The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace

1

Frankie marched along briskly, looking every inch the aristocrat in spite of the peasant costume she wore. She had dropped the scarf from her head, and her raven hair glistened in the sun like a black plume. Then she and her guards vanished around a bend in the road,

Leopold was white-faced and shaking.

“They have captured her!” he whispered hoarsely.

“Could be,” agreed the Saint. “On the other hand, it’s her easiest way into the Castle.”

“What do you mean?”

“Simply, that if you arrive at the village of Este, or even at the gates of the compound, and let it be known that you are the Countess Malffy and the real owner of the Castle, the guards are bound to pay attention to you. They’d be neglecting their duty if they failed to take you up to the Commandant for questioning.”

“You mean, she did it on purpose?”

The Saint nodded.

“Knowing your cousin, it’s on the cards. She’s clever enough and daring enough — I’d almost say mad enough — to think it up and perhaps even get away with it.”

“But she is captured. No one can save her now. They know she has the secret of the Necklace, and the Gestapo stop at nothing.”

“Since she thought this up, she must have a plan to save herself,” said the Saint optimistically. “That is, after she’s got the Necklace.”

“I’m going to rescue her,” declared Leopold, struggling to his feet.

Simon pulled him down again.

“It won’t help if somebody sees you. Anyway, you can’t take on a whole squad of soldiers single-handed.”

The young man was almost beside himself with emotion.

“What better way to die?”

“As somebody once remarked,” Simon said patiently, “the only trouble with death is that it is a permanent occupation. Wouldn’t you be more useful alive?”

“Not so long as Frankie is in danger,” replied Leopold, somewhat obscurely.

“I don’t think she’s in any actual danger at the moment. If I were the Commandant I’d find out what the higher-ups wanted me to do, and in German bureaucracy that means that the higher-ups will want to find out what their superiors think, and so on and so forth. That sort of thing takes time.”

His words struck home.

“You are right,” Leopold agreed. “But what can we do?”

“Well, to begin with, we can try to let Frankie know that we’re around.”

“I know.” Leopold’s eyes lit up. “I’ll go back to the village. She must have friends there. Someone will be able to get a message to her.”

“Not on your nelly you won’t. They’d get a message straight to the Commandant. If that village doesn’t have its quota of collaborators, I’m a bishop.”

“What can we do then?”

The Saint stretched himself like a great lithe animal, but keeping well down behind the rock.

“You wait here. I’ll go and recce.”

“But what if you are captured?”

The Saint grinned.

“If I’m not back in three weeks, send a St Bernard with a cask of brandy after me, and don’t forget it’s got to be a 1914 Delamain.”

“You make a joke of everything!” Leopold said petulantly. “You seem to forget that my cousin is in danger of being killed — or worse.”

Simon put a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, laddie, just because I try to see the lighter side of something doesn’t mean I don’t take it seriously. Now you wait back in the woods. Try not to expose yourself, as the bishop said to the actress. If I’m not back by nightfall, try to go back the way we came — swim across the river — and tell Max. He’ll figure out what to do. He’s got a vested interest in this business, aside from liking Frankie.”

“Why can’t I come with you?”

“Because someone’s got to be sure to be able to take the bad news to Max.” The Saint was swiftly transferring everything he considered unessential from his satchel to Leopold’s, concluding with the cognac bottle. “Look after this for me, will you? And no dipping into it until I get back. We may need it to celebrate.”

Then he turned and began climbing nimbly over the rocks in the direction of the Castle. He gained the woods on the other side of the cliff fall and turned to check on Leopold. The other waved to him rather forlornly.

Simon waved back, a buoyantly swashbuckling salute that conveyed its message of invincible confidence as eloquently as any words, and melted into the trees.

It was not long before he came out on a bluff overlooking the Castle. On this side it looked much more vulnerable to an attacking force, especially as the main entrance was here. A lone sentry paced back and forth across the open gate.

The Saint thought things over. The part of the Schloss he now overlooked was relatively low compared to the other opposite side which overhung the cliff. Here it was only three storeys high, except for the main keep tower rising from the centre of the edifice. Simon considered the possibility of climbing up to one of the windows overlooking the driveway to the main entrance. The snag, of course, was that he could easily be seen, and would in all likelihood anyway be spotted by the guard at the gateway if he made such an attempt. The Saint was always ready to take chances, but not the kind which would almost inevitably end in disaster.

There was nothing for it, he decided, but to work his way around in the edge of the woods on the bluff overlooking the Castle and see if one of the other sides did not offer a better prospect. He set off accordingly, keeping as far as possible out of sight, and assuming the plodding gait of a labourer going stolidly about some lawful business.

He soon found himself looking at an almost blank stone wall. On this side the Castle rose only two storeys from the ground because the bluff on which he stood ran right up to the Castle wall. As the Saint figured it, because of the sloping terrain on which the Castle stood, the inside of the building must consist of rooms on many different levels, and on the other side of the Castle there would be several floors below the point on which he stood.

The Saint stood back in the shade of the trees and took stock of the situation. Two windows overlooked his position, one above the other, but they were high up, and the sheer wall could only have been climbed with pitons.

Then his eye alighted on another potential method of getting into the Castle, which would not entail so many hazards as trying to scale the wall.

This was a basement window, half sunk into the ground. As Simon judged it, though small, it was still too large to be a dungeon light and probably led into one of the floors of the Castle which, because of the slope of the hill, would not necessarily be a basement on the other side. But good things usually have a snag, and in this case the catch was that the window was bisected by an iron bar. Nevertheless, the set‑up looked promising, and he decided to investigate it more closely.

