habits Redl had implanted, and principal among them was patience, patience. Patiently, detectives Ebinger and Steidl were waiting, day after day, week after week, waiting and waiting in their little room opposite the General Post Office, waiting for the ringing of the bell.
Suddenly, at 5:55 P.M. on Saturday, May 24, it rang. It rang in an empty room. Sergeant Steidl had gone to the privy down the corridor. Sergeant Ebinger was having a cup of coffee in the canteen on the ground floor. Both men were good, Redl- trained agents. At the same time they were also two Viennese in May, a season that tuned up the body's needs. The bell was ringing when both men, returning along the corridor, heard it through the door. The sound swivelled them into an aboutface. Together they raced down the one flight of stairs and across the square.
Too late, almost.
Behind the General Delivery window, the clerk could only shrug his shoulders. Yes, Herr Nizetas had come at last to claim his mail. Yes, just now, he'd signed for it in such a hurry, he might still be outside. Ebinger and Steidl rushed to the street-in time to see a cab pull away and vanish around the corner. Ebinger (who had better vision) had barely time to note its license number: A 3313.
The cool May evening must have felt even colder on the perspiring forehead of those two. To identify a cab by number would be slow; the driver, cruising all over Vienna, might not be found for hours. And Herr Nizetas had just shown how fast he could manage a disappearance.
The two sergeants ran back to General Delivery. What did Herr Nizetas look like? Again the clerk could only shrug: the face had been just about invisible since the hat had been pulled so far down. What kind of hat, what brim, what color? Oh, medium brim width, sort of gray. The man's height? Oh, medium, perhaps a little on the small side. His voice? Well, a normal male voice with the usual Austrian accent. Anything distinctive at all? Not really-no, nothing.
Nothing. Six weeks of waiting for nothing. Dazed by that 'nothing' Ebinger and Steidl walked out of the General Post Office to the street once more. And there they saw, with unbelieving eyes, a cab rolling toward them with the license number A 3313. It was the very one that had escaped them ten minutes earlier. They screamed it to a halt. They thrust their badges at the driver's face. Astounded by the hysteria, the driver said he'd just taken his fare to the Cafe Kaiserhof a few blocks down, a gentleman in such a fearful hurry he'd forgotten the sheath of the penknife he'd used to open some mail. There it still was, the sheath, on the back seat.
At the Cafe Kaiserhof minutes later, the head waiter said that nobody with a pulled-down hat, in fact, nobody at all had entered the cafe in the last fifteen minutes.
Stymied again. But at least Ebinger and Steidl had Herr Nizetas's knife sheath. And, querying the cab drivers outside the cafe, they had another bit of luck. The cabbie next in line said, oh yes, the gentleman with the hat down over his face, he'd gotten out of the taxi fast to take another, now what was the name he'd heard him call out?… Oh yes, the Klomser, the Hotel Klomser, that was it.
At the Hotel Klomser the concierge was sorry. He did not recognize the knife sheath. There was no Herr Nizetas registered at the hotel-he knew the names of all guests. No Herr Nizetas had come to visit either, he knew that because he always announced visitors by name. He was very sorry.
Ebinger and Steidl kept hissing more questions. Who had come into the hotel recently? Name? Description? At exactly what time? Anybody and everybody during the last half hour!
The concierge furrowed a flustered brow. Well, there had been a number of people, though he didn't constantly look at his watch. But during the last half hour, well, there had been Mr. Felsen, and then the two ladies, that was Mrs. Kleine- mann, the wife of Bank President Kleinemann, with her friend Mrs. Luechow, the wife of Director Luechow, and who else, yes, the new guest, Dr. Widener, they'd all asked for their keys, and Colonel Redl and Professor Zank-
'Colonel Redl!'
The two detectives stared at each other. They couldn't believe they'd heard that name.
'Colonel Alfred Redl?'
'Oh yes, he always stays with us when he arrives from Prague. Always Room Number One.'
