The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace

1

Max recovered himself in a moment and put down the jeweller’s eyeglass with which he had been examining the Necklace. Master and cat looked at Simon steadily.

“Come in, my friend,” Max said genially. “As you can see, we have got the Necklace back.”

Simon sauntered over and sat down in a chair opposite the desk. Though his attitude was relaxed, his eyes were on the alert in case the Austrian made a move to get a gun out of a drawer.

“I think, old fruit, you and I had better have a talk,” he said pleasantly.

Max’s eyebrows rose.

“Ach, but certainly. What do you wish to talk to me about?”

His hand caressed the back of Thai’s neck. The cat gave Simon a sardonic look.

“Well, to begin with,” said the Saint, “let’s clear up one thing. Are you working for yourself or the Germans?”

“I do not know why you should ask. You and I are on the same side. We have been all along.”

Simon shook his head. “No, we haven’t. You’ve tried to bamboozle me right from the beginning. I let you think you’d succeeded because I was curious to find out what you were up to.”

Max leaned back in his chair. His eyes did not waver. The cat moved over and climbed on his shoulder where he apparently went to sleep. But Thai had a strange quality of seeming to be dangerous even when at his mildest. It struck the Saint that this characteristic was shared by the cat’s master.

“All right,” said Max, “I am curious to find out where you get such absurd ideas. Let me hear some of your thoughts, wrong though they may be. When did you first begin to suspect me in your mistaken way?”

The Saint thought of the Rat and the Gorilla — and Anton lying dead on the floor of the hut. Max’s undeniable charm concealed some very nasty secrets.

“I mistrusted you all along, but that didn’t mean a thing. I mistrusted Frankie and Leopold as well to begin with. Of course, I should have rumbled it that night in Vienna, when you were so conveniently delayed and let me in to be banged on the head by those two thugs who were waiting for me in the garage. But I only thought of that later. No, I think I first, began to suspect you when you were so cool about the intervention of the “Gestapo.” Any ordinary person would have been scared reasonably spitless. But when I realised that the Rat and the Gorilla could be working for you, I knew you might be against Frankie also.”

“I don’t understand.” Max sighed wearily. “Forgive me, but what reason had you for not believing that the thought of the Gestapo did not automatically terrify me?” Thai suddenly opened his eyes wide and gave the Saint a look which seemed to say “Answer that if you can!”

“I didn’t believe it because it wasn’t in character. An Austrian might have fallen for it, it was crazy enough to appeal to the Austrian mind. But to me it was completely phoney. I’ve been around, Max, and I know your type. A smart operator and manipulator, yes, but only when you have first chance at stacking the deck. Not the type who goes into anything with the odds against him, or when he runs the risk of getting personally and physically hurt.”

Annellatt looked mildly offended.

“It’s the sort of thing you do, Mr Templar.”

The Saint could not help but admire his coolness. The Austrian was in a nasty spot but he might have been discussing the high price of coffee for all the tension that he showed.

“No one would ever accuse me of being your type,” Simon said. “But to get back to you. Why didn’t you just go to the police if you thought Frankie had been kidnapped? After all, she hadn’t done anything illegal — if she really was the hereditary Keeper of the Necklace.”

Max wagged his head patiently.

“In normal times, yes. But nowadays even the police are not entirely respectable. Don’t forget that the Gestapo controls Vienna and its police and I am sure the Germans would not be willing to see the Necklace taken away, perhaps altogether out of their hands. My concern was only to help Frankie in what she thought was her duty.”

The Saint shook his head.

“The Gestapo were never involved. The Rat and the Gorilla were not Gestapo, not even the Austrian branch. They were too inefficient for one thing.” His voice was suddenly cold and his blue eyes grew icy. “You thought you were dealing with a foreigner who wouldn’t understand the Austrian character. You thought I would buy your story that you just were in your quaint Austrian way trying to strike a blow against the invading tyrants.” His tone grew even chillier. “You were not just unlucky, you picked on the wrong man. Most foreigners think that because the Austrians do crazy things they are all a bit mad. I happen to think that there are few races that are more sane. The Gemans live in a dream world and try to make it real. The Austrians live in a real world and only pretend to dream.”

Max chuckled.

“That is a good epigram, but like all good epigrams it is as false as it is true. So now you have decided that I am a villain, and the men you have been fighting were in my employ. What, may I ask, could I have possibly have gained from such actions?”

