Читать книгу Tales of Mystery & Espionage: 21 Spy Thrillers in One Edition - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 77

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Charles Mildenhall, having been as near starvation during the past four days as he was ever likely to be, found his dinner excellent, the wine, personally vouched for by Mr. Herodin, of the best year and in perfect condition. The manager’s warning, however, concerning the company, was fully justified. There were one or two small groups of German officers who kept carefully to themselves and whose bearing was almost offensive. It was curious to notice how the few Austrians dining there, especially those with their womenkind, took care to remain on the other side of the room. One woman, who was dining alone, Charles recognized, and towards the end of dinner, at her request brought by a waiter, he went and sat with her for coffee. She dropped her heavy monocle at his approach and beamed up at him with a ready greeting.

“I was afraid that you might not recognize me, Mr. Mildenhall,” she said. “We dined together, you know, at Mr. Leopold Benjamin’s some time ago—on the night of his disappearance. I am the Princess Sophie von Dorlingen.”

“I remember you perfectly. Princess,” Charles assured her as he took the chair the waiter had drawn out for him. “I scarcely flattered myself that you would remember me, however. We were seated some distance apart at that memorable dinner and I had not the pleasure of much conversation with you.”

She shook her head ponderously.

“It is so sad, this,” she continued in her rather guttural voice. “So sad about Mr. Benjamin.”

“Tell me,” he begged. “I have been away for so long travelling that I really seem to have had but little news. Nothing has happened to him, I hope?”

The Princess rolled her eyes.

“Rumours, my young friend,” she sighed. “Rumours—many of them. All bad. Some of them we hope not true. But you can see for yourself his beautiful house, the bank—”

“I only arrived here a couple of hours ago,” Charles confided. “I’ve had a roughish journey down from Poland. I drove straight to the hotel and I have spent most of my time since changing.”

She raised her hands.

“The bank is closed,” she told him. “There are boards across the windows. As for the house—it is a wreck.”

“And the picture galleries—the museum?” he asked breathlessly.

“There are all manner of stories,” she went on, “but one thing is certain. Within an hour of the German invasion of Vienna a picked band of Nazis went straight to the house. They demanded to be shown to the picture galleries. They were stripped! There was not a picture upon the walls. Everything was gone. The museum was empty. The Nazis were in such a fury that they wanted to burn the house down. Since then there have been no end of stories. This much is true, at any rate—Mr. Leopold Benjamin was a much cleverer man than people believed. The bank vaults were almost empty. What has become of his possessions no one knows. The Nazis declare, though, that the pictures and a great many of the curios are still in the city. There are people who believe that Mr. Benjamin himself is still in Vienna. You and I know that he was at his house just before Hitler’s Nazis swept through the place.”

“I sincerely trust that he got away,” Charles said earnestly. “Surely we would have heard of it if anything had happened to him?”

“I don’t know,” she answered with doleful pessimism. “Terrible things have been done here, and from the moment they entered the city the Nazis took control of all the newspapers. Then there was that sweet young lady—Mr. Benjamin’s secretary. They say she was marched off to prison.”

“Princess!” he exclaimed in a tone of horror.

“It is true,” she assured him. “I believe that the American Minister went to her rescue but that they were furious at having to let her go. I am not sure that they did not arrest her again later on. Let me see—she sat next to you at dinner.”

“I sat between her and the Baroness von Ballinstrode. The Baroness was attractive, of course, in her way, but one meets that type in the civilized places all over Europe. Miss Grey had a queer Watteau-like grace of movement and figure, and a wonderful smile. I am not a very impressionable person, Princess, but I don’t mind confessing that I have thought of her more often and with more pleasure than any of these famous beauties.”

