The Prisoner in the Mask Read online

  Opening the flap of a Dutch bureau, Syveton waved the Count towards it. Sitting down, he wrote a brief note asking the American to meet him if he possibly could at eleven o’clock in the Louvre, near the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Marking the envelope ‘Strictly Private’, he put it in his pocket.

  Five minutes later he was again out in the dark night. On his way across Paris he dropped his note into the letter-box of Van Ryn’s bank. It was three o’clock before he let himself into the Pension Smirnoff; but even then it was a long time before he could get to sleep, his mind being filled with remorse for his unjustified suspicions of Angela.

  Nevertheless, he was up betimes and strolling past the headless ‘Victory’ shortly before eleven. As he halted to admire it, his friend approached from the other direction. They greeted one another in English with exclamations of surprise, as though they had met by the purest chance. Falling into step, they walked slowly down the long gallery, pausing now and then to look at the cases of Tanagra figures, and Grecian pottery with its archaic scenes sharply black on the red ceramic ground, while de Quesnoy gave a low-voiced account of the situation that had developed.

  Having heard him out, the American said, ‘Eight thousand dollars. That’s quite a sum. You’re still on the right side by about twelve hundred on that draft your father sent us early in September. Still, that’s beside the point. You certainly must not miss the chance to get even now the risks you have been taking look like bearing fruit. Okay, then; I’ll let you have the eight thousand against your note of hand.’

  With a smile the Count produced his worn pocket-book and took out a folded paper. ‘A thousand thanks. I felt sure you would; so I have it here already written out for you. My only real anxiety was that you might not be in Paris.’

  Van Ryn’s mouth widened into a broad grin. ‘I wouldn’t want to be any other place just now. I’ve a fiancée and her mother staying as my guests at the Scribe.’

  ‘Mon Dieu!’ de Quesnoy swung upon him. ‘You pulled it off then?’

  ‘Sure; and I owe you a lot for urging me to go right out to get her. Strange folk one meets up in Scotland, though. No one there seemed ever to have heard of the Chesapeake Banking and Trust Corporation. But did I ever let on to you that I’m a orack shot with a twelve bore? Anyway, I am; and I slaughtered more grouse birds in a day than some of the fellers there did in a week. Not that that made any difference to Fiona, bless her heart. She wouldn’t mind if I couldn’t hit a tame cat with a water pistol. But my being able to beat the men of her family and their friends at their own game made things sorta easier all round. In no time at all they were treating me as though I were a long-lost brother.’

  ‘I am delighted! Delighted!’ The Count wrung his friend’s hand with real enthusiasm. ‘But you are no more lucky than she is. Had I a sister I could not wish for her a better husband. How I regret that I am not in a position to call on her and offer her my congratulations. Please convey them to her for me. And as soon as I am through with this business you and I will drink to your happiness the best bottle money can buy.’

  De Quesnoy having been debarred from altering the appearance he had had while living as Dupont with Van Ryn, the greatest risk he could run was to be seen in his company; so they resisted the temptation to linger longer together. But they arranged to meet again after dark that evening in the south-west corner of the Palais Royal arcade, and in the shadows there the banker handed over a thick envelope containing the forty thousand francs.

  Returning to the Pension Smirnoff, the Count went up to his bedroom, locked the door and took up a board under the bed that he had loosened to form a cache. As a precaution against having his pocket picked in one of the cheap haunts which his life as Petrovitch made it necessary for him to frequent, he kept there the bulk of his money for current expenses and also the precious key to the coachhouse in which Harry Plimsol had installed his escape crate. Now, he took five thousand francs out of the envelope that Van Ryn had given him, then put it with the rest of the money into the cache, and replaced the board.

  Three hours later he was again with Bidegain at a corner table in the little café where that unhappy man took his nightly potations. Having reported that he had found a buyer for the fiches, but could not induce him to go higher than eighty thousand francs, the Count, under cover of a newspaper, showed Bidegain the five mille notes he had taken from the envelope, saying that he had demanded that much as evidence that the buyer meant to go through with the deal.

