The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace

1

The Saint’s mind moved with lightning speed and the Saint’s response was almost simultaneous. In another virtually continuous about-turn he flung himself at the girl, sending her flying through the door.

The impetus of his charge carried him through with her, and he slammed the door after him. The two men had been so surprised by his instantaneous reaction that they had not even moved.

The Saint helped Frankie to her feet. She smoothed her skirt and batted her eyelids up at him.

“You certainly do have the caveman approach.”

“And you’re like all women who want to make quite sure that they’re looking nice even if they may get killed the next minute. Come on, let’s get to Max’s before they shoot the lock in. I don’t think they’ll risk the noise, but with these types you never know.”

They were standing in a sort of archway leading to an inner courtyard of what had once been a large palais. Like so many big Viennese houses it was no longer tenanted by impoverished aristocratic owners and had been converted to flats. Without a word Frankie ran to a side door in the courtyard, which she opened with another key.

They passed through into a large almost pitch-dark entrance hall. A wide flight of bare stone steps led upwards, and Simon followed the girl up them. On the first landing she paused and opened a door with yet another key. The Saint stopped for a moment and listened but there were no sounds of pursuit. Their enemies had probably decided that it would not be politic to break down the outer door. After all, even Gestapo agents would have to explain their actions to aroused tenants and the police if they were called, and apparently for some reason the present exercise was one that they had been ordered to carry out with great discretion.

Simon followed Frankie through the door and closed it after him. The change from the bleak stone of the stairway and landing was dramatic. They were now in a long passage, thickly carpeted and hung with portraits lit by indirect lighting. The baroque plaster-work of the walls and ceiling was scrolled and touched with gold leaf, and the air was warm and comforting. Several doors opened off this wide hallway. They were big and stately, with ornamented panels and heavy gilded door-knobs.

Simon knew that the post-war housing laws in Vienna were very strict, and no owner, unless he could show good cause, or was very influential, was allowed to have more than a certain number of untenanted rooms in his premises. He guessed that Max was probably one of the privileged and that there were no “lodgers” in these several rooms.

At the end of the passage was a wide double door. Frankie opened it without knocking, and they passed through into a large handsomely furnished drawing-room, brilliantly lit by a chandelier and wall sconces. All the lights were on, as if to push more than just darkness from every comer. One felt that anything unpleasant or even disturbing could not breach the security of this room.

A blazing wood fire in the hearth made the room come alive with its variegated lights. Max was sitting in a chair by it, the Siamese cat on his lap.

He looked up as they entered. For a moment he appeared startled. Then he gave a cry of pleasure.

“Frankie, Gott sei dank!”

He leapt to his feet and Thai cascaded to the floor. The cat gave them all an affronted look and jumped up on to a sofa where he sat glaring distrustfully.

Max’s eyes met those of the Saint.

“Ah, Mr er... er... Taylor. How delightful to meet you again! As a tourist, you certainly get around Vienna!”

Frankie moved quickly to the fire and held out her hands towards the comforting blaze.

“They are downstairs,” she told Max in German.

“Who?”

“The men who kidnapped me. I think they are Gestapo.”

Max glanced at Simon.

“I think it would be polite to our guest to speak English,” he said in that tongue.

The girl followed suit.

“If you like, but he speaks fluent German. Max, may I introduce Mr Simon Templar, otherwise known as the Saint?”

For a long while Max stared at Simon. Then he gave a low whistle.

“So, we are indeed honoured!”

“The pleasure is all mine,” Simon replied blandly. “I’ve had a very entertaining evening. And I find the Gestapo adds a new dimension to life.”

Max grimaced.

“It certainly does! Unfortunately it is not such a nice one. Anyway, you will have a whisky while you are here, no?”

“Not no,” said the Saint. “Yes, thank you very much.”

He sat down next to Thai on the sofa and accepted the drink which Max brought him. The cat looked at the whisky with interest, his ears pricked, as if inviting the Saint to give him a sip.

There was a sudden noise as the door was flung open. A young man entered.

He was slightly built, slim, and he moved gracefully with an impression of controlled strength. His thick black hair was brushed smoothly straight back and his tanned face was aquiline and aristocratic.

“Frankie!” he cried when he saw the girl. “Wie bist du denn entflohen? Ich habe die ganze Zeit nach dir gesucht seit wir deine Botschaft bekamen!”

He walked swiftly over to the girl, taking both her hands in his. He kissed one of them and then her cheek. She looked into his eyes and smiled. There was obviously a close bond between them.

Turning towards Simon she spoke in English.

“I owe my life to our friend here. He just rescued me from the Gestapo. Mr Templar, may I introduce Count Leopold Denksdorff, my cousin?”

Simon’s name apparently meant nothing to the young man, who bowed curtly.

“How do you do?” he said formally.

His English, like Frankie’s, though heavily accented was excellent. Most Austrian aristocrats, as Simon knew, felt a close affinity to the English and, even after having been their enemies in a terrible conflict, emulated them whenever possible.

The Saint ignored young Denksdorff’s brusque manner.

“I won’t be sending a bill,” he said pleasantly. “Frankie’s thanks are more than enough.”

Max intervened tactfully.

“Tell us the story of your escape, Frankie.”