He took a deep breath, and sprinted across the intervening ground like a hunting panther. The distance was about forty yards, and he must have covered it in less than four seconds, veering at the end to roll prone into the narrow stone trough surrounding the window. Once there, he could only have been seen through the window itself, or from directly overhead: therefore if only nobody had been looking in exactly the right direction during those four fateful seconds, he would have got away with it.

After two or three breathless spine-tingling minutes, he ventured to believe that his luck might have held that long.

He peered through the window into what was obviously a storage room because it was filled with crates and boxes packed in an orderly fashion. It probably had been a storage place for some years and the window bar had been placed there not to keep anyone in but to keep intruders out.

The windowpane was an impediment for only as long as it took him to dig out the brittle putty which held it in its frame. The glass came out quietly, in one piece. Then he had plenty of room to work on the iron bar. It was thick and solidly set in stone, but its outer scale of rust was no tougher than a bride’s first cake, and the core of ancient iron was no match for a modern hacksaw blade, which cut it almost as easily as hardwood.

Even with liberal applications of oil, however, the sawing could not be completely noiseless, and the tension of waiting for someone to hear it and come to investigate it stretched every second of the time it took into what felt like an hour.

The instant his last saw stroke freed the bar, Simon squirmed through the opening and dropped on to a packing case below the window.

Before taking another step, he replaced the iron bar where he had cut it from, fixing it in position with a couple of wedges of black insulating tape. From quite a short distance, the repair would be invisible enough to deceive anyone who gave it a casual inspection from outside.

Only then did he feel free to boost himself down off the crate and review his immediate surroundings in more detail.

He found himself in a large room with whitewashed walls. Opposite the window was the door. It was shut. He walked over and tried the latch. It worked smoothly. But no amount of tugging would open the door. It was obviously locked on the other side.

The Saint studied it thoughtfully. That it would open inwards towards him was indicated by its hinges which were on his side of the door. Therefore, to even a first-term student of housebreaking, it might almost as well have been unlocked. Of course, the naive souls who were relying on the lock might not have been concerned with its vulnerability from the inside...

With the aid of pliers and the leverage of a screwdriver from his kit, Simon simply extracted the pins from the hinges. Luckily they were in good working condition and unrusted. It was then easy to prise the door out of its frame from that side, letting the lock itself serve as a clumsy but not irresistibly recalcitrant hinge.

He walked through the opening, and for the sake of appearances pulled the door back as near shut as possible behind him.

He was now in a passage leading off to his left and ending in a window which probably looked out over the cliff on the south side of the Castle and across the valley. Across from him were three doors. Two of them were small and looked as if they might lead into other storerooms. The one by the window, however, was larger and more imposing. The Saint decided that this one probably provided a route from the storeroom into the main body of the Castle. He walked up to it and stood for a moment listening. The only sound he could hear was a puzzling one. It was like the noise made by a buzz-saw with some of its teeth missing. At any rate, it did not sound human. The Saint tried the handle of the door, which then opened easily away from him. Swiftly the Saint slipped through.

The room on the other side looked as if it might have been a kitchen at one time, for there was a chimney-breast which could have contained a cooking stove. The room had, however, been turned into an office, complete with filing cabinets and a kneehole desk. In a swivel chair with his feet up on the latter was an officer in the black uniform of the SS. He was fast asleep, and the noise the Saint had heard was him snoring.

The Saint gently closed the door behind him and began to edge his way past the desk towards another door on the far side of the room. He stepped noiselessly but it made no difference. The German officer’s head slipped off the cushioning palm of his hand. He gave one last snort and woke up.

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the Saint.

2

Simon Templar was not taken aback or even bothered. He had figured that it would be a long shot if he got by the sleeping soldier. Experience had taught him that most risks could be turned into good chances. If they didn’t work out, then one had to improvise something new out of them.

He slipped his pistol from its shoulder holster. Its muzzle covered the startled officer implacably.

“Guten Tag,” said the Saint affably. He continued in his fluent German. “I have come to fix your main drain. They tell me you are blocked up. Would you mind removing your clothes?”

In spite of his facetious manner, the Saint’s cold blue eyes brooked no argument. Their message was clear.

German officers in long underwear look no more impressive than any other men and just as absurd. Indeed, the purpose of uniforms is primarily to lend dignity where it is not naturally bestowed. This SS officer, who had looked awesome in his black uniform, without it was just a rather heavy-set potbellied man.

“Menschenskind, wie sehen sie aus!” Simon said unkindly, looking him up and down. “But I suppose all the SS aren’t recruited from lingerie models.”

Rapidly the Saint got into the other’s uniform, contriving to do it without, ever letting his Walther waver from its hollow-eyed concentration on its target. The change of costume which had been so unexpectedly offered to him, he figured, could only be a godsend. It was a little short for him; but keeping his labourer’s clothes on underneath, and flattening his canvas shoes above the belt under his shirt, helped to make up the equatorial bulk which he lacked. It would have been a disaster if the jackboots had been impossibly small: even he would have found it hard to impersonate an SS officer parading around Schloss Este in his socks. Fortunately, they were not impossibly loose on him, and hid the shortness of the breeches; and the officer’s cap was just the right size. Simon put it on at a rakish angle.

The problem now was what to do with his captive.

The Saint was suddenly inspired with an idea straight out of the blue, which could only have been sent by some particularly impish devil to a kindred spirit.

