The Prisoner in the Mask

by Dennis Wheatley

  Later it emerged that it was in fact Esterhazy, and not Dreyfus, who had offered to sell information to Schwartzkoppen in July ’94. As an officer and a gentleman the German had been extremely shocked at finding himself confronted with a French officer who was proposing to betray his country. He had even endeavoured to dissuade him from doing so; but Esterhazy had persisted, and on submitting the matter to Berlin Schwartzkoppen had been ordered to deal with him. Actually he had produced nothing of any real value, and the material he supplied was now deteriorating to such a degree that Schwartzkoppen was on the point of telling him that he would buy nothing further.

  But at this time it never occurred to anyone in the Statistical Section that Dreyfus might have been arrested in mistake for Esterhazy. They jumped to the conclusion that they were on the track of a second traitor.

  Esterhazy’s past was then investigated and orders given for him to be shadowed. It emerged that he was a thoroughly bad hat. He had, between ’78 and ’81, actually been employed in the Statistical Section, thereby acquiring a considerable general knowledge of espionage and War Office procedure. But he claimed falsely to have been decorated for gallantry in North Africa, had married a young woman with a dowry of two hundred thousand francs, which he had since dissipated on vice, had for some years always been hard up, and was living with a registered prostitute known as Four-Fingered Marguerite.

  The shadowing of Esterhazy continued during May, June and July without producing any incriminating evidence, and as the petit bleu had never been dispatched there was really no case against him; so Picquart felt that it was, as yet, pointless to raise the matter with his superiors.

  In the meantime young de Quesnoy was leading a far from creditable life and one by no means satisfactory to himself. He fulfilled de Boisdeffre’s purpose admirably by serving as an intelligent and reliable link with the Russians; but, as he had foreseen, that entailed acting as cicerone to every new Muscovite officer who was sent either temporarily or permanently to take part in the secret discussions connected with the military alliance. A few among them were serious or elderly men, but the majority displayed an unflagging zest for ‘wine, women and song’; and to win their confidence meant once or twice a week accompanying them on wild bouts of dissipation which did not end till dawn.

  It was not that the Count objected to seeing pretty girls served up in huge pies and then dancing naked on the table. The trouble was that the night life began to get hold of him and, although having no regular office hours he could sleep off the effects of these orgies, he found himself losing interest in more sober pleasures. Towards the end of May Josephine broke off her liaison with him, and instead of seeking another respectable mistress he gave himself over to the allurements of any demimondaine who momentarily took his fancy.

  He now did little work in the Statistical Section but when he was in there one afternoon towards the end of August, Picquart showed him two letters and, covering up their signatures, asked him if he recognised the writing. He did, and said at once:

  ‘It is the same as that of the bordereau. They must have been written by Dreyfus.’

  ‘You are wrong,’ replied Picquart, and uncovering the signatures disclosed that they were written by Esterhazy.

  ‘Mon dieu!’ exclaimed the Count. ‘In that case it must have been Esterhazy who wrote the bordereau; so Dreyfus is innocent.’

  Picquart shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. Du Paty is of the opinion that they are forgeries made by Dreyfus’s brothers in the hope of fathering his guilt on his fellow spy. And Bertillon of the Sûreté maintains that a professional forger has been employed with the same object.’

  ‘How did you come by them?’ asked de Quesnoy.

  ‘Through another Jewish officer named Weil. He is on General Saussier’s staff and is a friend of Esterhazy’s. Recently he has also become suspect, and we have had his correspondence tapped.’

  ‘Have you managed to get anything at all against Esterhazy?’

  ‘No, nothing. That is just the trouble. Whatever may have been the case in the past we are quite certain that he has not been in communication with the German Embassy for the past few months.’

  ‘What view does General de Boisdeffre take about him?’

  Picquart replied a shade uneasily, ‘Not wishing to raise a mare’s-nest I did not even inform him of the finding of the petit bleu until the beginning of this month; but now I shall put in a full report and recommend a new investigation. After all, this does make it possible that Dreyfus was wrongly condemned, and we cannot allow an innocent man to suffer.’

