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"I'm not " he murmured. But Deibler laid his hands upon the man's shoulders and cut the horrid moment short. "Come now!" The chaplain came forward in his turn. "Pray, my brother," he said; "do you wish to hear mass?" At the touch of the executioner the prisoner had trembled; he rose, like an automaton, with dilated eyes and twitching face.
There were present the Attorney General, the Public Prosecutor, his deputy, the Governor of the prison, and behind these, M. Havard, Deibler, and his two assistants. The little company passed through the corridors to the third floor, where the condemned cells are. The warder Nibet came forward with his bunch of keys in his hand. Deibler looked at the Public Prosecutor.
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.
Deibler and his men will get the guillotine up in half an hour, and in an hour at the outside, Fantômas will be no more!" While the detective was speaking, the executioner had stepped briskly to the officer in charge of the proceedings and exchanged a few words with him.
"Are you ready, sir?" and as that gentleman, who was very white, made a sign of assent, Deibler looked at the Governor of the prison. "Unlock the cell," the Governor ordered. Nibet turned the key noiselessly and pushed open the door. The Public Prosecutor stepped forward. He had hoped to find the condemned man asleep, and so have had a moment's respite before announcing the fatal news.
"Sign the gaol book, please, M. Havard," he said, and while that gentleman affixed a shaky signature to the warrant authorising the delivery of Gurn to the public executioner, Deibler took the scissors and cut a segment out of the prisoner's shirt and cut off a wisp of hair that grew low down on his neck. Meanwhile an assistant bound the wrists of the man who was about to die.
The floor timbers fitted one into another and were joined by stout metal clamps fastened together by a bolt; next the men set the grooved slides, down which the knife must fall, into holes cut for the purpose in the middle of the floor. The guillotine now raised its awful arms to the sky. Hitherto Deibler had merely watched his men at work. Now he took a hand himself.
Lupin opened one of them and at once read the following lines: "ARSENE LUPIN'S ACCOMPLICES" "We know from a positive source that Arsene Lupin's accomplices, Gilbert and Vaucheray, will be executed to-morrow, Tuesday, morning. M. Deibler has inspected the scaffold. Everything is ready." He raised his head with a defiant look. "Arsene Lupin's accomplices! The execution of Arsene Lupin's accomplices!
Deibler took the man by one arm, a warder took him by the other, and between them they half-carried him to the office for his last toilette. In the little room, dimly lighted by a winking lamp, a chair had been set close to a table. The executioner and his assistant pushed the condemned man into the chair, and Deibler took up a pair of scissors. The Public Prosecutor spoke to the prisoner.
One of the assistants brought a case which Deibler opened, and Fandor instinctively shrank as a flash from the bright steel fell full in his eyes, that sinister triangular knife that presently would do the work of death.
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