Revenge! | Page 8

café that shut off his view of the pavement and the
policeman marching below. That complicated matters. Still he
remembered that when the sun went down the awning was rolled up.
His first idea when he took the room was to drop the dynamite from the
third story window to the pavement below, but the more he thought of
that plan the less he liked it. It was the sort of thing any fool could do,
as the policeman had said. It would take some thinking over. Besides,
dynamite dropped on the pavement would, at most, but blow in the
front of the shop, kill the perambulating policeman perhaps, or some
innocent passer-by, but it would not hurt old Sonne nor yet the garçon
who had made himself so active in arresting Hertzog.
Dupré was a methodical man. He spoke quite truly when he said he was
a student. He now turned his student training on the case as if it were a
problem in mathematics.
First, the dynamite must be exploded inside the café. Second, the thing
must be done so deftly that no suspicion could fall on the perpetrator.
Third, revenge was no revenge when it (A) killed the man who fired the
mine, or (B) left a trail that would lead to his arrest.
Dupré sat down at his table, thrust his hands in his pockets, stretched
out his legs, knit his brows, and set himself to solve the conundrum. He
could easily take a handbag filled with explosive material into the café.
He was known there, but not as a friend of Hertzog's. He was a
customer and a tenant, therefore doubly safe. But he could not leave the
bag there, and if he stayed with it his revenge would rebound on
himself. He could hand the bag to the waiter saying he would call for it

again, but the waiter would naturally wonder why he did not give it to
the concierge, and have it sent to his rooms; besides, the garçon was
wildly suspicious. The waiter felt his unfortunate position. He dare not
leave the Café Vernon, for he now knew that he was a marked man. At
the Vernon he had police protection, while if he went anywhere else he
would have no more safeguard than any other citizen; so he stayed on
at the Vernon, such a course being, he thought, the least of two evils.
But he watched every incomer much more sharply than did the
policeman.
Dupré also realised that there was another difficulty about the handbag
scheme. The dynamite must be set off either by a fuse or by clockwork
machinery. A fuse caused smoke, and the moment a man touched a bag
containing clockwork his hand felt the thrill of moving machinery. A
man who hears for the first time the buzz of the rattlesnake's signal, like
the shaking of dry peas in a pod, springs instinctively aside, even
though he knows nothing of snakes. How much more, therefore, would
a suspicious waiter, whose nerves were all alert for the soft, deadly purr
of dynamite mechanism, spoil everything the moment his hand touched
the bag? Yes, Dupré reluctantly admitted to himself, the handbag
theory was not practical. It led to either self-destruction or prison.
What then was the next thing, as fuse or mechanism were unavailable?
There was the bomb that exploded when it struck, and Dupré had
himself made several. A man might stand in the middle of the street
and shy it in through the open door. But then he might miss the
doorway. Also until the hour the café closed the street was as light as
day. Then the policeman was all alert for people in the middle of the
street. His own safety depended upon it too. How was the man in the
street to be dispensed with, yet the result attained? If the Boulevard was
not so wide, a person on the opposite side in a front room might fire a
dynamite bomb across, as they do from dynamite guns, but then there
was--
"By God!" cried Dupré, "I have it!"
He drew in his outstretched legs, went to the window and threw it open,
gazing down for a moment at the pavement below. He must measure

the distance at night--and late at night too--he said to himself. He
bought a ball of cord, as nearly the colour of the front of the building as
possible. He left his window open, and after midnight ran the cord out
till he estimated that it about reached the top of the café door. He stole
quietly down and let himself out, leaving the door unlatched. The door
to the apartments was at the extreme edge of the building, while the
café doors were in the middle, with