Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

“Me, I am as good as dead already. And what a death!” A spasm of shuddering possessed him. “For me the guillotine is waiting. The devil invented it. It is so they go at you with that machine: They strap you flat upon a board. Face downward you are, but you can look up, you can see — that is the worst part. They fit your throat into a grooved shutter; they make it fast. You bring your head back; your eyes are drawn upward, fascinated. Above you, waiting, ready, poised, your eyes see the — the knife.”

“But only for a moment do you see it, my friend,” said the Spaniard, in the tone of one offering comfort. “Only a moment and then — pouff — all over!”

“A moment! I tell you it is an eternity. It must be an eternity. Lying there, you must live a hundred lives, you must die a hundred deaths. And then to have your head taken off your body, to be all at once in two pieces. Me, I am not afraid of most deaths. But that death by the guillotine — ah-h!”

The Spaniard bent forward. He was sitting alone facing the other two, who shared a seat.

“Listen, Señor,” he stated. “Compared with me, you are the lucky one. True, I have not yet been tried — before they could try me I fled away out of that accursed Spain of mine.”

“Not tried, eh?” broke in the Frenchman. “Then you have yet a loophole — a chance for escape; and I have none. My trial, as I told you, is behind me.”

“You do not know the Spanish courts. It is plain you do not, since you say that,” declared the Spaniard. “Those courts — they are greedy for blood. With them, to my kind, there is not mercy; there is only punishment.

“And such a punishment! Wait until you hear. To me when they get me before them they will say: ‘The proof is clear against you; the evidence has been thus and so. You are adjudged guilty. You took a life, so your life must be taken. It is the law.’

“Perhaps I say: ‘Yes, but that life I took swiftly and in passion and for cause. For that one the end came in an instant, without pain, without lingering, yes, without warning. Since I must pay for it, why cannot I also be made to die very quickly without pain?’

“Will they listen? No, they send me to the garrote. To a great strong chair they tie you — your hands, your feet, your trunk. Your head is against a post, an upright. In that post is a collar — an iron band. They fit that collar about your neck. Then from behind you the executioner turns a screw.

“If he chooses he turns it slowly. The collar tightens, tightens, a knob presses into your spine. You begin to strangle. Oh, I have seen it myself! I know. You expire by inches! I am a brave man, Señores. When one’s time comes, one dies. But oh, Señores, if it were any death but that! Better the guillotine than that! Better anything than that!”

He slumped back against the cushions, and rigors passed through him.

It was the Italian’s turn. “I was tried in my absence,” he explained to the Spaniard. “I was not even there to make my defense — I had thought it expedient to depart. Such is the custom of the courts in my country. They try you behind your back.

“They found me guilty, those judges. In Italy there is no capital punishment, so they sentenced me to life imprisonment. It is to that... that — I now return.”

The Spaniard lifted his shoulders; the lifting was eloquent of his meaning.

“Not so fast,” said the Italian. “You tell me you lived once in Italy. Have you forgotten what life imprisonment for certain acts means in Italy? It means solitary confinement. It means you are buried alive. They shut you away from every one in a tight cell. It is a tomb, that is all. You see no one ever; you hear no voice ever. If you cry out, no one answers. Silence, darkness, darkness, silence, until you go mad or die.

“Can you picture what that means to one of my race, to an Italian who must have music, sunshine, talk with his fellows, sight of his fellows? It is in his nature — he must have these things or he is in torture, in constant and everlasting torment. Every hour becomes to him a year, every day a century, until his brain bursts asunder inside his skull.

“Oh, they knew — those fiends who devised this thing — what to an Italian is a million times worse than death — any death. I am the most unfortunate one of the three of us. My penalty is the most dreadful by far.”

The others would not have it so. They argued the point with him and with each other all through the day, and twilight found their beliefs unshaken.

Then, under the Spaniard’s leadership, came their deliverance out of captivity. It was he who, on the toss-up, won the revolver which they had taken from the person of the senseless special agent. Also it was he who suggested to the Italian that for the time being, at least, they stick together. To this the Italian had agreed, the Marseilles man, Lafitte, already having elected, to go on his own.

After the latter, heading east by south, had left them, the Spaniard said reflectively: