LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Only a few days longer, I fear.”

      “Will you dine with me on Thursday night?” the other suggested. “I am compelled to choose an early date because my movements are a little uncertain.”

      “I will do so with pleasure,” the young man assented. “It will interest my uncle very much to have news of you.”

      Mr. Benjamin shrugged his high, stooping shoulders. There was a momentary look of sadness in his sunken eyes.

      “Not too good news, I am afraid,” he said. “Our race becomes less and less popular in this country as the days go by. Things were different in your uncle’s time. At present we find the future full of anxiety. One pleasure at least I shall make sure of,” he concluded with a smile. “I shall have the pleasure of seeing you on Thursday at eight o’clock. I trust that you do not mind our early hours.”

      “Not in the least, sir.”

      “Our friend here at the desk,” Leopold Benjamin said, with a benevolent smile towards the cashier, “will write down my address for you. Auf Wiedersehen, Mr. Mildenhall.”

      He passed on, his companion—a short, thick-set man with a very intelligent face—by his side. The cashier looked at his client with increased respect.

      “We regard it as a great honour,” he confided as he counted out some notes, “to be received by Mr. Benjamin. He entertains very little now. Your money, sir—also your Letter of Credit,” he went on, returning the latter to its parchment envelope. “It will always be a pleasure to serve you here when you are in need of more money or if there is any general information about the city we can give you. I am writing here the address of Mr. Benjamin: Palais Franz Josef. Any vehicle you engage would drive you there without hesitation.”

      The young man gathered up his belongings, nodded in friendly fashion and took his leave. On the broad steps of the very handsome bank building he hesitated for a few moments, then decided to walk for a while in the Ringstrasse. It was barely five o’clock and, notwithstanding that these were days of strain and anxiety, something of the spirit of levity was visible on the countenances of most of the passers-by. The day’s work was over. The evening and night were at hand. The true Viennese is seldom sensitive to the call of domesticity. It is the music of the cafés, the light laughter of the women, the flavour of his apéritif which appeal to him with the coming of the twilight. Mildenhall yielded to the general spirit. After an hour’s promenade he entered one of the most attractive of the famous cafés, purchased an evening paper and installed himself at a comfortable table. He ordered a drink and lit a cigarette. His Thursday evening rendezvous pleased him. It was a great thing to have met Leopold Benjamin so entirely by accident and to have received so interesting an invitation. The Viennese cafés are not made for isolation. Mildenhall was seated in the corner place of the long settee which stretched down one side of the room. The table in front of him was sufficiently large to accommodate several customers. There were two chairs unoccupied. Mildenhall shook out his newspaper and turned it so that he could read the leading article. His attention, however, was suddenly distracted.

      “I do not disturb you, sir, if I take this chair?” a friendly voice asked in excellent English.

      Mildenhall glanced up and recognized the man who had been Mr. Benjamin’s companion in the bank a short time before.

      “By no means,” he answered courteously. “Why not the settee? It is more comfortable and, after all, I don’t take up much room.”

      With a bow the newcomer seated himself, handed his coat and hat to a waiter and gave an order. He glanced at the paper in Mildenhall’s hands.

      “One wastes much time nowadays,” he remarked, “with these fugitive journals. It seems to me that much is written which is not worth the ink.”

      “I gather that you are not a journalist!”

      “I am not,” was the quiet reply. “Clever men, no doubt, but what they are responsible for! Half the wars in the world are caused by the Press. Every grievance of mankind is nurtured by their pens. News itself is good, but news is the last thing one finds—in the evening papers, at any rate. The one you have there is engaged in an unholy crusade. It is doing great harm in the city. It is stirring up bad feeling in this place of beautiful things and kindly people.”

      “Did I not see you an hour ago in Benjamin’s bank?” Mildenhall asked.

      “You did indeed, sir. Mr. Leopold Benjamin is one of the men I admire most in the world. He is a great philanthropist, a great artist, a lover of the human race, a good man. But life for him at the present moment is poisoned by the campaign in a certain section of the Press.”

      Mildenhall nodded sympathetically.

      “This crusade against the Jews.” he murmured.

      “It is a wicked and outrageous crusade,” his companion said almost under his breath and after a careful glance around. “I should not, perhaps, speak like this in a public place, but I know who you are. I heard your introduction to Leopold Benjamin. I know, too, that you are an Englishman, and the English have always been the protectors of any persecuted race.”

      “Isn’t ‘persecuted’ rather a harsh term?” Mildenhall asked. “The Austrian is such a kindly person—at least, so I have fancied from the little I have seen of him.”

      “The Austrian by himself is well enough,” the other acknowledged. “It is what there is behind him, driving him on, that is dangerous. You permit?”

      He drew a small case from his pocket and handed a card to his companion.

      “I myself am not a Jew,” he went on, “although my name, which you see there, rather suggests it. I have a profession which keeps me wandering all over the world. There are few countries, well-populated countries, which I have not visited. The empty places do not interest me. I like work, and my work is amongst human beings. My name, as you see, is Marius Blute and I am a naturalized Finn.”

      “From your speech,” Mildenhall remarked, “I should have taken you to be English. From your appearance I should have thought that you were perhaps a Scandinavian.”

      “I was really born,” Blute confided, “in Finland. My mother was a Finn and my father, a Russian.”

      “And your profession?” Mildenhall asked pleasantly.

      “Ah, perhaps you will guess that before long,” the other replied. “I understand that we are to meet again at dinner on Thursday.”

      “Delighted to hear it,” Mildenhall assured him. “Tell me, do you think our host will show us any of his treasures? I have always been told that I should find choicer pictures in his rooms than in any European gallery.”

      “That is easily the truth,” Blute acquiesced. “As to whether he will open up the galleries for you, I have my doubts. These are dangerous times for a man who has such possessions.”

      “He has dangerous neighbours?”

      “Of that we will not speak here. Vienna, alas, is greatly changed. We have a perfect affliction of the Gestapo here amongst us. The Viennese themselves, the townspeople, have lost the control of their city. It is sad but it is true. One by one the men who have made Vienna a great and joyous place have been obliged to leave it. Those who have added most to its riches and its beauty are the very ones who are now the most persecuted. What the world of tomorrow may be, one sometimes wonders! I could take you to the house of one great Austrian aristocrat at this moment, Mr. Mildenhall. It is not far from here. You would find him sitting in one small room. At the further end is a curtain and behind that curtain, which is, I might tell you, of priceless Chinese silk, there is a bed, and on that bed he sleeps. At the other end there is a table surrounded by screens the beauty of which no words could describe, and there he dines. There is a great window hung with curtains which once adorned a Doge’s palace. When they are drawn aside he has one of the most beautiful views in Vienna. That room and its little antechamber, Mr. Mildenhall, he has not left for twenty years,

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