The Hunted Pole
“See!” cried Stromboli, as we strolled round the Earl’s Court Exhibition. “These stories of ours are becoming popular. The circulation of the magazine increases. In order to inspire my creditors with confidence, I buy a copy for each one of them. But they are many. It will be necessary to raise the price of the stories, in order that a reasonable margin of profit may remain.”
I suggested that he might find editors more amenable to argument, “if, for example,” I said, “you have any story of especial interest——”
As usual, Stromboli interrupted me.
“A story of especial interest! When I tell you that I have been hunted, like a wild beast, by officers of the Third Section of the Chancellerie Imperiale——”
“What! The Russian secret police?”
“Precisely.”
“That ought to do.”
“You think so?”
“I am sure of it.”
“Then I will begin at once.”
So we found a quiet table by the artificial lake, and while the band played valses and selections from the comic operas, Stromboli possessed himself of a vast beaker of black German beer, and blew dark clouds of smoke, and proceeded with—
THE ADVENTURE OF THE HUNTED POLE.
“Voyons! It must have been some twenty years ago, when the bombs were going off in Russia! There was a notion—mistaken, as it proved—that a revolution could be brought about by means of them. Fired with enthusiasm, and having an idea for a bomb of a new sort, I threw a few necessaries, including a manifesto, into my portmanteau, and started for the scene of action. But I never reached it. The machinations of the police frustrated me. Let me draw you the picture of the moment when I first learnt that the emissaries of the Third Section were on my track.
“It was at Warsaw. I had arrived there late in the afternoon, and had dined well at the best hotel, toasting the cause silently in the sparkling wine of the Widow Clicquot. After the meal I strolled out into the street to smoke my cigar, contemplatively, by moonlight.
“The hour was late. Few loiterers were abroad except myself. But presently, after I had taken several turns, I became aware of a quick, stealthy step, as of a man from nowhere, following behind me, and heard a clear but subdued voice speaking to me.
“‘Whatever you do, don’t look round. Walk straight on, and listen to what I say. Is your name Kosnapulski?’
“‘That is part of my name,’ I answered, without turning my head. ‘The full name is Jean Antoine Stromboli——’
“‘Right! You’re the man I’m looking for,’ the stranger interrupted. ‘But I mustn’t speak to you here. Turn up the next side street and keep in the shadow.’
“I hesitated. It might be the greeting of a comrade, or it might be the trick of a vulgar assassin. I resolved to take the risk, and turned sharply to the left, the stranger following me into the dark.
“‘Don’t stop,’ he continued, ‘and don’t answer, but listen to what I say.’
“So we walked on as though we did not know each other, and he talked to me as a man speaking to himself.
“‘Kosnapulski must on no account go back to his hotel. The police are there, waiting to arrest him on his return. Kosnapulski knows best whether he desires to meet them; whether there is anything compromising in his portmanteau, for example——’
“‘Heavens! My manifesto!’ I ejaculated. ‘I’ve signed it in full, Jean Antoine——’
“‘Hush! You mustn’t speak. The manifesto must be sacrificed. The better way will be to travel on foot to the Prussian frontier. I have a little parcel here, which I am placing on a window-ledge. When I have gone, come back and fetch it. It contains a few things that will help you on your way. Walk more slowly while I pass you, and then turn. Farewell!’
“He quickened his pace and glided by me—a cloaked and hooded figure. I gripped his hand silently as he passed me. It was the least—and the most—that I could do. Then I returned and found the little parcel resting in the place that he had indicated.
“I opened it in the darkest corner that I could find. It contained a false beard and a pair of spectacles, in which I disguised myself upon the spot; and a small handful of paper money, a note scrawled in pencil, which it was too dark to read; a flask of vodki, and a little bread and meat.
“Such was the whole of my provision for my pilgrimage. It was a terrible journey. I travelled only by night, hiding myself in the woods by day. But I need not dwell upon the details.
