“I read of that,” Charles murmured.
“No money from abroad could be claimed by individuals until the exchanges had been adjusted. If money was sent it was confiscated by the State and any letters accompanying it were destroyed by the censor. It was sheer robbery. Meanwhile our employment came to an end. We met day by day. It was impossible for me to leave Vienna because of the money I had already spent on Mr. Benjamin’s account. Between us we could not raise enough for Miss Grey’s passage to England, much less back to America.”
“Why didn’t you go on writing to Mr. Benjamin?” Charles asked.
“Because we neither of us had the slightest idea where he actually was,” Patricia pointed out eagerly. “It was absolutely necessary, until he could reach a place of safety, that no one should know his whereabouts. As soon as that time arrived he promised to write to us. We have had not a line, but as every letter that arrived here was censored, it seemed a hopeless task to get in touch with anyone.”
“When disaster first came,” Blute went on, “we had three hopes. One was that we should hear from Mr. Benjamin, that he would get a letter through to us somehow or other notwithstanding the censorship; the second was that the Benjamin Hospital, with a foundation from him which brought them in the equivalent of a quarter of a million dollars a year, would let us have the sum we needed to complete our obligations to Mr. Benjamin, and the third hope—it was the slimmest of all—was that we might some day or other come across a friend passing through Vienna.”
“Nothing so wonderful as this, though, ever entered into our dreams,” Patricia murmured.
“Well, that’s a very clear explanation of everything that has happened,” Charles pronounced. “It has been a horrible time for both of you. Now tell me this—I have made a wild guess. Am I right? The work you undertook for your Chief—had it anything to do with getting all his pictures and wonderful possessions out of Vienna?”
They were both silent.
“That was just what it was,” Blute said hoarsely after a moment’s pause. “We came so near success—”
“You didn’t succeed, then?”
There was a long and melancholy silence. Blute was shaking his head sadly. Patricia sat with her hands folded in front of her and it seemed to Charles that she was going through some sort of inward struggle. When at last she spoke it was as though the three words she uttered were tearing at her very heartstrings.
“No,” she confessed. “We failed.”
There was a knock at the door of the salon. The waiter entered. He indicated a chambermaid who was waiting outside.
“The young woman has come,” he announced, “to fetch the Fräulein who was dining here and who has a room on the other side of the hotel. It is a little difficult to find without help.”
Patricia rose to her feet. She held out her hands to her host.
“Mr. Mildenhall,” she said, “Charles, if you wish it—there are no words I can use to thank you. I go to bed without fear, almost happy for the first time for months. It is all your doing.”
“‘Almost’ happy?” he repeated.
She nodded.
“If you knew the difference between now and last night,” she said smiling, “you would not worry about the ‘almost.’”
“When can we meet to-morrow?”
“I do not know,” she answered thoughtfully. “I must see Mr. Blute, but I am too weary to talk any more to-night.”
“Come and have your coffee and rolls with me here in the morning,” he begged. “The chambermaid who looks after you will bring you along. I will be ready at nine o’clock.”
“You wish it?”
“I do seriously,” he insisted.
He led her towards the door.
“I wish it,” he repeated, “and I am determined also to know the meaning of that ‘almost.’”
The light faded from her face. She shook her head.
“That,” she said, “I shall not tell you just yet. It is not for you to know. Be satisfied with thinking what you have done for us, the misery from which you have snatched poor Mr. Blute and me. Apart from all of which,” she added, “I shall tell you this—”
She grasped his hand tightly. Suddenly she raised his fingers to her lips and kissed them.
“You are the sweetest Good Samaritan,” she cried, “the most wonderful and most tactful who ever brought a poor girl back into life!”
Her feet seemed to have recovered some of their old grace and lightness. She was across the room in a moment. She waved her hand and disappeared with the chambermaid.
CHAPTER XIII
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Marius Blute had risen to his feet when Charles returned to his easy chair. The latter waved him back again.
“Sit down and finish your cigar,” he invited. “That is, unless you are tired.”
“I am no longer tired,” Blute said. ‘T am a strong man, really. No man could have gone through what I went through in prison unless he had a sound constitution. Wine and good food were what I needed. I am myself again. But I must not keep you up.”
“My dear fellow,” Charles protested, “does anyone ever go to bed in Vienna before midnight? If you were not here I should only go out to a café. Remember, I have only heard just a sketch of your adventures.”
“It is difficult,” Blute reflected, “to explain everything.”
“Could you tell me this?” Charles asked. “What was the meaning of that ‘almost’ in Miss Grey’s farewell speech? She had been looking so radiantly happy all the evening. Now just a little of the cloud seems to have come back.”