“In Austria,” said the Saint, “you have to be aware that one and one often make three. In this case the Rat and the Gorilla added up to a third person who controlled them, you. You stood to gain quite a lot and to lose nothing at all.”

“Oh yes?” Max’s eyes sparkled with interest. He actually seemed to be enjoying himself.

“Yes. You see, I remembered that when we met in your apartment Frankie told you I knew where the Necklace was. She merely meant that she had informed me that it was in Schloss Este, and she was about to explain this when Leopold interrupted and lost his temper. After that the whole thing got sidetracked, but you concluded that she had told me more than she had you. From that moment on, I became useful to you. So you had me slugged in the garage by your men, who were told to extort the information from me. If they got it, you’d be in the clear all along the line, for if I survived I’d think I’d been kidnapped by the Gestapo, and you would be free to double-cross Frankie at the most propitious moment.”

“But why, may I ask, if I was working, as you say, against her, could I not have seized her in the first place and forced her to tell me everything I needed to know?”

“Because until you knew exactly where the Necklace was hidden, you didn’t know if it might be impossible for anybody except Frankie herself to get at it.”

“But then why would I let you join the party, to add another complication?” Max smiled disarmingly. “Even for an Austrian, is that not a bit exotic?”

“You wanted to keep all your options open, and you didn’t let me join — Frankie stuck you with me. You had to accept me or have me bumped off, fast, to maintain your credibility, for you knew I was a dangerous customer to fool around with. You wanted to keep an eye on me. Also you decided I might be more useful alive than dead. You’d figured out another angle.”

“What was that?” Max might have been listening with polite fascination to a tale Simon was inventing.

“It was that you might be able to get me to work for you.”

“Phantastisch!” said Herr Annellatt.

Thai seemed to blink in sleepy agreement.

“Maybe. But it’s all true.”

Max’s head moved in negation.

“It is a very interesting story, but you give yourself a little too much credit. After all, I am a wealthy man and I could employ any number of people to do the job of getting the Necklace. Why should I be so ready to engage you?”

“For two reasons. When you realised I didn’t know exactly where the Necklace was hidden in the Castle, you figured that Frankie might trust me more than you. You’ve been up against that deadlock for months. Frankie would never tell you where it was. You thought I might perhaps get it out of her.”

“Why you rather than me?”

The Saint smiled with shameless impudence.

“Possibly because I’m — a more romantic type.”

“And the second reason?”

“Because I am the Saint. You knew my reputation, and so do a lot of dreary policemen. You thought you could let me get the Necklace for you, and then steal it from me, and still throw me to the cops as the fall guy.”

“And so I persuaded Frankie to run away to Hungary just to get you to go after her?” Max spoke drily.

“Not at all. You were genuinely surprised and upset by her going. So was I. It loused up both our plans completely. You had to improvise a new one in a hurry.”

“And what was this new one?”

Max’s voice was silky. Both he and Thai regarded Simon from between narrowed lids.

“I must say you kept your head. You had to act fast because Frankie was going into Gestapo territory, and if she got captured your chances of getting the Necklace would have been finished. That meant you had to work with me and against me at the same time, once I had volunteered to go and get her out.”

“Surely all this is too clever, even for me,” Max protested.

Simon’s smile held genuine warmth.

“No, it’s not too clever for you, nor for me. It’s a pity we’re on opposite sides. We have very much the same kind of brain. But perhaps it’s inevitable that we should compete. There’s only room for one at the top, and I have a big advantage over you.”

“What is that?”

“I work on my own and do all my own dirty work. You have to rely on other people to do yours for you. That makes you as vulnerable as they are. For instance, your tame Rat made the mistake of addressing me by name, which he shouldn’t have known unless he’d been told. That was another thing that helped to confirm my suspicion that those two nasties were hooked up with you.”

Annellatt’s mouth turned down at one corner.

“It cuts both ways. If you lose once you lose totally. I can lose a lot of times and still win in the end.”

“In other words, your associates are expendable,” said the Saint sardonically.

“Exactly.”

“Like Anton.” The Saint looked directly into Max’s eyes.

For a moment Max’s gaze flickered.

“Believe it or not, that was a mistake. He was only a servant. I never thought he would be in any danger. It made me very sad. He was such a nice man.”

“He only made the mistake of working for you, in fact.”

“Possibly. But I tell you, I am sorry about Anton.” Max’s voice became warm, almost caressing, as he leant forward across the desk. “I still think we might work together, my friend.”

