanged polite salutes and decidedly impolite glares, and Fouchet and I advanced to where the prisoner and the priest stood between the guarding gendarmes.
“Even if I had known nothing of him—if I’d merely passed him casually on the boulevard—Konstantin would have repelled me. He was taller than the average and thin with a thinness that was something more than the sign of malnutrition; this skeletal gauntness seemed to have a distinct implication of evil. His hat had been removed, but from neck to feet he was arrayed in unrelieved black, a black shirt bound round the collar with a black cravat, a black serge suit of good cut and material, shoes of dull-black leather, even gloves of black kid on his long, thin hands. He had a sardonic face, long, smooth-shaven, its complexion an unhealthy yellowish olive. His eyes were black as carbon, and as lacking in luster, overhung by arched brows of intense, dead black, like his hair, which was parted in the middle and brushed sharply back from the temples, leaving a point at the center of the forehead. This inverted triangle led down to a long, hooked nose, and that to a long, sharp chin. Between the two there ran a wide mouth with thin, cruel lips of unnatural, brilliant red, looking, against the sallow face, as though they had been freshly rouged. An evil face it was, evil with a fathomless understanding of sin and passion, and pitiless as the visage of a predatory beast.
“He smiled briefly, almost imperceptibly, as I approached. ‘Captain Donald Tanis, is it not?” he asked in a low, mocking voice.
“I bowed without replying.
“‘Monsieur le Capitaine,’ he proceeded, ‘I have sent for you because I, of all the people in the world, can give you a word of comfort—and my time for disinterested philanthropy grows short. A little while ago I had the honor to take to wife a young lady in whom you had been deeply interested. Indeed I think we might make bold to say you were in love with her, nicht wahr?’
“As I still returned no answer he opened that cavernous, red-lipped mouth of his and gave a low, almost soundless chuckle, repulsive as the grinning of a skull.
“‘Jawohl,’ he continued, ‘let us waive the tender confession. Whatever your sentiments were toward her, there was no doubt of hers toward you. She married me, but it was you she loved. The marriage was her father’s doing. He was in my debt, and I pressed him for my pound of flesh, only in this instance it was a hundred pounds or so of flesh—his daughter’s. He’d acted as an agent of mine at the Censure Militaire until he’d worn out his usefulness, so I threatened to denounce him unless he would arrange a marriage for me with the charming Sonia. Having gotten what I wanted, I had no further use for him. The sad-eyed old fool would have been a wet blanket on the ardor of my honeymoon. I told him to get out—gave him his choice between disposing of himself or facing a French firing-squad.
“‘It seems now that he chose to be revenged on me at the same time he gave himself the happy dispatch. Dear, dear, who would have thought the sniveling old dotard would have had the spirit?
“‘But we digress and the gentlemen grow impatient,’ he nodded toward the file of troops. ‘We Russians have a saying that the husband who fails to beat his wife is lacking in outward manifestation of affection.’ He chuckled soundlessly again. ‘I do not think my bride had cause for such complaint.
“‘What would you have given,’ he asked in a low, mocking whisper, ‘to have stood in my place that night three weeks ago? To have torn the clothing off her shuddering body, to have cooled her fevered blushes with your kisses, then melted her maidenly coolness with burning lips—to have strained her trembling form within your arms, then, in the moment of surrender, to have thrust her from you, beaten her down, hurled her to the floor and ground her underfoot till she crept suppliant to you on bare and bleeding knees, holding up her bruised and bleeding face to your blows or your caresses, as you chose to give them—utterly submissive, wholly, unconditionally yours, to do with as you wished?’
“He paused again and I could see little runnels of sweat trickling down his high, narrow brow as he shook with passion at the picture his words had evoked.
“‘Nu,’ he laughed shortly. ‘I fear my love became too violent at last. The fish in the pan has no fear of strangling in the air. I can tell you this without fear of increasing my penalty. Sonia’s death certificate declares she died of a broken neck resulting from a fall downstairs. Bah! She died because I beat her! I beat her to death, do you hear, my fish-blooded American, my chaste, chivalrous worshiper of women, and as she died beneath my blows, she called on you to come and save her!