He and Leopold listened attentively to Frankie’s vivid account of her adventures, and explaining Simon’s part in them. The Saint observed the others closely, assessing them and their relationships. They seemed to be completely at home with each other in spite of their different temperaments and the fact that Max Annellatt’s background was quite different from that of the two young aristocrats. This camaraderie was surprising even in the new democratic Austria. Habits of over a thousand years die hard, and the Austrian nobility were still a very cliquey lot.

When she had finished, the girl turned towards Simon.

“But all is well. Mr Templar is going to help us to get the Necklace. I have told him where it is.” She gave Simon a dazzling smile. “He will give us a plan.”

Flirting is an essential part of every Viennese girl’s upbringing, but Max looked astonished.

“Was that wise, my dear? After all, you haven’t even told us.”

Frankie gave him a guilty glance. “I mean, I—”

“We can be grateful to Mr Templar for what he has done,” the young Count interrupted rudely, “but he can be of no further use. He is not one of us.”

There was a wealth of hauteur in his manner and the implication that unless one were born an Austrian aristocrat one was not properly born at all.

The Saint was only amused by the churlishness of an arrogant and probably jealous youth.

“You are quite right,” he said benignly. “And every time I’m reminded of it I feel I should go on a Diet of Worms.”

Max Annellatt held up a hand.

“Leopold, you must understand that Simon Templar is no ordinary Englishman. He is known as the Saint and is an international... er—”

“Crook?” suggested the Saint helpfully.

For the first time Annellatt looked slightly flustered.

“No, no! Perhaps ‘operator’ would be a better word.”

“Makes me sound as if I manned a switchboard,” Simon remarked. “What about Boy Scout?”

“I think I prefer ‘gentleman adventurer,’ ” Frankie said.

“Anyway,” Max said firmly, “I am in agreement with Leopold about one thing, Mr Templar. We cannot ask you to help us in our venture. It is too dangerous and it would not be fair to you.”

“Keep it up and you’ll really hook me,” said the Saint. “Tell me it’s dull and entirely law-abiding and I’d be delighted to stay out. But dangerous, well, that’s quite something else. My doctor told me I should have at least one adventure a day to keep him away. We’ve had today’s, but there’s always tomorrow.”

Frankie moved swiftly over and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“You are a dear!” she cried. “I knew you’d agree to join us in the end.”

“No!” exclaimed Leopold, looking as if he were about to stamp his foot with rage. “I won’t have it! Mr Templar is English. He knows nothing about Austria and nothing about us.”

“I expect I could muddle through,” Simon offered modestly. “It’s a tradition in my country. We always win in the end. Admittedly we give a lot of people a few nasty turns en route. But we do win, even if it means just not losing.”

Max’s face was impassive.

“With all respect to you, Mr Templar, and with gratitude for the help you have already given us, I think Leopold is right. We simply must not impose on you any further. It would do neither you nor us any good.”

His voice and manner were friendly but the Saint detected an odd undercurrent of nervousness.

Frankie suddenly drew herself up. Her face was pale but her carriage was regal.

“I wish Mr Templar to help us,” she announced flatly. “It is I who am the Keeper of the Hapsburg Necklace, not you Leopold, nor you Max. This is my decision to make, and I have made it.”

Her two countrymen looked at her in astonishment. There was nothing that they could say. Apparently her case was unanswerable, but they had obviously never before seen her assert herself so imperiously.

“All right,” said the Saint cheerfully. “If Frankie’s the boss, I can’t turn down the job. ‘Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut’ — as my dear old grannie used to say whenever they tried to stop her having another double gin. So let’s stop bickering and let me in on the rest of the plot. The readers are getting impatient.”

2

“Just for a start,” said the Saint, “I’d like to get straight on a point of protocol. Frankie, as we call her, has told me about her father, Count Malffy, the hereditary Keeper of the Necklace. Now, if I should have to ask for her somewhere else, or introduce her formally, what do I call her? Did she inherit the title as well as the job?”

“My cousin Francesca,” Leopold said proprietorially, and with undisguised disdain for such ignorance, “is the Gräfin — Countess-Malffy.”

“But the name has a Hungarian sound. How did Graf Malffy get so well in with the Hapsburgs?”

“Perhaps you did not learn in school that before the war of 1914 this was a country called Austria-Hungary.”

“Oh yes, so it was. And now Hitler has made this part Germany-Austria. Well, that’s life in the Balkans. Never mind. One day Hungary could be back under the same flag — if someone else doesn’t grab it first.”

The Countess Malffy was nobly trying to conceal her malicious delight in this sparring. But she was sensible enough to break it up again before it got out of hand.

“We are wasting time,” she said. “And Mr Templar—”

“Since we’re all friends, you can call me Simon.”

“—Simon has a right to know how difficult is the project in which we are asking him to engage.”

“As I understand it,” said the Saint, “the Necklace has just been left somewhere in the ancestral Schloss.”

Max went over to a beautifully inlaid Empire desk. From a drawer he picked out a folded sheet of paper which he spread out on top of the desk.

“Here is a map of Schloss Este,” he said, beckoning Simon.

The Saint walked over and looked at the map. Max’s finger pointed out its details.

