LITMIR.BIZ

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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.”

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