“If I were to tell you what I think,” Blute said thoughtfully, “I believe that she would be very angry with me.”
“There is something that still troubles her, then?”
“There is something.”
“Is there anything more I could do?” Charles asked bluntly.
“Nothing that I could ask you,” Blute replied, “nothing that either of us has the faintest right to ask you to do.”
“Look here, Blute,” Charles confided, “I’ll let you into a secret. I am very fond of Miss Grey.”
“That is no secret,” was the other’s quiet comment.
“I dare say not,” Charles observed smiling. “To tell you the truth,” he went on, “I really didn’t know it myself. I thought Miss Grey was very charming and all that, but it wasn’t until I saw her to-night in that horrible place and saw how ill and miserable she looked, and realized how she must have suffered—well, it wasn’t until then, anyhow, that I suddenly discovered I was very, very fond of her. I believe that if she realized how fond, she’d have explained that ‘almost.’”
“I think I know what Miss Grey meant. Our re-establishment, which has come about entirely due to your kindness, has reminded us that our task is not complete.”
“Well,” Charles pointed out, “I am still here, still at your service. How can I help you further?”
“It is not fair,” Blute said, moving uneasily in his place, “to invite you into an adventure in which you have everything to lose and nothing to gain. More especially Miss Grey will feel this because you have just about saved our lives in so charming a manner.”
“Absurd!” Charles declared lightly. “All that I have done has been a pleasure to me. Don’t think that I have finished with you, my friend Blute. There is the question of funds to settle. I can help you there—you and Miss Grey. It is impossible for you to get at your money—I mean your own money apart from what you have been robbed of. I can get at all I want without difficulty. Tell me frankly, beyond getting you out of the country what do you need money for? Is it possible that you still have a hope of saving any of Mr. Benjamin’s glorious collection?”
Blute was on his feet. Excitement gleamed in his eyes. He whirled his arms.
“Listen, my friend!” he cried. ‘It comes! I can keep silent no longer! It will be impossible for me to keep my mouth closed. Miss Grey will be angry. It cannot be helped. Be
prepared to be astonished, my friend. Save for the last struggle, that marvellous young woman and I have succeeded in achieving the impossible. All those glorious paintings—the two Andrea del Sartos, the Fra Filippo Lippis, the Murillo, the Titian, the two Spanish pictures, the Cellini handwork—oh! the great list of immortal things, the fit possessions of a god—we have saved them! Not yet have they been touched by one of Hitler’s emissaries, not once have the greedy eyes of his henchmen revelled in their beauties. There were days when we worked from sunrise till night, and if we ate it was without knowing it, and if we drank it was still bending over our tasks. That girl, with the heart of a lioness and the frame of a child, worked with me with the strength of a dozen men. We succeeded. The collection is in our keeping. Never has there been so much fury spent upon any Nazi failure as there has been spent over this one. Everyone wondered at the final rush of that big band of the Gestapo into Vienna. It was to make sure of their loot. It was to make sure of their millions. They came—and what did they find? Half a mile of empty walls.”
“Do you mean to say that you actually got the whole collection away?” Charles demanded incredulously. ‘T know that a great many of the pictures had gone from the first gallery the night of the scare, but in less than a week the whole house was being ransacked by the Nazis.”
“The whole collection is still under our control,” Blute declared. “We had even reached the final steps in its disposal. Then our luck failed. Perhaps we were a little careless one day. So many things seemed to have happened between that we began to hope we had been forgotten. Perhaps we were wrong. At any rate, our days of tribulation arrived. We were stripped of every pfennig we possessed, we were questioned and bullied to death. For months I lay in one prison and Patricia Grey in another. We were tortured—but never mind—we have finished with the horrors. Just as summarily as we were imprisoned we were thrown out onto the streets two months ago—penniless. For a time we were followed everywhere we went, then I think they gave us up. They saw me in the clothes of a beggar of the street, they saw me eating crusts at the back doors of the restaurants which in the old days I had patronized. They saw her in the same plight. Then little paragraphs began to appear in the papers that some of the pictures had been seen in Paris and some in London. They cooled off, they left us alone except now and then to mock at us as we passed. There we were starving in the streets, and treasures worth millions still safe here, still waiting only for us to take the final step. And we were without a pfennig towards a meal, without the money now for a letter or a telegram, without any means of opening up communication outside the ring of the city. Have you ever considered, Mr. Charles Mildenhall, the psychological, the actual mental condition of the really penniless man or woman?”
