An Officer and a Spy

I arrive at the office at my usual time and quickly scan the day’s papers laid out ready for me by Capiaux on my table. Le Figaro’s description of Dreyfus’s conditions on Devil’s Island has stirred up the sediment of opinion again, and everywhere Dreyfus is widely denounced: ‘Make him suffer even more’ seems to be the collective view. But it is a story in L’Éclair that brings me up short — an anonymous article headlined ‘The Traitor’ which alleges that Dreyfus’s guilt was proved beyond doubt by ‘a secret file of evidence’ passed to the judges at his court martial. The author calls on the army to publish the contents in order to put an end to the ‘inexplicable sense of pity’ surrounding the spy.

This is the first time the existence of the secret file has been mentioned in the press. The coincidence that it should happen now, of all times, just as I have taken possession of the dossier, makes me uneasy. I march down the corridor to Lauth’s office and drop the newspaper on his desk. ‘Seen this?’

Lauth reads it and looks up at me, alarmed. ‘Somebody must be talking.’

‘Find Guénée,’ I order him. ‘He’s supposed to be monitoring the Dreyfus family. Tell him to come over here now.’

I walk back to my office, unlock my safe and take out the secret file. I sit at my desk and make a list of everyone who knows about it: Mercier, Boisdeffre, Gonse, Sandherr, du Paty, Henry, Lauth, Gribelin, Guénée; to these nine, thanks to my briefing yesterday, can now be added Billot — that’s ten; and then there are the seven judges, starting with Colonel Maurel — seventeen — and President Fauré, and the President’s doctor, Gibert — that’s nineteen — who was the man who told Mathieu Dreyfus — who makes twenty; and after that — who knows how many more Mathieu has told?

There is no such thing as a secret — not really, not in the modern world, not with photography and telegraphy and railways and newspaper presses. The old days of an inner circle of like-minded souls communicating with parchment and quill pens are gone. Sooner or later most things will be revealed. That is what I have been attempting to make Gonse understand.

I massage my temples, trying to think it through. The leak ought to vindicate my position. But I suspect it is more likely to make Gonse and Boisdeffre panic and strengthen their determination to limit the investigation.

Guénée arrives in my office towards the end of the morning, jaundice-yellow as usual and smelling like the inside of an old tobacco pipe. He has brought with him the Dreyfus surveillance file. He looks around nervously. ‘Is Major Henry here?’

‘Henry’s still on leave. You’ll have to deal with me.’

Guénée sits and opens his file. ‘It’s the Dreyfus family who are behind it, Colonel, almost certainly.’

‘Even though the tone of the L’Éclair article is hostile to Dreyfus?’

‘That’s just to cover their tracks. The editor, Sabatier, has been got at by them — we’ve monitored him meeting both Mathieu and Lucie. This is part of a pattern of increased activity by the family lately — you may have noticed. They’ve hired the Cook Detective Agency in London to dig for information.’

‘And have they got anywhere?’

‘Not that we know of, Colonel. That may be why they’ve changed their tactics and decided to become more public. It was a journalist employed by the detective agency who planted the false story that Dreyfus had escaped.’

‘Why would they do that?’

‘I suppose, to get people talking about him again.’

‘Well then, I’d say they’ve succeeded, wouldn’t you?’

Guénée lights a cigarette. His hands are shaking. He says, ‘You remember a year ago, I told you about a Jewish journalist the family were talking to — Bernard Lazare? Anarchist, socialist, Jewish activist?’

‘What about him?’

‘He now seems to be writing a pamphlet in defence of Dreyfus.’

He searches through the file and gives me a photograph of a heavyset, youngish man in pince-nez with a huge balding forehead and a heavy beard. Clipped to it is a selection of newspaper cuttings authored by Lazare: ‘The New Ghetto’, ‘Anti-Semitism and Anti-Semites’, a series of recent articles in La Voltaire attacking Drumont of La Libre Parole (you are not invulnerable, neither you nor your friends. .).

‘Quite the polemicist,’ I say, flicking through it. ‘And now he’s working with Mathieu Dreyfus?’

‘No doubt of it.’

‘So he’s another who must know about the secret file?’

Guénée hesitates. ‘Yes, presumably.’

I add Lazare’s name to the list; that makes twenty-one; this is becoming hopeless. ‘Do we know when this pamphlet is likely to appear?’

‘We haven’t picked up anything from our sources in the French printing trade. They may be planning to publish abroad. We don’t know. They’ve become much more professional.’

‘What a mess!’ I toss the photograph of Lazare back across the desk towards Guénée. ‘This secret file is going to become a real embarrassment. You were involved in its compilation, isn’t that right?’