“Here you can see,” he said, “the Germans have fortified the whole area around the Castle. It amounts to some two hundred hectares, or about five hundred of your acres.”

“Not mine,” Simon disclaimed. “I don’t own a single rod, pole, or perch.”

“This area included both the Castle and a small village of just a few houses and a church. They have put barbed wire fencing round the perimeter and an electrical fence as well. There are also sentry platforms at intervals and searchlights for use at night. They may even have mined certain vulnerable places — I’m afraid I haven’t yet been able to find that out.”

“But I take it you have made a thorough survey of the Castle and its environs — from the outside?”

Max nodded.

“Aber natürlich, I and my men have observed it all. In the daytime through high-powered binoculars, and at night we have even crossed the river which runs past one side of the fortifications, looking for some way through the barbed wire and electrical fences. One of my men thought he had found it but he was mistaken, unfortunately.” He shrugged. “I had to give his widow a pension. She’s really better off. She has a steady income and no husband. That’s the best situation a woman can be in, so my married girlfriends tell me.”

“I must remember to give you the names and addresses of my four wives — I should have warned you that I was a Moslem,” murmured the Saint. “So it seems that all we have to do is cross the river at night, avoid the searchlights, get over electrical and barbed wire fences, and be careful not to step on any mines that may be lying around. All we need is a few crocodiles in the river to make our fun complete.”

Max laughed.

“I told you I liked your sense of humour, Mr Templar. I see now that it can also be what we call the gallows kind.”

“It may sound funny,” Simon said, “but it strikes me quite seriously that to try to get into that fortified area would be rather like putting our heads in a noose.”

Max shook his head. “It would be but for one thing. The Germans put up their fortifications in a hurry. What they have overlooked is that this whole valley” — his fingers traced the contours on the map — “between these hills is drained by a very large pipe buried deep in the earth. It is big enough for a man to crawl up and it comes out into the river. It was necessary because otherwise at certain times of the year when the heavy rains come the whole valley would be flooded because it lies between these two ridges of hills which run up to the Castle on either side. As you can see, the terrain forms a sort of funnel with the Castle at one end and the river at the other.”

“You can’t tell me the Germans haven’t spotted that one,” Simon objected.

Max maintained his opinion.

“It may seem strange, but they don’t appear to have. After all, the exit on to the river is well hidden by shrubs and rocks, and anyway the Germans haven’t been there very long. Given time they may find it, but they haven’t yet. One of my men has been quite far into the drain. He found a manhole but did not dare go any farther. He was brave, but not brave enough, which is as bad as being a coward.”

“So that leaves me to be the hero who opens up that manhole and sees what’s on the other side. It could be that your man wasn’t so much afraid as just being sensible. You expect me to be both brave and foolhardy. Well, I’m a gambler and I might take the risk. But I’ll have to decide that myself if and when I get there.”

Max nodded approvingly.

“Good! I at least assessed your own courage correctly.”

He pointed again to the map.

“I have worked out where this manhole comes up. It comes out, as would be expected, in the middle of some agricultural land, which is the most important part of the valley to drain. There are a number of wooden sheds in that area where the farmers keep their tools and the like. Probably one of these sheds hides the entrance to the manhole to cover it against corrosion by the weather or being blocked and covered with earth. If it doesn’t, the ground will almost certainly have been ploughed up all around it, and it will be in the middle of a wheat field or long grass.”

“And you really will take care of all my widows?”

“I hope that will not be necessary. I think you will be quite safe. For one thing, I doubt very much that the Germans have even dreamed about the possibility of the drain’s being where it is. After all, only country people know that agricultural fields are often drained by underground pipes. To most people a field is just a field and they never think what goes on underneath it. For another, no one would expect to have such a large drain in that place unless they knew about the possibility of flooding in that particular area because of the hills.”

“But surely they must have seen the end which opens on to the river? One thing you must say for the Germans is that they may be a bit plodding and often thick-headed, but they’re always thorough.”

Max shook his head vigorously.

“No, it is highly unlikely, otherwise my man would never have got as far as he did. As I have told you, the exit is concealed by rocks and is overgrown with bushes. The farmers never had any reason to keep that end of the drain exposed. Flood waters coming down the pipe would spill out over anything or sweep it out of their way. A few bushes and rocks would make no difference once the waters had got that far, and if they did, the peasants could always clear them away.”

“Do tell me some more cosy reasons why the drain is so absolutely safe for me to go into?” Simon smiled.

Max smiled back at him.

“The best reason is that it won’t be you who goes through it first, it will be one of my men.”

“And then his widow gets a pension, I suppose,” said the Saint. “No, thank you. You’re just trying to get out of this on the cheap — one widow to take care of instead of four. But I never employ stunt men. If anyone goes through that manhole first, it’ll be little me.”

Frankie and Leopold had been listening all this time in silence, Leopold with visible impatience, but leaving Annellatt to do all the exposition. But now Frankie leaned forward eagerly in the chair she had taken.

“Now you know all we can tell you, Simon, you are still with us?”

Simon had already made up his mind. He was, after all, a gambler at heart, albeit one who never took more chances than he had to. But your born gambler has to take some chances, and they are usually big ones. A toss of a coin with death was the sort of hazard that appealed most strongly to the Saint.

