Rex Stout: Target Practice

The man lay on a cot near a window in one of the wards of the French army hospital at Toulon. Dr. Dumain, who was showing me through the hospital and who had been called away to attend a delirious patient in another ward, had told me that the man’s name was Bonnot, and that he had shot himself in the breast two days before in the barracks at the fort.

I had started after the doctor, thinking to take advantage of the opportunity to make my escape — I had had enough of hospital for the day — and had nearly reached the door, when a hoarse, agitated voice sounded from behind.

“ Monsieur! ”

I halted. The man on the cot had turned his head to look at me with eyes that positively startled me with their expression of poignant, intense suffering.

The outline of his body under the white sheet and the knotty appearance of his arms, which lay outside, showed him to be a big, muscular fellow; his bare shoulders were brown and massive. His chest and neck were swathed in bandages; but these details did not enter my consciousness till later.

My whole attention was centered on his eyes, that burned like twin fires of agony; and I told myself that no physical pain could produce so keen a torment. As I looked, one great, brown arm was outstretched toward me.

“Monsieur, s’il vous plait,” he murmured.

I walked to the cot. “What is it — a drink of water?”

He shook his head. “No. I am not thirsty, monsieur, except here—” he laid his hand on his breast — “for death.” The eyes flashed. “Monsieur is English?”

“No. I am an American — a war correspondent. Is there anything—”

“So much the better,” he interrupted. “Monsieur, will you do me a kindness? I dare not ask anyone here — they are all French — they would laugh at me in scorn—”

“But you yourself are French,” I observed, considerably mystified.

“No!” he shouted with sudden fierceness. Then, glancing quickly at the three patients at the other end of the ward, he lowered his voice to a savage murmur.

“No!” he repeated. “Or, if I am, I am Bonnot first. You will understand when I tell you, and I must tell you — I must tell some one. It is a long story — the doctor may return soon. Will you listen, monsieur ?”

I nodded, wondering. And that is how I came to hear the story of Joseph Bonnet.

Before I go further, I want to say that it is made public with the full and free consent of his poor old mother, whom I saw a week later at the address in Paris which he gave me. I can really see no disgrace in it for him, nor for anyone else.

As nearly as possible I shall tell it in his own words; but if you would realize to what degree the story affected me, you must remember the bare, dreary hospital ward, the white sheet and bandages, the great, brown arms tossed about in feverish gestures, the burning eyes, intense with suffering.

Throughout, his voice was low and hoarse, packed with feeling; now and then, when he paused to clear his throat, the muscles of his face jerked with pain from a self-inflicted wound.

But he kept steadily on to the end. As I remember it, I did not once interrupt him.

I was born in Alsace (he began), in the town of Colmar, about fifteen miles from the French border. We were both born there — my brother Théodore and I. I was six years the elder.

When Théodore was only ten months old our father died — he was a carpenter, I don’t remember him very well — and our mother was forced to go to work. She was never very strong, and she had a hard time of it.

So when some German friends, who had been very kind to us, decided to return to Frankfort and offered to take Théodore along as their own son, mother let him go. He was a little over a year old then.

Not long after that she and I went to Paris, walking all the way. There she did a little better, and managed somehow to send me to school; she could never get enough together to send for Théodore, hard though she tried.

Finally I went to work. But I always hated Paris, and I never got along very well.

Once mother and I made a visit to Germany, and found that Théodore was a student at a university. We saw that he was happy and well fixed, and didn’t try to get him to return with us. But it was curious how well I seemed to remember him. He was a fine young fellow, and I was proud of him. I thought it strange that my own brother should talk with a German accent.

I think it was in 1909 that Théodore came to Paris. I mean the last time; he had been there to visit us several times before. I was twenty-nine then. He never explained his business any further than to say he was sent by the German government to conduct some sort of scientific investigation. I never caught on to things very well. He stayed two years, till August 1911.

Once I found a lot of maps and plans in his room, with names of Paris forts and suburbs and roads scattered all over them; but I didn’t think anything of it. In fact, I didn’t know what they were at the time.

Those two years were happy ones for all three of us. Théodore was even kinder to mother than I was, and so jolly he used to make the tears run down her face from laughing so hard. I don’t think a man ever loved another man better than I loved him. I guess there were tears on my face, too, the day he left Paris.

In 1911, just after Théodore returned to Germany, I joined the army.

At last I found a job that suited me, though it didn’t pay very well — just enough so mother didn’t have to work after taking a little out for myself. Théodore was sending her money then, too.

Six months after I enlisted I won a prize for artillery marksmanship; in a year I was made a corporal and was sent to Boulogne. I was transferred to Toulon in April 1913, and in the very first target practise I came out the head of the list.

You know, monsieur, they anchor a small fleet of boats carrying a low, mud-colored sail about the size of a torpedo boat. I hit it ten times at five kilometers without a miss.

They made me a sergeant for that, and put me in charge of Battery No. 3 on the second tier of the main embankment. You can see it from the window there — just under the flag on the right of the middle traverse.

So, you see, I was doing pretty well, getting a hundred and fifty francs a month and studying to take the examination for chief gunner, which is a fine job.

This summer, in July it was, three months ago, I began to get ready to send to Paris for mother, so she could be near me here in Toulon. She never liked Paris any better than I did.

But then the war came and I had to give that up.

A day or two after war was declared, about half the force at the fort was transferred to the field division and sent to the front. Every man of us wanted to go; but, of course, some had to stay.

We had enough to do. The colonel gave us target practise every other day, and set up double watches everywhere; so we barely had time to sleep and eat.

But nobody grumbled. All we talked about was how we’d like to get a chance at the Germans. I caught the fever from the rest of them, and every day at morning quarters I was hoping I’d be picked out to go to the front. I knew I was the best gunner in the whole battalion, and I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t been sent before. It was just chance, I guess.

It went on like that for two months, and every day we were getting more excited, what with the despatches from Lille and Rheims and Louvain, and the little speech the colonel made every morning at quarters.

What spare time we had we’d sit around in the barracks singing the “Marseillaise,” and our talk was bloodthirsty.