“You shall have your own way as long as it’s reasonable,” Charles assured him. “I don’t like that six o’clock train, though. I’ve heaps of things I want to say to Miss Grey and I can’t bear the thought of that long journey alone.”
“Never mind, sir,” Blute insisted. “Remember this. There will be as many spies about the Westbahnhof to-morrow as there will be passengers. As I have arranged it everyone in the city will know that you left in a Diplomatic coupé locked up by yourself two hours before the—what shall I call it?—the conspiracy. Not one of us, not Miss Grey, not the caskets, not the guard, not the railway agent, not I—will be on your train. If you travel with us or even with Miss Grey you’re in it up to the neck. Not one of us counts. They tell me you’ve a great future before you, you’re the nephew of a peer of England and you belong to a great family who would be disgraced if you were mixed up with this.”
“That’s all very well,” Charles said discontentedly. “I have been working at this thing with you practically the whole of the last two days. You’re turning me out of bed at five o’clock to-morrow morning, and then if any adventure should come of it when we reach the frontier or thereabouts I’m to miss all the fun.”
Blute shook his head.
“It won’t be fun, Mr. Mildenhall,” he said. “I can assure you of that. I don’t believe for a single moment that anything can go wrong with our plans but if it does,” he added gravely, “it will be anything you like to call it, but it won’t be amusing!”
“All the more reason why I should be on the spot,” Charles persisted stubbornly.
Blute’s tone and manner were alike changed. He spoke coldly but vigorously. His frown was forbidding.
“Mr. Mildenhall,” he said, “Miss Grey and I have talked this over and it’s come to this. We will let chance take care of what happens afterwards, but unless you consent to go by the first train and go by yourself I shall give you a cheque payable in London for the whole of the money you have advanced and we shall ask you to retire.”
Charles smoked nearly the whole of a cigarette and held Patricia’s hand firmly in his before he answered. Then he rose to his feet with a sigh, moved to the other writing-table, lifted one of the tin boxes to his side and unlocked it.
“All right,” he decided, “have it your own way. All the same, I hate travelling at six o’clock in the morning.”
CHAPTER XX
Table of Contents
“Never, young lady,” Charles said an hour or so later, leaning back in his chair and closing the lid of the last of the three boxes, “will you be able to say in the days of our more-matured acquaintance that you have never seen your husband do any real work.”
Her eyes were flashing all sorts of things at him. She left her place, came over and dragged a stool to his side.
“Do you want to be my husband?” she asked.
“Frantically.”
“Why?”
“Well, I suppose I must be fond of you. Isn’t that a good reason?”
“Yes, but you can’t be fond of me,” she remonstrated. “You know nothing about me. That first dinner—”
“Well, there’s a proof,” he interrupted. “At that one dinner, the first time I had ever met you, do you remember what happened?”
The colour slowly crept into her cheeks. Very velvety and soft they looked in the shaded lamplight by which she had been working.
“I can see you do,” he went on. “I very nearly kissed you. Now I ask you—isn’t that a proof? Could any man want to kiss a girl whom he was meeting for the first time in his life unless he had fallen head over ears in love with her?”
“Well, I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “They might in Vienna. I never met with anything of the sort in New York. We mustn’t talk nonsense, though. Is there any more typing for me?”
“Not a thing,” he answered. “You see,” he continued, looking round at the piles of torn paper by which he was surrounded, “I have a frantic sort of weakness for destroying and tearing up papers. I never see an important document lying about that I don’t want to destroy it.”
“A very inconvenient habit, I should think,” Patricia laughed.
“It’s a great strain. It means that if you don’t have to learn them off by heart you master their contents, at any rate.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you have mastered the contents of all these papers that you have destroyed?” she asked incredulously.
“Of course not. Only those that were worth while. You’ll see a certain number of documents still in sound condition. They are over on the right there. You will see a smaller number on your left—also spared. Some of those will be destroyed but both lots are to be glanced through again.”
“What are they all about?”
“Well, the last one I destroyed,” he told her, “was a bill for Her Ladyship’s lingerie from Madame Sturt. I destroyed the bill but I kept the receipt.”
“How much did the lingerie cost?”
He tweaked her ear—a soft pink and white shell-like little affair which he abandoned with reluctance.
“Do you realize that I was once a member of that household? You must not expect me to reveal the secrets of Her Ladyship’s toilet. Most unbecoming.”
“What are those serious-looking documents that you’ve kept?”
“Look here,” he demanded, “are you a spy?”
“Why no,” she assured him. “I should think it must be rather fun, though. If by any chance you didn’t change your mind and I did marry you, do you think you could find me a little espionage work?”
“Nothing in it nowadays,” he told her gloomily. “Typewriters and wireless have done away with all that. Diplomacy as a fine art is finished.”
“Then why are you taking all that trouble with those papers?”
“So that Her Ladyship shouldn’t pay her lingerie bills twice.”
“And to save her that,” she said, “you can sit there for nearly three hours with the fever of war in the air, troops marching by all the time and a long perilous journey before us within a few hours?”
