The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (15 page)

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

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

Simon put a hand on his shoulder.

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

“Why can’t I come with you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The problem now was what to do with his
captive.

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

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