Keeping his prisoner covered, he backed to the window and looked out. His surmise had been right. The room was on the south flank of the Castle, opposite the main entrance. Below it was the cliff which protected the defences on this side and which overhung the village of Este. It was a steep and rugged cliff. An enemy under fire would find it almost impossible to scale. On the other hand, going from top to bottom would be a relatively easy matter, although it might take some time.

Simon beckoned the officer.

“You are about to take a walk, my friend,” he said.

The other stared at him with bulging eyes.

“You must be mad.”

The Saint walked over to him. He stuck his gun into the man’s ribs and prodded him to the window.

“There you are.” He pointed downwards. “Take it slowly and you’ll have no trouble. Get up too much momentum and you’ll have to take your meals off the mantelshelf for a while.”

A gleam of hope shone for an instant in the man’s eyes. The Saint could tell what was going through his mind. He evidently regarded Simon as a fool for not shooting him out of hand. Once he had got beyond the range of Simon’s gun he could raise the alarm. Happily for his peace of mind, he didn’t know what the Saint had in store for him.

He gave Simon a scornful look as he climbed through the window and dropped down on to a ledge below. The Saint watched him begin his descent. Much of the cliff consisted of long shale slides. These were not too perilous, although some of them ended in a potentially lethal sheer drop. Nevertheless, there was no reason why the German should not get down safely if he kept his head. All Simon was going to do was to complicate his life for a little while and give him something with which to occupy his mind. After all, one didn’t want even members of the SS to get too bored. That would have been unkind. The Saint was all for being kind. He leaned out of the window and fired several shots in the direction of the German, who quickly ducked down behind a big rock.

The shots had the effect he desired. Guards rushed to windows and parapets. Whenever the German showed himself they promptly fired at him, reasonably enough, for no one had any business climbing that cliff up or down, especially a man in his underwear. Anyway, soldiers are not given to asking the whys and wherefores in a top-security situation. They prefer to shoot first, partly because it gives them a chance to do what they are trained to do, and ask or answer questions later. The officer was going to have his work cut out to inch his way down the cliff under fire from his own men. Moreover, the attention of the garrison would be centred on trying to shoot one of their own leaders. The piquancy of the situation struck Simon as purely hilarious, but he couldn’t afford to stay and enjoy it. He had to take the maximum advantage of its help as a distraction.

He moved quickly to the door on the far side of the room. Opening it cautiously, he peered through. Had there been anyone on the other side the man would not have known what hit him, for the Saint was ready for fast and decisive action. The room was empty, however. It was apparently an outer office, for it contained a desk, a typewriter, a telephone, and some more filing cabinets. German bureaucracy evidently required a lot of paper work, even in the Gestapo. There should have been an orderly or a secretary about, but he or she was probably having the German equivalent of elevenses: perhaps a stein of lager and a triple-decker leberwurst sandwich.

He walked almost casually across the room. The door on the other side gave on to a landing and a wide flight of stairs leading to the floors above and below. Here there was a storm trooper, but his attention had been seduced by the noise outside, and he was leaning out of a window, the broad expanse of his bottom looking comical in the frame.

Cat-like, the Saint tip-toed across the landing. He took the flight of stairs leading downwards. Although Simon had entered the Castle on the ground floor on the north side, on the cliff side there were several lower floors, and the steps led to a hall on another north side ground floor at a lower level.

Simon went noiselessly down the stairs. They doubled back under themselves, out of sight of the trooper, and after another zig or zag, debouched into a large marble-paved hall, hung with the usual antlered trophies and some old family paintings. One of the portraits, a girl in a ruff and a dress embroidered with pearls, was the image of Frankie. It had that same air of careless arrogance mixed with friendly amusement, a look which said, “You may like me, and I like you, in spite of the fact that I am much better than you are.”

Simon halted for a moment to think things out. He was faced with the choice of more doors, all of them closed. Which should he choose to go through? The muted sound of firing still came from above and he could hear the echo of hurrying footsteps in distant corridors. He had no time to waste.

It seemed probable that Frankie would be held in the most inaccessible part of the Castle. That would be in the tower, or even in a dungeon beneath it. Medieval towers were built as keeps — to keep people out, in fact! — in which to make a stand should the rest of the castle be captured. Its inaccessibility could still be used to keep prisoners or secrets in. Simon figured his best bet, therefore, was to head for the keep.

He judged this to be in a direction opposite to the staircase. He traversed the marble floor and opened one of the heavy double doors. He had guessed right. On the other side, the massive walls of a large room still furnished in somewhat medieval style with trestle tables and benches indicated that he had entered the oldest part of the Castle. At the other end of this room, which could well have been the original banqueting hall, stone stairs led upwards and downwards, spiralling as they went

He was now faced with another decision: whether to look for Frankie in an upstairs chamber, or in a subterranean prison below. He decided that the Teutonic mind would hold that prisoners should be kept in dungeons, and he headed down the stairs.

At the bottom was another passage. The only light came from some tiny windows set high up in the outside wall. These were barred, although they were too small for any adult to get through. A heavy oaken door at the end of the passage was half open. The Saint crept up to it and squinted through.

He was looking into a small anteroom. Two soldiers were seated at a table playing cards. The Saint had caught them in flagrant dereliction of their duty: they were certainly supposed to be on guard, for their guns leant against the table and they must have felt quite sure of being able to hear anybody approaching in time to put away their cards and resume their duty positions.

Simon felt a surge of exhilaration in his always sanguine spirits. Guards, except at royal palaces, where they are largely for show, usually guard something. In this case it was likely that these two were watching over a prisoner: Frankie...

