Chapter XIII: Part IV: Paris (3)

"You'll have to get one of these," O'Malley explained. "It isn't safe to be a stranger here. They're issued by the People's Committee to journalists who show their credentials. A lot of detectives have been down here, you see, posing as journalists, and asking questions in the villages, getting all sorts of information; that's how they managed to arrest the ringleaders in the villages."

"It was a pretty mean trick," Humphrey said.

"Mean--I should think it was. They nearly lynched Harridge, the photographer, yesterday, and they chased another so-called journalist to the river, and he had to swim for his life, while the mob fired pot-shots at him from the bridges. So now they've placarded the town to explain that every real journalist has a white armband with a number on it."

Humphrey looked at the shaggy man opposite. "Good Lord!" he said, "that's why that fellow's been shadowing me...."

"Yes. He's one of the Committee's spies."

"I'd better get that armband quick."

"No hurry. You're all serene in my company. We'll finish our drink and stroll up together."

On the way O'Malley told him some of the latest developments. The chief ringleader, the man whom the wine-growers hailed as the Redeemer, was still at large, and nobody knew where he was. Picture-postcards of the bearded man with a halo round his head and a bunch of grapes dangling from a cross that he held in his right hand, were selling in thousands at two sous each.

"To-morrow there are the funerals," remarked O'Malley. "Seven funerals at once. It ought to make a good story."

They came to a dingy house, where there were no soldiers. Humphrey followed O'Malley up a narrow, twisting staircase to a little room. The walls were plastered with the posters he had seen on the street hoardings. Five men sat in the room, smoking cigarettes. The air was full of the stale reek of cheap tobacco. They sat in their shirt-sleeves with piles of papers before them.

One of them, a gross man with a black moustache straggling over his heavy under lip, spread out his fat hands in inquiry. Another, thin, undersized and dirty, with a rat-like face, peered at them with blinking red-rimmed eyes.

"What do you want?" he asked, gruffly.

O'Malley, in his best Irish-French, explained his business and presented Humphrey. The hollow farce of polite phrases, which mean nothing in France, was played out. They wanted to see his _carte d'identité_ and all the credentials he had. Humphrey unloaded his pocket-book on them. Finally, they made him sign a book, and they gave him a white armlet; he pinned it round his arm, and walked forth a free man. The unkempt man stood on the opposite side of the street still watching him.

And now, as he walked along the streets of Narbonne, with the white armlet of the revolutionaries giving him protection, he smiled to see the soldiers guarding the streets.

"Look here," he said to O'Malley, "who's going to give me anything to prevent the soldiers bayoneting me?"

"Yes--I've thought of that too," O'Malley answered. "Funny, isn't it, that we've got to fly for a safeguard to the People's Committee? By the way, don't you get talking to strangers more than you can help. They're down on spies. I'm going to get my copy off now. See you at the post-office."

Humphrey went back to the Dorade, and wrote his message, a descriptive account of all that he had seen, in abbreviated telegraphese. Other correspondents were there, war correspondents used to open campaigns, prepared for all emergencies; others had come from the Fleet Streets of Spain and Belgium and Germany. There was an American, too, who had travelled from Paris: as he had not yet obtained his armband, he remained in the hotel, writing very alarming telegrams.

The Englishmen dined together--a jolly party--at a large round table, and, afterwards, they all went out to look at the town at night under arms. Once, during their walk, the sound of firing came to them, and they ran helter-skelter up the Boulevard right into the arms of a young lieutenant, who laughed and told them that nothing serious had happened. He invited them all to a drink in a café, and just to satisfy them, Humphrey went reconnoitring and found that all was peaceful.

He had no time to think of anything but his work. At midnight he went to bed and slept deeply.

* * * * *

On the second day the "Redeemer," whom every one had imagined to be captured, suddenly appeared in Narbonne, and was whisked away in a motor-car to Argelliers, his native town. Bouvier, of the _Petit Journal_, saw him, dashed into a motor-garage, and hired a car in an instant.

"_Viens_," he shouted, as Humphrey strolled down the Street. "The 'Redeemer' has come back. You can share my car." Humphrey, knowing nothing except that Bouvier was very excited, and that, by a chance, some big news had come under his notice, jumped into the car, and away they whirled into the open country.

The Southern landscape was vivid in the hot sunshine of the late autumn; they left clouds of dust behind them as the car raced along to overtake the car of the "Redeemer." They passed the spacious vineyards, where the grapes grew like stunted hop-fields, twining round their little sticks; they sped through avenues of poplars, and almond trees and ilex; through villages where old women cheered and pointed down the long road.

"We're catching him up," Bouvier grunted. "They must have heard the news of his coming somehow."

A bend in the road, and a bridge with the blue river running beneath its arches; farmhouses and boys driving cattle home; children swinging on a gate, and old men plodding towards the sunset, on sticks that could never straighten their bent backs: the country came at them and receded from them in a succession of pictures framed in the hood of their car. Vineyards, and again vineyards, with the ungathered grapes withering in the sun, and people crying to them, "He's come back: the brave fellow."

As the road led nearer to Argelliers they overtook yellow coaches, full of people, and country carts swinging along. The drivers pointed their whips ahead, and shouted something, but the words were lost in the rush of the wind as the car rushed by them.