The Saint shook his head. “No dice. I don’t change my habits so easily. But to get back to your cunning little scheme. It was pretty clever, I admit. You’d probably worked out a method of getting across the border a long time ago. In fact, you told me as much. The cleverness lay in incorporating these old plans with the new and in keeping out of the whole affair yourself.”

“Explain yourself a bit further.”

“On the surface you were helping us. But you arranged to have your men hijack the Necklace when we got back to the cabin. Though how they knew when we got back I still don’t know. I suppose you just told them to check the cabin at regular intervals. Wouldn’t it have been simpler if they’d waited for us there?”

Max flashed him a shrewd look.

“Were I the villain you think I am, I might not have wanted to run the risk of your seeing them or their car before you got settled in and relaxed.”

The Saint nodded.

“That would add up, especially as you told Anton to hold us there until someone arrived.” He looked at Max levelly. “You know, that Gorilla of yours really shouldn’t be allowed out. Is he a dope addict or something? I mean, for anyone to be so slug-happy is plain ridiculous. He shot Anton without even looking to see who he was!”

“A very stupid man, almost an animal,” agreed Max benignly. “Such people are dangerous, but they are also sometimes useful.”

“You figured we’d never know he was working for you and would think that the Gestapo must somehow have got on to your plans. That’s why you were able to welcome us back with such hospitality. Otherwise you would have made sure we were all killed, either in the cabin or somewhere along the line. Like me, you prefer to avoid complications whenever possible. It must have been a nasty shock when you found you were a candidate for a murder rap.”

Max stiffened.

“I was a candidate for what?”

“A murder rap. It’s American slang. It means you were responsible for Anton’s death even though you didn’t plan it, do it, or even want it.”

“But how can that be?”

“I imagine Austrian law recognises some universal principles. Anyone who is an accessory to a crime must take the consequences as much as the person or persons who commit it. That makes you guilty.”

Max leaned back in his chair and surveyed the Saint thoughtfully.

“You know,” he said, “I like you. I like you very much. I don’t know how old you are, but you look young enough to be the son I never had, and I am not all that old myself. If we had been on the same side, perhaps you might have inherited my... er... connections.” He unleashed a smile. “But with regard to the Hapsburg Necklace—”

“That proves your guilt if nothing else,” interrupted Simon.

Annellatt raised his shoulders.

“My lawyers would put up a good defence. You still don’t really know how I got it.”

“You could only have got it from the Rat or the Gorilla. That’s another crime in this country, I’m sure. There must be a law against stealing national monuments.”

Max’s smirk was almost triumphant.

“Ah, but I did not steal anything of the kind.”

“What do you mean? There it is.” Simon pointed to the Necklace which glimmered in a heap of fire on the desk.

“Do you know anything about jewels?” Annellatt asked.

“Enough to get by.”

Max picked up the Necklace from the desk and tossed it over to Simon. “It’s a fake,” he said.

2

Simon caught the Necklace deftly.

It shimmered and glittered with a thousand facets of light. Reaching over, he picked up Max’s jeweller’s magnifying glass and examined it. He was expert enough to be able to confirm at once that Max was telling the truth. The feel of the gems, moreover, gave them away. They lacked the voltage quality of real stones. The fires, though beguiling to the eye, were as false as those created for the grates of luxury flats or for sinners by evangelical missionaries.

Again he was shaken but not rocked out of reason. In his life, anything could happen and often did. But there was always a good reason for even the most extraordinary occurrences.

The explanation behind this one was fairly easy to see. Frankie’s father, grandfather, or one of her ancestors, must have had a duplicate made, perhaps with a view of selling the original secretly. Such a plot might have been a criminal conspiracy, but this did not make it any more improbable. To aristocrats, honour was all important, second only to exposed insolvency. If a distinguished bankruptcy could have been averted by the substitution of a string of baubles that would bedazzle anyone but a probing expert, what was the harm? Besides, the Necklace might even have been hocked with the connivance of the Austrian Government, to raise money for the State Treasury. Such things had been known to happen in the convolutions of Balkans economics.

On the other hand, the false necklace could have been made to safeguard the real one, for use as a decoy, red herring or other fraud to occupy the attentions of crooks, while the genuine one rested safely in secret custody.

In any case, the necklace he held in his hand was worthless to him, Max, Frankie, the Third Reich, or anyone else concerned with the value of the original. It was a beautiful piece of work and undoubtedly cost a tidy sum, but compared to the real thing it was only worth its weight in peanuts.