“It does seem a little off the map, doesn’t it? But listen, I know what we might do.”
“What?”
“Slip down to the Herrenhof and have a cocktail. It’s half-past seven.”
“And supposing Mr. Blute comes back while we’re there? You know perfectly well that you have promised not to be seen anywhere on the other side of that door with me.”
“Quite right,” he agreed. “Same thing. We’ll have it up here. Telephone down, there’s a dear—ask especially for Frederick. Say we want White Lady cocktails in a shaker—four of them.”
She telephoned down the order, then she came back to his side.
“My temporary work is spoiling me for real work,” she sighed. “I’ve been with Mr. Benjamin for two years and he has never offered me a cocktail.”
“Quite right. You couldn’t have been out of your teens two years ago and cocktail drinking is not a child’s habit.”
“My teens, as you call them,” she confided, “were finished long before I went to Mr. Benjamin’s bank. It is time you began to treat me with a little more respect.”
“We don’t have time to play games,” he told her. “Every time I’ve met you we’ve been facing a crisis.”
“It is quite true,” she admitted. “I wish we could get you to take this one a little more seriously.”
“It is difficult to take anything seriously in Vienna,” he said. “To tell you the truth, the ways of even our diplomats here are strange. In this medley which I have been requested to clean up and leave nothing behind me are some quite important notes concerning a conversation between two important people. The same rubber band enclosed the account for Her Ladyship’s lingerie.”
“Very slack,” she criticized.
“Don’t be too severe,” he begged. “These are just the scraps left over from about a ton of rubbish which bothered our very respectable Consul, Mr. Po
rter. Kindly collect for me, dear secretary-in-chief and wife-that-is-to-be, every wastepaper basket you can find in the apartment. I can count three from here.”
“Aren’t you rather harping on that matrimonial business?” she asked as she started on her tour round the room.
“It drives everything else out of my mind,” he confided. “Especially when you look as sweet as you do this evening.”
She paused in the centre of the apartment with a basket in either hand.
“Come and kiss me,” he insisted.
She moved slowly towards him without any marked reluctance.
“Tell me,” she enquired, “have you ever had a secretary before?”
“Heaps of them.”
“Did you expect them to come and kiss you whenever you felt amorous?”
“I never felt that way.”
“Why not?”
“They were all men.”
“Do you mean that you never had a girl secretary?”
“Never in my life,” he assured her. “When I’ve been staying down at home I’ve sometimes dictated a few letters to my mother’s amanuensis but as she is well over fifty, wears most unbecoming glasses and has taken a degree at Oxford I refrained from taking liberties.”
She brought the baskets and succeeded in slipping from his knee just as the waiter arrived with the cocktails.
“Never,” Patricia confessed, opening her vanity-bag, “have I been driven to my mirror so often as I have been during the last few hours.”
“Well, there’s a slight difference between the atmosphere of New York and Vienna, isn’t there?” he remarked. “Waiter,” he added, “you can leave the shaker and come back again in half-an-hour.”
Two more wastepaper baskets were discovered and filled. Charles leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette.
“Is it my fancy,” he asked, “or has my charming helper and bride-to-be been afflicted with a sudden seriousness?”
“I have been wondering,” she confided, “where we shall find Mr. Benjamin.”
“I can’t think how you ever completely lost him,” Charles reflected. “I should have thought Blute would have had a special emergency address which would have reached him.”
“He had several—and pseudonyms, too. He had tried them all before we got into the state in which you found us. The censorship here is simply devastating. Practically everything in any sort of code was destroyed.”
“It’s a mistake,” he told her, “to attempt to get a code letter through a censor anywhere. But let’s abandon this discussion now and talk about something really interesting.”
“Suggest something, then.”
“Getting married.”
“Lovely! Go on, please.”
“You see, I’m slightly interested in what happens the other side of that frontier, but when we find ourselves in the bracing climate of Switzerland I can’t carry a private chaplain in my waistcoat pocket and I believe it’s a terribly complicated thing, anyway, to get married in Switzerland.”
“Let’s talk about it,” she insisted. “It’s a heavenly thing to talk about, anyway.”
The floor valet knocked at the door and interposed.
“Shall you be changing to-night, sir?” he enquired.
Charles hesitated.
“Remember,” she told him, “Mr. Blute was terribly anxious that you should do everything according to your usual custom. He can’t somehow get it out of his head that we’re being watched.”
“Dear old boy, he’s probably right,” Charles acknowledged. “All right, Franz, I’ll be round in two minutes. Will you order your dinner yourself, child?” he asked. “The waiter will be here directly.”
She shook her head firmly.
“For me to dine up here is forbidden, too. Mr. Blute has been very firm about it. I suppose it is quite easy if anyone is watching these apartments for them to find out whether any extra meals are served up here.”
“What about my ordering dinner for one, but plenty of it? We can eat off the same plate and fool them that way.”
