Bibi-Ri had fallen back in his chair.
"The vultures!"
Well, I understood fast enough that I had made acquaintance of the terrible M. de Nou. The other would be his aide and familiar, a former Polish anarchist—I had heard—whom even the society of convicts rejected and who bore the fit name: Bombiste. These were the dreaded servants of the guillotine. But now they had passed I was bold as the best: I could mock myself.
"Imbeciles!" I laughed. "To be scared by an old bogey like that! The executioner? So be it. We can curse him and let him go.... Though in truth he has a sickly notion of an afternoon call, the lascar! ... Sit still while I plaster that sliced onion of yours."
But something had come upon Bibi-Ri. For once he gave me back no jest.
"The monster has marked me down! You heard him? It is a warning!" At that he started up, all streaky with soap and blood as he was, and must rush away on some errand. And then remembering it would be impossible to run the police limits of Nouméa before dark, collapsed again. "I am lost!"
Figure my amazement.
"But how?" I demanded. "Does your blessed executioner have power to pick his own victims?... Does he go about cropping heads, for example, like a man in a flower garden? What can he make to you? ... Unless perhaps he has come between you and that fair fortune I saw you pursuing so ardently a moment ago."
The way his jaw dropped! As if I had touched the very spring of his destiny.
Now you can guess that I knew perhaps a little—no matter how little—of lawlessness and violence and secret intrigue persisting within this model criminal laboratory of ours. Do you change vice to virtue by transporting it half a world away and bottling it up? A disturbing question. At least if you expect your convicts to work, to aspire, even to marry and to multiply like free men, you must expect them also to covet, to scheme, to quarrel and to sin—again like free men. These facts I had noted without exploring too deeply, you comprehend. But Bibi-Ri was the last I should have credited with a share in their darker meaning.