The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (10 page)

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
Birkeh
ü
gel
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 Renais
sance 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 gate
way arch.
He was evidently a retainer of sorts for he was wear
ing a green baize
apron.

“Good evening, Anton,” said his
master in German. “I
have brought a friend with me, Mr Templar, an English gen
tleman. 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.

III

How Leopold’s car was borrowed, and

Hcrr Annellatt provisioned a picnic

1

The Saint slept until midday. Then he got up
and had a long
hot bath and a shave. Feeling much rested and quite
peckish,
he followed Anton who came to lead him to the dining-room.

The inside of the Castle betrayed its
medieval origin, although the stone walls had been plastered over and slit win
dows
replaced by wider ones. According to upper-class Aus
trian custom, wall
spaces whenever possible were embellished
with the skulls,
horns, and antlers of slaughtered animals. The
passion which
aristocrats in all lands have for killing wild
creatures in great
numbers always struck the Saint as dis
tasteful, although he
had shot some big game himself when it
had seemed adventurous.
But whatever killing he did was very
selective, and it would not have done
to hang the heads of his victims on the walls of his home, since many of them
were
human.

Anton led him through an enormous
drawing-room, fur
nished for the most part in Louis Quinze style, but
contain
ing some comfortable-looking sofas and armchairs as well.

He stopped for a moment by another door.

“May I point out to your lordship,”
he said in English,
“that the central part of this house is wired with
burglar
alarms on this floor because of the great value of its contents.

One cannot go even from one of the state
rooms into another without setting off an alarm in this part of the
building.” He
cast his eyes to heaven. “Alas, it is necessary in
these
schreck-
liche
modern days of danger
and violence. In the old times
before the War such a thing would never have
been thought
of.”

“I take it,” said the Saint,
“that guests are expendable. I
mean, the guest wing isn’t wired, or is it?”

Anton shook his head.

“No, sir. There is nothing of great
value there.”

“I suppose that goes for me,”
murmured the Saint, as
Anton opened the door to the dining-room for
him.

Max, Frankie and Leopold were seated at the table and had
already begun their meal. Thai was once again
curled in his favourite position round his master’s shoulders. It was a pleas
ant domestic scene of upper-crust life in Central
Europe. But
it had overtones which jarred slightly.

For one thing, Annellatt, suave and
well-mannnered
though
he was, was not upper-crust. The Saint could not help but feel that the other
two were only there because of Max’s
dubious
respect for conventional ethics and procedures. Of
course, that should not be held against them.
Their part
nership with Max was a purely pragmatic one. In the ordinary
course of society life they and Max would have
been in
different orbits.

But there was more to it than that. The Saint
felt almost as
if he were looking at one of those drawings in magazine
com
petitions which incorporate deliberate errors. There was
something
wrong with this picture, although he couldn’t
quite put his finger
on what it was. Perhaps it was no more
than the rather
bizarre events which had brought them all
together.

He decided that for the time being he was not
going to let
it bother him. He was hungry and in a cheerful mood.

“Ach, good morning, Simon,” cried
Annellatt, getting to
his feet. “I trust you slept well?”

“Like the proverbial baby,” said the
Saint. “Except that
real babies usually seem to wake up
yowling.” He tickled the
Siamese cat behind the ears. “How did he get here—don’t tell
me he drove his own little car.”

“Frankie brought him, in his travelling
basket. I did not
want
to risk having to leave him at the flat in an emergency.” Max pulled out a
chair. “Please forgive us for having started
lunch, but I did not want to hurry you.”

The Saint smiled at Frankie as he took his
seat.

He said: “I did have a nasty dream that I was kidnapped by
the Gestapo. Most realistic it was.”

“Max has told us about your unpleasant
adventure,” she
said. “Really, Austria has become quite
barbaric since the Germans took over.”

Her voice was warm, and her concern seemed
genuine and
spontaneous.

