LITMIR.BIZ

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paid, I can promise you, but under a covenant never again to set foot in Europe. There are twenty-four doors between the palace and the villa. Every one opens in a different manner, and there is a secret connected with the key of every one of them. Patricia Grey and I have committed the plan to memory and destroyed it. Without our aid it would be a definite impossibility for anyone to traverse it.”

      “I’ll take your word for it,” Charles declared.

      “The impossibility of trusting a single person of our acquaintance with a secret of such vast importance,” Blute went on, “made it necessary for both Miss Grey and myself to go through an amount of physical labour which I could not describe to you. We have removed every canvas from three hundred frames and those we have transported into their present hiding place, which is within a few yards of where I have slept for many months. The canvases alone represent a value of some thirty million dollars and are the most valuable collection of Old Masters in any private ownership in the world.”

      “Amazing!” Charles murmured. “I can’t grapple with it all yet. Tell me, though,” he added, looking out of the window and conscious of a sudden obscurity, “why has Fritz turned off his lights?”

      “We are in what used to be a private road,” Blute confided, “leading to the compound. Now that the Benjamin house is unoccupied and partly in ruins the compound—part of which had been used as a garage—was also naturally left deserted. When I first started upon my scheme for concealing the pictures I had a camp bed and a few necessaries moved into it and that has been my home. We are fast approaching it.”

      They turned in between two pillars, gigantic obelisks they appeared in the semi-darkness. They were in what had once been a courtyard but which was now overgrown with weeds. Blute pointed to a distant corner.

      “Under the wall there,” he told Fritz, “with your lights turned off, you will be completely out of sight. There is no thoroughfare here and I may tell you that I have never known anyone to pass down this road. If by any hundred-to-one chance anyone should ask you what you are doing there, invent any story you like, but be sure not to say you brought a fare here.”

      “It is well understood, mein Herr,” Fritz declared. “I shall say that I brought my young lady, that she ran away promising to return at once and has given me the hoop-la!”

      “We shall make good use of that fellow, I’m sure,” Blute remarked. “Follow me very carefully, Mr. Mildenhall,” he said, pointing to a high hedge of laurels. “These bushes are a good screen but they have grown.”

      He paused at last before a long low building. He counted the bricks from a certain spot, removed one when he had arrived at the fourteenth by simply pressing a piece of the mortar, thrust his hand into the cavity, turned a handle and swung open a door. He replaced the brick, stepped into a dark apartment and beckoned to Charles to follow him.

      “Now don’t be alarmed that I use this torch,” Blute warned his companion. “The wires have been cut and we daren’t show much light, anyway.”

      He flashed the torch around. It was a dreary-looking place and the walls showed signs of damp and decay. In a distant corner was a plain iron bedstead, a rather dejected-looking screen, two chairs, an oil stove and a cupboard.

      “My surroundings, as you see, are not luxurious,” Blute pointed out. “Nevertheless, as I told you, the only nights I have not slept here since Mr. Benjamin left were the nights I spent in prison.”

      “And you have never been disturbed?” Charles asked.

      “Not only have I never been disturbed but I am convinced that no one has ever visited this place either in the daytime or at night. Why should they? It is just a stone barn with no obvious means of entry. Look into my cupboard!”

      Charles glanced over his companion’s shoulder. There was coffee equipment but no signs of any coffee. There was a very small piece of black bread on a plate and not another thing.

      “I slept here last night,” Blute confided. “I munched at that piece of bread when I got up and there it remains. I washed my face and hands in the basin opposite and I walked all the way up into the city. I served coffee during the rush hour at a café en route and there I got a mugful for myself and a roll in payment for half-an-hour’s work. It was my breakfast. My mittagessen did not exist. My dinner I will not speak about! I am fortunately a man—as you would be, I think, Mr. Mildenhall—who finds humour in violent contrasts.”

      He closed up the cupboard.

      “Now for some more magic!”

      He moved across to the middle of the floor and stooped down, pressed a certain spot in the corner of a square slab of ancient paving-stone, and a trap-door fell slowly back. Charles followed his guide down a ladder with iron rungs into another large but perfectly dry apartment. Blute held up his torch.

      “Take a pull on yourself here,” he advised. “For the first moment you may not like it.”

      Charles followed him confidently. Blute raised his arm and the light from his torch partially illuminated the place. Against the wall, side by side, were four deep coffins. The black cloths which had covered them were neatly piled by their sides. Charles stared at them wonderingly.

      “Defunct Gestapos?” he enquired. “Or have we here other enemies? Are these the results of a battle in the Catacombs?”

      Blute smiled.

      “You are a bad guesser, Mr. Mildenhall,” he said. “Within these coffins are some of the Old Masters which were the joy of Mr. Benjamin’s life.”

      “Awaiting exportation,” Charles murmured.

      “Precisely.”

      “Won’t that be just a little difficult?”

      “Not if our plans work smoothly. Consider what might happen. A shocking skiing or automobile disaster—a car rushing down, say, to catch the last train to the frontier. Four over a precipice. Fine description written the same afternoon in a well-known Viennese sporting paper. At the end of the column there is a notice that the bodies of the four victims are being conveyed to France for burial.”

      “I am confused,” Charles admitted.

      “It’s clear enough,” Blute pointed out patiently. “These are supposed to contain the bodies of the four young men. We have the tickets for the transport of the coffins. Remember that no notice has yet appeared in the papers concerning the accident. The day before we are ready to ship the coffins the account of the supposed accident will be published in the Viennese paper. As I said before, the accident never did happen and will be contradicted a week later. A stiff sum that little fairy story will cost but it will be worth it.”

      “Are those part of the game?” Charles asked, pointing to three large cases. “They seem to have the Customs chalk mark on them already.”

      “Another little idea,” Blute explained. “Those cases contain tapestry and some of the small objets d’art, including some miniatures that Mr. Benjamin is very anxious to have. I will tell you how they happen to be in their present condition. The Austrian Railway has a terribly bad name for the low wages it pays to its employees. At the Swiss frontier there are two Customs officials whose addresses I carry with me and whom I have only to advise of my coming. I have to arrange to travel by a train on which the Chef de Bagages is a certain Jean Pfeiffer, with whom I am acquainted. It was he who put me up to this in the first place. When we arrive at the frontier he will put these out of the train as usual but they will not be carried to the Customs shed where the luggage is opened. They will be glanced at and when no official is in sight they will be put back again upon the train in their old place—the first packages passed by the Customs.”

      “Ingenious.” Charles observed.

      “You see, the point is,” Blute went on, “Mr. Benjamin wants the contents of those cases. If by any chance the fraud were detected, they would be at the frontier, it would be the Swiss side which would take care of them and the consignee would be able

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