The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (11 page)

“That would be quite easy. If he took a
rope he could let
himself down from almost any of the outside windows.
He’d
have to wait until it was dark, of course. But there are so
many rooms
that I don’t think even the Gestapo can have oc
cupied them
all.”

“Right,” said the Saint. “If
I took a rope, a sleeping bag, a
picnic basket, and a good book, I could stay
for a week if I
liked the place.” He turned to Annellatt. “I
shall have to give you a shopping list.”

Max nodded.

“Nat
ü
rlich.
Anything you need can be obtained.”

“The rope isn’t a bad idea,” said
the Saint seriously. “And a
few tools. Also, some clothes. Dressed as we
are now, any of
us would attract attention, whatever we were doing. We
need the sort of things that any local workman would wear.”

“—or a peasant girl,” Frankie put
in.

“You are not going,” Leopold insisted.

Frankie drew herself up.

“If anyone is going to fetch the
Necklace, I shall have to be there. I am its Keeper, and only I know where it
is.”

“You and Mr Templar,” said Max.
“Don’t forget you have
told him.”

Simon shook his head.

“She has told me nothing except that
it’s in the Castle.”

For a moment Max looked disconcerted.

“Oh. I thought you said … ?”
He looked at Frankie.,
enquiringly.

“I only said I had told him where it
was. By that I meant
that it was in the Castle. I did not say
where
it was hidden.”

“I see, said Max thoughtfully. “But
is that wise? Let us
pray that nothing ever happens to you. But
if it did, someone else should know where to look for it.”

Frankie’s expression was enigmatic.

“I will do what I think best.”

“If you tell anyone, you will tell
me!” exploded Leopold. “I
am one of the family. Mr Templar is a
stranger and a noted
…
er
…”

“Scoundrel?” supplied the Saint
affably. “But that’s what
makes me the man for the job. Now, as a
professional scoun
drel, I’m thinking of something a bit more difficult for
Max’s
list. To go with the clothes, we should have suitable identity
papers. I
know that they’re always possible to get, if you know
where to get them.
Do Max’s connections extend to that?”

Annellatt pursed his lips.

“It could be arranged.”

“Then while you’re at it, it would be
better still to have a
second set, in totally different names, to fall back on if the
first lot get blown and we find ourselves on the
lam—should I
translate that?”

Annellatt’s brown eyes bubbled momentarily
with the imp
ish merriment to which they were disarmingly
susceptible.

“For my sins, I have learned some of
those expressions,” he
said, but made a colloquial German
translation.

He turned back to Simon.

If one can be done, both can be done,” he
said. “Anton
will take and develop the necessary pictures, at once.
They
could be ready tonight. But the papers will take a little
longer. It
may take two days.”

“The Hapsburg Necklace has been around
for quite a few years,” said the Saint. “I expect it can hold out for
a couple more days, if the moths don’t get to it.”

Max stood up.

“Then make your list, Simon, and you
can rely on me to do my part. While I am busy, will you all please regard
Schloss
Duppelstein as your own home.”

2

Simon Templar, as a natural sybarite,
greatly enjoyed the next
forty-eight hours. Schloss Duppelstein was
run luxuriously.
He had a sumptuously furnished bedroom, with a bathroom
attached,
in the east wing of the Castle overlooking the court
yard. Frankie and Leopold were housed in
the west wing.
Max’s quarters were in the
central section. What delighted
the
Saint most about his accommodation, however, was the beautiful porcelain stove
which stood in the corner of his bed
room
and filled it with heat. He considered such stoves to be
works of art and regretted that in Austria they
were getting
rarer as more modern
forms of heating took over.

There was only one small cloud on his horizon. Erich was
seconded to be Simon’s valet, and the Saint got the
impres
sion that his work entailed a
bit more snooping and curiosity
about
the Saint’s affairs and effects than was normally permis
sible. Still, he reckoned he could deal with Erich
firmly
enough should the need arise,
and he was never one to let such small matters, or the opinions of servants (or
anyone
else, for that matter) bother
him.

Cars and tennis courts were at the disposal
of the guests,
and
the weather was still warm enough to allow hardy individuals a quick dip in
the icy, highly ornamented outdoor
swimming
pool. There were many lovely walks and rides in
the hills around the Castle, and Max Annellatt had his own stables,
filled with thoroughbreds, which he frankly admitted he could not ride.

Max was kindness itself, and he personally
drove Simon,
together with Frankie and Leopold, to see some of the
sights
of the surrounding countryside. His cat came along on the ex
pedition, and even when his
master drove, Thai lay on his shoulders like a fur collar. Simon came to the
conclusion that
the Siamese was the only
creature Max really loved, for he
treated
it with a tenderness he never showed to humans.
When they drove into the flat Burgenland to see the tomb of
Haydn at Eisenstadt in the extraordinary church
built in the shape of a huge rock, but not in a huge rock, Thai wandered
off
and got lost, and Max was distraught until the cat was dis
covered in one of the sentry boxes of the nearby
Esterhazy Palace. Max joked that as a member of the Siamese Royal
Family,
Thai had probably been looking for a sentry to salute him, or even for Prince
Esterhazy himself.

