The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (16 page)

Simon beckoned the officer.

“You are about to take a walk, my
friend,” he said.

The other stared at him with bulging eyes.

“You must be mad.”

The Saint walked over to him. He stuck his
gun into the
man’s ribs and prodded him to the window.

“There you are.” He pointed
downwards. “Take it slowly
and you’ll have no trouble. Get up too much
momentum and
you’ll have to take your meals off the mantelshelf for a
while.”

A gleam of hope shone for an instant in the man’s eyes.
The Saint could tell what was going through his
mind. He
evidently regarded Simon as
a fool for not shooting him out
of hand. Once he had got beyond the
range of Simon’s gun
he could raise the
alarm. Happily for his peace of mind, he
didn’t know what the Saint had in store for him.

He gave Simon a scornful look as he climbed
through the
window and dropped down on to a ledge below. The Saint
watched
him begin his descent. Much of the cliff consisted of
long shale slides.
These were not too perilous, although some
of them ended in a
potentially lethal sheer drop.. Never
theless, there was no reason why the
German should not get
down safely if he kept his head. All Simon
was going to do
was to complicate his life for a little while and give
him some
thing
with which to occupy his mind. After all, one didn’t
want even members of the SS to get too bored. That would
have been unkind. The Saint was all for being
kind. He
leaned out of the window and
fired several shots in the direc
tion
of the German, who quickly ducked down behind a big
rock.

The shots had the effect he desired. Guards
rushed to win
dows and parapets. Whenever the German showed himself
they promptly fired at him,
reasonably enough, for no one
had any
business climbing that cliff up or down, especially a man in his underwear.
Anyway, soldiers are not given to asking the whys and wherefores in a
top-security situation. They
prefer
to shoot first, partly because it gives them a chance to
do what they are trained to do, and ask or answer
questions
later. The officer was
going to have his work cut out to inch his way down the cliff under fire from
his own men. More
over, the
attention of the garrison would be centred on trying to shoot one of their own
leaders. The piquancy of the situa
tion
struck Simon as purely hilarious, but he couldn’t afford
to stay and enjoy it. He had to take the maximum
advantage
of its help as a
distraction.

He moved quickly to the door on the far side
of the room.
Opening it cautiously, he peered through. Had there been
anyone on the other side the man would not have known
what hit
him, for the Saint was ready for fast and decisive ac
tion. The room was
empty, however. It was apparently an
outer office, for it contained a desk,
a typewriter, a telephone,
and some more filing cabinets. German
bureaucracy evidently
required a lot of paper work, even in the
Gestapo. There
should have been an orderly or a secretary about, but he
or
she was probably having the German equivalent of elevenses:
perhaps a
stein of lager and a triple-decker leberwurst sand
wich.

He walked almost casually across the room.
The door on
the other side gave on to a landing and a wide flight of
stairs
leading to the floors above and below. Here there was a storm
trooper,
but his attention had been seduced by the noise outside, and he was leaning
out of a window, the broad expanse
of his bottom looking comical in the
frame.

Cat-like, the Saint tip-toed across the
landing. He took the
flight of stairs leading downwards. Although
Simon had en
tered the Castle on the ground floor on the north side,
on the
cliff side there were several lower floors, and the steps led to a
hall on
another north side ground floor at a lower level.

Simon went noiselessly down the stairs. They
doubled back
under themselves, out of sight of the trooper, and after
an
other zig or zag, debouched into a large marble-paved hall,
hung with
the usual antlered trophies and some old family
paintings. One of the
portraits, a girl in a ruff and a dress
embroidered with
pearls, was the image of Frankie. It had
that same air of
careless arrogance mixed with friendly amuse
ment, a look which
said, “You may like me, and I like you, in
spite of the fact
that I am much better than you are.”

Simon halted for a moment to think things out.
He was
faced with the choice of more doors, all of them closed.
Which
should he choose to go through? The muted sound of firing still came from above
and he could hear the echo of
hurrying footsteps in distant corridors. He
had no time to
waste.

It seemed probable that Frankie would be held
in the most
inaccessible
part of the Castle. That would be in the tower, or even in a dungeon beneath
it. Medieval towers were built as
keeps—to
keep people out, in fact!—in which to make a stand
should the rest of the castle be captured. Its
inaccessibility
could still be used to
keep prisoners or secrets in. Simon
figured
his best bet, therefore, was to head for the keep.

He judged this to be in a direction opposite to the staircase.
He traversed the marble floor and opened one of
the heavy double doors. He had guessed right. On the other side, the
massive walls of a large room still furnished in
somewhat me
dieval style with trestle
tables and benches indicated that he had entered the oldest part of the Castle.
At the other end of this room, which could well have been the original banquet
ing hall, stone stairs led upwards and downwards,
spiralling as
they went

He was now faced with another decision:
whether to look
for Frankie in an upstairs chamber, or in a subterranean
prison
below. He decided that the Teutonic mind would hold
that prisoners should
be kept in dungeons, and he headed
down the stairs.