“My warning of peril was contained in the pencilled letter in which my mysterious friend had wrapped my bread and meat. I read it in the woods, while I was hiding in my disguise. I read it again by candle-light, in the first Prussian inn in which I found shelter after I had passed the frontier. Cheered and emboldened by generous draughts of Rhenish wine, I even went so far as to read it aloud in the café of the inn.
“‘Listen! my comrades,’ I exclaimed. ‘How many of you have ever received a letter of this sort? Admire the epistolary style of those who correspond with Jean Antoine Stromboli Kosnapulski.’
“And I read—
“‘Be on your guard! The Third Section means to have you. Its arm is long and it strikes unscrupulously. No country is so remote that it will not pursue you there. It will stoop to any means, even to poison and the dagger. This time I have warned you. Another time you may get no warning. If you would be safe, hide yourself until your name has been forgotten.’
“There was laughter at that, as you may guess, and a stamping of feet and a clapping of hands. I leapt upon a chair, and waved the precious missive above my head, and shouted in my exultation.
“‘You see what happens. The cause prospers. Even in the Third Section itself the cause has found a friend who protects the leaders of the people.’
“They cheered me to the echo; for I was paying for the Rhenish wine. But the landlord’s daughter—flaxen-haired Fräulein Minna, who was serving the refreshments—plucked me by the sleeve and signed to me to follow her. I did so.
“‘Suppose,’ she said, ’there were a spy of the Third Section in the café!”
“‘Show him to me,’ I replied, ‘I will undertake that he leaves quickly and with no desire whatever to return.’
“‘I dare not—for reasons which I must not tell you. But suppose the spy telegraphed a few words in cipher to St. Petersburg.’
“‘Eh bien! Suppose he did. What could St. Petersburg do then?’
“‘Apply for your extradition on some trumped-up charge of theft.’
“‘Then are there no judges in Germany?’ I asked.
“‘Why, yes. But they can be bribed,’ was Fräulein Minna’s answer.
“‘You’ve known that happen, little guardian angel?”
“She nodded slowly, with a look full of meaning in her eyes.
“Then I was frightened—as frightened, at least, as I have ever allowed myself to be. I began to realise the vast powers, the widespread nets, of that terrible Third Section; but I was to realise them still more vividly before many hours were over.
“At that moment her father, the landlord, burst upon the scene with noisy German oaths.
“‘Thunder and lightning!’ he said (among other things), while she fled in terror, before I had time to intervene.
“Then I drew myself up with dignity.
“‘I must ask you to understand, sir,’ I said, ‘that the blame for this, if there be any blame, in wholly mine. I was merely asking your daughter a simple question which I will now address to you. Can you, at once, provide me with a horse and carriage, that I may drive to the nearest railway station?’
“The man’s frown relaxed; he became comparatively civil.
“‘It’s a strange hour to start travelling,’ he growled, ‘but if you are set upon it——’
“‘I am absolutely set upon it.’
“‘In that case I will drive you there myself.’
“‘I thank you.’
“‘Come round to the stables, then.’
“He led the way, and in ten minutes or so the carriage was duly harnessed.
“‘Here’s something to keep you warm,’ he said, offering me a flask. ‘Better try to sleep a little.’
“Then he mounted the box, and drove off along the rough roads in the dark.
“The liquor in the flask was Kirsch-wasser—a cordial for which I had no great liking. I sipped at it and no more. Nevertheless, drowsiness overcame me, my fatigue and the previous draughts of Rhenish wine assisting, and I fell into a doze. How long I dozed I cannot tell you! All that I know is that, when I woke with a start, owing to the jolting and lurching of the carriage, the night was nearly over and the horizon tinged with the pale lemon hues that precede dawn.
“‘Where in the world am I now?’ I murmured to myself, with a sudden access of uneasiness.
“For the scenery that I looked out upon had a strange familiarity. One after the other I recognised a hillock, a clump of trees, a group of farm-buildings—all landmarks that I had noted in my wanderings of the night before.