“I’m with you,” he said calmly. “But I’d hate to break up a beautiful comradeship. If Max doesn’t accept it, I’d be a bad risk.”

Max Annellatt spread his hands generously.

“I have accepted,” he said. “I too do not want a bad risk. Now I think we should all go to my country place. Would you go back to your hotel, please, Simon — pay your bill and collect your things and come back here?”

“Certainly,” Simon replied. “But I like sleeping raw, and all I really need is a glass of salt water to bung my false teeth into.”

Frankie giggled.

“I don’t imagine you have any falsies,” she said.

The Saint grinned at her.

“I shall have to give you some lessons in American slang,” he murmured. “But the same to you, and thanks for the compliment. I wish I could say thanks for the memory. Perhaps I shall one day.”

The girl looked mischievously pleased. In spite of his youth, Leopold appeared about to have a stroke.

“Why pay for a room if you’re not using it?” Max argued practically. “Besides, it would be better if you seemed to make a normal departure, instead of just disappearing. Tell the hotel you are driving to Italy, which is the opposite direction from where we shall be going.”

“You seem to have forgotten,” Simon remarked, “about the Gestapo boyos lurking outside.”

“There is another way out of this building,” Max told him, “through the former stables, which are now garages, on to a different street, which the Gestapo should not have discovered yet. And I will lend you a car.”

“Well, what about the car I came here in?” Simon objected. “It belongs to a friend of mine, and he’s rather attached to it.”

“So much the better, if the papers are not in your name. He can report it stolen, and in due course the police will return it to him.”

The Saint drew a long decisive breath.

“Okay, Maximilian,” he said. “Let’s get the show on the road.”

With a brief wave of temporary farewell to Frankie and Leopold, he followed Max out of the room.

Max led him down a different stairway, which nevertheless brought them to another angle of the central courtyard. The place was probably a warren of such private staircases, designed in a more spacious age so that guests and servants could move about without unnecessarily encountering each other. And it was only to be expected that a man like Max Annellatt would have provided himself with at least as many bolt-holes as a prudent rabbit.

After making sure that the courtyard was deserted, Annellatt beckoned the Saint out and led him across to the back, where another door admitted them to a dimly lit grey-walled passage which zigzagged past a few other unpainted doors and a couple of square black caves stacked with unidentifiable shrouded relics, to bring them into an equally dim-lit architectural cavern where the damp air still seemed to incorporate ineradicable nuances of its former equine occupants.

In one of the converted stalls, Max introduced him to a gleaming Mercedes-Benz 540 supercharged coupé and handed him a key.

“Do you know how to drive it?”

“I could hardly miss,” said the Saint. “As I recall it, the gear box is synchro-mesh, and semi-automatic between third and fourth. To be very exact, the engine is actually 5401 cc—”

“Good,” Annellatt said approvingly. He went over to a large sliding door across from the stall, unbolted it and hauled it aside. It opened on to a dark rain-washed alley, where he indicated a turn to the right. “That will bring you back to the street in front of the building, but if you turn left there you will not have to pass the entrance again and anyone who is watching it, and you will be going towards the Mariahilferstrasse. Will you remember the rest of the way?”

“Some of my ancestors,” the Saint reassured him, “were homing pigeons.”

“Then you should be back here within ninety minutes. Tap on this door and I shall be waiting for you.”

Simon had only slightly exaggerated his sense of direction and his talent for noting and memorising routes. He found his way unerringly back to the Hotel Hofer, where it took him only a few minutes to pack the minimal travel bag which was all he had with him.

A bored night clerk seemed unsurprised at his checking out at such an hour, which might not have been so extraordinary for a commercial hotel, and gave him vague directions to the main roads towards Italy. It was not until much later that he noticed that “Mr Taylor” had filled in his forwarding address on the conventional form as “The Vatican, Rome.”

He found his way just as efficiently back to the building which housed Annellatt’s apartment, but parked the Mercedes short of the back alley and walked in to the sliding garage door. It was a few minutes less than the ninety that Max allowed him, and there was no response when he tapped on the door.

After a brief wait, he tried pulling the door aside, and it moved with no more resistance than its own ponderous suspension. But all was now darkness in the garage.

Simon stepped inside, reaching into a pocket for the pencil flashlight that he carried as automatically as a fountain pen. There had to be a light switch somewhere near by, if he could find it, to turn on the illuminations for late-homing tenants, otherwise some benighted elderly reveller returning from his favourite Weinstube might trip over a Volkswagen and get hurt.

Simon Templar was not exactly an elderly reveller, but he still got hurt. His whole world suddenly exploded and left him falling into blackness.

3

When he came to, he was in pitch darkness. For a few moments because of the discomforts of his accommodation he thought he was in his hotel bed until he realised that he was lying on a cold bare floor with his wrists tightly bound behind him. “No,” he said to himself, as cheerfully as he could in the circumstances, “I never tie myself up before going to bed. Someone’s been a bit naughty.”

He tried to loosen his bonds, but they were tied firmly enough to tell him that it would take even his escapologist’s skill quite some time to get out of them.

Then that attempt had to be deferred as a key turned in a lock, a door was opened, and the room was flooded with harsh light from a naked bulb switched on overhead.

