afraid that Miss Grey is taking this affair a little too seriously,” Blute said, crossing the room towards them. “Just look at the matter for a moment as I look at it, Mr. Mildenhall. If we go crash on this enterprise what’s the odds to those four men when they know that they’re secure for life if they bring it off, and probably only in for a short imprisonment if they fail? The guard of the train—pretty well the same thing with him. Joseph—”
“Joseph is impregnable, I admit,” Charles declared. “If anyone laid a finger upon Joseph I think there would be a minor revolution here. He’ll be mayor of the city before he’s finished. He has more friends than any man I ever knew.”
“I quite agree,” Blute assented. “I haven’t a shadow of anxiety myself about Joseph, Then there’s myself. I stand to make a million if we succeed. It’s the end of work for me—the beginning of a life of leisure. If I fail—well, Mr. Mildenhall, I’ll only say this. I have had a nasty shock these last few months—I will admit that—but it will never happen again. Everything was against Miss Grey and myself in this wretched city. It could never happen to us again to be censored out of existence.”
“From what I’ve seen of you, Blute, I think you’d get out of anything in time,” Charles declared, “but there’s Miss Grey here.”
“She isn’t really in it,” Blute pointed out. “She and I were both employees of Leopold Benjamin, but she has only the slightest association with the job I am trying to work.”
“Well, then we’ve no one to worry about.”
“We have,” the girl cried eagerly.
“Indeed we have,” Blute agreed. “There is you, sir.”
“Bosh!”
“What I’m afraid of,” Blute explained, “is this. With the war coming on, if there are any of these Gestapo about they’ll try to drag you into it. Please listen to me, Mr. Mildenhall,” he went on as Charles showed signs of escaping. “We should never have had a chance but for you. You found us the whole of the money, we are going about now—at least I am—with our pockets bursting. Think where you found us! We were down and out completely. I don’t say it would have lasted but when help came it would very likely have been too late. You’ve helped with the plans here, you’ve been wonderful, sir. If I let you get into trouble I don’t think Mr. Benjamin, or this young lady here, for that matter, would ever forgive me. I’ve been working to keep you out of it this morning and you must please do all that I ask of you.”
“You shall have your own way as long as it’s reasonable,” Charles assured him. “I don’t like that six o’clock train, though. I’ve heaps of things I want to say to Miss Grey and I can’t bear the thought of that long journey alone.”
“Never mind, sir,” Blute insisted. “Remember this. There will be as many spies about the Westbahnhof to-morrow as there will be passengers. As I have arranged it everyone in the city will know that you left in a Diplomatic coupé locked up by yourself two hours before the—what shall I call it?—the conspiracy. Not one of us, not Miss Grey, not the caskets, not the guard, not the railway agent, not I—will be on your train. If you travel with us or even with Miss Grey you’re in it up to the neck. Not one of us counts. They tell me you’ve a great future before you, you’re the nephew of a peer of England and you belong to a great family who would be disgraced if you were mixed up with this.”
“That’s all very well,” Charles said discontentedly. “I have been working at this thing with you practically the whole of the last two days. You’re turning me out of bed at five o’clock to-morrow morning, and then if any adventure should come of it when we reach the frontier or thereabouts I’m to miss all the fun.”
Blute shook his head.
“It won’t be fun, Mr. Mildenhall,” he said. “I can assure you of that. I don’t believe for a single moment that anything can go wrong with our plans but if it does,” he added gravely, “it will be anything you like to call it, but it won’t be amusing!”
“All the more reason why I should be on the spot,” Charles persisted stubbornly.
Blute’s tone and manner were alike changed. He spoke coldly but vigorously. His frown was forbidding.
“Mr. Mildenhall,” he said, “Miss Grey and I have talked this over and it’s come to this. We will let chance take care of what happens afterwards, but unless you consent to go by the first train and go by yourself I shall give you a cheque payable in London for the whole of the money you have advanced and we shall ask you to retire.”
Charles smoked nearly the whole of a cigarette and held Patricia’s hand firmly in his before he answered. Then he rose to his feet with a sigh, moved to the other writing-table, lifted one of the tin boxes to his side and unlocked it.
“All right,” he decided, “have it your own way. All the same, I hate travelling at six o’clock in the morning.”
CHAPTER XX
“Never, young lady,” Charles said an hour or so later, leaning back in his chair and closing the lid of the last of the three boxes, “will you be able to say in the days of our more-matured acquaintance that you have never seen your husband do any real work.”
Her eyes were flashing all sorts of things at him. She left her place, came over and dragged a stool to his side.
“Do you want to be my husband?” she asked.
“Frantically.”
“Why?”
“Well, I suppose I must be fond of you. Isn’t that a good reason?”
“Yes, but you can’t be fond of me,” she remonstrated. “You know nothing about me. That first dinner—”
“Well, there’s a proof,” he interrupted. “At that one dinner, the first time I had ever met you, do you remember what happened?”
The colour slowly crept into her cheeks. Very velvety and soft they looked in the shaded lamplight by which she had been working.
“I can see you do,” he went on. “I very nearly kissed you. Now I ask you—isn’t that a proof? Could any man want to kiss a girl whom he was meeting for the first time in his life unless he had fallen head over ears in love with her?”
“Well, I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “They might in Vienna. I never met with anything of the sort in New York. We mustn’t talk nonsense, though. Is there any more typing for me?”
“Not a thing,” he answered. “You see,” he continued, looking round at the piles of torn paper by which he was surrounded, “I have a frantic sort of weakness for destroying and tearing up papers. I never see an important document lying about that I don’t want to destroy it.”
“A very inconvenient habit, I should think,” Patricia laughed.
“It’s a great strain. It means that if you don’t have to learn them off by heart you master their contents, at any rate.”
