Читать книгу Tales of Mystery & Espionage: 21 Spy Thrillers in One Edition - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 76

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Seventeen months and twenty-four days later Charles Mildenhall, weary to death of trans-European railways, of shouting and gesticulating crowds, unwashed for two days, with parched throat and the smell of all evil things in his nostrils, sat upon the porter’s luggage barrow in the great railway station of Vienna and succeeded in achieving a state of utter disgust and weariness of life. He had been four days on a twenty-four hour journey, leaving behind him a commandeered car. He had stood in queues—a thing he loathed—he had had to make fairy-tale explanations of his business and his passport to a dozen unsympathetic officials rather than tell them the truth. He had reached Vienna in the gloom of a stormy evening to find not a taxicab at the station, not a single bowing commissionaire from any of the hotels, not a friendly face or a smile to be seen amongst the great cosmopolitan crowd who were pushing, apparently aimlessly, in every direction. Then, just as he sat up in despair to look out once more up and down the broad empty thoroughfare leading from the station, he beheld a wonderful sight and heard a wonderful sound. He saw a rather antiquated but a solid and veritable taxicab drawing up a few yards from the kerb-stone of the pavement and he heard what was far more wonderful still—a familiar voice. With his hand holding his cap raised high above his head, his countenance wreathed in one huge grin of welcome, was his ex-valet from the Embassy!

“Fritz!” he gasped.

“Mein Herr!” the little man exclaimed, only to wander off a minute later into a stream of mispronounced English. “What a joy! I am very happy. It is Herr Mildenhall.”

“The remains of him,” Charles uttered mournfully, rising to his feet. “Fritz, the sight of you has saved my life. I am worn out. I am hungry. I am thirsty. I am penniless. Take my dressing case, take my small bag, help me into your heaven-directed vehicle.”

Fritz leaped lightly off the box and did everything he was told.

“Ach, it is many, many months since I saw you last,” he cried. “Vienna is a rubbish heap. We are all starving. Where does Monsieur wish to drive?”

“What a joyous sound is your voice, Fritz!” Charles exclaimed. “Is there by any chance a hostelry open in this melancholy city?”

“The Sacher,” Fritz replied. “One wing is closed, the rest remains.”

“The Sacher!” Charles repeated as though in a dream of frenzied joy. “The Sacher by all means. But do not leave me when we get there, Fritz. I shall need you for a dozen things. I must have news of the place. I buy you—you and your vehicle—from this moment for the duration of my visit.”

“Thank God for that, sir!” Fritz said gratefully. “It is to be hoped mein Herr has enough money for his fare. If not, it is equal to me but there will be a tax owing to the hall porter—”

“Have no fear,” was the joyous interruption. “I’ll arrange all that. Let’s get along.”

They drove off. Charles lolled back against the cushions with a little groan of content. For two nights his head had rested on a wooden pillow. With every turn of the wheels the little vehicle seemed to be passing into the richer quarters of the city. There were more lights already. The fronts of many of the shops were barricaded with sandbags but here and there an open one invited customers. The line of cafés commenced, the lights of the Ringstrasse glowed feebly in their magic circle. There were men and women in the streets, crawling about, it is true, but civilized people. Marvellous! They drove up to the hotel and a porter stepped out for the luggage. Charles stumbled from the cab.

“Draw up and wait a minute, Fritz,” he ordered. “I will be with you directly.”

He walked to the cashier’s office. What joy! A familiar face was there, a familiar smile, the same deeply respectful bow.

“It is Herr Mildenhall!” the man exclaimed. “Welcome, mein Herr. We have money for you.”

“Thank God!” was all that Charles could say at that moment.

“What will you have, mein Herr?” the cashier asked. “There is money from England, money from Budapest and money from the Société Générale.”

“Give me some local money and fifty pounds in English notes.”

The clerk leaned across the desk.

“I would beg you, sir, not to display this too freely,” he said. “There is very little money in Vienna just now. Here is Mr. Herodin to ask what apartment he can give you.”

“A suite on the first floor,” Charles ordered, welcoming the manager with joy. “Mr. Herodin, I am glad to see you. I have not changed my linen or washed for days! I have not drunk a glass of wine or smoked a cigarette for a week! You have a trunk of mine here. Let it be unpacked—set a valet to work at once. Let a waiter provide a meal, a bottle of wine—in my sitting-room. Do not be alarmed if I bring my taxicab driver up with me. He was my valet when I was last here.”

“Suite number seventeen, Herr Mildenhall. I will set the quickest servants we have to work,” the manager promised. “Dinner will be served before you are out of your bath. We have rooms, we have food, we have wine. What we need are clients. The hotel is almost empty.”

“In a few moments,” Charles promised, “I will denude your larders and empty your cellars.”

He returned to the entrance. He poured small change into Fritz’s hand for the taxi drive. He tipped the hall porter. He tipped the porters who were guarding his luggage. He turned back to the stupefied Fritz, who was gazing at his handful of silver.

“There is enough there?” Charles asked him.

“Gnãdiger Herr,” Fritz replied, “this money would buy the taxicab and me! I am not sure that it would not buy the hotel!”

