Читать книгу Tales of Mystery & Espionage: 21 Spy Thrillers in One Edition - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 82

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Charles piloted his companion by the intricate route leading through the back quarters of the hotel to the lift and into the courtyard. Fritz was sitting on the box seat of his taxicab smoking a cigarette and reading the evening paper. Blute seized Charles’s arm.

“This chauffeur!” he exclaimed. “Remember, the fate of our whole enterprise will depend upon his discretion.”

“I pledge my word upon it,” was the confident reply. “I have known him for years. He is absolutely trustworthy. He is my man body and soul. Apart from that, he has somewhat the spirit of an adventurer and he is an out-and-out Viennese, loathing the Germans.”

“Satisfied,” Blute said tersely. “I will direct him myself.”

Fritz, with smiling face, held open the door. Charles entered the vehicle. Blute remained talking with Fritz for almost five minutes. Afterwards he took his place inside. Fritz closed the door and they drove off.

“I am satisfied with your chauffeur,” Blute declared. “He is intelligent, he worships you, he has quick wit, he is likely to be useful to us.”

“Is it permitted to ask where we are going?” Charles enquired.

“We are going by a roundabout course,” Blute confided, “to a compound attached to the garage of Mr. Leopold Benjamin’s palace. It abuts upon a lane where there are no other buildings and it is nearly a quarter of a mile from the house. Listen while I explain something. Do not let your spirits fall when I speak of a secret passage because, although I know these places have no novelty as hiding resorts and would be most unlikely to escape the notice of a trained S.S. man, you will have to take my word for it that this is one of the most wonderful secret passages in Europe. The palace in which Mr. Benjamin lived was built, as you know, by the Hapsburgs, and it has always remained a Royal Domain until it was purchased by Mr. Benjamin’s grandfather from the Archduke Ferdinand. The Archduke had a mistress to whom he was devoted, but he had also a jealous wife and family. He discovered the existence of this passage for himself, spent millions upon its development and built the compound as a villa, where the lady was installed. None of this appears in any published guide-book and most people seem to have forgotten the story. The passage is a quarter of a mile long and it commences fifty feet from the end of the picture gallery. It terminates in the room in which I have slept every night I have been free, before and after I was in prison. The only person to whom Mr. Benjamin ever revealed its intricacies was myself. I can safely say that no one else breathing has ever passed from one end of it to the other, or been shown the exit. No one whom I have ever come across in the city or amongst the hundreds of guests who have visited Mr. Benjamin have ever known that there was such a place. The police have no information concerning it, the twelve specialists whom Mr. Benjamin brought from America to install ventilation at various points and to connect it up electrically returned to the States when their job was over—well paid, I can promise you, but under a covenant never again to set foot in Europe. There are twenty-four doors between the palace and the villa. Every one opens in a different manner, and there is a secret connected with the key of every one of them. Patricia Grey and I have committed the plan to memory and destroyed it. Without our aid it would be a definite impossibility for anyone to traverse it.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Charles declared.

“The impossibility of trusting a single person of our acquaintance with a secret of such vast importance,” Blute went on, “made it necessary for both Miss Grey and myself to go through an amount of physical labour which I could not describe to you. We have removed every canvas from three hundred frames and those we have transported into their present hiding place, which is within a few yards of where I have slept for many months. The canvases alone represent a value of some thirty million dollars and are the most valuable collection of Old Masters in any private ownership in the world.”

“Amazing!” Charles murmured. “I can’t grapple with it all yet. Tell me, though,” he added, looking out of the window and conscious of a sudden obscurity, “why has Fritz turned off his lights?”

“We are in what used to be a private road,” Blute confided, “leading to the compound. Now that the Benjamin house is unoccupied and partly in ruins the compound—part of which had been used as a garage—was also naturally left deserted. When I first started upon my scheme for concealing the pictures I had a camp bed and a few necessaries moved into it and that has been my home. We are fast approaching it.”

They turned in between two pillars, gigantic obelisks they appeared in the semi-darkness. They were in what had once been a courtyard but which was now overgrown with weeds. Blute pointed to a distant corner.

“Under the wall there,” he told Fritz, “with your lights turned off, you will be completely out of sight. There is no thoroughfare here and I may tell you that I have never known anyone to pass down this road. If by any hundred-to-one chance anyone should ask you what you are doing there, invent any story you like, but be sure not to say you brought a fare here.”

“It is well understood, mein Herr,” Fritz declared. “I shall say that I brought my young lady, that she ran away promising to return at once and has given me the hoop-la!”

“We shall make good use of that fellow, I’m sure,” Blute remarked. “Follow me very carefully, Mr. Mildenhall,” he said, pointing to a high hedge of laurels. “These bushes are a good screen but they have grown.”