“‘Heavens!’ I ejaculated, as the whole truth flashed upon me.
“It was against her own father that the flaxen-haired Minna had wished to warn me, in the village inn; it was he, and no other, who was the spy in the pay of the Third Section. He had tried to drug me with his Kirsch; and his plot was to drive me back over the frontier, before I could know what was happening, and hand me over to the police. We might cross the boundary line, for all that I could tell, at any instant. Only by immediate action could I save myself.
“Standing up in my place, and leaning forward, I gripped the man by the collar with my left hand, while with my right I drew his own revolver from his side-pocket and held it to his head.
“‘Scoundrel!’ I roared at him, ‘pull up the horse this instant, or I’ll shoot you!’
“He felt instinctively that I meant what I said, and that his game was up.
“‘What is it? What have I done?’ he stammered feebly, bringing the carriage to a standstill.
“Now that there was no further need for violence I recovered my customary calm.
“‘You have lost your way, Herr Landlord,’ I replied. ‘Turn round and try to find it. Try very hard and very carefully, for this pistol of yours seems to be loaded, and might go off at the slightest provocation. Your destination, mind you, is not the Russian frontier, but the nearest German railway station.’
“He obeyed me sullenly, without further words. It was a long, long drive, over a dreary stretch of country; but it came to an end at last. At midday the weary horse jogged slowly through a village street, and I got down and paid my driver.
“‘Sweep it up,’ I said, scornfully tossing some coins into the gutter for him. ‘That is the proper way to pay men like you. Now go and boast to your boon companions how you have driven Jean Antoine Stromboli Kosnapulski to the railway station.’
“He slunk away, fearful lest I should denounce him to the porter and the stationmaster—tall, sturdy men, who were likely to have little sympathy with a Russian spy; while I, on my part, bought my ticket and began my journey to my hiding-place.
“Do you think that it was cowardly of me to wish to hide myself? Not, surely, after my warning and my experiences of the vast powers and the vindictive malice of that great and unscrupulous organisation which was endeavouring to hunt me down. Consider! Even kings have found it necessary to hide themselves sometimes; and if a king may hide himself without loss of dignity in an oak-tree, then surely it is no shame for a revolutionist to conceal himself, for a period, in a Swiss châlet. The king who hid in the oak-tree would doubtless have preferred the châlet if he could have got to it.
“‘Reculer pour mieux sauter,’ I said to myself, ‘must be my motto. I have my idea for a new bomb, and I will work it out in the friendly solitude of the pine forests.’
“So I lost no time, but journeyed day and night until I reached one of those little villages that lie high up in the hills above Montreux, on the blue waters of Lake Leman.
“These villages—Chailly, Saint Légier, and the rest—are, I should tell you, the usual hiding-places of Russian refugees. I do not say, of course, that to have a ‘usual hiding-place’ is the wisest course that prudence could devise. The practice, as I now see clearly, must simplify the task of those who seek. But, at the time, I did not think of this. The shores of the Lake of Geneva seemed to me, as it were, an Alsatia where even the Third Section could not seize its victims.
“And oh! the life I lived there! It was a strange and welcome interlude of peace, to which I still sometimes look back with deep regret when I am tired.
“My châlet was high up, in a lonely place, on the very verge of a great pine forest. I used to rise early and wander for a mile among the meadows. Behind me towered the dark crags of the Rochers de Nave; below me gleamed the lake; before me were the black Savoy Hills, with the white dome of the Velan in the distance. The sight of these things, and of the deepening autumn tints upon the vineyards, stirred all the deep-seated poetry of my nature, until it was with difficulty that I pulled myself together, saying—
“‘It is time that I was getting on with my bomb.’