  ‘I fully agree,’ de Quesnoy nodded. ‘But, by Jove, what a rumpus there will be in the Chamber if it does turn out that way.’

  For some weeks he heard no more of the matter as he now was really fully occupied in making arrangements for the visit of the Czar and Czarina. Paris was eager to welcome the Imperial couple, but when the visit took place it did not prove a great popular success. The timid young Nicholas cut a far from imposing figure and his German wife chilled people by her standoffishness.

  However, the horde of Generals, Admirals, Colonels and others that they brought in their entourage displayed no such nervousness about fraternising with the French. As a number of them spoke only Russian de Quesnoy, although far from being the senior officer of the Committee appointed to entertain them, was the key member of it. For days on end he got no sleep at all and by the time they departed he was so sickened of everything to do with gilded vice that he hoped never to have to go up the hill to Montmartre again.

  When he had recovered a little he asked his General to have him posted to a regiment, but de Boisdeffre said that the contacts he had made at the Russian Embassy were much too valuable to be thrown away. However, he suggested that as de Quesnoy had been a sitter-in with the Statistical Section for six months, he should in future spend his spare time in the Third Bureau, where getting an insight into operations would provide a new interest for him.

  The Count had no option but to agree, yet he was still anxious to get away from Paris, if only for a while; so he asked for and obtained three weeks’ leave. He had long wanted to visit the cities of the Rhine, and as this was the season of the vintage he decided that now was the time to do so.

  Before leaving he inquired of Picquart how the Dreyfus-Esterhazy affair was progressing, and Picquart said:

  ‘I am greatly worried about it. De Boisdeffre’s view is that a second case of this kind would completely blacken the honour of the Army; so that even if we secure incontestable evidence against Esterhazy we should refrain from prosecution. He would, I am sure, like us to ignore the whole business.’

  ‘But you must endeavour to find out the truth, on account of this wretched fellow Dreyfus.’

  ‘That is what I told him; so he gave me reluctant permission to carry on, but added that I was to use the greatest possible discretion and handle the affair under the direction of General Gonse.’

  De Quesnoy made a face. ‘Gonse is both a fool and a spineless creature. What is more he and du Paty had a bigger hand than anyone else in getting Dreyfus condemned; so if a mistake has been made he is the last person to want it found out.’

  ‘I know, and he has already indicated as much. But, justice apart, I think the attitude of the Generals is foolish. I expect you saw in the Press that the London Daily Chronicle had run a story that Dreyfus had escaped?’

  ‘Yes; but I take it there was no truth in it?’

  ‘No; none whatever. But it has brought the case to the attention of the public again, and there must have been some sort of leak about Esterhazy, without so far any mention of his name. This re-aroused interest has enabled the Dreyfus family to start an agitation for a retrial, and questions are to be asked in the Chamber.’

  ‘You are right, then. Our masters would be much better advised to stop burying their heads like ostriches, get right to the heart of the matter, and if an honest mistake has been made admit it.’

  Major Henry was not p
resent at this conversation and, had he been, he would not have been in agreement with the conclusions reached. His only loyalty was to the Army. As he saw it Picquart was behaving like an interfering fool, and at all costs the reputations of the Generals must be protected.

  He was one of the very few people who realised that the secret file contained no evidence against Dreyfus which could not have been torn to ribbons in an open court, and that if, therefore, the bordereau was proved to have been written by Esterhazy the whole case against Dreyfus must collapse. In consequence, at about this time, he began to manufacture new evidence with a view to protecting his superiors from being proved to have sent Dreyfus to trial without sufficient justification.

  First he extracted from the files a letter written in March ’94 by Panizzardi, the Italian military attaché, which had been intercepted on its way to Schwartzkoppen. In it a reference was made to some individual by the use of the initial P. Henry altered the initial to D.