“You must be very disappointed,” remarked Simon. “I mean, after all your hard work and the efforts of your bully boys, to end up with a pup must be disheartening to say the least. Oh, well, don’t let it get you down. Every silver lining has a cloud, as my Aunt Agatha used to say about her rich fat husband.”

Max smiled wryly. “You are an incredible man. We Austrians may make a joke about everything, but underneath we take it seriously. I believe you really do see everything as a joke.”

“A very serious joke.”

Annellatt sighed.

“What interests me very much now is where is the real Necklace?”

“Well, if it’s not still at Schloss Este or some Swiss bank or other, I have a business pal who could find out who sold it to whom recently — if it was recently. I have just concluded a deal with him myself, and there isn’t much that goes on above board or under the counter in the international diamond markets that he doesn’t know about.”

Max’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Do you think Frankie knows?”

“Who knows? She might be trying to cover up some ancestral fiddling, for the honour of the family. Or she might be trying to outsmart all of us.”

“We shall have to find out.”

“I shall have to find out.”

The set of Annellatt’s head took a speculative slant.

“Does that mean you would consider working with me?”

“No more than I have already. We weren’t made to be partners. We’d always be competing. Besides, as I’ve said before, I don’t change my loyalties so easily.”

“Neither do I. But my prime loyalty is to myself. Surely yours is too?”

“Not always. Believe it or not, I’m quite old-fashioned sometimes. I believe in honour and the code of a gentleman. I know it’s a bit out of date but purely practically it does make civilisation work. I mean, even Hitler would find life easier if one could trust his word.”

Max laughed, a trifle ruefully. “You mean you can’t trust mine?”

“I haven’t said that.”

“Ah, but you have implied it. I have a feeling that if I were an Austrian aristocrat you would feel differently.”

“I know a lot of aristocrats who are not gentlemen at all,” smiled the Saint. “And conversely, I know a lot of gentlemen who are not aristocrats.”

“But I am neither. I am an Austrian peasant who has made good, as you say in your language.”

It was an extraordinary conversation, at such a time. But Simon had long since realised that Max Annellatt was no ordinary man, and he was intrigued enough to let the chat take its course.

“Good — or bad. It depends on which way you look at it.”

“I am rich,” Max said flatly. “That is always good for the person who is rich.”

“Especially if he doesn’t care what lengths he goes to to get richer,” said the Saint, leaning back lazily.

Max’s expression became serious.

“When I was a child, my father used to beat me regularly, either because I had been bad, or to keep me from being bad — but mostly because he was drunk.” The smoke from his cigarette curled upwards, and suddenly there was a break in its smooth flow. “I have had a horror of violence ever since.”

“That’s why you ordered your men to grab me and work me over, I suppose,” said Simon sympathetically. “Presumably when they shot Leopold and when they killed Anton it was all in the spirit of fun.”

Max shook his head.

“Anton’s death was a mistake, and I am truly sorry for it. My men did not know he was in the cabin, and when he came in through the door suddenly, one of them shot him before he recognised him.”

“That takes a load off my mind, if not off Anton’s,” said the Saint. “It’s good to know you’re really a nice chap at heart. But it must be an awful disappointment to you not to have got the Hapsburg Necklace.”

Annellatt spread his hands all the way from his shoulders downwards.

“One cannot always win. There will be other times and other businesses. Besides, I may yet get the real Necklace.”

“It’s highly unlikely,” the Saint assured him. “When the police hear about Anton and your other activities, you’ll be lucky if you just spend the rest of your life in jail and not dead, if you will forgive an Irishism.”

“We shall see about that. I have resources — some of them in other places than Austria.”

“And this little shack — you could afford to just walk away from it?”

“As you know, it is not in my own name. And there is an enormous mortgage, at atrocious interest. I might be much better off without it.”

The Saint felt himself quite irresistibly compelled to let Annellatt continue to entrench his theoretical position.

“I suppose you’ve got it all worked out, how we could carve the joint between us.”

Max put all his considerable charm into a smile.

“I think, Simon,” he said, “that this conversation — and this necklace — had better be a secret between us.”

“Why?”

“Because it would do no good to tell anyone else and would probably be harmful.”

“To you, yes. To be honest, it wouldn’t bother me at all.”

Annellatt’s reaction was vehement.

“No, if Frankie knew of it, she might insist on going back to Schloss Este to look for the real one.”

“And suppose she already knew?”

“Then we should have to find out what happened to it.”