“‘You thought she stopped her letters because she had grown tired? Bah, again. She did it out of pride, because she thought that you no longer cared. At my command her father intercepted the letters you sent to her Paris home—I read them all, even your halting, trembling proposal, which she never saw or even suspected. It was amusing, I assure you.
“‘You’ve come to see me die, hein? Then have your fill of seeing it. I saw Sonia die; heard her call for help to the lover who never came, saw her lower her pride to call out to the man she thought had jilted her as I rained blow on blow upon her!’
“Abruptly his manner changed, he was the suave and smooth-spoken gentleman once more. ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Hauptmann!’ he bid me with a mocking bow.
“‘I await your pleasure, Messieurs,’ he announced, turning to the gendarmes.
“A detail of twelve soldiers under the command of a lieutenant with a drawn sword detached itself from the nearer company of infantry, executed a left wheel and came to halt about five meters away, their rifles at the order, the bayonets removed. The colonel stepped forward and read a summary of the death sentence, and as we drew back the gendarmes unlatched their handcuffs and bound the prisoner with his back against the post with a length of new, white rope. A handkerchief was bound about his eyes and the gendarmes stepped back quickly.
“‘Garde à vous!’ the firing-party commander’s voice rang out.
“‘Adieu pour ce monde, mon Lieutenant, do not forget the coup de grâce!’ Konstantin called airily.
“The lieutenant raised his sword and swung it downward quickly; a volley rang out from the platoon of riflemen.
“The transformation in the prisoner was instant and horrible. He collapsed, his body sagging weakly at the knees, as a filled sack collapses when its contents are let out through a cut, then sprawled full length face-downward on the ground, for the bullets had cut the rope restraining him. But on the turf the body writhed and contorted like a snake seared with fire, and from the widely opened mouth there came a spate of blood and gurgling, strangling cries mingled with half-articulate curses.
“A corporal stepped forward from the firing-party, his heavy automatic in his hand. He halted momentarily before the widening pool of blood about the writhing body, then bent over, thrust the muzzle of his weapon into the long black hair which, disordered by his death agonies, was falling about Konstantin’s ears, and pulled the trigger. A dull report, like the popping of a champagne cork
, sounded, and the twisting thing upon the ground gave one convulsive shudder, then lay still.
“‘This is the body of Alexis Konstantin, a spy, duly executed in pursuance of the sentence of death pronounced by the military court. Does anyone lay claim to it?’ announced the commandant in a steady voice. No answer came, though we waited what seemed like an hour to me.
“‘À vos rangs!’ Marching in quick time, the execution party filed past the prostrate body on the blood-stained turf and rejoined its company, and at a second command the two units of infantry formed columns of fours and marched from the field, the trumpet sounding at their head.
“The black-smocked men dragged the coffin from the black-curtained van, dumped the mangled body unceremoniously into it, and the driver whipped his horses into a trot toward the cemetery of Vincennes where executed spies and traitors were interred in unmarked graves.
“‘A queer one, that,’ an officer of the party which had accompanied the prisoner to execution told us as we walked toward our waiting cars. ‘When we left the Santé he was almost numb with fright, but when I told him that the coup de grâce—the mercy shot—was always given on occasions of this kind, he seemed to forget his fears and laughed and joked with us and with his warders till the very minute when we reached the field. Tiens, he seemed to have a premonition that the volley would not at once prove fatal and that he must suffer till the mercy shot was given. Do you recall how he reminded the platoon commander to remember the shot before the order to fire was given? Poor devil!’”
“Ah?” said Jules de Grandin. “A-ah? Do you report that conversation accurately, my friend?”
“Of course I do,” young Tanis answered. “It’s stamped as firmly on my mind as if it happened yesterday. One doesn’t forget such things, sir.”
The Best of Jules de Grandin Page 33