It was a small grey room about the size of a prison cell, which it depressingly resembled, and as he rolled over he saw that it was devoid of furniture.

Two men entered. Both wore raincoats and turned-down Trilby hats. The Saint recognised them at once. They were the Rat and the Gorilla. The names of convenience that he had given them could not have fitted more neatly. They were two perfect stereotypes from a C-grade film.

The Rat spoke in English. He had a heavy and rather guttural accent blended with that of the American locality where he had learned it, which sounded rather like Yonkers. And Simon had no doubt that in the same school he had acquired some of the less attractive characteristics of the American culture.

“So you are awake already?” he said.

As a remark it was superfluous, but it helpfully told the Saint that he could not have been knocked out for long.

Simon looked at him with distaste. The man had the sneering manner of a professional sadist. Such types, in the Saint’s experience, were always vulnerable. Compensating for their own physical inadequacy with another man’s muscle, they were always aware of their dependence and made more insecure by it.

“I’m not sure,” Simon replied, his gaze meeting the other’s steadily. “I could be having a particularly nasty dream.”

“Perhaps you won’t be quite so fresh, my friend, when we’ve finished with you,” said the Rat.

“And what exactly is it you want to finish?”

The Rat lit a cigarette.

“We want to know what you are doing in Vienna.”

“I came to see the Zoo,” Simon told him. “But I didn’t know the animals were wandering around loose in the streets.”

The Gorilla stepped over and kicked the Saint viciously in the ribs. Simon could not quite cut off a reflex gasp of pain, but managed to turn it into a laugh.

“There’s a good Nazi,” he observed. “Be sure a man isn’t only down but has his hands tied before you kick him.”

The Gorilla’s face was suffused with rage. He bent down and deliberately struck the Saint across the face. He looked as if it made him feel a little better.

“You must have practised that on your girlfriend,” said the Saint. “Or is she a boy?”

The Gorilla reached in his pocket and brought out a switch knife. The blade flicked out like a silver snake’s tongue. He thrust the point to within half an inch of the Saint’s left eye.

“How would you like to have only one eye?” The blade twitched sideways. “Or no eyes at all?”

“Listen,” said the Rat. “We know that you did not meet the Countess Malffy or Herr Annellatt before tonight. But the Saint wouldn’t come to Vienna, at this time, just as a tourist. We want to know what you came to do, if you have already done it, and all about it.”

“Und ve haf vays off making you talk,” said the Saint, in contemptuously exaggerated burlesque.

“You will also tell us exactly where the Hapsburg Necklace is hidden.”

So that was part of it. They thought that Frankie might have confided her secret to him. That could make things more difficult. Ignorance is one thing which is more easily shown up than it is proved. And this pair looked as if they would take a lot of convincing.

“I’m sorry,” said the Saint, “but I keep my tiara in the bank and only wear paste. One meets so many unpleasant characters around these days. After all, a girl doesn’t want to risk losing her most precious souvenirs.”

The Rat sighed dramatically, but moved his head negatively in reply to the Gorilla’s expectant glance.

“There are better and more painful ways to persuade him,” he said in German. “But not here. And I see that it will take time. Blindfold him, while I see if the car is here.”

He went out, closing the cell door after him. Simon Templar, whose faculties never stopped working when they were not concussed, automatically wondered about the “not here.” A cell such as he was in would have seemed quite satisfactory for what is politely called “intensive interrogation.” A change of venue could only suggest a lavishly equipped chamber of horrors which it was not amusing to imagine.

The Saint had no delusions about the power of painful persuasion. Eventually any human being would break: it was only a question of human willpower against scientifically applied agony. And in that unequal contest, science had always been ahead.

The Saint wondered what his own threshold of surrender would be. And what made the outlook exceptionally gloomy was that they would be seeking information which even in the most abject extreme he would be totally unable to give them.

It was the kind of situation which eliminated any rational scruples against the means to combat it.

The Gorilla hauled Simon to his feet like a rag doll, pulled out a dirty handkerchief, and twirled him around. He stood squarely behind Simon to tie the folded handkerchief over the Saint’s eyes.

Simon reached back, at first cautiously and gently, with his bound hands, and located the Gorilla’s crotch and testicles. He closed one hand on them, in a clamp like a fiercely activated vise.

The Gorilla shrieked aloud, and released the cloth he had been knotting and everything else.

Simon whirled around, keeping his balance as adeptly as a dancer. The Gorilla was bent double, clutching his anguished organs. This callisthenic exercise brought his head down to waist level. The Saint, poised on one foot, kicked it like a football, with compound interest for the kick which he himself had received.

The Gorilla instantly stopped screaming, and crumpled into blissful anaesthesia.

Simon Templar dropped to his knees, and somewhat laboriously, as it had to be with his hands tied behind him, located the Gorilla’s switch knife. After that, it took him less than a minute to cut the cords from his wrists.

So far, so good! The Saint flexed his muscles and massaged the circulation back into his arms. All he had to do now was to get through the locked door and out of a building whose plan was unknown to him, and past any guards who might be still around. The thought of these obstacles made him feel quite pleased with his situation. He only hoped he would meet the Rat on his way out. He wanted to give him an object-lesson in the perils of arrogance that was not sustained by personal prowess in the arts of self-defence. It should be possible to get this into his head, even without surgery, perhaps by throwing him out of a convenient window or down a staircase. Viennese staircases are usually very long, winding, and particularly hard, being made of stone.