“Listen,” Charles went on. “Park the taxicab anywhere, go and sit down at a café—eat, drink moderately, but eat, man! You look half starved. Then come back here to-morrow morning at ten o’clock. Suite number seventeen. Come up to me—suite seventeen.”

There was joy mingled with a pitiful anxiety upon the man’s face.

“Herr Mildenhall,” he stammered. “You remember Suzette, my wife? She is starving, too.”

“Fetch her, you idiot!” Charles cried. “Drive away in your taxi and fetch her wherever she is. Take her to the café. Eat and drink—both of you. Here—take some more money.”

Fritz stepped back and shook his head.

“Mein Herr,” he confided, “I could buy the café we go to with this.”

“Go to a better one, then.”

“Oh, we shall eat, I promise you,” the man declared with tears in his eyes. “We will eat and we will drink and I will be here at ten in the morning—do not fear. One has not prayed for deliverance all this time in vain,” he added as he stumbled into his seat.

For a moment Charles forgot his own discomfort. He watched Fritz drive off.

“There are many like that?” he asked the hall porter.

“The city is full of them, sir,” was the doleful reply. “It is hard enough for those who have kept their posts. Our wages are reduced, the price of food has gone up, there is no coal and little wood. Life is very difficult. Everything that we have the Germans take. I think that they wish to get rid of the Austrians and they have decided that the quickest way is to starve them. Now they tell me we are to go to war again.”

Charles hurried away with a word of sympathy. He slipped into the lift, where a pert young Viennese lady with flashing eyes languished at him in vain. In a moment or two he was in number seventeen. He drew a long sigh of deep content at the comfort and luxury with which he was surrounded. One valet was waiting to strip off his clothes, another was testing the warmth of the bath. The trunk he had left there had been fetched up and opened. Fresh silk underwear and fresh linen were already laid out. He plunged into the bath with a groan of happiness. He sank in it up to his neck, stretched out his hands for the sponge and the soap. A sensation of amazing and voluptuous content crept over him. He closed his eyes…When he awoke only one of the valets was left.

“Have I been asleep?” he asked.

“Only for a few minutes, sir,” the servant answered.

“Is Frederick still in the bar?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“Telephone down for two dry Martinis. See that they are sent up in the shaker—absolutely cold and the proper glass.”

“I’ll telephone down, sir.”

“A debauch of luxury,” Charles murmured to himself a little later as he finished shaving and eyed his second cocktail greedily. “What has become of my dinner?”

“The waiter brought the first course up, sir, but we sent it back in case you slept longer. I stayed here to see that you did not slip down in the bath and Franz here is unpacking the trunk and your small things and preparing your evening clothes.”

“What time is it?”

“Eight o’clock, sir.”

“I’ll dine in the restaurant,” Charles decided. “I can’t go to sleep at the table, anyhow. I shall come straight to bed afterwards.”

The man’s face was a little grave as he bowed.

“What’s the matter—the restaurant is open, I suppose?”

“Most certainly, sir. The restaurant is open. There is dancing—Mademoiselle Celeste from Sweden, she makes very beautiful gymnastic dance.”

“Capital! Tell the head-waiter to keep me a corner table against the wall somewhere.”

“Certainly, mein Herr.”

Charles completed his toilet, sipped his cocktail and lit a cigarette. There was a knock at the door. Mr. Herodin entered. He smiled at the transformation.

“You are feeling a different man, Herr Mildenhall?” he enquired.

“And looking one, too, I hope!”

The manager waved the servants away.

“You are doing us the honour, I believe, of dining in the restaurant, sir?”

“I thought I would,” Charles acquiesced. “It will be a treat to see some civilized people again.”

“I fear, sir, that you will see very few of them,” Herodin confided. “The fact of it is that our clients have momentarily deserted us.”

Charles nodded and waited for more.

“The people who come here,” the man went on, “are chiefly German Nazis. They are not very polite, they give a great deal of trouble and they are not so particular in their dress and uniform as the Viennese—added to which their behaviour is rude.”

“I understand. Anyhow, I’m much too sleepy to talk to anyone, much less quarrel with them.”

The manager sighed.

“It is sad,” he said, “but one by one my regular clients have deserted me. The Archduke Karl Sebastian was often here; Count Pilduski with the Countess; Monsieur and Madame de Kruiten, and always some of the younger gentlemen from the Embassies when they were going. And now—no one. I thought it better just to give you a word of warning.”

“Very kind of you,” Charles acknowledged. “As a matter of curiosity I must have a look at them, though. Is anyone in possession of the British Embassy?”

“It seems to us, sir, to be in a state of chaos,” Herodin answered. “Mr. Porter is there for urgent enquiries. He was Consul General, I think, before the Embassy began to break up. Did you bring any news, sir? Do you think that there will be war?”

“If there is it will be a very foolish war,” Charles replied. “But no one can tell.”

“You will find such English papers as we have received during the past week on your table in the restaurant, sir,” the hôtelier announced. “There is no late news, but one understands that the German mobilization on Poland’s frontier is a very grave affair.”

Charles finished his cocktail and moved towards the door. He bade the manager good night at the lift.

“I go now to discover,” he said, “whether your chef’s Wiener Schnitzel is as wonderful as ever.”