“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.”
CHAPTER IX
Table of Contents
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.
&nbs
p; “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.
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