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

Blute finished his brandy and rose to his feet. With a grin across the table at Charles he put several of the cigars in his pocket.

“Put on your hat and coat,” he enjoined, “and come with me.”

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Charles piloted his companion by the intricate route leading through the back quarters of the hotel to the lift and into the courtyard. Fritz was sitting on the box seat of his taxicab smoking a cigarette and reading the evening paper. Blute seized Charles’s arm.

“This chauffeur!” he exclaimed. “Remember, the fate of our whole enterprise will depend upon his discretion.”

“I pledge my word upon it,” was the confident reply. “I have known him for years. He is absolutely trustworthy. He is my man body and soul. Apart from that, he has somewhat the spirit of an adventurer and he is an out-and-out Viennese, loathing the Germans.”

“Satisfied,” Blute said tersely. “I will direct him myself.”

Fritz, with smiling face, held open the door. Charles entered the vehicle. Blute remained talking with Fritz for almost five minutes. Afterwards he took his place inside. Fritz closed the door and they drove off.

“I am satisfied with your chauffeur,” Blute declared. “He is intelligent, he worships you, he has quick wit, he is likely to be useful to us.”

“Is it permitted to ask where we are going?” Charles enquired.

“We are going by a roundabout course,” Blute confided, “to a compound attached to the garage of Mr. Leopold Benjamin’s palace. It abuts upon a lane where there are no other buildings and it is nearly a quarter of a mile from the house. Listen while I explain something. Do not let your spirits fall when I speak of a secret passage because, although I know these places have no novelty as hiding resorts and would be most unlikely to escape the notice of a trained S.S. man, you will have to take my word for it that this is one of the most wonderful secret passages in Europe. The palace in which Mr. Benjamin lived was built, as you know, by the Hapsburgs, and it has always remained a Royal Domain until it was purchased by Mr. Benjamin’s grandfather from the Archduke Ferdinand. The Archduke had a mistress to whom he was devoted, but he had also a jealous wife and family. He discovered the existence of this passage for himself, spent millions upon its development and built the compound as a villa, where the lady was installed. None of this appears in any published guide-book and most people seem to have forgotten the story. The passage is a quarter of a mile long and it commences fifty feet from the end of the picture gallery. It terminates in the room in which I have slept every night I have been free, before and after I was in prison. The only person to whom Mr. Benjamin ever revealed its intricacies was myself. I can safely say that no one else breathing has ever passed from one end of it to the other, or been shown the exit. No one whom I have ever come across in the city or amongst the hundreds of guests who have visited Mr. Benjamin have ever known that there was such a place. The police have no information concerning it, the twelve specialists whom Mr. Benjamin brought from America to install ventilation at various points and to connect it up electrically returned to the States when their job was over—well paid, I can promise you, but under a covenant never again to set foot in Europe. There are twenty-four doors between the palace and the villa. Every one opens in a different manner, and there is a secret connected with the key of every one of them. Patricia Grey and I have committed the plan to memory and destroyed it. Without our aid it would be a definite impossibility for anyone to traverse it.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Charles declared.

“The impossibility of trusting a single person of our acquaintance with a secret of such vast importance,” Blute went on, “made it necessary for both Miss Grey and myself to go through an amount of physical labour which I could not describe to you. We have removed every canvas from three hundred frames and those we have transported into their present hiding place, which is within a few yards of where I have slept for many months. The canvases alone represent a value of some thirty million dollars and are the most valuable collection of Old Masters in any private ownership in the world.”

“Amazing!” Charles murmured. “I can’t grapple with it all yet. Tell me, though,” he added, looking out of the window and conscious of a sudden obscurity, “why has Fritz turned off his lights?”

“We are in what used to be a private road,” Blute confided, “leading to the compound. Now that the Benjamin house is unoccupied and partly in ruins the compound—part of which had been used as a garage—was also naturally left deserted. When I first started upon my scheme for concealing the pictures I had a camp bed and a few necessaries moved into it and that has been my home. We are fast approaching it.”

They turned in between two pillars, gigantic obelisks they appeared in the semi-darkness. They were in what had once been a courtyard but which was now overgrown with weeds. Blute pointed to a distant corner.

“Under the wall there,” he told Fritz, “with your lights turned off, you will be completely out of sight. There is no thoroughfare here and I may tell you that I have never known anyone to pass down this road. If by any hundred-to-one chance anyone should ask you what you are doing there, invent any story you like, but be sure not to say you brought a fare here.”

“It is well understood, mein Herr ,” Fritz declared. “I shall say that I brought my young lady, that she ran away promising to return at once and has given me the hoop-la!”

“We shall make good use of that fellow, I’m sure,” Blute remarked. “Follow me very carefully, Mr. Mildenhall,” he said, pointing to a high hedge of laurels. “These bushes are a good screen but they have grown.”

He paused at last before a long low building. He counted the bricks from a certain spot, removed one when he had arrived at the fourteenth by simply pressing a piece of the mortar, thrust his hand into the cavity, turned a handle and swung open a door. He replaced the brick, stepped into a dark apartment and beckoned to Charles to follow him.

“Now don’t be alarmed that I use this torch,” Blute warned his companion. “The wires have been cut and we daren’t show much light, anyway.”

He flashed the torch around. It was a dreary-looking place and the walls showed signs of damp and decay. In a distant corner was a plain iron bedstead, a rather dejected-looking screen, two chairs, an oil stove and a cupboard.

“My surroundings, as you see, are not luxurious,” Blute pointed out. “Nevertheless, as I told you, the only nights I have not slept here since Mr. Benjamin left were the nights I spent in prison.”

“And you have never been disturbed?” Charles asked.

“Not only have I never been disturbed but I am convinced that no one has ever visited this place either in the daytime or at night. Why should they? It is just a stone barn with no obvious means of entry. Look into my cupboard!”

Charles glanced over his companion’s shoulder. There was coffee equipment but no signs of any coffee. There was a very small piece of black bread on a plate and not another thing.

“I slept here last night,” Blute confided. “I munched at that piece of bread when I got up and there it remains. I washed my face and hands in the basin opposite and I walked all the way up into the city. I served coffee during the rush hour at a café en route and there I got a mugful for myself and a roll in payment for half-an-hour’s work. It was my breakfast. My mittagessen did not exist. My dinner I will not speak about! I am fortunately a man—as you would be, I think, Mr. Mildenhall—who finds humour in violent contrasts.”