Operator 5 #42 The Dawn That Shook The World by Curtis Steele

Author:Curtis Steele
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8: Wolves’ Day

BY EARLY morning the Place de la Concorde was crowded, and long before noon feverish-eyed humanity packed it from side to side. Looking down at that savage, unkempt throng, one might well have supposed the date to be the Eighteenth Century instead of the Twentieth. Just such a mob as this had howled for the heads of their rulers in 1793; just such wild-eyed men and women had cackled their delight every time the sharp blade of the guillotine sheered off another luckless head. At that time they wore red caps and badges; now they sported dirty yellow shirts and armbands. But beneath the outer symbols they were the same rapacious wolves come to glut their appetite for human blood and misery. All morning the steady stream of condemned victims had flowed up to the three hard-working execution machines. But these lesser performers had received scant attention. It was the president and the premier of France for whom this milling audience waited so impatiently. By eleven-thirty the procession of the lesser victims ended, the better to set the stage for the main event. It was a quarter to twelve when the dignitaries of the high court and the Paris executive committee took their places on the high grandstand erected near the main, central guillotine. The bloody-handed lords of the New Dawn — with Evan Carliotti smiling complacently in their midst! The crowd fidgeted, mumbled — and then was hushed as a black-robed priest wended his way through the open lane and mounted the platform. The round, wide-brimmed hat of his order pulled down well over his bowed head, he seemed hardly aware of the dense crowd that surrounded him on every side as he silently fingered his beads. The giant figure of the executioner moved to its place. The pompous clerk with the death warrants cleared his throat so that his part in the grisly drama should be perfect. Then a ripple of excitement swelled into a wave, a roar of sound sweeping over the square. The condemned were approaching! Out there at the far edge of the crowd the tumbrel had come in sight. Instead of the jolting, two-wheeled cart of bygone centuries, the modern death conveyance was a large open motor-truck, its side-poles capped with the ghastly heads of some of its recent passengers! Hands tied behind them, their backs lashed against a spar that had been set up in the center of the truck’s floor, stood President Pierre Tremel and Premier Georges Montanye — accompanied by Larry Trowbridge, the man who had tried to liberate them. Unafraid, they looked out over that sea of faces, ignoring the smugly grinning countenance of Paul Challet, who sat with two other guards at the rear of the vehicle. The savage roar swelled to ear-splitting proportions as the truck reached the guillotine and came to a stop. Challet’s men lowered the tailboard while he stepped up to the prisoners and began to unfasten them.

The president first... A hush fell over the gaping spectators as Pierre Tremel started toward the rear of the truck.

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