The following morning, Max left early on his
self-imposed
errands. Either from tact or malice, he asked Leopold to
go
with him for company, which the young man could scarcely
refuse. A
little later, Frankie suggested to Simon that they go for a drive in Leopold’s
car.

“I don’t think he’d like that,”
Simon demurred.

“Perhaps,” she said carelessly.
“But if I tell him it was my
idea, he won’t dare to say so.”

They both enjoyed each other’s company and recognised
that they shared a certain cavalier attitude to life, and they
found it
very pleasant to be temporarily free of the jealousies
of Leopold, and
Max’s somewhat overpowering hospitality.
Although Patricia
Holm was never far from his thoughts, it
was very tempting to
accept Frankie’s open readiness for a flir
tation. And he would
have had no guilty feelings about Pa
tricia, who had never tried to tie
him any more than he tied
her. He was more wary of feeling guilty about
Frankie, who
he felt might get in deeper than she intended, if he
went too
far with her game. For all her independence of spirit, the
Saint figured, she was the sort of girl who would take a love
affair
seriously, and seriousness in such matters can lead to the
sort of complications the Saint
did not want at that stage of
his career.

However, he had no compunction about taking
advantage of her ardour to make another attempt to find out from her
where the Hapsburg Necklace was
hidden in Schloss Este.
She was wickedly
cagey and enjoyed teasing him with hints
while at the same time never giving him a clue as to its where
abouts. She told him her father had told her
mother where
the Necklace was hidden
as he lay dying from a heart attack.
Her
mother had given the secret to Frankie when the girl
came of age.
Frankie told Simon all this while they were driving through the Wienerwald in
the midst of glorious
autumn colours.

He finally changed the subject, to try
something else.

“How did you meet up with Max?” he
asked. “He’s not
your league at all.”

“My what?”

“Your class. He’s not
Erstegesellschaft,
or even
Zweite.
In
fact, he’s not
Gesellschaft
at all.
He admits it himself. He’s a
self-made man, and he’s made a pretty good job
of it, but
you know how snobby you Austrian aristocrats are.”

“That’s why we adore the British and the
Americans. They
are the only other people who assume that the entire
world was made for them. The Germans think that even if it was
made for
someone else, they can conquer it. The French
think that France was
made for them and the rest of the
world doesn’t count. The Italians say
‘See Naples and die’ or
‘See Rome and pay.’ They are not even a
nation. And so it
goes. But the English and Austrian upper classes seem to
have
sprung from the same womb.”

“But not from the same father. Funnily
enough I’ve heard
exactly the same piece from some of my other Austrian
friends.
Do they teach it to you in school?”

For a moment Frankie looked annoyed. Then she
burst out
laughing.

“Certainly only the English-speakers can
be as rude as the
Austrians,” she said. “But seriously, we are
not nearly so snobby as we used to be. Nowadays we are quite democratic. We mix
with all sorts of people.” She gave Simon a mischievous look.
“Especially if they have money.”

“Well, Max certainly has that.”

“Yes, he does. He’s very well-known in
business indeed
in many other circles. I met him at a party given by an
Arch
duke—a very poor Russian archduke.”

“And you liked him straight off?”

She shrugged.

“One can like anyone one needs if one
puts one’s mine to
it.”

“I don’t think you’re as cynical as you
pretend,” Simon
said.

“I’m not cynical at all. I’m just a
realist. I needed someone like him, powerful and unscrupulous, with the power
and
influence money brings to help me get the Necklace back. I
also knew that he is a strong
Royalist. He would like to see
the
Pretender, young Archduke Otto, back on the throne. He
told me himself that he was prepared to use all
his power and
money in the cause of
the Monarchy. And that means that he
must
be in favour of the aristocracy.” She made a sweeping
gesture with her hand. “But he is the type
who never does anything which he does not consider an investment.”

“And so you told him about the Hapsburg
Necklace?”

“Yes, but not where it is hidden.”
She gave him a sideways
look. “I shan’t even tell you
that.”

“How am I supposed to get it for you
then? Just play Hunt the Necklace all over Schloss Este and hope I’ll come
across it?”

“No,” she replied calmly. “You
are taking me with you.”

The Saint shook his head.

“So you’ve said before. But I’m not,
you know. I always
travel light. I never take any excess baggage if I can
help it.”

Her eyes laughed back at him.
“Touch
é
,
but we’ll see who wins, you or me. I
might try by myself. Then, if I fail, I can
always fall back on
you.”

“You can fall back on me anytime, darling.” replied the
Saint gallantly. “But what has Max done for
you so far?”

“He has put his organisation at my disposal,
and found out things about the surroundings of Schloss Este that even I did
not know.
Even now, he is getting us false papers, which I
would never know how
to get. And he has men who would commit any crime that is necessary, at his
orders—or for his
money.”

“What does he think he will get out of
it, or shouldn’t one
ask?”