From this room another flight of stone steps led downwards, to a dungeon, or perhaps a number of them, the Saint surmised. In the old days, escape from such a set-up, past guards and locked doors, would have been virtually impossible. It was not going to be a Cakewalk even now, but for the moment Simon had the initiative.

Pulling down his tunic and adopting a ramrod Prussian air, he stomped into the room, for the first time letting his borrowed boots make the sort of sound they were designed for. The two soldiers looked up with complete consternation writ largely on their countenances. They were so taken aback that they could not even rise to their feet.

The Saint did not give them a chance to pull themselves together. Freezingly he glared at them and then pointed to the dungeon staircase. “Take me to the prisoner,” he commanded in his harshest and most arrogant German.

The two men did not question his authority. There was no reason why they should. An SS officer in uniform could only appear in the midst of a Gestapo fortress with the proper accreditation and in fact could only be a real officer in the SS. That was their simple and logical reasoning. They leapt to their feet and hastened downstairs ahead of Simon, babbling abject excuses for their conduct.

At the foot of the steps there was another heavy door. This one had a grille in it. Haughtily the Saint pointed to the lock. One of the guards produced a large iron key and opened it Simon waved the soldiers back and strode in.

Frankie was sitting in a corner on a truckle bed. She looked pale and dispirited. She glanced up as the Saint entered, and instantly her posture changed. She gave no sign of recognition, but her back straightened and her chin assumed a disdainful aristocratic angle.

“Come with me. I wish to talk to you,” Simon said imperiously, in the bullying tone that he had adopted to fit his uniform.

Grabbing her by the arm, he pulled her to her feet and sent her spinning through the door with such force that she fell heavily outside.

The guards laughed sycophantically at this display of Aryan superiority. Simon allowed them a tight-lipped smile. Then, very deliberately, he kicked one of them on the shins and the other up the backside.

“Imbeciles!” he shouted. “Pigs like you are a disgrace to the Fatherland. You will stand here at attention until I get back, and you had better hope that I shall be in a good mood and will not have you flogged.”

Then, holding Frankie by the elbow, he propelled her up the stairs ahead of him.

“Thank you for keeping your head and not giving me away,” he whispered as they reached the anteroom.

“I was waiting for you,” she said. “I knew you’d come, somehow.”

“God save your trusting fat head,” said the Saint fervently, as they crossed the room and fled up the flight of stairs to the banqueting hall.

The main hall was still empty, but the sound of firing had ceased. The SS officer must either have got away or be lying low — unless, of course, he had been shot by his own men.

The Saint halted.

“There is a small matter of a necklace,” he remarked coolly. “I suppose we might as well pick it up while we’re here. I mean, it’ll save us another trip. Not that I haven’t enjoyed this one. I just love climbing along other people’s sewers. But as the saying goes, when you’ve seen one drain you’ve seen ’em all.”

Surprisingly, Frankie shook her head.

“We have no time and we cannot get to the place where it is. We must try again.”

The Saint gave her a long incredulous stare. It was not like Frankie to give up so easily.

“All right,” he said finally. “Let’s get out of here then. I have my own special entrance and exit.”

He led her up the main staircase.

He had intended dealing with the trooper outside the secretary’s office in the same way as he had handled the soldiers guarding the dungeon, but the man was no longer there. Simon turned to lead Frankie into the office, and then the door opened.

They found themselves staring into the muzzle of a Mauser machine pistol held by a grim-faced SS corporal.

3

The man lowered his weapon at the sight of the Saint’s uniform, and his eyes widened when he saw Frankie.

“Was geschieht, bitte?” he asked.

“I am from Central Kontrolle,” Simon replied easily. “I have been sent to take the Frau Gräfin back with me. She is an important prisoner. Air Marshal Göring himself wishes to see her in Berlin.” He leered professionally. “She is a pretty woman, yes? And the Marshal likes the girls. Perhaps that is the reason.”

The soldier remained suspicious.

“Your papers, please sir,” he demanded respectfully but firmly.

There were some papers in the inner pocket of the tunic the Saint was wearing, but Simon felt sure there was no point in trying to pass himself off with them: they would undoubtedly include a photograph which would not resemble him in the least. He must stick to his role of an emissary from Berlin.

“My papers are in my car,” he said brusquely. “If you will come along with me to the courtyard I will show them to you.”

“To the courtyard?” repeated the corporal.

“Certainly, to the courtyard. I was on my way to see your chief. He will be interested to know why my visit has been delayed.”

For a moment the soldier looked uncertain.

“You say you come from the Air Marshal in Berlin, sir?” he asked. “But he is...”

A curious look came into his eyes and he did not finish his sentence.

“Exactly,” said the Saint crisply, “and therefore my mission is urgent. I wish to see your superior officer.”

The man smiled, and the Saint did not like that smile. It was the expression of someone who knows something to his own advantage and to someone else’s detriment. The someone else in this case could only be the Saint. At any rate, that was the way Simon figured it, and he had a habit of being right.

“Very well, sir,” said the soldier, “then we will go together.”

He motioned with his gun for the Saint and Frankie to precede him down the stairs.

Simon did not budge.

“I understand this is his office,” he said coldly.

“It is, sir, but he is not there. I have just been to look for him myself. We will go to the Kommandant’s office. He is the man you should be seeing anyway.”

His eyes were cunning and malicious. The Saint liked him less and less and felt sorry for his wife. But then perhaps her eyes were cunning and malicious too. The corporal had the self-satisfied air of one who could already feel the stripes of a Feldwebel on his sleeve.