“She was, indeed, very charming,” the Princess agreed. “Beatrice von Ballinstrode, of course, I knew much better, but of the two I would much rather trust the little lady you were speaking of. They both seem to have disappeared now. Oh, it is a sad place, this Vienna, Mr. Mildenhall! My life—what has it become? I was born in a palace. I live now in four rooms with a maid, almost as old as myself, to look after me. She cannot cook. Three times a week I come here and I eat—sometimes a mittagessen, sometimes a dinner. Seldom do I see any of my friends. To-night I have been lucky. I used to see you sometimes, Mr. Mildenhall, at the Embassy parties. You are like a shadow from the old times, anyway. It has done me good to talk to you. Now, outside, in a few moments you will see an old woman, fatter than I am, in a black dress, a white apron and a shawl around her head. That is my maid Madeline. We shall hobble home together.”

“If I stay long enough,” Charles proposed, “you must dine with me one night, Princess.”

“You will not stay,” she sighed. “There is war in the air, more terror that is coming. I can scent it, almost I can smell it. Austria is full of German troops. In a few nights you will hear the tramp of feet, the roaring of planes, the shrieking of locomotive whistles. They will be off then to the north. A million or two more lives, rivers of blood, all for the lustful joy of one man.”

“The war may still not come,” he reminded her.

“If you really think that, all I can say is that I see the future more clearly than you,” she said.

“We should have hope, at any rate,” he declared. “I do not often talk of my missions. Princess, but I will tell you this. I have talked with the fighting men of Poland within the last ten days. I was on a special and a secret mission. It is over now. There is no secret about it any longer. I went to tell them frankly that England and France both recognize their responsibility in their guarantees to her, but though the guarantees would hold, time would not stand still. My mission was to beg them to count up their resources, to ask them whether they could maintain the defence of their country long enough for us to reach her. They only laughed at me. They are full of confidence, but I feel they over-estimate the value of bravery against science. They laughed at the idea of Germany’s facing a declaration of war from England and France!”

“So do I,” the Princess agreed. “In my saner moments I, too, feel the same way.”

“It is always,” he ventured with a smile as he followed her example and rose to his feet, “the women who are the bravest.”

He accompanied her to the door, handed her over to her strange escort, then he returned to his own table. He sipped his brandy thoughtfully. What he had half expected happened. One of the little group of German officers seated at a round table whose attention, for the past quarter-of-an-hour, seemed to have been focused upon him rose to his feet. He crossed the room and came to a standstill before Mildenhall’s table. He was a young man with closely cropped hair and the pink and white complexion of a boy. He had an immovable eyeglass and his manner was not ingratiating.

“I have the honour to address Mr. Charles Mildenhall?” he enquired frigidly.

Charles eyed him with some surprise.

“You have the advantage of me, sir,” he said.

“I am Lieutenant von Hessen of the Third Army Corps, now quartered in Vienna. The Commanding Officer of my regiment desires a few words with you.”

“I am at his disposition,” was the quiet reply.

The young officer hesitated.

“My C.O. then will await your coming,” he said.

“Wait one moment,” Charles begged. “I said that I was at the disposition of your C.O. here.”

“Are you a British officer?” the lieutenant asked a little arrogantly.

“Certainly.”

“It is a peculiar habit you English have,” he complained. “On the eve of war you discard your uniforms. May I enquire your rank?”

Mildenhall produced his pocketbook, drew out a card and handed it to his questioner. The latter read it out thoughtfully:

“‘Major the Hon. Charles d’Arcy Mildenhall. Dragoon Guards.’

“You will permit me?” the young man added with some reluctance. “I will present your card to Major von Metternich.”

He recrossed the room and leaned down to speak to his senior officer. Charles measured with his eye the distance between the table at which he had been seated with the Princess and the one occupied by the officers. It was absolutely impossible that they should have been able to overhear a word of his conversation. He waited with equanimity for what might happen. Presently a tall, broad-shouldered man with the Swastika a prominent embellishment of his uniform came across the room and addressed him. His manner was stiff but agreeable.

“May I have a few minutes’ conversation with you, Major Mildenhall? I am Major von Metternich of the Third Army Corps.”

“With pleasure,” Charles replied. “Pray sit down.”

The Major seated himself and toyed with his miniature moustache for a moment or two. He spoke excellent English but he did not seem altogether at his ease.