He was not daunted by the unknown quantity of other Gestapo cohorts whom he might encounter. At that hour, there were likely to be very few on duty, and a free and untrammelled Saint would certainly be able to cope with a couple of Nazi-type thugs, especially as he would have the advantage of the element of surprise. To paraphrase the poet, his strength was as the strength of ten, not for the reason that his heart was all that pure, but just because it was. Even though he was no Sir Galahad, he was never awed by being to some extent outnumbered. And now, thanks to the Gorilla’s knife, he was not even unarmed.

His ears had told him that the Rat had not locked the cell door when he left, and in fact there would have been no reason to do so. Simon opened it cautiously, and stepped out into a dimly lit grey-walled corridor.

He had hardly stepped out when he recognised it.

It was the passage through which Annellatt had led him from the courtyard of the apartment building to the garage. The “cell” which he had escaped from lay behind one of the unpainted doors which he had seen in passing, and must have been some kind of former store-room.

The Rat and the Gorilla must have thrown him in there simply for temporary storage. And this explained why they could not use it for a prolonged “interrogation,” and the Rat’s reference to a car which had apparently been sent for.

It also disposed of Annellatt’s rash statement that they would not have discovered the connection between the garage and the residential building.

Having found his bearings, the Saint was faced with an immediate decision: to continue his escape through the garage, or to return to the flat and warn the others — if it wasn’t already too late for that...

It took him exactly two seconds to choose the latter. Whatever the risk, he couldn’t make good his own getaway without knowing what had happened to Frankie.

He retraced the passage through the door to the central courtyard. Its baroque splendour was silent and deserted.

The door to Annellatt’s principal stairway was locked. Before ringing the bell beside it, he tried to recall the position of the other door by which Annellatt had brought him out. This was a little more difficult, but he thought he located it correctly, and tried the handle.

Either by accident or design, it was not locked.

But he had barely moved the door the necessary minimum of millimetres to discover this when there was a creak of hinges from the building’s main entrance. Turning his head, he saw the inset door starting to open. It might only be another perfectly innocent tenant coming home, but the Saint could not take a chance on it. With the silent stealth of a bashful ghost, he backed off so that one of the courtyard’s massive marble columns was between him and the incomer.

Pressing himself tight against the pillar, and tracking the other’s progress by the echoing sound of his footsteps, Simon kept himself completely hidden until his ears told him that the man had passed and was moving away from him. Only then did he come from behind his cover and see the back of a short figure in a raincoat and hat which he felt sure of recognising.

He stepped out of cover, caught up in three soundless strides, and collared the man around the throat in the crook of his left arm. In a simultaneous movement, he brought the Gorilla’s knife, in his right hand, into full view before his captive’s face.

“Halb so wild,” he advised gently. “Didn’t you just say we had something to finish?”

The man’s hat, at first knocked over his eyes by the stranglehold, fell off completely, and the Saint found himself looking down at the unmistakable, even from that awkward angle, snub-nosed pudding features of Max Annellatt.

4

“Pardon me,” said the Saint politely, releasing him. “But for a moment I thought you were someone else. Is Frankie upstairs?”

“No, I sent her off with Leopold soon after you left, in his car. To the Malffy Palais, to pack a bag and go straight on to my country place. I promised her we would join them there.”

“Why weren’t you in the garage to meet me?”

“I went with them to the Palais, to be sure it was not under surveillance. I don’t think Leopold would have known what to do if it had been. Then it took me an infernal time to get a taxi to bring me back. I apologise for being late — but how did you get in?”

“Those lads from the Gestapo let me in, and coshed me before I could find out they weren’t you.”

Max’s eyes widened.

“Then they have found out about the garage! But it must have been since we left.” He glanced apprehensively across the courtyard at the door to the passageway. “But you—”

“I managed to get away, by a trick which would have horrified the Marquis of Queensbury. If not his son. But even if one of them isn’t in top form at the moment, we’d better not spend any more time nattering here.”

“I saw you had left my car up the street, as I came in the taxi,” Annellatt said. “And now you have explained to me why no one was watching the front of the building. Let us take advantage of it before they realise that two people can be in two places at once.”

“You took the words out of my mouth,” said the Saint.

They crossed quickly to the front door, which Max opened and pre-empted the first step out — “As a resident here, I have every right to come and go as I please.” But the street outside was deserted.

They hurried along to the next block, where Annellatt headed authoritatively for the door on the driver’s side and opened it. The Saint just as naturally accepted the passenger position. He found that he still had the ignition key, and handed it over.

“She goes well, doesn’t she?” Annellatt said as he started the engine. “But it was careless of you to leave the doors unlocked, especially with your luggage in the car. You should never leave things in unlocked cars in Vienna. The inhabitants of this town are strictly honest, but that doesn’t stop them stealing and cheating the tax inspectors. Only the Viennese can be moral and immoral at the same time.”

“That isn’t just Viennese, it’s an Austrian national characteristic,” Simon permitted himself to generalise. “But if you take that personally, I hope it’s in the nicest way.”