“Nor was I absolutely bereft of company. In the châlet itself, indeed, there was no one but a deaf old woman—the widow of a woodcutter—who cooked my dinners. But, every now and again I met tourists from the Montreux hotels and entered into conversation with them. I was a mystery to them; they christened me the hermit of Saint Legier. But they invited me to refresh myself with them in the cafés, and I did so the more willingly that my own store of silver coin was scanty. And sometimes, when the white wine flowed, I told them stories of my revolutionary adventures, such stories as I now tell to you.
“‘You do not know who I am,’ I would say. ‘What will you think when I tell you that I am here in hiding from the Russian secret police? Yes, so it is! I am no other than Jean Antoine Stromboli Kosnapulski.’
“And I would go on to tell them the story of my adventure in the streets of Warsaw, and other stories which I have told you, or may tell you later. It was the only return that I could make for the extensive hospitality of those knickerbockered youths.
“One day, moreover—the most memorable day of all—I made the acquaintance of a lady. Let me endeavour to recall that day.
“It was away towards Blonay, at some distance from my temporary home. She was tall and elegant, wearing a white blouse, a dark skirt, and a sailor hat; her hair was auburn; her eyes were beautifully blue. She looked about her anxiously, as though in doubt of the direction that she ought to take. Revolving the situation rapidly in my mind, I said to myself—
“‘I am favourably impressed. In the absence of more serious adventure, this is emphatically an adventure to be pursued.’
“And to the lady herself I said, raising my hat with a very courteous flourish—
“‘Pardon me, madam. You seem to me to have lost your way. May I place myself at your disposition and direct you?’
“From her dress and demeanour I had judged that she was English, but from her reply it appeared that she was American.
“‘Now, I call that real nice of you,’ was her simple answer.
“‘Your destination?’
“‘Way down at Territet. Grand Hôtel des Alpes.’
“‘We are at some distance from the high road. You will permit me, perhaps, to guide you.’
“‘I guess a white man couldn’t do less,’ she replied, smiling, and we strolled on together.
“Do not think me boastful or vainglorious if I tell you that, as your phrase is, I ‘made the running quickly.’ A revolutionist must needs do so. He is a busy man, with little leisure on his hands; he never knows what an hour may bring forth for him; gallantry is seldom possible for him, save on the condition that he makes haste with it and does not dally over the preliminaries. Besides, he enjoys advantages denied to most of you; he dazzles by virtue of the mystery which surrounds him; like the soldier, he carries his life in his hands. Such things appeal to women. It did not surprise me, therefore, that my beautiful American grew confidential.
“‘I’m Daisy van Bean,’ she said, ‘the daughter of the railroad king, and I’m stopping with poppa at Territet. But say, now. You’ve walked all this way with me and you haven’t yet told me what your name is.’
“It was my chance for the great coup which was to fascinate her imagination, if not to win her heart. I answered—
“‘Beautiful Daisy, I will surprise you. I am Jean Antoine Stromboli Kosnapulski—the revolutionist—the fugitive—the inventor.’
“‘The inventor? Say, now, what have you invented?’
“‘I have just invented a new bomb.’
“She clapped her hands.
“‘That’s just too lovely for anything,’ she said. ‘Tell me all about it.’
“I hesitated; you would have done the same. Such secrets are not lightly to be babbled of. But was there ever an inventor who did not delight to talk of his invention—even before it was provisionally protected? So I told.
“‘Beautiful Daisy, it is a bomb of which I think I have every reason to be proud. The principal ingredient is fulminate of mercury. It will make a terrible noise, but do no harm worth speaking of. You wonder; but I will explain. What is the object of a bomb? To terrorise. What is the most effective cause of terror? Noise. By noise, far more than by any other means, shall we frighten governments into conceding our demands.’
“She was not indignant, as some women would have been, but only curious.
“‘I’d just love to have a look at that bomb,’ she said.
“‘But, beautiful Daisy,’ I replied, ‘even if you saw it, you would never know that it was a bomb. That is another of its merits. It can be made up to look like anything—like a cigar-case, for example, or a photograph album, or a purse.’
“‘How clever!’