“No, and I don’t want to just now,” Charles declared. “Let’s get on with this. I gather that by some extraordinary means the pictures remain hidden, that you still have access to them and with money you could carry out your plans to restore them to Leopold Benjamin.”
“With money and help—yes. But listen, Mr. Mildenhall. The last steps will be the most dangerous. You are still a young man and you have all that you need in life. Why should you risk everything in an enterprise of this sort?”
Charles smiled deliberately. It was not a humorous effort. It just meant the slow relaxation of his features from his strained period of listening.
“For the same reason, I suppose,” he replied, “that half the men in the world have, some time or another, made fools of themselves. I don’t admit that I am going to make a fool of myself, but I am going to help you and Patricia to finish your adventure whatever we may have to go through.”
Blute spent several moments of indecision, his eyes fixed intently upon the speaker.
“If you were an ordinary young man,” he began, “I should warn you once more. As it is, I shall not do so. I believe that you have made up your mind. Very well, I proceed—”
“Let me tell you this one thing about myself which may set your mind a little more at ease,” Charles insisted, finishing his brandy and lighting a cigarette. “I started in the diplomatic world with every mortal advantage. Things were made far too easy for me. I abandoned the straightforward course towards the final goal of an ambassadorship solely because the preliminaries were too circumscribed. I felt a craving for adventure. My year as military attache did not help me in the least. I happened to be on friendly terms with our Foreign Secretary. I have one great gift—the gift of languages—so I put it up to him that I could be of more use to the country as a free lance, wandering from one seat of disturbance to another, undertaking special missions, bringing back from remote places at times very valuable information. He agreed and off I went. I shall never earn any great distinctions, I shall never have my chest covered with medals and orders. People will repeat my name and wonder in years to come what I have done to be still hanging about the Foreign Office. I don’t mind. I shall have lived the life I wanted to live.”
Blute finished his brandy and rose to his feet. With a grin across the table at Charles he put several of the cigars in his pocket.
“Put on your hat and coat,” he enjoined, “and come with me.”
CHAPTER XIV
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Charles piloted his companion by the intricate route leading through the back quarters of the hotel to the lift and into the courtyard. Fritz was sitting on the box seat of his taxicab smoking a cigarette and reading the evening paper. Blute seized Charles’s arm.
“This chauffeur!” he exclaimed. “Remember, the fate of our whole enterprise will depend upon his discretion.”
“I pledge my word upon it,” was the confident reply. “I have known him for years. He is absolutely trustworthy. He is my man body and soul. Apart from that, he has somewhat the spirit of an adventurer and he is an out-and-out Viennese, loathing the Germans.”
“Satisfied,” Blute said tersely. “I will direct him myself.”
Fritz, with smiling face, held open the door. Charles entered the vehicle. Blute remained talking with Fritz for almost five minutes. Afterwards he took his place inside. Fritz closed the door and they drove off.
“I am satisfied with your chauffeur,” Blute declared. “He is intelligent, he worships you, he has quick wit, he is likely to be useful to us.”
“Is it permitted to ask where we are going?” Charles enquired.
“We are going by a roundabout course,” Blute confided, “to a compound attached to the garage of Mr. Leopold Benjamin’s palace. It abuts upon a lane where there are no other buildings and it is nearly a quarter of a mile from the house. Listen while I explain something. Do not let your spirits fall when I speak of a secret passage because, although I know these places have no novelty as hiding resorts and would be most unlikely to escape the notice of a trained S.S. man, you will have to take my word for it that this is one of the most wonderful secret passages in Europe. The palace in which Mr. Benjamin lived was built, as you know, by the Hapsburgs, and it has always remained a Royal Domain until it was purchased by Mr. Benjamin’s grandfather from the Archduke Ferdinand. The Archduke had a mistress to whom he was devoted, but he had also a jealous wife and family. He discovered the existence of this passage for himself, spent millions upon its development and built the compound as a villa, where the lady was installed. None of this appears in any published guide-book and most people seem to have forgotten the story. The passage is a quarter of a mile long and it commences fifty feet from the end of the picture gallery. It terminates in the room in which I have slept every night I have been free, before and after I was in prison. The only person to whom Mr. Benjamin ever revealed its intricacies was myself. I can safely say that no one else breathing has ever passed from one end of it to the other, or been shown the exit. No one whom I have ever come across in the city or amongst the hundreds of guests who have visited Mr. Benjamin have ever known that there was such a place. The police have no information concerning it, the twelve specialists whom Mr. Benj
amin brought from America to install ventilation at various points and to connect it up electrically returned to the States when their job was over—well 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.”
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