  At the sight of the big crisp banknotes that could have got him out of all his troubles, Bidegain lifted his rheumy eyes to de Quesnoy’s and muttered, ‘You have worked fast; but that is all to the good. The sooner we are through with this business now the better. I’ll bring the papers here tomorrow night. I’ll not part with them, though, without the money; so you must persuade your friends to trust you with the lot.’

  ‘I think I can do that,’ replied the Count quietly. Then, after they had had another drink, he went home feeling confident that his gesture of showing Bidegain as large a sum as he probably earned in a year had both removed his last hesitations and ensured his acting without delay.

  Next morning he was up early and, having walked for the best part of a mile, went into a café where he was not known. From it he telephoned Laveriac’s apartment but, to his annoyance, learnt that the General had been away for a couple of nights and was not expected back until mid-day. He then tried that of Guyot de Villeneuve and had better fortune. As it was a Saturday the Deputy had no plans for that morning that he could not put off, and he agreed to meet de Quesnoy at half-past ten at the west gate of the Luxembourg Gardens.

  When de Villeneuve learned about the fiches he became almost as excited as Syveton had been. He said that, through Laveriac and other secret royalists at the War Office, it was known to the Committee that during the last few months the influence of the Grand Orient over General André had increased to such a degree that it now virtually dictated all promotions and appointments in the Army. If cast iron evidence of the connection could be produced it would, therefore, be more valuable than ever, and should provoke a storm of public indignation which would have disastrous repercussions on the Government.

  Elated as de Quesnoy was to learn that his six months of uncongenial and dangerous labour were likely to be so well rewarded, he pointed out to de Villeneuve that the fiches would be of little value unless it could be proved that André acted upon them; so Mollin’s letters to Vadecard were essential to the coup, and, although he had no reason to suppose them to be forgeries, it must be put beyond all doubt that they had been written by him. It was for that reason he had tried to get hold of Laveriac, as the General could no doubt have secured a paper in Mollin’s writing from one of the files in the War Office.

  De Villeneuve at once agreed the point and said that, the matter being of such importance, he would go to Laveriac’s apartment and wait there until his return. It was further settled that the Deputy and the General should be at half-past eleven that night at the Café Nicole, which was only a few hundred yards from that frequented by Bidegain, and there await de Quesnoy’s coming.

  It was close on twelve o’clock when he joined them, and he had with him three letters from Mollin. For them he had given Bidegain twenty thousand francs, withholding the other half of the money for the time being, while the equally cautious Bidegain had retained the fiches. All three of the letters contained passages showing beyond dispute that Mollin had been acting on behalf of General André, and after a brief examination Laveriac declared himself fully satisfied that they were in Mollin’s writing.

  De Quesnoy then returned to Bidegain and, to his astonishment, on his handing over the second twenty thousand francs the little man produced from a canvas satchel a great bundle consisting of several hundred fiches. Seeing the Count’s look of surprise, he gave a nervous laugh and said:

  ‘From the time we started asking the branches for these things I’ve had over twenty-five thousand of the
m through my hands; but now I’m finished with the business I thought your friends might as well have their money’s worth; so I cleared the files and brought you their whole contents. I only wish I could see that pig Vadecard’s face on Monday morning.’

  Having had a final drink with him and wished him luck, the Count hurried back with his treasure to the Café Nicole. There, he and his two fellow conspirators spent over an hour going through it to their great satisfaction. Many of the fiches were quite innocuous and a few even in praise of the officers reported on, as sound priest-haters and good democrats, but dozens were denunciations of men whose only crime was sending their children to one of the old-established Church schools instead of the new government lycées, and some, as Laveriac was in a position to know, were tissues of malicious lies invented with the object of sabotaging the careers of strict but highly competent officers.