  After numerous other minor fiddlings he produced, on All Saints’ Day—which being a public holiday enabled him to bring with him to the office without its being known a professional forger named Leeman—his greatest effort at deception; a document that in due course became famous as the faux Henry. Taking two more flimsies intercepted from Panizzardi, the bottom halves of which had not been written on, he cut these off; then, having gummed them together, he had Leeman forge a note on them in Panizzardi’s hand actually mentioning Dreyfus by name.

  The fatal mistake he made, which later when discovered cost him his life, was his failure to notice that the two flimsies were of different paper. Although identical at a casual glance, on one the faint squared lines were blue-grey and on the other grey-claret.

  Picquart, of course, had not the least idea that his subordinate was carrying on such nefarious activities, or that he was secretly warning the Generals that unless they got rid of the over-scrupulous head of the Statistical Section they might find themselves in serious trouble.

  On de Quesnoy’s return from the Rhine he saw his friend again and found him more worried than ever. He was now fully convinced that Dreyfus was innocent but he could not persuade anyone to do anything about it. De Boisdeffre had succeeded in persuading himself that Esterhazy must have been an accomplice of Dreyfus’s and that, even if the legal case against the latter was weak, he had been condemned justly. General Billot who, as Minister of War, would have to answer for the Army to the Chamber if it was found that a miscarriage of justice had occurred, was still more strongly against the revision of the case, while Gonse had displayed panic at the very idea.

  ‘The case cannot be reopened,’ he had declared to Picquart. ‘Owing to the senior officers involved this is out of the question.’

  ‘But Dreyfus may be innocent,’ Picquart persisted.

  ‘By comparison that is a matter of no importance,’ the General replied, then added: ‘And if you keep your mouth shut no one will be any the wiser.’

  At that Picquart had declared that he thought the General’s attitude abominable, and that he refused to carry the secret of such injustice with him to the grave.

  De Quesnoy congratulated him on the stand he had made, then went off to resume his own particular business. With the Russians he now dealt firmly, telling them that he planned to marry a great heiress and that her family would not agree to the match unless he gave up his life of dissipation. This was a situation they understood, so no umbrage was taken and his social relations with them were transformed into the giving and acceptance of a series of jolly but quite respectable luncheons and dinners.

  Nevertheless, his life still being aimless, he continued to be ill at ease and discontented. After having paid only the most obligatory calls at the Salons in the Faubourg St. Germain for the past six months he returned to them; but he no longer radiated the unspoilt charm which had made him so popular while an officer cadet. He now had a blasé air which, in spite of his devilish handsomeness, attracted only the maturer women. Surfeited as he had been through the summer with demi-mondaines, experienced women of Josephine’s age no longer had any appeal for him. Beauty with what might pass for innocence was what he craved, and he made a bad start on the young wife of a Senator named Trouverier, who responded to his proposals by threatening to slap his face and afterwards told all her friends that she had done so.

  His next choice was more fortunate, as little Madame de Beaumont-Arlon found him irresistible; but a cousin of hers who had adored her since she was a child, and had hoped that after marrying she might become his mistress, became furious with jealousy. It happened that he was a poet of mediocre ability, so he took his revenge by getting published some rather witty and decidedly derogatory verses obviously aimed at de Quesnoy.

  The Count promptly threatened to cut off the writer’s ears, but the lady’s husband intervened. De Quesnoy was persuaded to forgo that pleasure in order to spare her the scandal which would have resulted, and, in view of the unfortunate publicity which had already been given to the affair, to transfer his attentions elsewhere.

  His last venture that autumn was the Princess de Lodi. She was a lovely sylph-like creature of eighteen, but her husband was only twenty, and they had been married less than six months. As they happened to be in love with each other de Quesnoy’s bid for the young Princess’s favours was most untimely. But intrigued by the prospect of perhaps attaining the apparently unattainable he persisted in his endeavours; with the result that the Prince called him out.