“The matter which I wish to discuss with you, Major, is not altogether a military one,” he confessed. “It is in a sense passed on to us from our Intelligence Department. It concerns the disappearance of a well-known Jewish banker and financier from his house and bank here in Vienna.”

“Mr. Leopold Benjamin?” Charles ventured.

“Precisely. It appears that just before our Führer decided to rescue these poor people and draw them into the Reich, Mr. Benjamin gave a small dinner party at his house. From that dinner party he disappeared.”

Charles nodded thoughtfully. He said nothing.

“In the course of my investigations,” the Major continued, “I received a list of the guests who were present. Your name was amongst them.”

“That is quite probable,” Charles assented. “I was present.”

“I have had an opportunity,” the Major went on, “of questioning most of the other guests—I or someone representing our Intelligence Corps. Not one of them was able to give me the slightest clue as to Mr. Benjamin’s probable whereabouts.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” Charles replied. “I was going to call at the bank to-morrow morning.”

“I am afraid,” the other observed, “you would find that a waste of time. The bank has ceased to operate.”

“Bad luck,” Charles remarked carelessly. “My visit was of no importance, however. Just a slight matter of business.”

“Mr. Benjamin is not, to our knowledge, engaged in any business in Vienna at the present moment,” the Major said. “He is a member of a race which is entirely out of favour with our Führer. He is a Jew.”

“I think everyone in Europe knows that,” Charles smiled. “However, if he is no longer in business I must find the small amount of money I need somewhere else.”

“That is an easy matter for you, no doubt, Major. With our Intelligence Department, which I represent, it is a different matter. Mr. Benjamin is heavily in our debt. It seems highly improbable that he has left the country and the department is determined to find him.”

“That he should be heavily in debt to your country astonishes me,” Charles observed.

“He owes,” Major von Metternich confided, “a very large sum for unpaid taxes. The Treasury of the Reich has decided that if he should show any indisposition to pay, it would be necessary to seize his great collection of pictures and other objects d’art. They have been famous throughout Europe for many years.”

“Quite true.”

“You have seen them, without a doubt?”

“Never,” Charles replied. “I was to have seen them, I believe, the night of the dinner party of which you speak and from which Mr. Benjamin was summoned away.”

“Did you ask to see them on that occasion?”

Charles’s eyebrows went slowly up.

“You must excuse me. Major von Metternich,” he said, “but you seem to be cross-examining me on a purely private matter.”

“This is a friendly conversation,” was the irritated reply. “If you cannot regard it in that light it may be necessary for me to pass the affair on to another tribunal.”

“Is that a threat?”

“You may accept it as such, if you like.”

Charles considered the matter for a moment quietly.

“I will tell you all that I know about the Benjamin collection,” he proposed.

“That is all I can expect, Major,” was the somewhat mollified response.

“My request to see the pictures,” Mildenhall told his companion, “was received as quite an ordinary one, but, to be frank with you, there was a sense of excitement and unrest at that dinner party which I suppose was due to the fact that Vienna was at any moment expecting the arrival of your invading army. Towards the end of dinner Mr. Benjamin received a message and left the room. A short time afterwards word came that he had been called away. I left at once. So did most of the other guests. As soon as it was daylight I continued my journey.”

“To England?”

“To England. I had stayed over for the Princess von Liebenstrahl’s ball that night.”

“And you have not seen Mr. Benjamin since?”

“I have not seen him since.”

“Nor any of his household or family?”

“Nor any of his household or family.”

“In that case, Major, it does not seem that you are going to be very much use to us,” the Nazi remarked.

“Not the slightest,” Charles agreed.

“You stay long in Vienna?”

Charles smiled.

“I am rather feeling the instinct of the homing pigeon,” he confided.

Major von Metternich smiled grimly, then he rose to his feet.

“You are without a home here for the moment,” he observed.

“I was not officially connected with the Embassy on my last visit,” Charles explained. “I am staying here in the hotel. This time also I am on my way back to England.”

“It remains for me to wish you a pleasant journey,” the Major said with a bow.

“I thank you,” Charles answered with equal politeness.