  They still had more than half of the fiches to go through when they noticed that the café was nearly empty and, not wishing to draw the patron’s attention to themselves, decided that they had better soon make a move. As Vadecard could not fail to find on Monday that his files had been rifled, there was now a risk that he might take some counter action which would rob the coup of its surprise value; so it was agreed that de Villeneuve should enter the Chamber as soon as it opened on Monday, with Mollin’s letters and a selection of the fiches, and intervene to produce them at the first opportunity.

  Whatever the risk, de Quesnoy felt that he could not deny himself the pleasure of witnessing the outcome of his endeavours; so during Sunday he spent quite a lot of time considering various possible disguises. His choice fell on turning himself into an elderly asthmatic, and first thing on Monday morning he set about his transformation.

  At a pharmacy he bought a pair of cheap steel-rimmed spectacles, a large black oval pad such as poor persons afflicted with asthma used to wear tied over their mouths with black tapes, and a tin of talcum powder. In a public lavatory, with the aid of a pocket mirror, he brushed some of the powder well into his beard and hair; then, satisfied that he looked a good fifteen years older, he bought a stick on which to lean, and, at a little before eleven o’clock, having the appearance of a confirmed invalid, made his way slowly up to the public gallery in the Chamber of Deputies.

  The Chamber was two-thirds empty and engaged in winding up a dull debate that had been carried over from a previous session. But Deputies kept drifting in and it soon became clear that those of the Right had been specially mobilised. A scurrying to and fro on the Left showed that alarm had been taken there and a quarter of an hour later the benches on that side also began to fill up. Prime Minister Combes came hurrying in at midday and soon after him the Foreign Minister, Delcassé, the Minister for the Colonies, Doumergue, Pelletan and General André.

  They had hardly taken their seats before de Villeneuve jumped to his feet and asked leave of the President of the Chamber to speak on a matter of urgent national importance. It was granted and, with the vitriolic eloquence of which he was a master, he denounced the War Minister as a traitor, guilty of deliberately weakening the country’s defence for political ends.

  His attack was at first greeted with laughter; but having recalled how André had suppressed the properly qualified Promotion Committees to take the fates of twenty thousand officers into his own hands, he pointed out that no man could have personal knowledge of even one in fifty of them; so the Minister had found himself compelled to substitute other, less impartial, groups of advisers for the Promotion Committees. That he had consulted Prefects who owed their appointments to the Ministry was common knowledge, also that he had invited the Bloc des Gauches to make its recommendations; but it had been only rumoured that he had disgraced his high office by allowing himself to become a creature of the Freemasons.

  There were cheers from the Right, boos and catcalls from the Left, but the Chamber was obviously intrigued to know what was coming next. As soon as the noise had died down he read out Captain Mollin’s letters to Vadecard and followed them with a selection of the most slanderous of the fiches.

  The Chamber heard him out with hardly a murmur. When he had finished the Left sat in stunned silence, looking hopefully at the Ministry for a swift and categorical denial of these damning charges.

  It did not come. General André got slowly to his feet and, whitefaced and shaking, he cried in a tremulous voice, ‘I have had no notice of this. I will look into the matter.’

  Tough old Combes jumped up and shouted, ‘Lies! Lies! Lies!’ But he was howled down by the Right and the Centre, which now turned upon him with cries of ‘Explain or resign! André is a traitor! Down with the Ministry! We are betrayed! The country is in danger! Refute the charges or resign! They have sold us to the Germans! Out with them; out!’

  To de Quesnoy’s grim delight it seemed that the Government was doomed; but, taking advantage of a temporary lull in the pandemonium, Jules Jaurès, the great Socialist intellectual, sprang up to the tribune and, with the skill of a born orator, succeeded in getting a hearing.

  Eloquently he pleaded with the Radicals and Republicans not to be stamped into withdrawing their support from the Ministry on a snap motion; not to lose their heads and help the ‘Caesarians’—the old military caste, the promoters of war, the rich manufacturers of arms and the oppressors of the common people—to overthrow the Government.