Suddenly, Frankie took off on her own. The Saint cursed inwardly. A moment later he did so outwardly. Frankie dashed for the stairs and the soldier fired a shot in the air.

Simon had to admire the way the man kept his head. It would obviously be awkward for him if he had to report that he had killed this prize prisoner, but it would be even more awkward if he had to announce that she had escaped. If the warning shot failed to halt her, he would have to try to do so by shooting her in the leg.

Frankie kept on going. The soldier aimed his gun at her.

There was nothing for it. The Saint saw what he must do. People were always amazed at how quickly such a big man could move when he wanted to. Greased lightning wasn’t in it. Greased time was more like it. One moment he was standing some feet from the soldier and the next, without any apparent movement, he was astride his prone body. The soldier would never be able to recall exactly what had happened, but for some time his slumber would be untroubled by that problem.

Simon grinned rather mirthlessly at Frankie, who had halted in her tracks.

“Magnificent,” he said. “Also magnificently stupid. And for Christ’s sake, will you stop sticking your neck out and hoping that I’ll manage to catch the axe.”

He was interrupted from elaborating the lecture by shouts from above and the clattering of feet on the stairs.

They had no choice but to flee downwards. They dashed down the stairs into the front hall. This did not solve their dilemma. They could go through one of the doors which led to other parts of the castle and try to hide somewhere, but it was certain that there would be a thorough search of the whole premises and that would inevitably lead to their capture. It looked as if there was nothing for it but to carry on into the courtyard and hope somehow to be able to bluff the sentry at the gate.

The Saint opened the great front door and they slipped through. He closed the door instantly behind them, in the hope that the pursuit would be left briefly without a clue as to which way they had gone.

“Take it easy, old girl,” he said to Frankie. “Pretend we belong here.”

“But I do,” Frankie said with a smile.

Simon took her arm and marched her boldly out from the sheltering archway into the open courtyard.

His first impression was that there was a Staff car parked in the shadows on one side of the square, with a chauffeur in Luftwaffe uniform industriously polishing the windshield. This was corrected when he realised it could not possibly be a Staff car, since it was a Delage D8 100 Mouette saloon with the famous special body by Henri Chapron — not the sort of car which an ordinary officer of the German army, or even the SS, would have at his disposal. It must belong to someone special.

The Saint scanned the courtyard as he walked towards it. Aside from the parading guard by the gate the place was empty. Then suddenly a door in the side wing on his left opened and two men came out.

One was a slim elegant figure in an SS uniform with a colonel’s insignia. Simon guessed he was the Kommandant of the Castle. He indicated by his posture and general manner extreme deference towards his companion, a large jolly-looking man in a peaked cap and a greatcoat with two rows of medals hung on it in violation of the usual regulations for the wearing of decorations.

There was no mistaking the Prime Minister of Prussia, Chief of the Luftwaffe, and, so rumour had it, Director of the Four Year Plan for War Preparations. And he knew now why that officious corporal had become so smug.

For Simon Templar it was suddenly spring. It was a lovely day and everything was happening just right. There was nothing that would lend more zest to that moment than an encounter with one of the most formidable chiefs of the Nazi Reich. It struck him that the Air Marshal’s presence in the Castle could even be connected with the Hapsburg Necklace. Simon’s earlier improvisations might have hit the nail on the head. The Nazi leader might want to find the Necklace for the benefit of the Third Reich, but he was also known to be a greedy and insatiable collector of art and antiques. The Necklace might well end up round his wife’s neck — or perhaps even his own, in view of his well-known liking for decorations. Unless they knew what it was, nobody would ask any questions. Even if anyone did, this man’s power and influence were sufficient to ensure that such questions were not asked out loud.

Holding Frankie by the arm, Simon hurried her across the courtyard to meet the approaching officials by the Delage. The chauffeur looked startled. The SS colonel was obviously completely flummoxed. His jaw fell open and the monocle dropped out of his eye. The Minister alone remained apparently unmoved by this sudden and extraordinary encounter.

“Ach, mein lieber Freund!” cried the Saint, with genial familiarity. “How nice to see you again! And how is dear Emma and all the children? Are they all at Schloss Harinhall?”

“Who are you?” asked the Minister guardedly.

His smile was broad and tolerant, but his eyes, with their pin-prick pupils, were as cold as dry ice.

“Oh, don’t pay any attention to this uniform,” replied the Saint jovially, as he opened the door for Frankie to get in. “I won it off a chap at strip poker. Surely you remember me? I’m Cardinal Spaghetti, Chief of the Vatican Plumbing Department. This is my wife.”

As he spoke he swung himself into the driving seat of the Delage, having already seen that the key was in the ignition. A car of this kind and in such a guarded place would be considered safe. After all, it was inconceivable that anyone would try to steal such an important vehicle in such a stronghold. Anyone but the Saint...

The Kommandant swore and lunged for the door. The chauffeur stood there with a look of complete astonishment on his face. From his point of view the fact that a member of the SS and a woman had taken over his master’s car was obviously quite beyond his comprehension. As the car shot away, Simon looked in the driving mirror and saw that Göring was actually convulsed with laughter, and he realised why this man was such a formidable figure in the political hierarchy of his country. The aristocratic detachment which allowed a sense of humour to operate in a situation of this sort was something not even Hitler possessed, let alone the rest of the vulgar and common men who headed the Nazis and the Third Reich.

The car roared through the outer gateway. The startled sentry saluted it and Simon’s uniform smartly. The SS officer shouted at him to stop the car, but by that time it was rounding the corner of the Castle wall and a moment later it was out of sight.