He paused at last before a long low building. He counted the bricks from a certain spot, removed one when he had arrived at the fourteenth by simply pressing a piece of the mortar, thrust his hand into the cavity, turned a handle and swung open a door. He replaced the brick, stepped into a dark apartment and beckoned to Charles to follow him.

“Now don’t be alarmed that I use this torch,” Blute warned his companion. “The wires have been cut and we daren’t show much light, anyway.”

He flashed the torch around. It was a dreary-looking place and the walls showed signs of damp and decay. In a distant corner was a plain iron bedstead, a rather dejected-looking screen, two chairs, an oil stove and a cupboard.

“My surroundings, as you see, are not luxurious,” Blute pointed out. “Nevertheless, as I told you, the only nights I have not slept here since Mr. Benjamin left were the nights I spent in prison.”

“And you have never been disturbed?” Charles asked.

“Not only have I never been disturbed but I am convinced that no one has ever visited this place either in the daytime or at night. Why should they? It is just a stone barn with no obvious means of entry. Look into my cupboard!”

Charles glanced over his companion’s shoulder. There was coffee equipment but no signs of any coffee. There was a very small piece of black bread on a plate and not another thing.

“I slept here last night,” Blute confided. “I munched at that piece of bread when I got up and there it remains. I washed my face and hands in the basin opposite and I walked all the way up into the city. I served coffee during the rush hour at a café en route and there I got a mugful for myself and a roll in payment for half-an-hour’s work. It was my breakfast. My mittagessen did not exist. My dinner I will not speak about! I am fortunately a man—as you would be, I think, Mr. Mildenhall—who finds humour in violent contrasts.”

He closed up the cupboard.

“Now for some more magic!”

He moved across to the middle of the floor and stooped down, pressed a certain spot in the corner of a square slab of ancient paving-stone, and a trap-door fell slowly back. Charles followed his guide down a ladder with iron rungs into another large but perfectly dry apartment. Blute held up his torch.

“Take a pull on yourself here,” he advised. “For the first moment you may not like it.”

Charles followed him confidently. Blute raised his arm and the light from his torch partially illuminated the place. Against the wall, side by side, were four deep coffins. The black cloths which had covered them were neatly piled by their sides. Charles stared at them wonderingly.

“Defunct Gestapos?” he enquired. “Or have we here other enemies? Are these the results of a battle in the Catacombs?”

Blute smiled.

“You are a bad guesser, Mr. Mildenhall,” he said. “Within these coffins are some of the Old Masters which were the joy of Mr. Benjamin’s life.”

“Awaiting exportation,” Charles murmured.

“Precisely.”

“Won’t that be just a little difficult?”

“Not if our plans work smoothly. Consider what might happen. A shocking skiing or automobile disaster—a car rushing down, say, to catch the last train to the frontier. Four over a precipice. Fine description written the same afternoon in a well-known Viennese sporting paper. At the end of the column there is a notice that the bodies of the four victims are being conveyed to France for burial.”

“I am confused,” Charles admitted.

“It’s clear enough,” Blute pointed out patiently. “These are supposed to contain the bodies of the four young men. We have the tickets for the transport of the coffins. Remember that no notice has yet appeared in the papers concerning the accident. The day before we are ready to ship the coffins the account of the supposed accident will be published in the Viennese paper. As I said before, the accident never did happen and will be contradicted a week later. A stiff sum that little fairy story will cost but it will be worth it.”

“Are those part of the game?” Charles asked, pointing to three large cases. “They seem to have the Customs chalk mark on them already.”

“Another little idea,” Blute explained. “Those cases contain tapestry and some of the small objets d’art, including some miniatures that Mr. Benjamin is very anxious to have. I will tell you how they happen to be in their present condition. The Austrian Railway has a terribly bad name for the low wages it pays to its employees. At the Swiss frontier there are two Customs officials whose addresses I carry with me and whom I have only to advise of my coming. I have to arrange to travel by a train on which the Chef de Bagages is a certain Jean Pfeiffer, with whom I am acquainted. It was he who put me up to this in the first place. When we arrive at the frontier he will put these out of the train as usual but they will not be carried to the Customs shed where the luggage is opened. They will be glanced at and when no official is in sight they will be put back again upon the train in their old place—the first packages passed by the Customs.”

“Ingenious.” Charles observed.

“You see, the point is,” Blute went on, “Mr. Benjamin wants the contents of those cases. If by any chance the fraud were detected, they would be at the frontier, it would be the Swiss side which would take care of them and the consignee would be able to get possession of them by paying a heavy fine. If they remained in Austria the Nazis would confiscate them and Mr. Benjamin would never see them again.”