At the bottom was another passage. The only
light came
from some tiny windows set high up in the outside wall.
These were barred, although
they were too small for any adult
to get
through. A heavy oaken door at the end of the passage was half open. The Saint
crept up to it and squinted through.

He was looking into a small anteroom. Two
soldiers were
seated at a table playing cards. The Saint had caught
them in
flagrant
dereliction of their duty: they were certainly supposed to be on guard, for
their guns leant against the table
and they
must have felt quite sure of being able to hear any
body approaching in time to put away their cards
and resume their duty positions.

Simon felt a surge of exhilaration in his
always sanguine
spirits. Guards, except at royal palaces, where they are
largely
for show, usually guard something. In this case it was likely that
these two were watching over a prisoner: Frankie …

From this room another flight of stone steps led down
wards, to a dungeon, or perhaps a number of them,
the Saint
surmised. In the old days,
escape from such a set-up, past
guards
and locked doors, would have been virtually impossi
ble. It was not going to be a Cakewalk even now,
but for the
moment Simon had the
initiative.

Pulling down his tunic and adopting a ramrod
Prussian air,
he stomped into the room, for the first time letting his
bor
rowed boots make the sort of sound they were designed for.
The two
soldiers looked up with complete consternation writ largely on their
countenances. They were so taken aback that they could not even rise to their
feet.

The Saint did not give them a chance to pull
themselves
together. Freezingly he glared at them and then pointed
to
the dungeon staircase. “Take me to the prisoner,” he com
manded in
his harshest and most arrogant German.

The two men did not question his authority.
There was no
reason why they should. An SS officer in uniform could
only
appear in the midst of a Gestapo fortress with the proper
accreditation
and in fact could only be a real officer in the SS.
That was their simple and logical
reasoning. They leapt to
their feet and
hastened downstairs ahead of Simon, babbling
abject excuses for their conduct.

At the foot of the steps there was another
heavy door. This
one had a grille in it. Haughtily the Saint pointed to
the lock. One of the guards produced a large iron key and opened it
Simon
waved the soldiers back and strode in.

Frankie was sitting in a corner on a truckle
bed. She looked
pale and dispirited. She glanced up as the Saint entered,
and instantly her posture changed. She gave no sign of recognition, but her
back straightened and her chin assumed a dis
dainful aristocratic
angle.

“Come with me. I wish to talk to
you,” Simon said imperiously, in the bullying tone that he had adopted to
fit his
uniform.

Grabbing her by the arm, he pulled her to her
feet and sent her spinning through the door with such force that she fell
heavily
outside.

The guards laughed sycophantically at this
display of Aryan
superiority. Simon allowed them a tight-lipped smile.
Then, very deliberately, he kicked one of them on the shins and the
other up
the backside.

“Imbeciles!” he shouted. “Pigs like you are a
disgrace to the Fatherland. You will stand here at attention until I get
back, and you had better hope that I shall be in a
good mood
and will not have you
flogged.”

Then, holding Frankie by the elbow, he
propelled her up
the stairs ahead of him.

“Thank you for keeping your head and not
giving me
away,” he whispered as they reached the anteroom.

“I was waiting for you,” she said.
“I knew you’d come,
somehow.”

“God save your trusting fat head,”
said the Saint fervently,
as they crossed the room and fled up the
flight of stairs to the
banqueting hall.

The main hall was still empty, but the sound
of firing had ceased. The SS officer must either have got away or be lying
low—unless,
of course, he had been shot by his own men.

The Saint halted.

“There is a small matter of a
necklace,” he remarked
coolly. “I suppose we might as well pick
it up while we’re
here. I mean, it’ll save us another trip. Not that I
haven’t en
joyed this one. I just love climbing along other people’s
sewers.
But as the saying goes, when you’ve seen one drain
you’ve seen ‘em
all.”

Surprisingly, Frankie shook her head.

“We have no time and we cannot get to
the place where it
is. We must try again.”

The Saint gave her a long incredulous stare.
It was not like
Frankie to give up so easily.

“All right,” he said finally. “Let’s get out of here
then. I
have my own special entrance and
exit.”

He led her up the main staircase.

He had intended dealing with the trooper
outside the secre
tary’s office in the same way as he had handled the
soldiers
guarding the dungeon, but the man was no longer there.
Simon
turned to lead Frankie into the office, and then the
door opened.

They found themselves staring into the muzzle
of a Mauser
machine pistol held by a grim-faced SS corporal.

3

The man lowered his weapon at the sight of
the Saint’s uni
form, and his eyes widened when he saw Frankie.

“Was geschieht, bitte?”
he asked.

“I am from Central Kontrolle,” Simon replied easily.
“I
have been sent to take the Frau Gr
ä
fin back with me. She is an
important prisoner. Air Marshal Göring himself
wishes to see
her in Berlin.” He
leered professionally. “She is a pretty
woman, yes? And the Marshal likes the girls. Perhaps that is the
reason.”