The Saint slowed down a little for the next bend.

“No point in killing ourselves,” he murmured. “Besides, we have to pick up Leopold.”

“Where is he?”

“Sitting on a sharp stone farther down the hill meditating. He’s finally decided to get down to fundamentals.”

Simon stopped the car beside the rock slide and got out and stood beside it. He waved and called, “Come out and play, Leopold. It’s me, Simon. Hurry up, or you’ll miss the bus and there isn’t another one.”

A moment later Leopold emerged from behind a rock and scrambled up the avalanche towards them. He was carrying the two satchels.

“What does this mean?” he panted. “And that uniform—”

“Explanations later,” said the Saint curtly. “We’ve got half the German army on our tail. Pile in and let’s get going.”

Leopold climbed into the back seat and stowed the bags on the floor at his feet. The Saint got back in the car and launched it off again.

“Gott Sei Dank, Frankie!” chattered Leopold from the back seat. “How did you escape?”

“Simon got me out, of course,” Frankie told him impatiently. “But we are still escaping. They are bound to come after us.”

“And the Necklace?”

“Is still safe.”

Leopold’s snort of exasperation with Frankie’s dictatorial and dismissive manner could be heard over the noise of engine, tyres, and the wind of their passage.

“How far are they behind you, Simon?” he wanted to know.

“Still a fair way, I should think,” answered the Saint calmly. “It’d have to take them a few minutes to turn out a posse and get it carborne, and I shouldn’t think their transportation department’s got anything that has the legs of this job. Our problem is that I still can’t drive as fast as words can go through a telephone wire.”

“I know a back road that will avoid the next town,” Frankie said. “Probably they don’t know it — it’s not much more than a cart track—”

“But first, darling,” Simon reminded her, “we’ve got to get past the guards at the entrance to this verboten area.”

They zoomed through the hamlet of Este, scattering geese and peasant children from their path. As they left the village behind, Leopold said: “We should have gone back through the drain, as we came in.”

“We couldn’t,” said the Saint. “The hut we hid in is in full view of the Castle, and by this time the battlements are crawling with characters on the lookout. Some sniper would have earned himself an Iron Cross before we got near it. Anyway, Frankie wouldn’t like the drain. There’s no class to it.”

Frankie smiled at him.

“I think you just like this car.”

“It’s a beauty,” he admitted. “And was lent to me by a very distinguished owner.”

“But how do we get out of the camp? They’ll be waiting for us at the gate and we can’t just climb over the barbed wire.”

The Saint shrugged.

“I won’t know till I see what the set-up is when we get to the gate.”

“We’re there now,” she said, pointing ahead.

The gate was closed. Four soldiers crouched in front of it. What was more important was that they were crouching over machine-guns. The phone call which he had anticipated had reached them in time enough. If ever there was a situation where he had to improvise, it was there.

His genius did not let him down. As it neared the boundary fence, the road ran beside a grassy field. The Saint drove a little nearer to the gate and then swung the car off into the field, so that it was at right angles to the road with its back towards the machine-gun squad, who were scrambling to turn the guns through a ninety-degree realignment. But they had not yet opened fire, perhaps because they had been ordered to take live prisoners if possible.

“Get down on the floor,” he ordered Leopold and Frankie.

Then he crouched down low over the wheel and reversed full tilt towards the machine-guns and their attendants.

He knew that there was a good chance that he might be dead in the course of the next few seconds, but the chances of death were paradoxically all that they had to live for. He had to gamble on the unexpectedness of his manoeuvre, the awkwardness of the machine-gun mounts, the probability that Göring’s car would have been equipped with some non-standard bullet-proofing, and the fact that the rear-wheel transmission was much less liable to disablement by impact than the front-wheel steering.

The astonished soldiers did not have time to get their guns properly trained and only managed a few wild bursts of sporadic fire before the Delage was upon them. There was a succession of splintering crashes as the car knocked their machine-guns for six. There was a nasty lurch as one of the wheels went over a soldier who failed to get out of its way. Simon spun the wheel full lock, and there came a tremendous crash as the car hurtled backwards through the gates.

On the other side of them the Saint wrenched it through another three-point turn and sent it barrelling away down the highway towards potential freedom. A few scattered shots reached his ears from behind, but he heard only two or three bullets hit the coachwork.

“You can come out now,” he told Frankie and Leopold. “The storm is past and there will be thé dansant in the lounge.”

“Mein Gott,” said Leopold, climbing back on to his seat. “Sometimes I think you must be a maniac.”

“If I weren’t,” said the Saint, “I’d never have got into this caper.”

4

They were soon out of the hills, and as they drove along a rutted lane in flat countryside the Saint considered what to do next.

“I think,” he said, “our best bet is to head for a border post and take it from there. We’ve got to get back into Austria and contact Max. If we’re lucky we’ll be able to talk our way through, if not — well, there’s always the odd miracle if you’ve led a good life like I have.”

“If you’ve led a good life,” Frankie said, “Machiavelli should be made a saint.”

“Only I beat him to it,” Simon reminded her.

“I don’t like it,” Leopold said darkly. “We shall all be arrested and shot.”

“Oh, Leopold, you are always so negative,” Frankie protested.

“As the model said to the photographer,” flipped the Saint. “At any rate this crate lives up to its prospectus. They say it’ll do a hundred without turning a hair, although on a track like this it hasn’t much of a chance. But this Cotal electric gearbox is very convenient.” He accelerated rapidly after a skidding turn. “We ought to get somewhere pretty fast as long as we keep her filled up and remember to cough in the tyres every now and then.”