Max seemed to take no umbrage. There was a slight smile on his lips as he kept his eyes on the road. One would not have taken him for a rally driver, but he handled the Mercedes impeccably.

“Would you like to tell me now how you escaped?”

Simon filled him in briefly on the details.

“My head still aches,” he concluded, “but I think the Gorilla will be aching a bit longer.”

“It will not make him more friendly if you ever meet again,” Annellatt opined. “Let us hope that will not happen. But I’m now convinced that your reputation is well deserved.”

“I only wish,” said the Saint frankly, “that I knew more about yours.”

“It would depend entirely on who you heard it from. But I expect that is something we have in common.”

The Saint looked out of the window.

“Where are we now? Isn’t that the Stadt Park?”

“Yes. You know Vienna well, Simon?”

“Well enough. I know where to eat, sleep, and enjoy myself. That’s all one need know about a town.”

Max laughed.

“Especially the last. Perhaps we can trade some addresses. By the way, have you been to Baden?”

“Not often. I’m not old or rheumatic enough to need the spa waters, and the Casino is really pretty small time. Young Leopold’s mother wouldn’t be seen dead there, I’m sure, and the town strikes me as being a sort of undertaker’s happy hunting ground. But why do you ask?”

“My place is near there,” replied Annellatt, pressing his foot down on the accelerator as they came out on the main road to Schönbrun. “At this hour of the day it should not take us long to reach it.”

For a while he devoted himself to thrusting the car along the broad avenue without further talk. As they passed Schönbrun Palace, the Saint wondered, as he always did when he saw that great edifice, about the composition of an Imperial mind which could think in terms of a summer cottage with a thousand rooms. They left the Palace behind them and headed south-west towards the Neusiedlersee, skirting the Wienerwald.

When they were in the country, Max really let the Mercedes go. It seemed to handle itself as if it had a spirit and a | mind of its own. Max glanced at Simon.

“I love driving fast,” he remarked. “Life is so slow. Anything which can speed it up and make it amusing is so much to the good.”

Simon concurred, with a reservation.

“Almost anything. I can’t stand roller coasters, or those other machines that spin you around in three or four directions at once. I’m afraid you’ll never see me having a big time in the Prater.”

“That is childish stuff, fit only for the Viennese who are all children at heart. That’s what makes them so dangerous. They are loving, happy, and utterly ruthless, like children. You and I are adults. I think we understand each other, yes?”

“I might understand you better,” said the Saint levelly, “if I really knew anything about you.”

“I thought I had told you a lot, for such a short acquaintance.”

“Not about yourself.”

“Do I seem such a mysterious personage?”

“It’s a bit of a mystery to me,” said the Saint bluntly, “how a man who makes such mistakes as you have can be as successful as you’ve obviously been. Or expect to go on getting away with it.”

“What mistakes, for instance?”

“For instance, assuming that the Gestapo wouldn’t be wise to your back garage exit.”

“I still think it was true at the time. I did not say they would never find it.”

“But it was a bad under-estimate, all the same. Now, you were sure that the Malffy Palais wasn’t being watched, at least tonight. Perhaps because they were waiting for Frankie at your flat. But they know you’re involved in the Necklace business with her. The Rat used your name when he started to question me. So why wouldn’t they know about this country place of yours? Why are you sure they’re such an inefficient lot, this Viennese Gestapo?”

Max shrugged.

“The Austrians are not a very efficient race. But we do get things done all the same. You may remember the old joke in the War. ‘The situation in Berlin is serious but not hopeless. The situation in Vienna is hopeless but not serious.’ That really sums up our national character.”

“But you lost the War.”

“In a sense, yes. But we made a very good recovery. And when Hitler took over this year he did so because he wanted our gold reserves, which were amongst the highest in Europe — better, I believe, even than those of England.”

The Saint did not reply for a long while. When he finally spoke it was thoughtfully.

“And still you haven’t given me the answers. You just come out as a charming and delightful chap, and probably a thorough-going crook. Perhaps that’s the real reason Frankie picked you as a colleague. You must have some useful contacts both in high places and in the underworld.”

Max plucked a cigarette from a gold case, deftly performing the operation with one hand. Simon pulled out the car lighter and lit it for him. Annellatt’s face appeared weary and almost sad in the brightening glow.

“You are right, of course. I have the entrée into many circles. But the story of my life is long and rather unhappy. I do not like to think about it myself, although admittedly it always lies in the back of my mind.”

“All right,” said the Saint indifferently. “Keep it to yourself then.”

But Max ignored him. He kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead and had the aspect of someone utterly alone, lost in his own bitter memories.

“I was born in Tyrol, the son of a poor farmer. Tourists find that Alpine region very picturesque and beautiful, and they think its inhabitants always look happy and contented. So they do. But that is only to please the tourists!”

He changed gear to negotiate a hill.

“What visitors don’t know is that many of the Tyrolese have an entirely subnormal level of existence. Indeed, the kindly tourist would be horrified if he knew the extent of poverty there. That is why it is kept from him, because the Tyrolese need his money, even though, to speak frankly, they don’t much like tourists.”

The car surged forward as he changed back into high.

