The Prisoner in the Mask Read online

  It is possible that he would actually have lost his reason had it not been for the years he had spent in Madagascar. The supernormal powers he had acquired there, through endless hours spent patiently developing the techniques of the mind, now stood him in good stead. By concentrating his will he could make his spirit leave his body, which gave complete relief to both for several hours at a stretch. But the effort needed to perform this feat was considerable and sometimes he became exhausted before he could accomplish it. Nevertheless, these self-induced trances served to repair the mental and physical ravages he sustained far better than half-conscious, tortured sleep could have done; and as ‘hope springs eternal in the human breast’ he managed to cling to the belief that patience, wit and courage would somehow enable him to escape from Cayenne.

  At a little before seven o’clock in the evening of January 10th after a day of blistering heat, the cruiser suddenly dropped to half-speed, then slowed still further; an order was shouted from the bridge and her anchor was let go.

  De Quesnoy was exercising in the presence of Colonel Roux and one attendant warder. Screened off as they were on the small semi-circular after-deck of the cruiser they could see only the open ocean that lay astern. But, after a few moments, the ship began to swing with the tide. The Count stepped quickly to the rail expecting to catch his first glimpse of the South American coast and the little port of Cayenne.

  Slowly a low coastline came into view, but it was a dozen miles away. Then, only a few hundred yards distant, there appeared a jagged spit of rocks upon which the waves were breaking in white foam. Another minute disclosed the spit to be the easternmost tip of a barren, sun-scorched island a bare four hundred yards wide by two miles long.

  A good part of its flat surface was enclosed by a double palisade eight feet in height, the inner one having in its centre a single-storeyed stone building no larger than a cottage. The island had no harbour, but a short channel wide enough to take a good-sized boat had been cut through the reef to a flat slab of rock, upon which an officer and two men in warders’ uniforms were standing.

  As de Quesnoy stared through the eye-slits in his mask at the desolate scene, an icy hand seemed to grip his heart. Roux had come up beside him and, as in some awful dream, he heard the Colonel say:

  ‘I had not the heart to tell you before, but it is here that you are to be permanently imprisoned. As you may have guessed, it is Devil’s Island.’

  The Count had guessed. The last hopes with which he had buoyed himself up during the past terrible days and nights were now gone. This was no fort with people going to and from it and outside its walls a town or jungle into which an escaped prisoner might hope to disappear. With awful certainty he knew that, once in that stone hut encircled by its palisades and surrounded by the ocean, short of a miracle, he must die there; for from such a place there could be no escape.

  19

  A TERRIBLE ORDEAL

  The night of de Quesnoy’s transference from Paris to La Rochelle had been looked on by him as the most miserable he had ever spent, yet that following the arrival of the cruiser off Devil’s Island brought him to even greater depths of misery. Before, he had spent the hours speculating unhappily on what the future might hold for him; now he knew the full horror of the fate to which he had been condemned.

  In such circumstances the unruffled calm and concentration needed either to will himself to sleep or deliberately to project his spirit from his body were beyond his mental compass. Try as he would, he could neither keep still for any length of time nor succeed in completely emptying his mind. The itching of his scalp was so persistent that every now and then he was positively tortured into rubbing it against the inside of the helmet, and each time he endeavoured to check the working of his brain some thought of Devil’s Island came to stir it into fresh activity.

  He had had only a brief sight of the island, as Colonel Roux had declared his intention of going ashore at once to make arrangements for his prisoner’s reception early the following morning. But before the Colonel had re-locked him into his cell he had seen two more islands in the distance on the other side of the ship.

  The group was, he knew, called the Isles de Salut and they were about thirty miles from Cayenne. The largest was used as the penal settlement to which France’s most dangerous convicts were sent, either to die of fever or to struggle with the barren soil for a miserable existence. The next in size had on it a primitive asylum, to which were sent criminal lunatics, and prisoners from the larger island who were driven mad by privation and despair. Devil’s Island was much the smallest of the three and had been used until February 1895 for the internment of a handful of lepers, when it had been hurriedly evacuated to accommodate a single Prisoner of State—Alfred Dreyfus.