“With the help of some of your special operatives?” The Saint’s voice was tinged with acid. “No, dear old fruit, I think we should have it out with Frankie and Leopold face to face. I suppose you’ve locked them in their rooms too?”

“No, the only one I was afraid of was you. They would not be likely to wander around the Castle after everyone had gone to bed. But you, Simon, you have a propensity for poking your nose into other people’s business.”

“So that’s why you had me locked up for the night”

Annellatt’s gesture was mildly apologetic.

“I wanted to make sure of not being disturbed while I examined the Necklace and arranged to have it transported away from the Schloss. There are people who are eagerly awaiting it, and until just before you made your rather dramatic entrance, I thought it was the real thing. Your door would have been unlocked and you would probably never have known anything about it. How did you get out, by the way?”

“I flew,” Simon said with a perfectly straight face. “That’s something about me you didn’t know. I grow wings after dark. All right, so Frankie and Leopold are not locked in. Let’s talk it over with them right now.”

“I am ready.”

“And how will you explain how the frontier guards knew that the false papers which we presented at the frontier — which you provided — were fakes, and they were waiting for them?”

“Only,” Max said intelligently, “if there was a leak in my own organisation.”

“Then you’d better start thinking about it,” said the Saint.

Max stood up. He was still exercising all his usual charm of manner, but there was something suddenly remote about him and curiously forceful.

“You have not counted on one thing, while you are giving me orders.”

“And that is?”

“I may not be as strong nor as brave as you. But I am just as clever and I never get into a situation that I can’t get out of.”

There was utter silence in the room as they re-assessed each other. The cat still lay on the table and continued to gaze implacably at Simon, who was struck once again by the resemblance between this animal and its master.

Simon felt oddly uneasy. It was a rare feeling and he did not like it. He sensed uncomfortably that he was not in complete control of the situation. Max, he had to admit, was an opponent with whom nothing should be taken for granted.

The Saint also got to his feet, seemingly as relaxed as ever but ready for instant action should his enemy make a move.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s cut the chat and get it over with.”

Max and Thai continued to look at him. There was a queer light in the eyes of both of them. Simon could not read behind it, but all his senses were on the alert. He drew the flick knife from his pocket, and snapped it open.

“I hate to get melodramatic,” he said, “but if you’re thinking you can pull some kind of fast one, I promise you that I can throw this much faster.”

“I would never try to compete with your expertise.” It sounded almost as if the cat were purring Max’s words. There was an aura which emanated from this man which was paradoxically both stimulating and lulling. “But I do have these qualities at my service, only they belong to another being.”

“Your tame bully boys?”

Max’s soft white hands stroked Thai.

“By the way, how did you get past them?”

“I came a different way. Now we’ll go together — the regular way — and be as friendly as anything when we pass your guards.” Simon made a movement with the knife to underline his meaning.

Max’s eyes were wide and brilliant. He looked like a fat cat about to pounce. It was a greedy, anticipatory look, excited yet with a touch of fear.

The Saint had seen that look many times at gambling tables. It was the look of someone who expects to make a killing. Perhaps Annellatt was expecting just that. His body was utterly still except for the hand stroking Thai.

To Simon it seemed that time had stopped for a long moment. When it started again something would happen.

Then Max spoke.

“Get him, Thai,” he commanded, and flung the cat at Simon.

3

Simon was suddenly immersed in a flurry of fur and tearing claws, which ripped at his face and neck in savage frenzy. He felt as if he were being attacked by a miniature tiger.

If Max himself or any other human being had attacked him like that, the Saint would have used his knife in an almost reflex action. Against a theoretically domestic pet, the thought patterns of a lifetime made it nearly as instinctive to hold back. And then, before he could overcome his reluctance to use the blade, the cat was gone, leaping through the half-open window. Simon never did discover where Thai went. It was possible that the animal simply leapt down into the courtyard. But that would have been a formidable jump even for a cat, but Thai was certainly no ordinary cat, and reminded him more of the feline “familiar” with which superstition used to credit witches.

Anyway, Simon was not concerned with Thai at that moment. It had vanished; but then, so had its master.

Max’s disappearance was more prosaic. He had simply gone through the door. It was still open as he had left it.

Simon did not rush after him. He figured there would be many escape routes in the Castle, and Max would be well clear before pursuit even got started, while the Saint himself would risk blundering into an ambush. The man who had so admirably and cleverly outwitted him might well have more tricks up his sleeve now. It was not often that the Saint met his match.