“It all seems to me like a very cleverly thought-out scheme,” Charles admitted. “The only thing is—why have you left it so long? If there is a declaration of war within the next few days—and there will be—there will be a tremendous rush of people across the frontier and you will find it difficult to get away.”

Blute, for once in his life, spoke as a man might speak who was accustomed to lose control of his temper. He even raised his voice. His soft, low intonation was gone. He almost shouted.

“Jesus Christ!” he cried. “Can’t you realize, sir, can’t you realize, Mr. Mildenhall, the agony through which that little girl and I have awakened in the morning and crawled to meet one another? No news—no fresh face—nothing at the post—nothing at the Censor’s office—and every day that passed brought us nearer disaster. We have everything planned and, simple though it may now seem, it has taken some planning and some scheming. And then we come face to face with this horrible position. For the final expenses we have not one penny between us! We have no money with which to bribe the undertaker and his men who are to take the coffins to the station, we have no money for our own tickets, we still have the guard and the Customs men to arrange with. We are helpless!”

“You were helpless,” Charles said, patting him on the shoulder. “Why, it must have been maddening, Blute. Thank heavens I came along.”

Blute sat down on one of the cases. For the first time he seemed in some small degree to lose control of himself. His face twitched. Charles looked away quickly but he could almost have sworn that there were tears in the man’s eyes.

“Maddening it has been these last few weeks,” he went on. “Listen, Mr. Mildenhall, I must tell you that it was I who transferred Leopold Benjamin’s whole fortune from Germany and Austria to America and London. It was I who thought out the schemes for transference, who guarded against the currency troubles, who completed the whole business. I can assure you it was child’s play compared to these schemes which Miss Grey and I between us have perfected to bring Mr. Benjamin back his treasures. We are on the point of success. Everything is arranged and the money does not come. We have been robbed of what we had and now all the banks have closed their doors firmly against anyone who needs money in this country. I am not a beggar, Mr. Mildenhall, no more is that child a beggar, but last night I was playing a tin-pot little violin in a lowdown café to earn a wretched dinner which I shared with the child; and as for finishing our work here—it is ruined, all brought to nothing for the need of a few thousand pounds.”

“Steady on,” Charles begged. “My dear fellow,” he went on kindly, “wipe your face—do. I know it sounds terrible, but listen—that all belongs to the past. I’m coming in with you. I’ll risk all the money I can raise for you and I’m perfectly certain that even now I can get all you want. I’ll travel with you. I’ll take the whole adventure on. You and I and Patricia—we’ll fool these fellows, we’ll cheat the Customs and we’ll make that old man happy.”

“You mean that, Mr. Mildenhall?” Blute asked hoarsely. “For God’s sake don’t fool about with me.”

“I do mean it,” Charles assured him. “I can be useful to you in many ways. I have a pull with the railway and the Customs. I have a diplomatic passport as well as my own. We will devote to-morrow—or rather to-day—to deciding the train we travel on. You can get the story of the terrible accident into the paper at once. Here—wipe your face—there’s a good fellow. I have never known you to raise your voice before. Use my handkerchief. I have a spare one. You will need all your nerve for the next few days.”

The smile came back to Blute’s lips. He led the way up the ladder to the main room, bent down, closed the trap-door and standing up again moved slowly towards the exit.

“My friend, I am ashamed,” he said humbly. “For the moment I forgot. Do you really mean it? You will come to our aid, you will be once more our deliverer?”

“Of course I mean it. I’ve promised. To-morrow morning you must come straight to my room at Sacher’s. We will work out just how much money we shall need. We shall have the help of the hotel in getting the places on the train. Everything will be easy…Now what’s the matter?”

The smile had already disappeared from Blute’s lips. There was fear on his face, horror in his eyes. The door was slowly being pushed open. Fritz crept onto the threshold and was standing there, his face as white as a ghost’s.

“Mein Herr,” he cried softly. “A man has been down the lane. He came quietly but he carried a torch. I had no time to get to you or to get away before he saw the taxicab. I hid behind it. He called out. I did not answer. I heard him mumbling to himself. He stepped out into the lane again and I heard him calling. He is coming down—they are coming here—two of them. They are S.S. men! Ach, mein Herr!”

The gift of swift thought had helped Charles Mildenhall through more than one crisis of his life.

“Come inside and get behind the door, Fritz,” he ordered. “Don’t close it. Leave it open. We’ll deal with these men.”

“I have a revolver—in the car,” Fritz stammered.

“Leave it there,” Charles answered. “I have one in my pocket!”