  That most ill-fated of men had occupied a room in the little stone hut on it for four and a half years. For the first eighteen months of that time, while exercising each day, he had at least had the small consolation of being able to look at the other islands and watch the passing of an occasional ship, but in September ’96 his captivity had been made still more rigorous.

  His brother Mathieu, wishing to re-arouse interest in his case, had caused a rumour that he had escaped to appear in the British Press. André Lebon, the Minister for the Colonies at that date, although assured by cable that there was not the least possibility of Dreyfus’s escaping, had sent an inhuman order to the Governor of the islands to build a double palisade round the hut, and that until it was completed the prisoner was to be shackled to his bed each night. So for six weeks the wretched man had lain in chains, and for his remaining three years on the island had been debarred from even gazing out to sea.

  Later, accounts had been published of his sufferings. As the island was only five degrees north of the equator it had no seasons and the heat there was intense. Month in, month out, the sun blazed down from a brassy sky, making the little stone prison as hot as a furnace. Dreyfus’s warders had been under orders not to speak to him. During the weeks he had been chained up, his manacles had rubbed raw places on his wrists and ankles. Each night the light in his cell had drawn myriads of insects to feast upon him and nearly drive him mad. A prison officer named Daniel, who was notorious as a sadist, had been sent specially from France to act as chief jailer. He had found the prisoner prostrate from heat and racked with fever, but had shown him no mercy.

  As de Quesnoy recalled reading of these things he groaned aloud. His warders were not allowed to speak to him; he was chained in his cell; his flesh had been rubbed raw by one of the restraints put upon him, and he had no reason whatever to hope that the present French Government would treat him in other ways any better than its predecessor had Dreyfus. It even occurred to him that as it was only a little over four years since Dreyfus had been sent back to France, the officer whom he had seen on the landing place of the island might quite well be the infamous Daniel. In any case, the presence of an officer and two warders on the island at all showed that a cable must have been sent from Paris ahead of the cruiser to the Governor of the penal settlement, ordering him to prepare Devil’s Island for a new Prisoner of State and, no doubt, giving special instructions about guarding him.

  The thought of such a cable brought to the Count’s mind the possibility that another might shortly be despatched reporting the discovery that someone had changed places with de Vendôme. It was now seventeen days since the exchange had been effected and every day that passed made it more probable that soon the secret must leak out. Now he felt that he would no longer care greatly if it did. A clean, quick death by a volley from a firing squad was to be preferred to a gradual destruction of body and mind by successive bouts of fever, dysentery, heatstroke, hallucinations and derangement of the brain.

  Yet his abnormally strict confinement had so far made no serious inroads on his quick wits or fine constitution, and when, at last, morning came it found him waiting almost with impatience to be taken to the island.

  There he would, at all events, get a
fresh deal. As soon as he had seen the last of Roux he would be free to speak again; and since none of the prison staff of the islands could know de Vendôme by sight, he could without risk accept the blessed relief of allowing his mask to be removed. Later he might even succeed in hypnotising one of his warders and so compel the man to aid in his escape.

  The insoluble problems of—How? In what? To where? What then?—pulled him up short, but, nevertheless, he refused to surrender absolutely to the depression which had almost overwhelmed him the previous evening, and when his breakfast was brought to him he ate it with his usual heartiness.

  While he was eating, the two warders kept within a few feet of him but left the door of the cell open. Through it he saw that during the night another ship had arrived off the island. She was lying at anchor bow on to the stern of the cruiser and a good half mile away; so it was difficult to get a correct impression of her, but from the sharp angle of her bows, her white paint and squat yellow funnel de Quesnoy thought she might be a private yacht. It occurred to him that, in view of the importance the French Government obviously attached to him, she might perhaps have brought the Governor of Guiana out to satisfy himself that the prisoner was handed over in good shape.