“‘Still,’ I said, ‘if you would deign to accept the humble hospitality of a bachelor’s roof——’
“She was emancipated—even for an American. The usual proprieties seemed to have no hold upon her.
“‘I will,’ she said, ‘and if I’m alive to-morrow, I’ll be passing here about this time.’
“And then we said good-bye. If only I had known! But I must not anticipate.
“I prepared a feast for my beautiful Daisy—such a feast as my modest means permitted. We had tea and fruits, and bread and butter, and cream, and honey—real honey, not the poisonous stuff they make at Zurich. Imagine, then, my consternation when she burst into a flood of tears, exclaiming—
“‘Oh! I feel mean, I do. I feel real mean.’
“I imagined, of course, that she was ashamed of the advantage that she was taking of the confidence which her parents had reposed in her, and I tried to comfort her upon that supposition. But she was inconsolable.
“‘No, no, it isn’t that,’ she said. ‘Why I feel mean is that I deceived you. I’m not Daisy van Bean, and my poppa isn’t a railroad king.’
“I tried to assure her that I was superior to all foolish prejudices about her social station; but she interrupted me again—
“‘Listen! There’s no time to lose. I’m just a spy and a decoy of the Third Section. They heard of you, and they sent me up to make sure, and they’re following me—six of them—this very afternoon. I didn’t intend telling you; but when you looked at me just then, I felt real mean.’
“‘I must not stay here another moment,’ I said. ‘Come with me. Let us fly together.’
“‘Too late! too late!’ she murmured. ‘I hear them coming.’
“And, sure enough, there was the sound of footsteps on the gravel. But a thought struck her.
“‘What’s the matter with getting out of the window?’ she asked eagerly.
“‘They are all barred,’ I answered. ‘With my own hands I fixed the bars, so that the Third Section might not break in by night. How was I to know that the Third Section would attempt to enter in broad daylight by the door?’
“She gasped.
“‘Great snakes! As if, in a lonesome place like this, it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to rush the house!’
“‘Rush the house!’ I repeated, for the Americanism was new to me.
“But Daisy only went into hysterics on the sofa, and ten seconds later I had grasped the meaning of her words.
“The door opened and the intruders entered. There were six of them, all dressed in black, as men who go to funerals. I should have wondered at this if I had had the time to wonder, but I had none. There was no parley, no attempt at parley. They knew their rôle and I knew mine. I hurled the teacup at the foremost of them and gashed his forehead badly. The milk-jug followed, breaking the front teeth of the second. Then they ran in upon me and we fought at close quarters.
“Such a fight as it was! Kicking upwards, I caught one of them under the chin, so that he lay for dead upon the floor. A second, getting the sole of my boot in the pit of his stomach, fell, doubled up, in the remotest corner of the room. A third, however, with fiendish ingenuity, hurled a chair between my legs. I tripped and fell, half dazed with the blow that my head got as I tumbled. They rushed upon me, pinioned me, and tied my hands and feet. The fight had hardly lasted a minute, and, conquered by superior numbers, I was at their mercy.
“‘Run for help, Marie,’ I had shouted to my old housekeeper at the beginning of the struggle, and, though she was deaf and could not hear me, what she saw sufficed to send her, screaming loudly, down the hill.
“One of my assailants, however, pursued her, caught her, put his hand over her mouth, lifted her in his arms, and brought her back and locked her in her bedroom. I saw her kicking, as he carried her past the open door, and then my senses left me.
“How long I lay stunned I cannot tell you. Wholly unconscious at first, I must have continued for hours in a state of semi-consciousness, vaguely aware, like a man in a dream, of the strange things that were going on around me. I perceived dimly that night fell and that the lamps were lighted. As it were through a mist, I saw the figures of men watching me. From time to time I heard muffled voices that I could make nothing of. At last if seemed as if a cloud had suddenly lifted, and my senses returned to me with a flash.
“Horror of horrors! I was sitting—in an open coffin—with the lid lying on the floor beside it, ready to be fixed on!
