twice a week! They’re coming to-night. What do you think of that for gay Vienna?”
“Very pleasant, I should call it.” he remarked. “I haven’t played bridge for I don’t know how long. Your one great party of the year is coming off, I hear, as usual.”
“The Von Liebenstrahls? What courage! They’re safely away in their Schloss, which they say is a complete fortress and as big as a small town, and they’re opening up the Palace here in Vienna just for that one party. Every spring for years theirs has been the great social event of Vienna and the Field Marshal will insist upon having it as usual. There are a hundred servants down here making the Palace ready now.”
“The true Viennese spirit,” he approved. “They say Prince von Liebenstrahl is the bravest man in Austria and his wife is still the most beautiful woman. It’s years since I saw them.”
“Have you ever been to one of their balls?” she asked.
“Never.”
“You’d better come with us. You’ll still see the most beautiful women in Europe and the most marvellous collection of uniforms.”
“Very kind of you,” Mildenhall said a little dubiously.
“We have forty people dining, as it is,” Lady Tremearne confided, “but we’ll squeeze you in somewhere. The English and American Embassies have always given dinner parties. I believe the Countess Otobini, the wife of the Hungarian Minister, is having one this year.”
“I’m afraid dinner is off for me,” he regretted. “It’s the night I am dining with Benjamin.”
“Then I shan’t say another word about my little feast,” she laughed. “Mr. Benjamin himself eats scarcely anything, but he is a great epicure and he pays his chef an immense salary. Then his wines, too, are the most famous in Vienna. What you probably won’t get, and although I know it’s a brutal taste I still like them, is a cocktail. I told Mr. Benjamin so once myself and there was that pained look in his eyes as though someone had played a wrong note on a violin or dropped an ‘h’ in the middle of a beautiful speech. He never said a word but I could see him suffering.”
“He’s perfectly right, of course. Spirits are crude things, however cunningly they are mixed, compared to wines.”
Lascelles made rather a hurried entrance and took Mildenhall by the arm.
“We must fly,” he declared. “Your guests are coming up the grand staircase. Lady Tremearne. I shall take Mildenhall down the back way.”
Lady Tremearne smiled.
“Tweeds are quite all right until ten o’clock in this country,” she said, “and I’m sure he’d like to see the Archduchess again.”
“Later on in the week, perhaps,” Mildenhall said as he felt his friend’s compelling touch. “You will excuse us, Lady Tremearne? I shall pay my formal call to-morrow.”
She dismissed them with a little wave of the hand.
“Wish me luck,” she called out. “Fifty cents a hundred and we play the forcing two!”
CHAPTER III
Victor’s smooth face was wreathed in smiles as he led Lascelles and Mildenhall, his two distinguished guests, to their places an hour later in the most famous of Vienna’s smaller restaurants. He was reputed to speak the language of every recognized nation in Europe and his English was smooth and faultless.
“It is a great pleasure for me,” he said, “to welcome Mr. Mildenhall back to Vienna. Mr. Lascelles has always his table here, although he dines at his beautiful Embassy more often than I could wish. To-night many of my valued patrons are honouring me. Sometimes I see them—sometimes I do not. The Archduke to-night, par exemple, I do not see, but Mr. Mildenhall will agree with me, I am sure, that his companion is very, very beautiful.”
He ushered the two men into their bôite. A bowl of dark red roses stood in the centre of the small round table prepared for two, and the array of glass would have looked equally at home in a museum. They took their places. Victor spread out his hands.
“For the guests whom I would like to honour,” he confided, “I carry no menu. I think that I know well the tastes of Monsieur Lascelles, I believe that I can divine those of Monsieur Mildenhall. I shall not shock you if I offer you the new season’s caviar with the ninety-year-old vodka, the first of the young salmon from our own noble river, a baby deer with some garnishings of young hog’s flesh, a salad which I prepare here and a souffle incomparable, something invented only last week by the nephew of my chef, the Cordon Bleu Maurice, who serves his apprenticeship here. With the salmon a Berncasteler Doktor of ‘84 will serve to help you forget the crudeness of the vodka. With the deer I would offer a Chateau Mouton-Rothschild of 1870. Of the brandy we speak later.”
“Victor has ideas!” Mildenhall murmured.
“Such a meal should be set to poetry,” Lascelles suggested.
“But for poetry or for music where else would you go?” Victor demanded. “They all tell me that my restaurant is the meeting-place of lovely women, and you are precisely the right distance away to appreciate the most wonderful music Strauss ever wrote, played by the maestro.”
“We submit, Victor,” Mildenhall remarked with a twinkle in his eyes. “You are the Emperor of Gastronomy!”
Victor bowed low and left them.
Mildenhall’s whole attention during the next few minutes was concentrated, as far as discretion permitted, upon the table exactly opposite.
“I think,” he pronounced, “the woman with Karl Sebastian is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen in my life.”
Lascelles permitted himself a glance across the room.
“Most of Vienna thinks as you do, my friend,” he admitted. “An introduction would be quite in order, but—not to-night.”
“Tell me her name,” Mildenhall asked. “I can’t remember having seen her here before.”
“The name by which she is generally known, and to which I believe she is absolutely entitled, is the Baroness von Ballinstrode. I have heard there was a previous marriage, to a man whose name I have forgotten, which was annulled, but I don’t think the divorce was properly legalized. Very complicated, some of these religious quibbles.”
“Overwhelmingly Teutonic,” Mildenhall murmured, “but nevertheless exquisite. I have never seen such a complexion—bluer eyes—a more fascinating smile. She has almost too much animation for her type.”
“If you stay long enough I must certainly see about that introduction,” Lascelles observed. “The Archduke is here for the Von Liebenstrahls’ dance on Thursday. A day or two afterwards he and the Archduchess will return to their castle in the mountains, unless he can get off on his own for a few weeks to Monte Carlo. A week is about as long as he dare spend in Vienna, nowadays. Lucky for him if another putsch doesn’t come