“You’re ridiculous,” she laughed. “Mr. Blute showed me a very clean little restaurant out at the back part of the hotel where some of the courriers and hotel clerks go sometimes. I can use the service stairs to it and I’ll hurry back for coffee.”
Charles took her into his arms for a moment before she slipped off. Then he held her about a yard away and looked into her face.
“It’s the deep setting of your eyes, child, which has so completely disturbed my affections. Rather theatric, you know, but it’s frightfully attractive.”
“Don’t dare to look into any others,” she enjoined, releasing herself reluctantly. “Especially beware of the beautiful Baroness!”
CHAPTER XXI
Table of Contents
The Baroness was there all right. She was seated on a divan in Frederick’s small private bar and by her side was the young German officer. She waved her hand to Charles and patted the place by her side.
“Come, Mr. Mildenhall,” she invited. “This is somewhat piquant. Come and amuse a tired woman. Come and have a glass of wine with us. To-morrow it will not be possible.”
Charles bowed to both of them and accepted the invitation.
“To-morrow,” she went on, “if that brave little island of yours makes up its mind to stand up and fight the mighty German Empire, if you two should meet one of you will be interned. Is that not so, Count?”
“I have no idea,” the young man replied formally, “as to what Herr Mildenhall’s exact diplomatic position is. If he claims no privileges he will certainly have to be dealt with as an enemy.”
“I have at present no diplomatic position,” Charles admitted, “which is the reason why I am running away. I am taking the last train to the frontier. If you will excuse me,” he added, waving on one side the bottle of champagne, “I will ask Frederick to mix me one of his White Lady cocktails.”
“You will not, I fear,” the young officer observed, “have a comfortable journey.”
“I am a seasoned traveller,” was the careless reply. “I am used to hardships.”
The Baroness shivered.
“Hardships,” she echoed. “I hate even the sound of the word. I like comfort.”
There was a single moment in their lives when Lieutenant Count von Hessen and Charles Mildenhall were en rapport. They both glanced involuntarily at the Baroness, who gave one the impression of a gorgeous butterfly stretched out on the divan in the gentle and voluptuous abandon of her soulless, insect life. The beauty of her limbs if anything was a little too much displayed under the light chiffon of her gown. Her neck and shoulders were exquisite. As a matter of fact she was looking her best that night. There was a twin gleam of humour in the eyes of the two men as they met for a moment.
“The Baroness glorifies that simple word,” Charles murmured.
“My friend speaks truthfully,” the German assented.
“A girl friend of mine once declared,” the Baroness said with a faintly humorous smile upon her lips, “that I was not nearly so beautiful as I believed but that I had the gift, when I desired to use it, of appearing beautiful. It has not brought me much reward in this world. If it gives anyone pleasure to look at me I am glad. But how do I benefit by it? Not at all. I am an unhappy woman.”
“Unhappiness could never remain in so lovely a setting,” the Count pronounced with stilted emphasis.
“Nevertheless, it is true,” she assured them. “I am unhappily married. My husband does not come near me. I have a dear friend who is always in political troubles and who flies from country to country. I have a few acquaintances who please me—like you two. But you amuse yourselves and you hurry away. That, Mr. Mildenhall—and you. Count, is not the way to treat a woman whom you profess to find attractive.”
“I am the slave of duty,” the Count volunteered.
“I am a wanderer who has lingered too long in Paradise,” Charles sighed. “Now I have to fly or the stern ha
nd of the law will set me down in a draughty tent somewhere behind barbed wire!”
“I am obviously unlucky in my admirers!” she lamented.
Charles sipped his cocktail. Somehow it seemed to lack the flavour of its predecessor.
“I have not received even an invitation to dine,” the Baroness went on.
The Lieutenant Count von Hessen rose smartly to his feet. He stood to attention.
“Baroness,” he said, “you are aware of the necessity of my presence at the Barracks at half-past nine to-night. If you will share a humble meal with me now it will give me great pleasure and will render less sad my departure.”
The Baroness showed signs of being disposed to linger.
“Will you order the dinner, dear friend?” she suggested, smiling up at him. “When it is ready I will come. There is wine to finish and the days of economy must begin once more.”
“The dinner is already ordered,” he said firmly. “I ventured to anticipate a favourable reply to my invitation. It is the duty of a soldier always to be economical. Frederick, will you send the bottle of wine to my table?”
“Certainly, Herr Lieutenant,” the man replied. “It shall be done.”
The Baroness, a little wearily, held out her hand to Charles, who had also risen, and rose gracefully but languidly to her feet.
“It is to be farewell, then, Mr. Charles Mildenhall?”
“Baroness,” he said as he bent over her fingers, “after all, there is a chance the war may not come. In that case we shall meet before long in one of the three capital cities of pleasure.”
“And they are?”
“Vienna, Paris or London—perhaps even in New York.”
The Count and Charles exchanged formal bows. The Baroness threw Charles a kiss from the tips of her fingers. She was a woman who knew how to express a great deal in a pout. She exercised her art as she left the room with that frankly voluptuous swing of the hips which had cost many a man his night of dreamless repose.
21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series) Page 60