“‘A thousand thunders!’ I yelled, trying to struggle to my feet. ‘What are you doing? I am——’
“But, with my hands and feet fastened, I could scarcely move.
“A rough hand thrust me back, and one of my enemies—he with the damaged forehead—held a piece of stamped paper before my eyes, saying jeeringly—
“‘You are Jean Antoine Stromboli Kosnapulski, are you? Then read that, my friend!’
“‘Good Heavens!’ I ejaculated.
“The paper was my acte de décès—my death certificate, bearing the signature—forged, of course—of the leading physician of Montreux.
“So the scheme of these ruffians of the Third Section was—to bury me alive! I could have no doubt of it, and I could do nothing to help myself. There was just a chance that Daisy might find a means of saving me; but it was a very faint chance. The others would almost certainly look too sharply after her for that. I felt my face blanch and great beads of sweat stand out upon my forehead. I made a desperate effort to free myself, but with no result.
“The men stood round and laughed at me, and then one of them advanced and clapped a pad over my mouth.
“‘Here’s something to keep you quiet, my friend,’ he said derisively.
“Those were the last words I heard. There followed the sickly smell of chloroform, the insufferable sense of suffocation, and then a blank unconsciousness, drifting into weird and wonderful dreams. At last—after how long a period I cannot say—consciousness and recollection stole back to me together. I grasped the meaning of the incessant rattling and jolting which had been with me in my dreams, and still continued now that all my faculties were once more awakened.
“‘The fiends!’ I ejaculated, as the awful truth came home to me. The Third Section had kidnapped me and locked me in the coffin, for the purpose of conveying me back to Russia, where, without doubt, the hangman’s rope awaited me. They had forged the death certificate in order to be able to pass the coffin, without question or investigation, through the various custom-houses. It was a better fate than being buried alive, as I had expected; but only because it gave the chapter of accidents an opening.
“‘Let me out! I have no business here. I am Jean Antoine Stromboli Kosnapulski.’
“But no answer came. If any sound had issued from my narrow prison, the rumbling of the train had drowned it. If I were ever to get out of it, I must find the way myself, by my own strength and ingenuity.
“By luck my hands were not so securely fastened as they might have been. Confident in the strength of the coffin itself, my captors had evidently been guilty of carelessness in this respect. I was able to get my hands to my mouth, and, after half an hour’s patient work, to undo the knot with my teeth.
“‘Now let me see if they have left me any sort of tool,’ I said to myself.
“So I first rescued my feet from their bonds and then fumbled in my pockets. The fools had not taken the trouble to empty them, thinking, no doubt, that it would be time enough to do this when I reached my destination; but they contained little enough, all the same. A few coins, a few notes of the Geneva Bank, a box of matches, some letters, a key, a small pocket-knife, and a cigar-case—such was the full list of the implements that I had to work with.
“‘First for the cigar-case,’ I mused. ‘If only I knew whether that was the bomb cigar-case!’
“For I knew that, in one of my cigar-cases, I had packed one of my noisy but harmless bombs; though whether it was in the one that I had in my pocket, or in the one that I had left upon the mantelpiece, I could not recollect. In the former event my course was clear. I had only to wait until the train stopped and then fire it. The terrific din would doubtless break the drums of both my ears; the flame might even scorch my face. But at least the train would be searched after the explosion, and when smoke was seen issuing from the coffin, through the breathing-holes that had been bored for me, it would be opened.
“I waited patiently until we reached a station. Then, holding the case carefully behind my back, so as to save my face as much as possible, I jerked it open.
“But nothing happened—nothing, that is to say, except that the cigars fell out of it!
“‘Let me see how far the knife will help me,’ was my next idea.
“It was quite a little knife, as I have said. But the journey to the Russian frontier was a long one. I had plenty of time in front of me. It seemed just possible that, if I worked diligently, I might at least carve a hole in the lid through which I could put out a finger, if not a hand, and make a signal of distress. I opened the little pocket-knife and set to work.