“Exactly!” said Leopold, in a voice which sounded both gloomy and supercilious.

“What does that mean?” demanded Frankie.

“Yes,” Simon seconded. “ ‘Exactly’ may be precise, but it also leaves one neither here nor there. All over the place, so to speak, and not anywhere in particular.”

“Have you looked at the petrol gauge recently?” Leopold asked sourly.

The Saint looked.

“Hmmm. Yes, I see what you mean. Rather low. They must have hit the tank when they were shooting at us, the naughty boys. Let’s hope the puncture isn’t right at the bottom. Well, have faith, as the Good Book says, and ye shall move internal combustion engines. I’m sure Moses didn’t worry about petrol pumps.”

“Yes, but he was walking,” Frankie said.

“And so may we be shortly,” responded the Saint. “Onward Christian soldiers, and all that. It’s an idea. We can arrive at the border on bare feet and say we’re pilgrims headed for Berlin to lay a wreath on the tomb of the Unknown Rabbi. That ought to get us the red carpet treatment, though I’d rather not wonder what they’d dye it with.”

“We shall soon be on a better road,” Frankie said, and they were.

They tore through a poverty-stricken village of strangely oriental-looking dirty whitewashed hovels. Some children and old peasants watched their passage with amazement, their interest making their slant Magyar eyes almost round.

Glancing at the fuel gauge every few seconds, Simon saw that the level was falling much faster than even extravagant consumption would account for, although not so fast as to reveal a catastrophic outpour. Therefore they should have quite a few miles still in hand — but the precise number would depend entirely on the level at which the tank had been perforated. If the damage was high up enough, the leak might stop by itself while they had a few gallons left; but if it was right at the bottom, the tank would very soon run dry. They were “ifs” with the palm-sweating uncertainty of Russian roulette.

Simon decided that it was worth wasting a precious minute to know the worst — or the best. He brought the car to a stop, got out, and ran back to kneel in the road behind it.

In little more than a minute he was back in the driver’s seat and starting off again.

“The hole in the tank is very low down and pretty big,” he reported almost conversationally. “I stuffed a handkerchief in it, but we’d lose as much petrol as we’d save while we were trying to make a better patch. We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed and see how far we go.”

“There you are!” said Leopold lugubriously. “I told you this whole idea was crazy.”

“You are a man of very sound if limited judgment,” Simon assured him consolingly.

“No, we have a good chance,” Frankie contradicted. “I know this road, and the border post is now only a few kilometres away.”

“Yes,” said Leopold darkly, “and what happens then? They stop us and ask for our papers, and while they are examining them the Gestapo catches up with us.”

He passed his finger across his throat expressively, as Simon saw in the rear-view mirror. To Simon Templar, the gesture was an irresistible provocation.

“Quite right,” he assented heartily. “Sound, if limited, again. Besides, they’re bound to have reported this car missing. Every official from here to Berchtesgarten will be watching out for it. Now if you’ve got any other jolly thoughts to boost our morale, do let us share them.”

Leopold lapsed into aggrieved silence, and the Saint drove steadily on at the best speed he could estimate as a compromise between the need to evade pursuit and the need to conserve fuel.

Presently the winding but improved lane that they were on ended abruptly in a T-junction with what was obviously a main road.

“We’ve done it!” claimed Frankie excitedly. “Turn right, and the frontier is only about two kilometres.”

It was just as Simon braked for the turn that the engine coughed, started up again, coughed, ran for a few seconds, and then died.

“Well,” said the Saint, “that’s that. Don’t say anything, Leopold. This is no time for sound if limited pronouncements. What we need is another miracle. I have it! Cogito ergo sum — the old cogs are going round.” He leapt out of the car. “Come on, Leopold. Bring my bag of tools, and make sure it’s mine.”

A moment later he had exposed the engine of the Delage and was working on the carburettor with a spanner from the tool kit. When he had the top off he reached into the bag again and pulled out the brandy bottle. He unscrewed the top and took a swig.

“Prost,” he said, and poured the rest of the cognac into the carburettor.

“Gott im Himmel!” squealed Frankie, who was leaning out of the car window to watch.

“Now I know you are mad!” exploded Leopold.

“I admit it’s a bit of a waste,” said the Saint calmly. “Delamain ’14 wasn’t exactly meant for use in cars. But it always pays to have the best.”

“But surely a car won’t run on brandy?” said Frankie.

“A car will run on anything that’s got enough alcohol in it. I’m sure that Delamain won’t let us down. After all, it’s a mature and brave spirit, as they say.”

“And how far will that get us?”

“Hardly anywhere,” said the Saint cheerfully, as he squeezed behind the wheel again. “But that’s where we’re going. Come on, Leopold, don’t bother about the tools. Pile in!”

Simon pressed the starter, and the motor sprang to life almost immediately. He put the car in gear and started off.

As he began to turn out of the lane, he had to brake quickly to give way to a black Audi saloon that came speeding along the main road from their left. There were three men in it, in civilian clothes, and the two who were not driving turned automatically to glance at the Delage as they swept past.

Simon glimpsed on their faces a much more startled reaction than the situation warranted. And there was something about the character of the faces themselves, combined with the character of the car, that spelled out just one word in his brain.

The word went into italics when the Audi’s stop lights blazed red and the car swerved sharply to the righthand verge and then swung into an abrupt left turn across the highway and stopped, effectively blocking the road.