What the future held for Max was something to speculate about another time. Simon imagined that such a successful and influential crook must have contacts in many countries. He would easily be able to build a new life for himself in some place like Argentina or Peru. Perhaps a peon in Columbia, sneaking a sackful of stolen gems from an emerald mine, would have merry brown eyes and hum “The Blue Danube” as he went. Or perhaps Max would be the subject of a Grand Jury investigation in New York. Simon wondered if they would let him wear Thai like a fur collar while he invoked the Fifth Amendment.

The Saint was more concerned with his immediate situation. He could, of course, walk out of Max’s study and down the passage to the door which opened on to the gallery. As he knew, it was locked and possibly bolted on his side. Obviously the sensible thing to do was to go along and unlock it and walk back across the gallery to his room. But his room had also been locked by the indefatigable Erich, who had taken the key away, and the Saint had not brought any tools for lock-picking.

It seemed to him that for far too long he had been on the run from people intent on doing him harm. He was tired of having to crawl and climb around difficult, uncomfortable and even dangerous places, in order to elude this type of person. But then, up to now, he had been handicapped by having a young and impulsive woman to look after and an equally young and even more impulsive boy. Now he was on his own, which was how he liked it to be, and he decided to make the most of it.

Inspired by the thought, he stuffed the necklace casually into his shirt pocket and set off back down the stairs, treading as insouciantly as if he owned them.

Suddenly, from below came the sound of voices and feet running along the echoing passage. Max, en route to freedom, had alerted his bully boys and told them to go and get the Saint and do him in. That way he wouldn’t be around when the ultimate nastiness took place, and his sensitive soul would remain unbruised.

Then Simon saw them, the Rat and the Gorilla, waiting for him at the foot of the stairs. Annellatt’s men.

Being the obedient thick-headed villains they were, and being two to one, and armed, they must have figured they were in an impregnable position. They were like two well-trained and rather vicious dogs, and the Saint for an instant almost felt sorry for them. Until he remembered the surprised look on the dead face of Anton as he lay in a pool of his own blood in the cabin.

If the Rat and the Gorilla had the advantage of weaponry and numbers, Simon Templar had the advantage of surprise, which he could create for himself by sheer quickness of wit. And in such an emergency his wits connected like lightning.

“Geronimo!” he yelled, at the most startling top of his lungs, and did something which his adversaries could not possibly have dreamed of his doing in such circumstances. He simply leapt on to the banister and slid downwards.

The Gorilla’s reflexes were too slow to enable him to take aim at such a fast-moving target. The Rat recovered faster, but by the time he had come out of shock sufficiently to bring his gun to bear, Simon had left the banisters halfway down and dropped from view on the floor below, and the Rat’s bullet harmlessly splintered the rail.

The Saint was now concealed from the two thugs by the staircase itself, but he gave them no time to regroup. Whirling like an avenging typhoon around the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, he was upon the Rat before the latter could locate him. The Rat, being small and not particularly strong, didn’t stand a chance, which was all the more unfortunate for him since the Saint used him as a shield between himself and the Gorilla, whose reactions were too sluggish to stop him pulling the trigger of the gun he was trying to aim at the Saint. That bullet ended the Rat’s meager and evil-filled life for good and all — or perhaps, more aptly, for bad and all.

The Rat’s pistol dropped from his dead hand, and the Rat followed it and cascaded on to the floor.

The Gorilla was still trying to take aim when the Saint threw his knife. The gun spoke, but the Gorilla’s shot went wide because of the swiftness with which the Saint was moving. The knife flew straight and true as an arrow to bury itself up to the hilt in the Gorilla’s throat, and the Gorilla slumped to the ground beside the Rat, choking his last gasps on his own blood.

The Saint did not wait to consider their passing, any longer than to scoop up the handiest of the two fallen guns. The two thugs, he considered, were better out of this world than in it.

His own tiredness had evaporated, the blood raced through his veins and zest filled his soul. He had done what he liked doing best, triumphing over the Ungodly and thwarting their knavish tricks, as the British National Anthem called them. So he told himself. Actually, if he had been more analytical, he would have been honest enough to admit that it boiled down to the fact that he had enjoyed a good fight and coming out on top.

Which was all very fine, except that winning a skirmish was not winning a war. Or even a decisive battle. There were still hurdles to take, bridges to cross, and even metaphors to mangle.

In plainer language, what was the back-up organisation behind the latest casualties? And/or what was the other factor which their clumsiness didn’t fully account for?

