United States or Timor-Leste ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This I strenuously opposed, and guaranteed that Simard would be ready to launch his missile. I met with little difficulty in persuading the company to agree, because, after all, every man among them feared he might be one of those selected, which choice was practically a sentence of death.
I did not dare to hint that he belonged to the Secret Service; nevertheless, if the authorities had this plot in charge, it was absolutely necessary we should work together, or, at least, that I should know they were in the secret, and steer my course accordingly. The fact that Simard appeared with undisguised face was not so important as might appear to an outsider.
I had resolved to get Simard insensibly drunk on the morning of the procession, but my plans were upset at a meeting of the anarchists, which luckily took place on an evening shortly after my arrival, and this gave me time to mature the plan which was actually carried out.
I guaranteed that the bomb would be thrown, and this apparently was taken to mean that if Simard did not do the deed, I would. This danger over, I next took the measurements, and estimated the weight, of the picric bomb.
The next few days were the most anxious of my life. Never before had I lived on terms of intimacy with a picric bomb, that most deadly and uncertain of all explosive agencies. I speedily found that Simard was so absinthe-soaked I could do nothing with him. He could not be bribed or cajoled or persuaded or threatened.
Here they allowed the insensible Simard to drop with a crash on the floor, thus they left us alone without even an adieu. The Apaches take care of their own after a fashion. I struck a match, and found part of a bougie stuck in the mouth of an absinthe bottle, resting on a rough deal table. Lighting the bougie, I surveyed the horrible apartment.
Beside him Egide Simard, and others who had come a long road by sleigh, fastened their long fur coats as they left the church, drawing them in at the waist with scarlet sashes.
Simard will need no purgatory in the next world. I kept him on bread and water for a month in my strong room, and at first he demanded absinthe with threats, then grovelled, begging and praying for it. After that a period of depression and despair ensued, but finally his naturally strong constitution conquered, and began to build itself up again.
'Garçon! he shouted harshly, 'bring me four absinthes. What will you drink, Ducharme?, 'A café-cognac, if you please. 'Bah! cried Simard; 'better have absinthe. Then he cursed the waiter for his slowness. When the absinthe came he grasped the half-full glass and swallowed the liquid raw, a thing I had never seen done before.
Simard, under the influence of the drink, was slowly becoming the Simard I had known ten years before. Remarkable! Absinthe having in earlier years made a beast of the man was now forming a man out of the beast. His staring eyes took on an expression of human comradeship. The whole mystery became perfectly clear to me without a question asked or an answer uttered.
Word Of The Day