Simon was struck anew by her unusual charm.
He won
dered how much of it was deliberate—or conversely, to what
degree it was natural. One
never knew with Austrians. Charm
was a
national characteristic which with them was both he
reditary and
cultivated. They used it delightfully—and quite
ruthlessly.

Leopold, who had also risen to his feet, gave Simon a short
stiff little bow and sat down again. As far as the
Saint was
concerned, the young Count’s
Austrian charm must have been sent to the cleaners. It certainly wasn’t around,
and
hadn’t been since they met.

Anton and a serious young footman called
Erich waited on
the table, and the conversation touched only on general
topics. For
some reason, the Saint took an instant dislike to
Erich. He was at a
loss to explain this to himself, for Erich
was respectful,
polite, and efficient, which is all that is really
required of footmen.
But there was something about the
young man’s carefully blank dark eyes, and the way his
sandy
hair and bleached eyebrows seemed to
make his personality
fade away, that made the Saint vaguely uneasy about
him.

Coffee and liqueurs were served after lunch
in the drawing-
room,
and when the servants had withdrawn, Herr Annellatt
quickly got down to business.

“Now, about the Necklace,” he
announced briskly, “we
must complete our plan.”

Simon rotated his balloon glass gently,
swirling its pale gold
contents up the sides.

“I thought we already had a general
plan,” he said. “All it needs is a man of exceptional strength,
agility and cunning,
who can climb in and out of castles like a
cat and fight his
way
out of trouble if necessary—or think his way out if needs
be.”

“In fact, someone like the Saint,”
Annellatt said. For a
moment Simon thought he was actually purring,
but then he
realised it must be the cat.

“Since you don’t seem to have anyone who
fits the bill,”
Simon replied modestly.

The Count sprang to his feet.

“Mr Templar would be worse than useless,” he blurted out
angrily. “He is a foreigner and speaks no Hungarian. If anybody goes it
should be me.”

“I can’t see that it makes any difference whether one speaks
Hungarian or not,” said the Saint. “If the breaker-in is discov
ered they’ll merely shoot him out of hand or slap
him in jail for the rest of his life. It won’t do him any good to protest in
his best Magyar that he’s just a plumber who’s
forgotten his
tools.”

“So how do you plan to break into the
Castle?” asked
Frankie in her most adoring manner.

“Yes, how?” echoed Leopold, in a
contrastingly scornful
tone.

The Saint felt sorry for him. The young man was obviously
in love with Frankie and was insanely jealous of
her undisguised fascination with the Saint. Flattering though it was, it was a
complication that Simon could have done without. But
since it was inescapable, as some philosopher said
about some
thing similar, he might
as well relax and enjoy it.

His smile was like a kiss in her direction.
It was no ordeal
for him to play her game in spite of recognising the
innate ruthlessness of her character.

“The plumber routine might be a gambit,
at that,” he said.
“But I’d rather save it for a defence.
I’ve always preferred a
head-on surprise attack to complicated plots
which are liable
to trip over their own webs.”

“But this is not some farm cottage,” retorted Leopold.
“It
is a castle, with modem improvements.”

“And I’m an oldfashioned retired
burglar,” Simon replied
amiably, “which is the last kind of
person they’d expect to be having a go at their battlements.” Max drew on
his cigar.

“In Vienna, I showed you as much as I could,” he said.
“That agricultural drain will bring you close
to the castle—”

“And Frankie may know something about
its weaknesses
from the inside. Like secret passages and what not.”

The girl shook her head.

“We were never at Este very much. My
father liked his cas
tle in Bohemia better.”

“I see,” said the Saint.
“What you might call an
embarras
de ch
â
teaux.”

“I don’t know any secret passages, and I was not brought
up to look at it like a burglar,” Frankie
said, with a flash of
hauteur.
“I can show you where the wine cellars were, and from there one could make
one’s way quite easily to where
the
Necklace is hidden.”

“Suppose Mr Templar did get in,”
said Max, “how would
he get out again?”