The Crimson Circle

Prologue

The Nail

It is a ponderable fact that had not the 29th of a certain September been the anniversary of Monsieur Victor Pallion’s birth, there would have been no Crimson Circle mystery; a dozen men, now dead, would in all probability be alive, and Thalia Drummond would certainly never have been described by a dispassionate inspector of police as “a thief and the associate of thieves.”

M. Pallion entertained his three assistants to dinner at the Coq d’Or in the city of Toulouse, and the proceedings were both joyous and amiable. At three o’clock in the morning it dawned upon M. Pallion that the occasion of his visit to Toulouse was the execution of an English malefactor named Lightman.

“My children,” he said gravely but unsteadily, “it is three hours and the ‘red lady’ has yet to be assembled!”

So they adjourned to the place before the prison where a trolley containing the essential parts of the guillotine had been waiting since midnight, and with a skill born of practice they erected the grisly thing, and fitted the knife into its proper slots.