  The days when both principals took two friends with them to a duel, and all six men fought with a sword in one hand and a poignard in the other till a majority of the combatants had fallen bleeding to death upon the ground, were long since past. Duelling had become a farce in which pistols with very small bullets were used at quite a long range. In consequence it was the exception rather than the rule for either party even to wound the other.

  In the chill hour of dawn the Prince and de Quesnoy met in a clearing in the Bois de Boulogne. Their seconds and a doctor took every precaution against either suffering any serious injury, they duly exchanged shots without hitting each other and honour was declared to be satisfied. But the story of the duel and the reason for it was all round Paris by mid-day, and it was not one which redounded to de Quesnoy’s credit.

  Now that he was attached to the Third Bureau he rarely saw Picquart and well over a month had elapsed since he had had an opportunity to ask him how the Dreyfus affair was progressing; but one morning early in December an enquiry took him to the Statistical Section. To his surprise he found Henry occupying Picquart’s desk, and on his asking for Picquart the ex-ranker replied:

  ‘He’s gone, and won’t be coming back.’

  ‘Has he then met with an accident?’ de Quesnoy inquired with quick concern.

  Henry shrugged. ‘You can call it that if you like; but it’s one he brought on himself. People who start butting their heads against the policy decisions of their superiors are apt to break them.’

  ‘Surely you don’t mean that he has been kicked out of his job because he was pressing for the Dreyfus affair to be reopened?’

  ‘That’s just what I do mean. He got up against General Gonse, and Gonse went to old Billot. He told the Minister that either Picquart must go or he would.’

  ‘But this is disgraceful! Picquart is a first-class man and he was acting in accordance with his conscience. From the moment it was discovered that the writing on the bordereau was Esterhazy’s it became at least possible that Dreyfus had been wrongly condemned, and—’

  ‘Oh, let the damned Jew rot,’ cut in the bullet-headed Major. ‘He has caused us more than enough trouble already.’

  ‘But if he is innocent that was no fault of his; and it is disgraceful that he should be made to suffer for something he did not do.’

  ‘You have a lot to learn about the Army yet, Count,’ Henry replied with a tolerant smile. ‘When I was a sergeant in the Zouaves, the son of a Colonel got involved in theft. His officer wan
ted him charged, but his seniors thought differently. The officer was broken and the culprit set free. That’s the way things go, and it’s no good trying to alter them. The sooner you get it into your head that the chaps on top are always right, the better.’

  Seeing that it was pointless to argue de Quesnoy asked where Picquart had been sent, to which Henry replied:

  ‘They bunged him off to Corps Headquarters at Chãlons-sur-Marne; but that’s only a temporary measure. I happen to know that they mean to send him to Tunisia, and I expect they’re hoping that an Arab bullet will put an end to there being any chance of his talking out of turn.’

  De Quesnoy was horrified, but he forbore to comment and marched out of the room. For the next hour he sat in his own office thinking the matter over. The suggestion that Picquart was deliberately to be put in the front line of battle was an iniquitous business. After much deliberation the Count decided that he could not stand by and see a friend so unjustly treated without attempting to do something about it. Drawing a sheet of paper towards him and heading it: ‘Personal; for the Minister of War only’, he wrote to General Billot as follows:

  This morning I learnt from Major Henry that Lieut.-Colonel Picquart has been deprived of his post as head of the Statistical Section owing to his having pressed for a possible miscarriage of justice to be fully investigated and, if necessary, rectified.

  I desire to represent that, if the above is true, such treatment of an officer is not only indefensible upon moral grounds but, should questions be asked about it in the Chamber, is liable to bring the Army, and particularly yourself, into grave disrepute.

  Knowing himself to be bound to secrecy, he had been shrewd enough not to imply that it was his own intention to get a Deputy to raise the question; but owing to the number of people concerned in the Dreyfus-Esterhazy affair several leaks had already occurred, and there might well be further ones. Counting on the fear in which all Generals went of political criticism, he hoped that the threat would induce the War Minister to reconsider the matter and, even if he did not reinstate Picquart, compensate him for removal from his post by promotion to a better one.