  His impassioned plea saved Combes and his colleagues. A Radical put a motion that André should be allowed a week to produce an explanation. It was carried, although only by a majority of four.

  De Quesnoy left the Public Gallery sadly disappointed. He endeavoured to cheer himself with the thought that André would find it no more easy to explain his associations with the Masons in a week’s time; but he knew only too well that, now the mine had been sprung, scores of unscrupulous politicians would be holding small, agitated group meetings, with the object of keeping in power the Combes’s Ministry, because it suited their private ends.

  Pocketing his spectacles and asthma pad, he went to a barber’s and, giving as a reason for the white powder in his hair and beard that he had been to a fancy dress dance the previous night, he had them thoroughly shampooed. Then, early in the evening, he took his courage in both hands and went to the headquarters of the Grand Orient in the Rue Cadet.

  It took considerable nerve to do so, as it was possible that Bidegain had been caught and, under pressure, given him away as the man who had tempted him to sell the secrets of the Brotherhood. Yet, if he suddenly terminated his associations with the Masons, knowing him to have been a crony of Bidegain’s they might swiftly come to suspect him of acting as the agent for their betrayal. To appear boldly among them before they had had the time to carry out a full investigation, and find out how their minds were working, seemed therefore a high, but not unreasonable, stake to play against the certainty of being shadowed later and possibly having his identity discovered by fanatical amateur sleuths, who would either have him arrested by the police or knifed by an Apache.

  He found the headquarters in a turmoil. Freemasons buzzed indignantly in it like a swarm of angry bees. They took the line that their Secretary-General had been performing a valuable service to the State in helping to Republicanise the Army—that last stronghold of aristocratic privilege, monarchism, and subservience to Rome—but, all the same, they were far from happy at having had his activities made public.

  Bidegain, the Count learned much to his comfort, had made good use of the week-end. His family were still in Paris and refused to answer questions; but he had taken the Sunday morning train for Brussels with several pieces of luggage, and left behind him rude notes for his principal creditors intimating that he never meant to return.

  Reassured that he, personally, was in no immediate danger, the Count returned to his lodging and put in a sound night’s sleep. On Tuesday evening he went to the billiards saloon and spent a few hours with Forain and the rest of the little crowd there that he had come to know so well. They echoed t
he opinions he had heard at the Grand Orient the previous night, and it was evident that not one of them had the least suspicion that he was at the bottom of the scandal which had become front-page news under inch-high headlines, and was now agitating all France.

  Two mornings later, as he left his room to go out, Madame Smirnoff, meeting him on the landing, told him there was a letter for him in the rack. Had she not mentioned it, he might not have known of its arrival for some days, as during the whole time he had had a room at the Pension he had not received a single letter there, and he expected none. Wondering what could have caused one of his fellow conspirators, or Van Ryn, to write to him, he hurried downstairs, to find to his surprise that the envelope was in Angela’s writing.

  Tearing it open, he saw that it contained only a single sheet of paper with a few lines on it, which read:

  Something has happened about which I must talk to you. Please come to the pavilion at ten o’clock tomorrow, Thursday, night. I will see that the door in the wall is left unlocked. If you cannot come on Thursday I shall wait there at the same time each night until you can.

  For the rest of the day his thoughts were never far from her, but he speculated in vain upon what it might be that she wished to see him about. He was still feeling great contrition over the unjust suspicions of her that had driven him to break into the pavilion the preceding Thursday night, and weighed in his mind if he ought to tell her about that. Finally he decided that no good could come from doing so; but it was possible that Syveton had already told her of his unexpected and violent entry. If that proved the case, rather than attempt to explain it away by lies, he was quite prepared to confess the truth and grovel. As things turned out the matter did not arise, and from the moment of his arrival upstairs in the pavilion his mind was fully occupied with a startling new development.