Major, it does not seem that you are going to be very much use to us,” the Nazi remarked.
“Not the slightest,” Charles agreed.
“You stay long in Vienna?”
Charles smiled.
“I am rather feeling the instinct of the homing pigeon,” he confided.
Major von Metternich smiled grimly, then he rose to his feet.
“You are without a home here for the moment,” he observed.
“I was not officially connected with the Embassy on my last visit,” Charles explained. “I am staying here in the hotel. This time also I am on my way back to England.”
“It remains for me to wish you a pleasant journey,” the Major said with a bow.
“I thank you,” Charles answered with equal politeness.
CHAPTER X
Soon after ten o’clock that night Charles Mildenhall suddenly realized that he was half dead with sleepiness and fatigue. He mounted to his rooms, rang for the valet and in a quarter-of-an-hour was in bed. Twelve hours later he awoke to find Herodin, frock-coated, smiling, the perfect hôtelier, standing by his side. He bowed apologetically.
“Mr. Mildenhall,” he said, “the floor waiter reported that you gave no orders for calling.”
“Quite right,” Charles replied, sitting up in bed. “I was dead tired. This morning I am rested. If you will be so good as to send the valet to turn on my bath, and the waiter?”
“With pleasure, Mr. Mildenhall. I ventured to come up myself this morning because I thought that you would like to know that the news looks slightly better. The Führer has consented to receive an emissary from Poland. It will at least mean a few more days’ delay.”
“Excellent!” Charles exclaimed, rubbing his eyes.
“There is also,” Herodin continued, “the very shabby taxicab in which you arrived last night.”
“The chauffeur is to wait,” Charles replied. “It would be a kindness, Mr. Herodin, if you could send him round to the back and supply him with coffee and anything else he wants. He is an old friend, once valet at the Embassy. I picked him up at the station on my arrival and have engaged him for my few days here.”
“It is a very gracious action,” Herodin murmured.
Charles Mildenhall was of an age when nature speedily reasserts itself. He drank his coffee, then he sent down for Fritz, who presently arrived already a different person and dressed in an entirely new suit of clothes.
“Feeling better, Fritz?” his patron enquired.
The chauffeur grinned.
“And the wife, sir,” he replied. “Food and wine, they do make a difference. We drank your health, sir—yes, I can promise you that—more than once, too.”
“Now listen,” Charles said, tapping a cigarette and lighting it. “I have two to three days to spare in this city and I am very anxious to discover the whereabouts of a young lady and a man called Blute who was an agent of Mr. Leopold Benjamin, the banker.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That is going to be our work,” Charles went on, “for every minute of the time until I have to leave for England. I know they will be difficult to find, because they were in a way members of Mr. Benjamin’s household and that has been broken up, but we must set our minds to it.”
“We will find them, sir,” Fritz declared confidently. “The young lady, now,” he went on, “would she be a young lady with red hair?”
“Good God, how did you know that? Of course she has red hair—very beautiful and plenty of it.”
Fritz smiled.
“Rather small in figure—very pleasant voice and a real smile?”
“What do you know about her?” Charles demanded eagerly. “Have you seen her lately?”
Fritz shook his head.
“Well over a year ago, sir,” he admitted, “and it’s a queer thing how I come to remember it, except that she was almost the first fare I had. The young lady you are looking for, she came out of the porter’s lodge of the Palais Franz Josef where she had been talking to the woman there. Why, it could not have been more than a day or a couple of days after you left. I was to drive her to the Benjamin Bank, but when we got within a street of it she stopped me. We could see that there were soldiers guarding the place. She jumped out, paid me and slipped away.”
“Patricia Grey her name was.”
“I never heard any name,” Fritz admitted, “but that young lady came out of the lodge and I drove her to Benjamin’s Bank or should have done, if the soldiers had not been there—and she had marvellous red hair. It’s an easy guess, sir, that she was the young lady you are looking for.”
“The man’s name was Marius Blute.”
“Never heard of him, sir. But the young lady, I should know her again if I ever saw her, and don’t you forget, sir, she came out of the porter’s lodge at the Benjamin palace. She would not have been there if she had not had something to do with the place. She asked to be driven to Benjamin’s Bank. That is proof that she belonged to the staff, and there isn’t another young woman in Vienna with hair like that—a sort of golden red it is, sir. Shines like—”
“That,” Charles interrupted, “is the young lady I want to find.”
“We’ll do it, sir,” Fritz assured his patron confidently. “Where shall we start?”
“We will go to the Benjamin Hospital. We may hear something about the whereabouts of Mr. Benjamin there and that will be a start.”
“Very good, sir. Shall I bring the taxi round to the front?”
“In ten minutes.”
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
