LITMIR.BIZ

      At the Krankenhaus Benjamin, Charles received his first knock-down blow. He was received by a German doctor and surrounded on all sides by Nazi Germans. The doctor was brusque in manner and downright in speech.

      “The Austrian, Schwarz,” he announced, in reply to Charles’s enquiry, “is in prison. His wife has been banished.”

      Charles was staggered.

      “What have they done?” he asked. “What was the charge?”

      “They are Jews,” the doctor replied, “and they dared to have a notice that Jews and Jewesses could claim priority here for treatment.”

      “But the hospital,” Charles reminded the speaker gently, “was built and endowed by a Jew.”

      “What does that matter?” the doctor retorted.

      “It is Nazi Germany now which owns Austria. We have control of the hospital and we have not a Jewish patient left. That I can tell you. The beds are filled with Germans who suffered during the fighting outside the city. What do you want with Dr. Schwarz?”

      “I wanted news of Mr. Leopold Benjamin, if there was any. If not, of his secretary. There was a man, too, named Marius Blute, who managed some of his affairs.”

      “You will get no news of any of those people here,” he was told promptly. “The man Blute has been here and was sent away again pretty quickly. He had the impudence to ask for money. It is true this hospital is endowed with Jewish money, but the money would have been taken away from the Jew Benjamin if the authorities had been able to find him. This hospital and the endowment money and everything else belongs now to the German Government.”

      “Do you think I would be allowed to see Dr. Schwarz at the prison?” Charles asked.

      “I should think they would be more likely to send you in to keep him company,” was the insolent reply. “Go away, please. I have no more time to waste—especially on an Englishman.”

      Charles was thoughtful when he regained the street.

      “Fritz,” he confided, “things are looking bad here. This is no longer the Benjamin Hospital. The two people I am anxious to find out about have been here—at least, Blute has—and been turned away. The whole of the funds and the endowment have been taken over by the Germans.”

      “Swine!” Fritz murmured equably.

      “Yes, but what about it? I have only a day or two here. I want to find Miss Grey or Blute—Miss Grey particularly—and I don’t know where to look.”

      Fritz’s queer, puckered-up little face was full of concern. He looked doubtfully at his patron.

      “You will excuse me, sir?” he begged. “But were they living together, these two—any relation or anything of that sort?”

      Charles brushed the idea away without hesitation.

      “That was quite impossible,” he answered. “Mr. Blute has brains, of course, and I should think he’s a very decent fellow, but I am sure they weren’t related and I don’t think anything else would be possible. Mr. Benjamin thought highly of Miss Grey. She came to him from the New York branch of his bank and she soon became his personal secretary.”

      “I should suggest we drive up to the old porter’s lodge, sir, and make enquiry there. We might even get into what remains of the house. If we can find out nothing there we shall have to try the restaurants. Everyone’s obliged to eat, anyway, and there are more than ever that are doing it in restaurants.”

      “As you say, Fritz,” Charles assented.

      They drove immediately to the fine porter’s lodge which guarded the approach to the Benjamin mansion. The entrance gates they found were locked. Fritz descended and rang the bell. The door of the lodge was opened in due course by a weary-faced woman. Fritz talked to her for a few moments, after which he returned to his employer.

      “Nothing to be learned, sir,” he reported. “This woman is the widow of the old doorkeeper. He was killed in the fighting when the Nazis first marched in. She says the place was overrun afterwards for weeks, first by disciplined soldiers and searchers, and then by a rabble. No one can get into the house now. The doors are locked and the windows barred. Forty vanloads of furniture have been taken away.”

      “Did you ask her what was in the vans?” Charles asked.

      “No, but I will.”

      Fritz called back the woman and Charles descended from the taxi. She answered his questions through the railings.

      “The vans were mostly locked up, sir,” she told him, “but one thing is very certain. The first Germans who came were very disappointed. There were many officers amongst them and one or two civilians. They walked up and down the quadrangle and argued. Sometimes they went back into the house as though for another search. Then a fresh lot came. It was always the same—they went away angry.”

      Charles searched his pocket and dropped a few reichsmarks into the woman’s eagerly outstretched hand.

      “I want you to try and remember something for me.”

      There were tears in her eyes. Her clenched fingers were gripping the silver coins. She was shaking from head to foot.

      “Tell me what it is, mein gnädiger Herr,” she half sobbed.

      “There is one person whom you must remember coming here often—Miss Patricia Grey, Mr. Benjamin’s secretary.”

      “The little one?” she asked. “Always with a smile—with the hair—ach, so lovely?”

      “That is she,” Charles acknowledged. “Tell me, have you seen anything of her lately? Can you tell me where to find her?”

      The woman’s face fell. She shook her head drearily.

      “The last time I saw her, mein Herr,” she confided, “she was between two great Nazi soldiers or policemen—I do not know which—who were bringing her away from the house. She had passed through the gates only an hour before, waved her hand and thrown me a kiss. She was always so gay. When she went out her face was white and set, her hair was disarranged, it looked as though she had been struggling.”

      “What do you suppose they were doing with her?”

      “They were taking her to prison, mein Herr. That I know.”

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