Evil in a Mask by Dennis Wheatley Page B

ex-aristos who were living in idleness in England or Coblenz while we were fighting on the Rhine, in Italy and Egypt.’
    With a shrug, Roger let the matter pass, for he knew that there was much in what the Major had said. From those earlier campaigns many thousands of France’s best fighting men had never returned and, although the Army still had a leaven of them as junior officers and N.C.O.s, its ranks were now composed mainly of young and often unwilling conscripts; while Napoleon’s policy of marrying the new France with the old had led to his giving staff appointments to considerable numbers of inexperienced youths of noble families, many of whom lacked the daring and
élan
of the men with whom he had earlier surrounded himself. In numbers the Army was greater then it had ever been; but its quality had sadly deteriorated.
    Next morning, the Russian soldier-servant produced for Roger a pair of field boots a little too large for him, but comfortable enough, and the tunic and busby of a Hussar officer who had recently died in the local hospital. Somewhat more presentable in this false plumage, he spent the next six days with his gloomy companions, alternately taking exercise in the walled garden, drowsing in an armchair with broken springs and talking with them about past campaigns. Meanwhile, with the best patience he could muster, he waited for some indication that the Hetman Dutoff had carried out his promise to request General Bagration to arrange for his exchange.
    On the seventh day his hopes were realised. The officer in charge of the prisoners informed him that an order had come for his transfer to Tilsit, where the Commander-in-Chief had his headquarters. That midday he said good-bye to his fellow prisoners, without disclosing the reason for his transfer then, with an infantry subaltern as escort, he set off in a well-equipped sleigh for the headquarters of the Russian Army.
    Tilsit was on the Niemen and some thirty-odd miles from Insterburg, so it proved a long, cold drive across the still frozen plains, ameliorated only by the fact that Roger had been provided with furs and that the young officer responsible for him had taken the precaution to bring half a dozen large
brodchen
stuffed with caviare, a similar number of
apfel-strudel
with rich, flaky pastry, and a bottle of captured French cognac.
    By evening they reached the larger city and, somewhat to Roger’s disquiet, instead of being taken to the Palace occupied by General Bagration, he was checked in at another, larger prisoner-of-war camp.
    This camp consisted of several score of hutments. In it there were confined a thousand or more French soldiers and, fenced off in a separate enclosure, quarters that housed some seventy officers. Among the latter were three with whom Roger was acquainted. They welcomed him gladly as a comrade in misfortune, but were as depressed as those he had left behind at Insterburg. They were, in fact, even more gloomy about theirprospects, as they had learned the results of the battle of Eylau.
    For the first time the Emperor had there met his match in the Russians. That bloody battle had proved no victory for the French, although Napoleon had claimed it as one. But he had been enabled to do so only owing to the fact that he had retained the ground he held, whereas the more cautious Bagration, against the advice of his Generals, had withdrawn during the night. Actually, the appalling slaughter had resulted only in a draw.
    Again, for fear of causing his companions unhappy envy, Roger did not disclose his hopes of shortly ending his captivity by being exchanged. But he now felt confident that on the next day he would be sent for to the General’s headquarters and, anyway, informed that negotiations with regard to him were in progress.
    He was disappointed in that and several days followed, during which he had to listen to the complaints of his fellow prisoners at having had to participate in this ghastly