E. Phillips Oppenheim - 21 Greatest Spy Thrillers in One Premium Edition (Mystery & Espionage Series)

“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!”

Table of Contents

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 while he’s in the city. He’s not much of a politician but he’s quite a figurehead.”

“What about the Anschluss ?”’

“No politics, there’s a dear fellow,” Lascelles begged. “I don’t know where the Germans got the idea from,” he added, looking round, “but they always think that Englishmen—especially if they are connected with diplomacy in any way—are nothing but ‘gasbags/ This place is a favourite rendezvous of the Royalists—the few of them that are left. I should think we are certain to have a visit from the Gestapo, unless Victor succeeds in keeping them away. Wish I were going back with you, Charles. Central Europe is getting on my nerves.”

The caviar arrived and with its many et ceteras absorbed the attention of the two men for a time.

“There is no vodka like this in the world,” Lascelles remarked as he sipped it slowly. “Soft as velvet, isn’t it?”

“It’s marvellous,” his friend agreed. “Perfect food, perfect wine and glorious women. Think what would happen to us if anything went wrong with Vienna!”

Lascelles’ face seemed suddenly to have lost all expression. His fingers were toying with the flask of vodka.

“Gestapo!” he murmured under his breath. “The one thing I regret in Vienna just now is the passing of the polo. Since the Hungarian team broke up there hasn’t been a decent game.”

“It’s the County cricket I miss through travelling so much,” Mildenhall observed with equal seriousness. “I saw Yorkshire play twice last year but I missed the West Indian Test Match. Free hitting and lots of it—that’s the type of cricket I like to see.”

Four members of the Gestapo—brawny, muscular young men with evil faces—stood in the middle of the restaurant talking to a very solemn-faced Victor. One of them detached himself and strolled in leisurely fashion about the place gazing insolently at the diners. Before one of the least conspicuous tables, where a man was dining alone, he stopped. The man continued to eat, taking apparently no notice of what was going on around him. The intruder knocked on the table with his knuckles. The diner looked up and asked what seemed to be a simple question. The S.S. man shouted at him angrily. His voice was heard all over the room.