from the room which contained the telephone box, was striding up and down in silent fury. The waiter who had recognized Blute came running across the devastated stretch of turf. He had a bottle in each of his coat pockets and he carried three glasses.
“Vermouth and cassis,” he announced to the two as he paused breathless. “Herr Blute—he ordered.”
Charles took the bottles from him.
“Vermouth and cassis,” he remarked. “It’s a good enough drink, Patricia. How much for the three, waiter?”
“Five francs, Monsieur L’Anglais.”
“How much for the two bottles?”
“Twenty francs.”
Charles handed out the money, added five francs and motioned him away. The waiter departed, his face wreathed in smiles.
“Delicious!” Patricia exclaimed, sipping hers.
They drank a glassful each. Charles also nodded his approval.
“The civilized person,” he observed, “becomes awfully narrow about his drinks. If I lived to be a hundred I should never have ordered a vermouth and cassis. Here comes Mr. Blute. We’ll mix his.”
Blute approached them, walking a shade more quickly than usual, but otherwise preserving his attitude of stony abstraction. He accepted his drink, however, and sipped it appreciatively.
“I regret to say,” he announced, “that there is not a room to be had in the hotel. For forty people the lounge is reserved. The dining hall being empty—there is no food here to be served—it is also turned into a dormitory. Two American tourists, students from Grenoble, a man and a girl on their honeymoon, have commandeered the billiard table. There seems really to be not an inch of space vacant. I did not book rooms in advance because having done so for Mr. Mildenhall I did not wish it to appear that we were travelling in his company.”
Charles laughed gaily.
“You’re over-scrupulous, my friend,” he declared. “I still hope to be in London only a day after I was expected, and when I am on the sort of mission I have been engaged on during the last two months I make my own plans and choose my own company.”
“They would not have been able to keep the rooms, in any case,” Blute remarked. “The people on the first train forced their way in.”
“And things otherwise are going all right?” Charles asked, a lingering note of anxiety still in his tone.
“Everything goes like clockwork. The guards have permission to sleep in the van. That I arranged in Vienna. They brought their food with them. I paid them a farewell visit just before we reached this place and found them at their posts perfectly satisfied and ready for anything. The guard of the train has already taken possession of the cases which are supposed to contain the effects of the victims and he assures me that there is not the faintest chance of trouble with the Customs. I shall not worry any longer about these by-way telephones. We shall go through to Zürich and from there I know I can ascertain Mr. Benjamin’s whereabouts.”
“In the meantime I have an idea,” Charles said. “We mount from here to my bedroom. There we can talk undisturbed. Afterwards, naturally. Miss Grey will occupy it. You and I, Blute, can easily sleep out of doors if necessary.”
“I could sleep very well where we are,” Blute assented, “but your room will be an excellent refuge for a short time. I don’t fancy this mixed crowd of people all around us.”
They rose to their feet and made their way through the uneasy mob into the hotel and up the stairs. Charles unlocked his door and threw open the windows.
“Not so bad,” he declared cheerfully. “There is soap, water and one clean towel for Miss Grey if she should care to use them. The air which comes in through the windows is not at all bad and furthermore—”
“Something left from your luncheon?” Patricia exclaimed, jumping up with a whirl of her skirts and seizing the basket which he had been holding out.
He drew back the fastenings and lifted the cover, raised a serviette and smiled.
“Behold! The offering of the best hotel manager in Europe left neglected at the time it was meant to be eaten but welcome as never was food welcomed before by us three hungry mortals.”
“And I never knew I was really greedy,” Patricia murmured as she lifted the second serviette. “A whole chicken, a delicious cheese, rolls, butter, fruit! Charles, I must be greedy! I am going to cry.”
“A sure sign,” he observed, undoing the inside straps, producing a dish and beginning to carve the chicken. “Well turn my suitcase off the luggage. Stand and use that for a table. We must sit on the bed. But wait a moment—you carve the chicken, Blute.”
He rummaged in his dressing-case and produced the cocktail shaker.
“I have no words of gratitude and thanks left,” Patricia sighed. “My greed has conquered my emotions. You men had better divide the cocktail. I can have more vermouth and cassis. Besides, there’s a delicious bottle of white wine here.”
“The wine I drank for my dinner last night—Gumpoldskirchner,” he remarked, drawing it from the basket. “A terrific name but an excellent flavour.”
“The best Austrian wine that’s grown,” Blute declared. “You two can play about with the apéritif—I’ll wait for the wine.”
They finished their meal in supreme content. Patricia insisted upon rolling up her sleeves and washing the plates. Afterwards, they sat by the open window and over the station roof watched the outline of the mountains in the distance. Darkness had come and Charles broke up a somewhat spasmodic conversation.
“I think we’d better leave you, Patricia,” he suggested. “We’re all tired and we shall have to be up early in the morning.”
“Nothing of the sort,” Patricia protested. “I am not going to take your room, Charles. I shouldn’t think of it. You were up long before we were this morning.”
“The matter,” Charles declared, “is not worth an argument. I am no Sir Philip Sidney but I should hate to go through life remembering that a few nights before our wedding I let my wife sleep with all the rest of this picnicking Bank Holiday crowd whilst I revelled in the luxury of this—er—truckle bedstead!”
“Please, Charles!” she begged with something suspiciously like a blush on her cheeks. “I’m much more used to roughing it than you are.”
Charles abandoned the discussion. He took a couple of bottles from his dressing-case and a clean handkerchief and joined Blute at the door.
“Sleep well, my dear Patricia,” he enjoined. “Brace yourself up for those few minutes of agony tomorrow. I have a feeling somehow or other that no one will do more than glance at our passports, that the Customs men will be so busy that they will just wave our baggage on one side and that we shall be making our brief farewells within half-an-hour of crossing the frontier. What do you say, Blute?”
“When I am engaged upon a serious enterprise,” the latter replied, “I concentrate the whole of the time upon its successful accomplishment. I
