The Prisoner in the Mask

by Dennis Wheatley

  The Chief-of-Staff, de Boisdeffre, who had just returned from leave, was now brought into the picture. On the 8th he laid the case before Mercier and the War Minister said that more certain identification of the writing must be secured before action could be taken. De Boisdeffre referred the matter back to his Assistant, General Gonse, who sent for Major the Marquis du Paty de Clem of the Operations branch, to which Dreyfus was then attached. Du Paty and Major Picquart, who was Dreyfus’s immediate chief, then compared numerous papers in his writing with that of the bordereau. Picquart was dubious but du Paty completely satisfied that they were the same, and his report was so positive that it convinced both de Boisdeffre and Mercier.

  Both were pressed for time as they had shortly to be present at the Army manœuvres at Limoges; but before leaving Mercier made a full report to the Prime Minister at a meeting at which the Minister of Justice, Guérin, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hanotaux, were also present. Hanotaux, foreseeing the diplomatic complications which were certain to arise if a French officer were accused of selling secrets to the German Military Attaché, urged most strongly that no action should be taken, or at least until much more conclusive evidence could be produced. Mercier then asked Guérin to put a civilian hand-writing expert in touch with Gonse, who was being left in charge of the case.

  Gonse was a man of mediocre intelligence and hasty judgments who concealed his inefficiency behind a high-handed manner. Having made up his own mind that Dreyfus was the guilty party, he refused the police expert full information but bullied him for a quick decision, and when it was given against his own convictions he promptly ignored it. He told du Paty to order Dreyfus to come to the War Office in civilian clothes, and to arrange to put him through a writing test.

  Mercier got back on the 14th and held a conference with all the senior officers concerned. General Saussier, the Military Governor of Paris and the senior officer in the French Army, had privately advised him: ‘No good can come of publicity. Send the fellow off to the Colonies and see he does not come back.’ But in spite of this, and Hanotaux’s warning that a trial would mean trouble with the German government, Mercier felt that matters had now gone too far to be hushed up. Scores of officers in the War Office knew about it, and the members of the police department with which Gonse had had such futile dealings. A leak, Mercier reasoned, was now certain, and it would result in the press accusing them of condoning espionage. As War Minister he was already being heckled in the Chamber about certain bloomers he had made and he did not want any more trouble. In consequence he agreed that Gonse’s arrangements should go forward.

  Next morning at 9 o’clock Dreyfus reported to Major Picquart. He was taken in to du Paty who ordered him to take down a letter for the Chief of Staff’s signature. The missive was so phrased as to contain many words which had been used in the bordereau. When he had done, du Paty, without even looking at it, charged him with high treason and arrested him.

  The whole group of officers involved in the case had by now argued themselves into an unshakable conviction of Dreyfus’s guilt so completely that they had actually placed under some papers on the table at which he was writing a loaded revolver. Revealing it, du Paty told him that he would save everybody a lot of trouble by doing the executioner’s business himself. But the unfortunate man, taken entirely by surprise, violently protested against the charge and shouted: ‘I won’t do it! I am innocent! I am innocent!’

  He was then searched, his keys were taken from him, and he was escorted by Major Henry to the Cherche-Midi prison. There, he became so overwrought that the Governor feared for his sanity and, convinced of his innocence, insisted that a doctor should be allowed to see him. Meanwhile a group of officers led by du Paty had searched his house. They found there not a scrap of evidence against him. His wife was informed of his arrest, but they refused to disclose to her either with what he was charged or his whereabouts, and bound her to silence by telling her that if she mentioned his arrest, even to his family, that would assure his complete ruin.

  During the fortnight that followed, by the interrogation of Dreyfus and an examination of his papers du Paty endeavoured to build up a case, but by the end of the month he had unearthed nothing new and could only report that he considered Dreyfus’s guilt to be established. Next day the Libre Parole broke the story to the public and in a matter of hours the rest of the Press was running leading articles upon it.

