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PROLOGUE: THE NAIL

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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.

But even mechanical skill is not proof against the heady wines of southern France, and when they tried the knife it did not fall truly.

"I will arrange this," said M. Pallion, and drove a nail into the frame at exactly the place where a nail should not have been driven.

But he was getting flurried, for the soldiers had marched on to the ground..

Four hours later (it was light enough for an enterprising photographer to snap the prisoner close at hand), they marched a man from the prison..

"Courage!" murmured M. Pallion.

"Go to hell!" said the victim, now lying strapped upon the plank.

M. Pallion pulled a handle and the knife fell as far as the nail. Three times he tried and three times he failed, and then the indignant spectators broke through the military cordon, and the prisoner was taken back into the gaol. Eleven years later that nail killed many people.