  When the Count had finished breakfast he was locked up again for an hour. Then Roux unlocked the cell and said to him, ‘The cruiser has no boat large enough to take the cell without danger of it over-balancing; so we must leave it behind. That being so, I shall adopt the same measures for preventing you from attempting anything rash, or the curiosity of the crew’s being aroused at the sight of your mask, as I did when we marched you out of the Cherche-Midi.’

  As he spoke the red-headed warder was already undoing the padlock which secured the chain to the staple in the wall of the cell. A moment later its free end fell with a clank on to the floor. Stepping out of the cell, de Quesnoy tucked the end of it into his belt. The warder, picking up the valise that held de Vendôme’s few belongings, followed. The older warder now appeared round the corner of the deck screen carrying a pair of handcuffs and a sack to put over the Count’s head.

  Roux gave a quick glance over his shoulder, then an exclamation of annoyance. Looking past him de Quesnoy saw that the ship that had arrived in the night had swung a little so that she now lay three-quarters on to the cruiser’s stern, and at that angle his guess about her being a steam yacht was confirmed. At the same second his mind registered two other things—from her stern staff she was flying the Stars and Stripes, and a neat white gig, with four oarsmen and three men in her stern, had just put off from her.

  ‘Tonnerre!’ muttered the Colonel angrily. ‘These accursed globe-trotters! Why must they choose this, of all days, to come and gape at Dreyfus’s prison?’ Turning back to de Quesnoy, he went on quickly, ‘We cannot allow these people to get a close view of your being taken ashore; so we must postpone matters for a while. Be pleased, Monsieur, to return to your cell.’

  De Quesnoy’s brain had been moving at the speed with which Marconi’s invention of wireless telegraphy was soon to be transmitting messages all over the world. ‘Now that they had reached their destination he was no longer bound by his parole. Could he break free of the Colonel and the warders? Surprise counted for much, so he might. The warders were both armed with pistols. Would the Colonel order his men to use them? Probably. Anyhow the chance that he would be shot down would have to be taken. But if he did get away could he possibly reach the yacht?

  ‘No; there must be a boat alongside the cruiser already manned and waiting to take him to the island; it would overhaul him long before he could swim half-a-mile. The gig from the yacht was coming in this direction, though. Could he reach that? Perhaps. But what about sharks? That he might be attacked by them was another risk he would have to take. Say he did get through, what then?

  ‘Would the men in the boat give him their protection? No, why should they? There could be no disguising from them the fact that he was an escaping prisoner. And, even if a generous pity inspired them with the wish to do so, how could they? As foreigners in French territorial waters they were subject to French law; and, unarmed as they were, how could they defy the cruiser and her crew?

  ‘Yet the alternative was to be cast into hell upon earth—days and nights of unremitting torture from heat, insect bites and dysentery. And that could end only in one of two ways: either death from Yellow Jack or a cable about de Vendôme leading to a firing squad.’

  Desperation at these last swift thoughts swayed de Quesnoy into taking the wild gamble. To render Roux hors de combat would, he realised, contribute more than any other first move to his getting clear of the ship. Drawing back his clenched fist, he drove it with all his force into the Colonel’s stomach.

  They were standing facing one another only two feet apart, so the blow took full effect. Roux’s melancholy pale blue eyes started from his head, his mouth gaped open; every breath of wind had been driven from his body. Without a sound he doubled up, then fell writhing on the deck.

  Before his two men could recover from their surprise de Quesnoy had sprung over his body and was running for the stern rail. He covered no more than a couple of yards. As the Colonel had ordered him back into his cell the warder behind him had put down the valise and grasped the end of the chain preparatory to re-padlocking it to the staple. Now, seizing it with both hands, he threw all his weight on it and brought the Count up short.