“Gestapo!” the Saint said aloud.

Without an instant’s hesitation, he let the clutch in again and spurred the Delage forward with all the acceleration of which it was capable.

“Hold tight, Leo,” he barked, and flung out his own right arm like a bar across Frankie’s chest to prevent her being hurled through the windscreen when the crash came.

It came, and he was ready for it with his feet braced against the firewall, and his tremendous strength held Frankie back enough to save her from contact with dashboard or windscreen. The Delage had not attained a speed at which no preparedness could have spared them the effects of a collision, but the crunch was still sickeningly loud. The side of a car is infinitely more vulnerable than the front, and the Audi was hit broadside just as the men in it were opening the doors to get out. The Audi was slammed two feet squarely sideways and almost rocked over.

The Saint was out of the Delage the instant he had assured himself that Frankie was unhurt. Of the two shocked Gestapo men left in the Audi, he chose the one who looked liveliest to yank out first, and destroyed that unseemly sprightliness with a left to the solar plexus and a sledgehammer chop to the back of the neck. The second, with a nasty cut over one eye, was moaning dazedly, and Simon compassionately put him out of his pain with a carefully placed uppercut. The third, who had been farthest out of the Audi when the Delage hit it, had probably been caught and crushed by the collapsing door: he lay face up in the road, looking as if he would give no trouble for a long time, if ever.

Within seconds, the menace of the Geheimnisstadtspolizei had been at least temporarily neutralised. But so also had the services of the Reichmarshal’s elegant Delage.

Simon rejoined Frankie and Leopold, who were now standing beside it.

“Have we got anything to tie up some partypoopers?” he asked.

Leopold looked blank. Frankie furrowed her brow in thought.

“I am wearing three petticoats,” she said. “I think I could spare a couple, and there are always my stockings. They’re thick wool and serviceable.”

“The best possible service for them,” Simon approved. “Peasant girls are very well equipped in every sense of the word, apparently. Come on, Leopold, let’s arrange our patients while Frankie takes off her clothes.”

In a minute or two Frankie joined them. She handed Simon her stockings and a fancy petticoat of the kind peasant girls saved for special occasions when they might display them in high-kicking and swinging folk dances. With the help of his knife the Saint swiftly ripped it into strips. The men were soon tied and gagged and arranged in a neat triangle, head to foot. Simon placed the empty brandy bottle in the centre, like a hub.

“I do like to leave things tidy,” he remarked, and even Leopold smiled.

The two interlocked wrecks blocked the road like two grappling dinosaurs that had expired in mortal combat. Simon patted the Delag apologetically on its crumpled bonnet.

“Even if you died on a drunken binge, remember it was a ’14 cognac,” he said.

He was stripping off his SS uniform with the rapidity of a quick-change artiste. It went into the ditch, along with the jackboots, and he put the more comfortable canvas shoes back on his feet.

He set off at such a fast pace that the other two had difficulty in keeping up. Once they were over the brow of a low hill they could see the border station quite clearly. It was the usual type, consisting of a shed and a barrier bar across the road, weighted at one end so that it could be raised or lowered easily. The bar was in its blocking position.

Simon kept going without breaking stride.

“Don’t let it look as if we were a bit concerned,” he said. “The sportsmen we just took out of play must have been the Gestapo detail sent to watch for us at the border. With any luck, the regular border guards will only have been told to look out for a peasant girl and a man in SS uniform. How did you get across, Frankie?”

“My papers say I’m a Hungarian waitress working at a gasthaus near the border in Austria. I was just coming on a visit to my family.”

“Okay. So now you’re going back to work. And no reason why a couple of agricultural-engineer customers that you ran into shouldn’t walk you back.”

The Saint paused and considered the immediate future thoughtfully. “Well,” he said finally, “I think this is going to be a case of brains over brawn. Come on, let’s see if we can talk our way through.”

“I think you’d better let me do the talking,” said Frankie. “After all, I speak Hungarian as my second language.”

“And I speak it as my eighth,” laughed the Saint, “but I’m not going to talk Hungarian. You just wait and see!”

Frankie looked doubtful and worried. Leopold looked doubtful and annoyed. So far the Saint had come through with flying colours, but the young man was always looking for a possible slip-up on the part of the man he both admired and resented. But if the Saint had any misgivings they could only have been perceived by a lie detector.

Arm in arm with Frankie, he marched unhesitatingly up to the border post. It was manned by two men in uniform who regarded them with little interest. One of them held out his hand with a supercilious expression for the Saint’s papers. He did not even bother to ask for them. But the other gave Frankie a slight smile of recognition.

“Was your family well,” he inquired in Hungarian.

“Very well, thank you,” she replied in the same language.

“It was not a long visit.”

“It was only to settle some family business. And my mother was glad I could go back with these friends.”

The barrier was raised, and they were waved on. It was as easy as that.

The Austrian barrier was about twenty yards ahead.

“Keep your fingers crossed, and your eyes too,” said the Saint. “We’re halfway home.”

The Austrian station was manned by two guards who watched their approach across no-man’s-land through a window in their small official building. As Frankie and her companions reached it, one guard stepped out to meet them, holding a rifle in the crook of his arm.

“Ihre Urkunde, bitte.”

Each of them produced the documents that Annellatt had provided.

The guard took them with one hand, glanced at them, and then transferred them to two fingers of the hand which cradled his rifle, so that he could take a notebook from his pocket and consult it.

A very small semblance of an ominous smile came to his thin lips.

“These papers are forgeries,” he stated flatly. “We have been waiting for someone to present them.”