  As the Press knew only the bare outline of the story it was not to be wondered at that there was an immediate outcry against the unfortunate Dreyfus.

  The facts were that he was an Alsatian Jew but came of a family so completely integrated with their adopted country of France that after 1870 they had abandoned their home in order to retain their French citizenship; that he was an able and efficient officer about to be appointed to the General Staff and so had a career before him that was full of promise; that; although it was ferreted out that he had for three brief spells had mistresses, he was respectably and happily married and had two young children; that at the time of his arrest he had a bank balance of 400,000 francs—and the franc was then 25 to the £1. Therefore anyone less likely to have sold military secrets to a foreign power could hardly be imagined. But these facts were not reported at the time and did not emerge until long afterwards.

  It was not until later, either, that his being a Jew played any considerable part in the matter. Both Colonel Sandherr and Major Picquart admittedly had a prejudice against Jews; but there were at that date over five hundred Jewish officers in the French Army. Neither in it nor among the public had there as yet developed anything approaching an anti-Semitic movement, and when it did come it was due not to the soldiers but to the Press.

  The thing which weighed most heavily against Dreyfus was his unattractive personality. Several officers vouched for his intelligence, industry and, to the best of their belief, honesty, but not a soul could be found to say that he was a jolly good fellow.

  He was of medium height with high shoulders; his hair and moustache were light and he had a broad forehead, but his eyes were small and close-set. He wore pince-nez and his voice was high-pitched, toneless and weak. His manners left much to be desired. He was extremely inquisitive, dictatorial and so boastful that he would lie about imaginary exploits with women. Finally, he had no interest whatever in music, literature, art or sport; so his sole contact with his fellow officers was the work they were engaged on, and in no other way was he one of them.

  The crux of the matter was that the War Office staff was convinced, the Press reported and the public believed that an officer had been caught selling information to the Germans. Had the accused been an ex-jail-bird—as were many of the meaner kind of spies—yet a Frenchman, that would have been bad enough; but the fact that he was a Captain of Artillery made the crime heinous. The French nation felt shamed before the world, and officers of all ranks displayed bitter anger that one of them should have cast such a slur on the honour of the Army.

  Early in November Major d’Ormeschville, of the Paris garrison’s Court-martial Section, took over the investigation from du Paty and, finding that Dreyfus persisted in his denials, represented to the War Office the weakness of their case. This appears to have been the point at which the originators of the charge, fully believing Dreyfus guilty, decided that he must not be allowed to get off from lack of evidence, even if much of it could not be completely substantiated. Colonel Sandherr, presumably, and probably with the help of his loyal assistant Major Henry, then combed the Statistical Section’s files for every leak of information which might conceivably be attributed to Dreyfus, and added to this dossier every scrap of material they could gather which might help to blacken him in the eyes of his judges.

  Meanwhile Madame Dreyfus had been allowed to communicate with her husband’s two brothers, who at once came to Paris and sought the assistance of Edgar Démange, one of the most brilliant barristers of the day. Démange interviewed Dreyfus in prison and, convinced of his innocence,
agreed to undertake his defence; but, in the interests of national security, the authorities allowed him to see only a few of the papers which were to be put in as evidence for the prosecution.

  Hanotaux’s prediction, that the Germans would take umbrage if it was publicly asserted that their Embassy was being used for espionage purposes, proved correct. Their ambassador published an official statement that Schwartzkoppen had at no time either met or communicated with Dreyfus, and on direct orders from Berlin protested to both Hanotaux and the President of the Republic. Then Italy and Austria followed up with assurances that their Military Attachés also had had no dealings with Dreyfus. Nevertheless the preparation for the court martial went on.