Who tipped off the border guards about the fake passes? Who, in another phrase, was the rotten apple in Max Annellatt’s own carefully sifted barrel?

Stepping over the prostrate bodies of his two erstwhile opponents, Simon walked down to the end of the passage where there were two doors. The one straight ahead obviously led into the main body of the Schloss, and he knew the one on the left gave on to the courtyard.

The Saint tried the inner door. As he expected, it was locked. Behind it, all the state rooms would also be locked and wired with burglar alarms.

Simon Templar believed that the most direct and obvious action was frequently the most brilliant. He therefore calmly unbolted the courtyard door and walked out into what still remained of the night.

As he moved briskly across the cobblestones, he checked the load and action of the gun he had taken over. One hazard he could do without was that of being penalised by any incompetence of the enemy, who in some respects had betrayed streaks of vulnerable sloppiness. He tucked the pistol under his belt, just inside the unbuttoned front of his shirt.

He mounted the broad steps to the main front door of the Castle, and rang the bell just as if he were a casual visitor — albeit a casual visitor with bloody scratches on his face. There was no answer, so the Saint rang again, this time long and hard.

After a while, the lights went up in the Great Hall and there was a noise of bolts being retracted. The lock clicked as the key turned, and then the door slowly and silently opened, the alarm having been switched off.

The Saint stepped into the blazingly lighted hall.

“Good evening — once again, Erich!” he said.

4

The manservant’s eyes goggled and his jaw hung open. In a moment, however, he had regained his composure and his face once more wore its professional mask. In his hand was a Luger automatic, and Simon noted that it was held in a manner which combined decorum with instant readiness for action.

“Ach, Herr Templar!” Erich’s eyes flicked as he tried to determine whether Simon was armed. “What has happened, sir? How do you come here?”

The Saint smiled genially.

“Locked doors do not a prison make, my dear Erich, to misquote a famous English poet.”

The man’s dark eyes became expressionless once again. The Saint sensed, as indeed he had always felt about Erich, that here was potentially a really dangerous customer, far above the calibre of the Rat and the Gorilla. Had the man possessed a sense of humour he might even have approached Max’s stature in villainy. Even so, the Saint realised that he would have to be very careful in dealing with the humourless Erich.

“But what are you doing here, sir?” the man repeated. “I thought you had retired for the night.”

“I had, but I’m given to sleep-walking, especially down the sides of buildings. The doctors tell me I’m a unique case. It only comes over me when I get close to Dracula country. Do you have any bats in your belfry?”

As he rambled on inconsequentially, the Saint was edging into the doorway. But Erich was not to be caught unawares. He stepped backwards, but his gun was still at the ready.

“You have not told me why you are here,” he persisted stubbornly.

“And why I am not still locked in my room,” said the Saint dryly. “But I have some bad news for you. Your master has vanished. I can’t find him anywhere.”

For an instant there was a glint of surprise in the other’s eyes. Then his lids drooped partially over them.

“He is in his study, sir,” he replied, giving the Saint a calculating stare.

“Oh, no, he isn’t. I’ve just been up there.”

“Impossible,” Erich said flatly. “I have been in my quarters, and at this time of night the only entrance to the East Wing is past my room because the state rooms are all locked and their burglar alarm is switched on.”

“Perhaps he turned himself into a bat,” responded the Saint helpfully. “Or maybe he’s been kidnapped. Didn’t you hear a couple of shots a few minutes ago?”

As he spoke he again attempted to edge closer to Erich, but once more the manservant retreated, his gun held steadily on target.

“I was on my way to investigate them, sir, when you rang the bell.”

“There seems to have been some sort of a fracas,” Simon informed him. “There are a couple of dead men at the foot of the stairs in that wing. Someone seems to have been playing games rather roughly with them.”

Erich’s eyes widened.

“Furchtbar! Who are they, these men?”

The Saint was watching him keenly.

“I don’t know their names, but I’ve seen them around before in other places, and they were never up to any good. One of them looks like a big ape and the other like a rat.”

Erich’s face was once more expressionless.

“Are you sure you did not kill them, sir?” His query was polite, but his voice had a menacing ring.

“No, I’m not,” said the Saint cheerfully. “Or yes I am, whichever way you want to look at it. What I mean is, I am not sure I did not kill them because I did kill them.”

Erich’s eyes were suddenly as cold as agates. So was his voice.

“And possibly, sir, you have killed the Herr Baron?”