"The whole countryside seems to know that he's escaped. There'll be thousands in the Market Place," Bouvier said.

"It'll be a fine story," Humphrey agreed. "Those other fellows must have missed it." He was drunk with the excitement and the happiness of hunting a quarry.

They came to the Market Place of Argelliers, and the sight amazed him.

Left and right the people crushed together--a rectangular pattern of humanity. People of all ages had been drawn there by the magnetism of this man who had stirred up the South to revolt. The caps and dresses of the women and girls gave touches of colour to the sombre crowd of men, and, as he stood up in the motor-car for a better view, he saw row upon row of pink, upturned faces, parted, eager lips, and eyes that strained against the sunshine to see the black-clad figure of a man standing on the low roof of the People's Committee. Boys had climbed the trees round the Market Place--their gaping faces shone from the dark branches; and on the outskirts of the vast crowd men and women stood up in carts and waggonettes--horses had been harnessed to anything that ran on wheels.

There was not a soldier in sight. The sun shone fiercely on the Market Place of Argelliers, where two thousand people were thinking of their wrongs. And the man on the roof talked to them. His voice, strong and sonorous, came to them urging them to be of good cheer. They flung back at him cries of encouragement, and called him by name.

"I'm going into the crowd," Humphrey said.

"Better stop here," urged Bouvier. "They're an excitable lot."

"I must hear what he's saying."

Humphrey climbed out of the car, and pushed his way into the middle of the crowd. There was a loud shouting over some remark that the speaker had made. He found himself wedged in tightly between heavy, broad-shouldered men, with black eyes and swarthy faces. He heard the man on the roof speak about those who had been attacking him, and a voice close to Humphrey yelled, "_La Depêche de Toulouse_," and immediately another voice cried out, "_Conspuez la Depêche de Toulouse_." He turned at the voice and saw, with a sudden shock, the shaggy-haired man with the bloodshot eyes who had dogged his footsteps that first day in Narbonne. Their glances met. Humphrey thrust back into his pocket the pencil with which he had been making furtive notes.

"_Conspuez les autres!_" cried the man with the bloodshot eyes, "_conspuez les mouchards_."

He was conscious of a new note in the crowd: he saw anger and hatred passing swiftly over all the faces around him. They turned on him with relentless eyes. He saw the shaggy-haired man shouldering his way, and scrambling towards him with crooked fingers that clawed at the air. In one quick second he realized that he was in danger.

"_Conspuez les autres._" The cry rose all about him swelling to a roar of confusion.

"_En voilà un!_" shouted the shaggy man, pointing to Humphrey's white armband. They surged against him, and he was swept from his feet. He heard the shriek of women, and the babble and a murmur that ran like an undercurrent through the storm of noisy voices. The black figure on the roof was wringing his hands, and trying to calm the mob.

Humphrey turned to escape. "What a fool I was to come into the thick of it," he thought. Once, in the struggle, he saw Bouvier standing with a white face in the motor-car, probably wondering what the row was about.

And then, they came at him suddenly and determinedly. Remorseless and menacing faces were thrust close to him. He struck out and a thrill went up his arm as his fist met a hard cheek-bone.

Something fell on his arm with a heavy, aching blow that left it numb and limp, and at the same moment an excruciating spasm of self-pity swept upward from his soul, as he saw, as in a red mist, uplifted, clenched hands struggling to meet him. This was real life at last. He had ceased to be an onlooker; the game was terrible and earnest, and he was, for the first time, the principal figure in the play. His agony did not last long.

The hot breath of the men was on him, and the evil, bloodshot eyes of the shaggy-haired man who had denounced him, loomed terribly large, like great red-veined moons.

And, in that last moment, before all consciousness went from him for ever, as he swayed and fell before the trampling mob, in that supreme moment when deliverance came from all the tribulations that life held for him, an odd, whimsical idea twisted his lips into a smile as he thought:

"What a ripping story this will make for _The Day_."

THE END

COLSTONS LIMITED, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

Hyphenation has been retained as in the original publication.

Page 25, in the phrase "every day" a space was kept (every day, it seemed).

Page 31, comma erased (among which, "Twencent").

Page 41, double quotes added ("We had an awful row.).

Page 56, hyphen retained (a bed-sitting room).

Page 77, apostrophe added (reporters' room).

Page 112, She changed to she (Yes, she had remembered him,).

Page 121, period added (he began.).

Page 190, double quotes added (I know.").

Page 192, period erased (to wait...").

Page 195, apostrophe replaced by period (she was now.).

Page 212, double quotes added (I wrote about....").

Page 212, double quotes added (Thanks for the bob....").

Page 245, period added (of the office.).

Page 254, sedn changed to send in (I'll send you).

Page 256, single quote added (forgotten by to-morrow.').

Page 256, single quote added (go I.'").

Page 307, question mark changed to period (Not as big as London.).

Page 310, phaseology changed to phraseology in (intimate phraseology.).

Page 340, period added (anything in common between them.).

Both "latchkey" and "latch-key" were used in this text. This text also uses "countryside" and "country-side", "earrings" and "ear-rings", "lawsuits" and "law-suits", "notebook" and "note-book", "schoolmasters" and "school-masters", "tablecloths" and "table-cloths". This was retained.

End of Project Gutenberg's Mightier than the Sword, by Alphonse Courlander