“At first things went quite easily. The interior of the coffin was lined with a thick felting, designed, no doubt, to muffle any noise that its occupant might make. I worked diligently and succeeded in stripping off a patch of it. But I could get no further. Alas! and alas! Behind the padding I encountered, not wood, but solid lead, upon which the knife made no impression.
“Beaten again!’
“I gasped out the words in the bitterness of my despair and fainted. For an hour or two, as I conjecture, I lay senseless on my back. My last hope, apparently, was gone. My one chance of escaping the hangman was to die before I reached him. But then, suddenly—
“Crash! Bang!
“The noise reached me even in my leaden box. I felt the train slowing down immediately afterwards, and knew exactly what must have happened.
“‘The Third Section! They stole the cigar-case from my mantelpiece. They’ve opened it to try the cigars and fired the bomb themselves.’
“But depression followed quickly on the heels of exultation. The firing of the bomb, though it stopped the train and caused the Russian spies to be arrested, would hardly help me to declare my presence in the coffin. The chance was that I should be left there till I starved, or else put hastily underground because no one knew who I was. What was I to do to arrest the attention of the officials, who were even now beginning to search the train from end to end.
“I thought hard, as though my brain were packed in ice, and then the inspiration came to me.
“‘I have it! The cigars! If they see smoke coming through the air-holes, they’ll think it was the bomb!’
“Did you ever try to smoke a cigar when you had just come round after having been under chloroform? If not, then you may take my word for it that it needs more heroism than to charge a battery or defend a barricade. I choked and coughed. I was seized by the most hideous nausea. I would have preferred the torture of the rack or thumbscrew. But I bit my lips and stuck to it, smoking for dear life’s sake.
“It seemed whole weeks before my signal was discovered, though from the length of the ash upon my Vevey fine I knew that it could not have been more than five minutes at the outside. At last I began to hear voices, though I failed to distinguish the words, and realised that tools were at work upon my living tomb. In spite of the awful nausea, I puffed away harder than ever, pressing upwards with my hand, so as to lift the lid the very moment it was loosened.
“At last it yielded. I thrust it off, not waiting for it to be lifted, and with the stump of my cigar still between my fingers sprang to my feet, exclaiming—
“‘It is time that I was out of this. I have no business here.’
“The guards and porters and policemen who were standing round turned pale, as though they had seen a ghost, and nearly fell into each other’s arms.
“‘Who the——’ one of them ejaculated in his consternation, and I answered reassuringly—
“‘Fear nothing! No harm will happen to you. I am Jean Antoine Stromboli Kosnapulski.’
“Then I stepped out of my box and looked around me. We were at Basle. On the platform I saw my old enemy of the Third Section—the same man whose forehead I had gashed—offering explanations to two policemen, who held him fast and did not seem at all disposed to listen to him.
“I pointed at him with the finger of denunciation.
“‘There he is,’ I cried. ‘That is the culprit; that is the man who fired the bomb. He was making bombs in the woods near Montreux, and because I caught him at it he kidnapped me and threatened me with this living death. It is a voice from the dead that now convicts him of his crime.’
“You can imagine the effect that followed from my words. The crowd rushed forward as one man, vowing that it would tear the miscreant limb from limb; the police, as one man, formed up to save him for more formal and deliberate justice, and I found myself standing alone and unobserved upon the platform.
“‘This is a good opportunity of retiring unobtrusively,’ I said to myself, ‘If I remain to give evidence, I shall be the mark of the vengeance of the Third Section for the remainder of my life. Better that an ocean should roll between us; better that I should disappear mysteriously and leave no trace behind.’
“So, taking advantage of the confusion, I bought a ticket and slipped unnoticed into the Paris train en route for Havre and America.
“Afterwards, from the papers, I learnt that my enemy of the Third Section—whose Government naturally could not help him—had been sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour.”