“No, he was too quick for me. I didn’t get the chance. He jumped on his cat and rode off between the chimney pots. A very versatile chap, your master.”

Erich’s gun pointed directly at the Saint’s heart.

“What have you done with him?”

“I tell you,” maintained the Saint, “I haven’t touched the blighter. But his cat touched me in several places.” He indicated the scratches on his face. “Left his calling card, he did.”

“I think, Mr Templar, you had better answer my question.”

“I have. Quite truthfully. Your master did a bunk. Or as they say in America, he took it on the lam. Sie scheinen schwer von Begriff zu sein. I expect he’s in his car right now heading for parts unknown as fast as it will take him. Don’t ask me which, any one will do for him in his present circumstances. He’s a refugee from the Law, you see, as well as from me. You might be in a bit of the same trouble yourself, just from having been associated with him. Unless you’d claim that you were always really working for yourself — but that could be embarrassing too, couldn’t it?”

“Was meinen Sie?”

“I mean that Max’s beautiful organisation had its weak spot, like a lot of brilliant organisations have had before. As the old saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In this case, the weak link is you.”

“Ich verstehe nicht.”

“Oh, but you do understand. Like a lot of smartie subordinates before you, you thought you were smarter than the Boss. So you thought you could use his set-up for a while, and then take over and ditch him at the right moment. It’s only your bad luck that I got wise to the double-cross. Maybe you were just that much too clever when you tipped somebody off about our false papers.”

For a while there was silence. Erich was obviously fitting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together, swiftly and competently, in his mind.

“I think,” he said finally, “that I shall have to kill you.”

The Saint actually laughed. A spectator would have thought that he was really enjoying himself. The spectator would have been right. This was just the sort of situation that Simon Templar revelled in: death only a few feet and perhaps only a few seconds away. Unless he could dodge it.

“I expect you’re right,” he said. “But I must warn you that I’m probably quicker on the draw and a better shot than you are. It’s my Boy Scout training.”

Erich steadied his aim deliberately. For a long moment they faced each other. Then the Saint dipped into his shirt pocket and brought out the necklace. The movement was slow and relaxed, making sure not to give any suggestion that he might be going for a concealed weapon. Which he was doing, of course; but this weapon was psychological.

Erich’s eyes bulged as he saw the fiery splendour of the stones. Obviously his mother hadn’t told him that artificial gems could sparkle as brightly as real ones. He drew in his breath sharply.

“Das Halsband!” he whispered, as if he were admitting something against his will. With an effort he switched back to English and his attention to Simon. “Where... how did you get it?”

The Saint swung the necklace in languid hypnotic arcs in front of the man’s eyes, and Erich had difficulty in keeping his gaze from following it.

“Your master gave it to me,” Simon answered. “He said he didn’t want it any more — or you either. So off he went, leaving me to dispose of both of you.”

Erich was not easily intimidated.

“In that case,” he said, “you are wrong, Mr Templar. It is I who will dispose.”

“Have it your own way,” said the Saint accommodatingly. “But if this is what you want most, you’re welcome to it. Help yourself — as one Schmuck to another.”

And he tossed the Hapsburg necklace carelessly to the footman, even more carelessly than Max Annellatt had recently tossed it to him.

Adept as he was, Erich would scarcely have been human if he had not grabbed at the necklace as it snaked towards him. For one fatal instant his attention was distracted from the Saint.

That was all Simon needed. A moment suddenly seemed to elongate itself as he filled it with sudden action. Leaping across, he knocked the gun from Erich’s hand and seized the servant’s arm in a grip which should normally have compelled submission.

But the footman also knew some tricks of the trade. As the Saint began to apply the pressure on his captive arm which would have forced him to give in, Erich kicked him hard and accurately on the shin.

Simon was, after all, human, and a shin is a most painful portion of one’s anatomy when it is struck a violent blow. For a moment his concentration also wavered, and Erich was as quick as the Saint had been to use that moment to his advantage, and while Simon’s grip fractionally relaxed Erich wriggled free. He leapt back and looked around for his gun.

It lay on the floor, just out of his reach and even more out of Simon’s.

Erich automatically dived for it, and the Saint just as automatically did not try to beat him to it. Instead, the Saint’s right hand dived inside his shirt for the pistol that he had tucked away.

It was a moderately close thing, but in such circumstances moderation is more than enough.

“Well,” said the Saint, more or less to himself, as Erich crumpled quite ummistakably out of active participation, “I suppose a devout cricketer would call this a hat trick.”