  The older warder had the sack in one hand and the handcuffs in the other. All he could do for the moment was to aim a blow with the latter at de Quesnoy’s head. As the Count sprang past, the steel handcuffs caught him squarely on the back of the head and, had it been unprotected, might well have knocked him out. But the leather helmet saved him.

  Brought up with a jerk, he swung left and returned the blow by a trick that he had learnt from an Apache back in ’96, when he had been frequenting the low haunts of Montmartre. Instead of striking with his fist he stuck out his first and second fingers rigid and opened in the form of a V, then jabbed swiftly with them at the man’s eyes. It was a risky stroke, as if the points of the fingers struck bone one or both of them might be broken; but if successful it was inevitably decisive. In this case it came off. As always happened, the man instinctively shut his eyes in time to save them, but they were severely bruised beneath the lids. Temporarily blinded, and in great pain, he dropped the things he was holding, gave a piercing cry, clapped his hands over his face and staggered away out of the fight for good.

  Meanwhile the redheaded warder, still hanging on to the end of the chain with one hand, had drawn his revolver with the other. Raising it, he bellowed:

  ‘Stand still! Put up your hands or I fire!’

  As the Count swung about the chain wrapped itself half round his waist, bringing him within three feet of the man who held it. Although he was covered at point blank range, he was near enough to make a grab at the weapon. It was that or surrender. Simultaneously he shot out his left hand and kicked with his right foot. His thrust knocked the revolver aside just as it went off. The bullet hit the winch in the middle of the stern deck and ricocheted from it with a loud whine. His kick landed hard on the warder’s left shin.

  The man let out a yelp, lifted his injured leg, lurched, and dropped the end of the chain. Before he could recover and level his revolver to fire again de Quesnoy was upon him. Seizing his weapon arm by the wrist, he thrust it down, then brought his right fist in a smashing uppercut to the jaw. The click made by the warder’s teeth could have been heard twenty yards away. As his head came forward it rolled upon his shoulders. To make certain of him the Count repeated the dose. The revolver dropped from his nerveless hands, his knees gave and he slumped in an unconscious heap.

  It was none too soon. The shot must have been heard forward of the screens as the Count caught the sound of shouting and running feet coming towards them. The Colonel, too, although groaning and gasping, had recovered a little and was struggling to his feet. Springing at him, de Quesnoy gave him a
violent push which sent him sprawling again, snatched up the revolver the warder had dropped and made his second dash for the rail.

  As he reached it the Lieutenant of the Watch, followed by two matelots, came at the run round the end of the port side screen. For a moment they paused there, staring in astonishment at the scene of havoc on the deck and its evident cause—a figure made grotesquely inhuman from having a head the shape of an inverted bucket. But they had all heard that there was a mystery prisoner aboard, and guessed at once that this must be him.

  Turning to face them, de Quesnoy levelled the revolver with a threatening gesture. They saw then that this strange headpiece was a mask, yet it seemed to make him more formidable. None of them was armed; so from fear of being shot down they pulled up a few yards from him.

  He had injured the warders only because if he was to get away he had no option, and he did not mean to shoot at French sailors unless he was compelled to in order to keep his freedom. Having halted them, he threw a swift glance at the gig, then, to attract the attention of the men in her, he pointed the revolver upwards and, in rapid succession, fired three of its remaining bullets into the air.

  As the shots crashed out the sailors made up their minds to rush him, but as they started forward he clambered up on to the rail. Balancing there for a second, he saw that the gig, which had been heading for the island, had suddenly altered course. She was now coming straight towards the cruiser, and could not be much more than a third of a mile away. The Lieutenant still had a pace to cover as de Quesnoy took a header into the sea.

  He had never practised diving from any considerable height and was still clutching the revolver; so his awkward plunge might have resulted in his being temporarily knocked out. But the helmet protected his head from shock, and it served him well again in the next few moments for, although he went down as if he was never going to stop, the big bubble of air caught in it brought him to the surface more swiftly than he had expected.