  It opened on December 19th, and the Military prosecutor at once asked that the case should be heard in camera. General Mercier had insisted on this, as he knew the weakness of the evidence but was now persuaded that should Dreyfus be acquitted the inference would be that someone else, still at large, was the traitor and that would make suspect the honour of every officer employed at the War Office, thus creating an intolerable situation. Démange protested, but the President of the Court, knowing the War Minister’s wishes, overruled him; so the court was cleared of all but the military, and defending counsel.

  Among the seven judges not one was an Artillery officer; so none of them possessed the technical knowledge to point out to the others that had the bordereau been written by a gunner he would have expressed himself differently, and that the only printed document mentioned in it, far from being secret, was not even classified as confidential.

  Twenty officers were called for the prosecution, among them Gonse, du Paty and Henry, all of whom distorted the evidence with a view to blackening the accused. The Chief Rabbi, a few friends and half a dozen officers next testified to Dreyfus’s good character. Henry then asked to be recalled. Knowing how important to the honour of the Army his superiors considered it that a verdict of guilty should be secured, he proceeded deliberately to perjure himself.

  In spite of this, at the end of the second day, Picquart who was acting as observer for Mercier and de Boisdeffre reported to them that the judges appeared to be doubtful about the prisoner’s guilt, and that he would be doubtful about it himself if he had not heard about the secret dossier that Colonel Sandherr had compiled.

  It was this secret dossier which clinched the matter. On the third day the judges went through it in private. They were all honourable soldiers, but none of them had had any legal training, otherwise they would have realised that they should not have done so unless they were prepared to allow the defence to see and dispute its contents; but this they could not do because many of the papers would have disclosed the secret operations of the Statistical Section. Now convinced by the sheer mass of this supporting material that the evidence of Gonse, du Paty and Henry had revealed the truth, the Court brought in a unanimous verdict of ‘Guilty’.

  The death penalty for political crimes having been abolished in 1848; the prisoner was sentenced to be cashiered, degraded, deported, and confined for life in a fortified place.

  On January 5th the first part of the sentence was carried out in one of the courts of the Ecole Militaire. Detachments from all the regiments forming the garrison of Paris were paraded as a hollow square facing inward. In its centre Dreyfus standing to attention had his badges of rank and buttons cut from his uniform, and his sword was then broken in front of him. He gave a loud cry of; ‘Soldiers, an innocent man is being degraded!’ but his thin voice was half drowned by the shouts of hatred from the mob which had assembled outside the gates. His wrists were then tied and he was taken in a police van to the Sureté.

  On January 18th he was removed to La Rochelle, where another mob learning of his presence tried to lynch him. Then on February 21st he was deported to the penal colony in French Guiana, and, shortly after his arrival there, permanently incarcerated on Devil’s Island.

  Once the sensation of his trial had died down, he was forgotten by all but a few people for nearly three years. But a time was to come when his name would cause suicides, duels, the wrecking of many careers, riots, widespread looting and the fall of a government.

  9

  A RAKE’S PROGRESS

  De Quesnoy, like most of his companions at St. Cyr who knew only what the papers reported, felt it a great pity that the law did not permit of Dreyfus being shot or, as a more suitable end for such a loathsome traitor, hanged; but at the time of the trial he had much more pleasant thoughts to occupy him.

  Just as he was in need of it, he had found in the vivacious and alluring Madeleine de Frontignac the perfect foil for his amorous propensities. During the fortnight that followed their first encounter they met either in secret or at the Marquise’s home as frequently as de Quesnoy could get away from St. Cyr. Then the college broke up for the winter vacation, but the lovers had already made their plans for that. Madeleine had taken an early opportunity to present her new beau to her husband, and the cynical old Marquis did not disguise the fact that in this instance he approved her choice. In consequence she had no difficulty in getting him to invite the Count to join them at their villa at Cap Ferrat, to which they went each winter so that the Marquis could indulge his love of gambling during the height of the Monte Carlo season.

  Immediately after Christmas they left for the South of France and nothing could have enhanced their romance more than the exchange of furtive meetings under the leaden skies of Paris for an unchallengeable and continuous companionship under the blue ones of the Mediterranean.