'My God!' Detective Steidl said. 'What a coincidence! Let's consult him-'
'We're not supposed to consult anybody,' Detective Ebinger said, 'except Control.'
Again the two stared at each other.
'When the Colonel came in just now,' Ebinger asked the room clerk, 'how was he dressed?'
'Oh, civilian clothes. He's always dressed very smart.'
'Did he wear a gray hat?'
'Well, he always takes it off when he comes in. He is such a gentleman.'
'All right, but what was the color of the hat?'
'Well-yes, gray. It was gray.'
'What time did he come in?'
'What time? About ten, fifteen minutes ago.'
'Did he go to his room?'
'Why, yes, of course. He took his key.'
'Did he say he'll come down again soon?'
'No, but he always goes out at night. He likes to dine out.'
'When he comes down, ask if he has lost this knife sheath.'
The six weeks Ebinger and Steidl had waited in the room of the nonringing bell were as nothing compared to the eternity they spent hidden behind a potted palm in the lobby of the Hotel Klomser. It lasted about an hour.
Shortly after 7 P.M. a man in his forties, slight, slim, with a well-brushed blond mustache, stepped down the red carpet of the stairs that led from the second floor of the Hotel Klomser to the lobby. He did not wear a hat but carried under his arm his officer's kepi. The gold choke-collar of his blue General Staff blouse gleamed with the three stars of his rank.
'Good evening, Colonel Redl,' said the concierge. 'Pardon me, sir, but did you happen to misplace this knife sheath?'
'Why, yes,' the Colonel said. He extended his hand. He retracted it fast. Too late.
Shortly after 9 P.M. on that same night, another colonel, August von Urbanski, darted through the neo- Renaissance portals of the Grand Hotel. It was one of the most imposing entrances on the Ringstrasse. In the dining room the gypsy orchestra had finished playing the waltz 'Wiener Blut.' The Chief of Staff, General Conrad, flushed from a turn around the dance floor with Frau von Reininghaus, had just sat down and cupped his hand around a glass of champagne. He would never drink it.
Colonel von Urbanski, his Intelligence Chief, stood over him, bending down, whispering even before he had finished his salute. Within seconds the General's face turned gray, grayer than the gray streaks in his blond hair. His hand dropped from the goblet. He called to his adjutant at the next table. He had to call twice because most of his voice had abandoned his throat. The adjutant jumped up to alert the General's chauffeur.
Four hours later, at one o'clock in the morning of Sunday, May 25, 1913, four officers walked from the staircase of the Hotel Klomser past the dozing night clerk to the street. One of the four carried folded in his breast pocket a white sheet covered with gothic script. It was a statement signed by the occupant of Room One. In exchange for the signature the occupant had received a loaded pistol.
In Room One the occupant sat, motionless, in the gold choke-collar of the General Staff uniform. The mahogany table before him was bare except for three sealed letters and the pistol.
On the day following, Monday, May 26, Vienna's foremost newspaper, the Neue Freie Presse, discussed at length the tension between Serbia and Bulgaria, only recently fellow-victors over Turkey in the Balkan War of 1912. There was also detailed coverage of the nuptials of Kaiser Wilhelm's daughter Marie Luise to Prince Ernst August von Braunschweig-the sermon of the officiating bishop, the titles, uniforms, and dresses adorning the ceremony and its social significance. A much smaller story began:
VIENNA, May 26. One of the best known and most able officers in the General Staff, Colonel Alfred Redl, General Staff Chief of the Eighth Army Corps in Prague, committed suicide Sunday night in a hotel in the Inner City. The highly gifted officer, who was on the verge of a great career, killed himself with a shot in the mouth, an act prompted, it is believed, by mental overexertion resulting from severe neurasthenia. Colonel Redl, who served for a long time in a military capacity in Vienna, and who was equally popular in military and civilian circles, had only arrived from Prague on Saturday night and had taken quarters at the hotel…