“I’m not too keen on most tourists myself,” Simon admitted. “Somehow, every country always seems to export its worst specimens. Or maybe going abroad brings out the worst in them.”

“Yes, but you dislike them from the vantage point of superiority. You are rich and aristocratic. I can tell you it is not very pleasant to know that others are wealthy and wasting food when you and your family are poor and hungry. My mother died when I was ten of consumption, aggravated by malnutrition. No, let’s be honest, starvation would be more accurate. The fact that she was regularly knocked about by my father, who was a drunken brute, did not help. But perhaps he only drank to forget how unable he was to cope with the miserable situation of his family.”

Simon noticed that the knuckles of Max’s hands showed white as he gripped the wheel with sudden intensity. Then, as if coming back from a long distance, he continued.

“We were a large family. Poor families often are, in this country at any rate. There were too many for my father to provide for. We had to fend for ourselves. Two of my sisters and a brother died, simply because they could not, how do you say it, make the grade. Another brother emigrated to the United States, where he has obviously done quite well, for though we have never heard from him since, I saw his name in the paper connected with a Grand Jury investigation in New York.” Max chuckled. “It was my brother who was being investigated.”

His expression became sombre again.

“Two of my other sisters were forced to sell themselves to tourists who admired the beauties of Tyrol a little too personally. One of them now lives in Innsbruck and the other in St Anton. Both are married and run excellent pensions of extreme respectability.” His irrepressible Austrian humour flashed back for an instant in his eyes. “They do not approve of me. I am the black sheep of the family.”

The Saint was sympathetic to Max’s story, but he was also aware that it was a pitch for his good will.

“You don’t seem to have done so badly for yourself,” he observed.

“I’ve done very well. I realised early that life is what you make it. I decided to make mine extremely comfortable. That I have done.”

“I’m glad your story has a happy ending.”

Max gave him a steady look. “That was not part of my bargain with life. I did not ask for happiness. People who are happy are either saints or idiots.”

“Point taken,” Simon conceded. “I’m happy!”

“Yes, you may be a ‘Saint’ but not quite the usual kind, and that naturally makes me want to ask questions of my own.”

“Fire away,” said the Saint. “It costs nothing to ask.”

“I was wondering what brought you to Vienna, before you so providentially met Frankie.”

The Saint sighed.

“Everyone seems to be curious about that,” he said. “But I’m afraid that’s one I’m not answering. Perhaps I’ll tell you all about it in a couple of hundred years, and I think it might amuse you. But for now you’ll have to take my word that it had absolutely nothing to do with you, Frankie, or the Hapsburg Necklace.”

He knew now that Annellatt’s reminiscence had also been a bid for reciprocal confidence, but Max seemed to accept its failure with good grace.

“That at least is worth knowing,” Annellatt said, and drove on in silence for several kilometres.

After some time he braked suddenly and swung the car off on to a side road, which joined the main one where two ruined castles flanked it on opposite sides. Simon had seen them before and knew that to get to them they must have bypassed the town of Baden. They were called Rauhenstein and Rauheneck, and they flanked the road to Mayerling. Simon figured they must have been built by two rival barons who wanted to be near enough to each other to have a good bash-up when they felt like it. It occurred to him that the Middle Ages must have been full of fun like that.

They travelled a short while down the lane, twisting and turning as the road took them. Then suddenly ahead of them loomed another castle, looking in the bright morning sunlight like something painted on the backdrop of an operetta. This one was not ruined and indeed seemed to be in excellent repair.

Max drove the car to the entrance gate which was guarded by two towers and blocked by heavy wooden doors.

“Here we are,” he said, and blew a tattoo on his car horn.

In a moment or two the doors opened on silent, well-oiled hinges. Max drove the car through the gate and into a stone-flagged courtyard.

“Let me relieve at least one of your anxieties,” he said. “This place, in the official records, is owned by a Baron von Birkehügel of Salzburg. I think it will take even the Gestapo a long time to discover that I have ennobled myself, and to identify him with me.”

The Castle was of that typical Austrian kind in which Renaissance classical details had been added to plaster over a medieval stone framework. The walls, Simon judged, would probably be about six feet thick, but the effect of the Renaissance overlay was graceful, light, and charming. He turned to his host.

“Very nice. Just what everyone should have. When does the chorus come on?”

Max laughed and got out of the car. Simon followed suit An elderly man hurried towards them from under the gateway arch. He was evidently a retainer of sorts for he was wearing a green baize apron.

“Good evening, Anton,” said his master in German. “I have brought a friend with me, Mr Templar, an English gentleman. Please see that a room is prepared for him at once.”

The old man bowed towards the Saint, bending almost double.

“Good morning, sir,” he said in English. “Welcome to Schloss Duppelstein.”

Simon returned his greeting and glanced around the courtyard before following him into the Castle, which consisted of a main central portion which obviously housed the state rooms, as indicated by a row of large windows overhung with carved pediments, and two wings, each fronted by an arcade, above which ran a roofed wooden gallery, carved in a fanciful manner and painted in gay colours. Above these rose plaster-covered walls and two tiers of windows. The battlements of the Castle had been removed in Renaissance days and the structure had been given a tile roof in the French style.

A figure came out on to the wooden gallery of the left wing. It was female, lovely, and Frankie.