  The house-party at the villa consisted of the Marquis’s two elderly sisters, the husband of one of them, a young married couple who were friends of Madeleine’s and a middle-aged bachelor of the type who spends his life battening on his richer friends but pays for it by making himself either useful or inconspicuous as required. They were all perfectly well aware that young de Quesnoy was their hostess’s latest lover, but none of them even hinted at it; and, exercising an equal discretion, Armand and Madeleine never displayed before the others any greater degree of intimacy than could be attributed to tastes in common having led them to become close friends.

  The age of travel for people of modest means had not yet dawned, but no major war had disturbed Europe for nearly a quarter of a century; so unhindered commerce had greatly increased the number of well-to-do families in every country, and many thousands of them now came each year to the Riviera. Among the wealthier nobility of Britain, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Scandinavia and the Balkans there were scores who either had their own villas or hired one for the season, and accommodation in the luxury hotels, although new ones were added to their number every year, was always at a premium.

  Every sunny morning beneath the palms outside the Cercle Nautique at Cannes, on the terrace at Monte Carlo, on the Promenade des Anglais at Nice, and along the sea-walk at Mentone, fashion parades took place which were rivalled hardly anywhere else in the world. In the afternoons there were tea parties in innumerable beautiful private gardens, heady with the scent of mimosa, roses and carnations. In the evenings the lights were lit along the lovely coast while scores of wealthy hostesses entertained as many as thirty guests to ten-course dinners. Then in laces and satins, perfumed and bejewelled, their bare shoulders protected from the cool night air by ermine and sables, the ladies accompanied their men folk to the casinos, where hundreds of thousands of pounds changed hands nightly.

  There were, too, visits to friends who entertained on the luxury yachts that crowded the anchorages of the harbours; drives in open landaux up to the beauty spots in the hills or to the scent factories at Grasse; rallies at which the curious could see ten or twelve of the new smelly, ugly, horseless carriages known as automobiles; and high spots in this riot of pleasure, the Battles of Flowers, in which the crowds bombarded the long processions of flower-decked carriages with every variety of bud and blossom.

  This life of luxury, elegance and gaiety, ministered to by thousands of servants and brought a
bout by the wealthy of half the world coming together for a few weeks in a tiny area, had only two more decades to run; but while it lasted it provided the perfect setting for two rich young people who were in love, and de Quesnoy and his beautiful Marquise enjoyed every moment of it.

  Early in January the Count learned that his father was staying near Cannes at the villa of the Grand Duke Michael; so he wrote asking if he might call, and in reply received an invitation to lunch. After the meal they had a long talk, during which de Richleau endeavoured to persuade him to resign his commission in the French Army and accept a Captaincy that the Grand Duke had generously offered him in one of the regiments of which he was Colonel-in-Chief. Politely but firmly de Quesnoy refused; but the meeting had broken the ice after his year of estrangement from his father. He volunteered to send back the Cross of St. Louis that lay in a safe-deposit in Paris, and the Duke responded by raising his income to a thousand a year—which for a young bachelor was great affluence in those days—and thus the breach between them was healed.

  While de Quesnoy was at Cap Ferrat there occurred another political crisis. Casimir-Périer, exasperated beyond further endurance by being ignored by the Dupuy Cabinet and libelled in the Socialist Press, resigned the Presidency. In his place another mediocre politician, Félix Faure, was elected. He was a handsome man, a great dandy, a fine figure on a horse and, although in his middle fifties, still an inveterate pursuer of women. Ten days later a new government was formed with M. Ribot as Prime Minister, and General Zurlinden succeeded Mercier at the War Office.

  By then the Count had torn himself from Madeleine’s arms, and the other joys of the Riviera, to return to St. Cyr for the opening of another term. But as a second year student he enjoyed still more latitude about going into Paris, so when she got back there at the end of February they had ample opportunity to continue their liaison.