The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (2 page)

Meanwhile, however, he felt no monastic
obligation to ig
nore anyone else of that gender who pleased the eye and
the
imagination.

The girl had not been sitting at her table
for long before a
man joined her. He was not at all the sort of person one
would have
expected her to be waiting for. His slight frame
was encased in a
raincoat, the belt of which was drawn so
tightly that the coat
ballooned out below it almost like a
skirt. His face was narrow, and the
felt hat which he did not
take off when he sat down was pulled over his
forehead, giv
ing him a somewhat sinister air. His appearance reminded
Simon of
nothing so much as a large rat, for his skin was grey,
his eyes narrow and
shifty, and his mouth thinly compressed. It showed petulance rather than
strength, however. When he finally did take his hat off his sinister quality
largely disap
peared, for he was completely bald save for some wisps
of hair
which stuck out clownlike from the sides of his head.

The Saint watched the couple with idle
interest. The man
was talking to the girl in a low voice with great
urgency. At in
tervals she shook her head violently and even angrily.
Sud
denly the man stopped talking, and fixing her with an almost
hypnotic
look he put on his hat and stood up, becoming once
more the
evil-looking rat.

She sat for a moment staring at him, an
expression of as
tonishment on her face. Then she too rose—somewhat reluc
tantly,
the Saint thought. Pulling her coat about her she
started for the
door.

For a moment her eyes met the Saint’s. To his
surprise,
they
seemed to wish to say something, but he decided that
that was just wishful thinking on his part. Then she was
gone, probably leaving his life for ever.

The thought gave him a twinge of regret.
Hotels are lonely
places
for men who do not have their wives or girlfriends
along. Also, Simon was very choosey. A girl had to have that
special quality, something exciting and unknown
yet almost
tangible, which made her
different. This girl had it.

Simon wondered whether she and her companion
were
lovers. In Vienna this would be quite possible, even though
he was
obviously much older than she, and a distinctly unat
tractive type at that. In Vienna
relationships between men
and women,
although tinged with the romance of a Strauss
waltz, were usually totally down-to-earth as well. The man
could have been rich and the girl poor. Simon
decided against
this little fantasy,
principally because he did not like the idea himself. In any case, if the Rat
was rich, he was too mean to
buy
himself a new raincoat.

He was idly speculating about other possible
reasons that
might have brought this unlikely pair together when he
sud
denly noticed that the girl had left her handbag behind.
There
might still be time to catch her. He sprang to his feet, grabbed up the bag,
and hurried after her.

It was blowing and raining outside. In the
gloom Simon
could see the figures of the man and the girl hurrying
up the
street towards a parked car. Huge jagged shadows chased after
them,
created by the swaying sign of the Hofburg restaurant.
Heedless of the rain,
the Saint ran after them, moving silently
like a great cat. He
quickly caught up with the pair.

Simon spoke fluent German, as he did a number
of lan
guages. He held out the bag towards the girl and explained
how he
had come by it. Her face was pale and ghostly in the
half light, and her
blue eyes looked almost black and seemed very large. It suddenly struck Simon
that she was frightened.
“Danke, danke vielmals,”
she said
huskily.

The man grabbed her by the arm.

“Komm!”
he
commanded her roughly.

Simon noticed that he stood very close to
her, pressing his body to hers in a protective fashion. Perhaps they were mar
ried after
all. If that was the case he did not think much of
her lot—or rather her
“little.” The man looked a bit of a
brute, but a mean
rather than a strong one.

Simon never minded out-and-out badness. In
fact, it rather
appealed
to him as long as it was openhearted and large-
minded. But petty viciousness was anathema to him. It re
minded him of tax collectors, customs officials,
and all the other people who wanted to spoil a free and lusty enjoyment
of life.

The girl stood firm.

“Nein. Ich muss diesem Herren
danken.”

“Komm!”
snarled
the man again, tugging at her arm. “Wir
haben uns versp
ä
tet.”

The girl shook him off. She opened her bag
and fumbled in
it.

“Hier ist etwas f
ü
r Sie.”

She handed Simon a banknote.

The Saint was irritated, understandably so. No man who
has done what he considers to be a gallant act
likes to be
tipped for it, unless he
belongs to those vocations in which
tipping
is a part of income. He thrust the money curtly back
at her.

“I am not a porter,” he told her
in German.

She was finished with him however. Brushing
the money
aside, she turned and got into the parked car while the
man
held the rear door open for her. Simon saw there was another
man in
the driver’s seat. He was bulky and had a simian appearance. The rat-faced man
joined the girl and slammed the door in Simon’s face. The car shot off,
spattering him with rainwater from the gutter.

Cramming the banknote into his pocket, Simon
walked back to the Hofburg restaurant fuming. When he got there
he thought it might be soothing
to have a drink and he or
dered a glass of
the apricot brandy which he considered to be Austria’s finest beverage. When
the
Barack
came, he reached
into
his side pocket and pulled out the banknote the girl had
just given him, thinking wryly that he might as
well use it to
solace the pride that
it had wounded.

To his surprise he noticed that it was covered
with writing.

He paid the waitress with another banknote
from his wal
let and spread the note with writing on it out on the
table.
The script was in German:

Emergency, help! Please
 
ring U
-58-331
  
and say that
Frankie
has been kidnapped. Keep this for your trouble.

The Saint felt an old familiar tingle of
anticipation spreading through his ganglions. It was the physical confirmation
of
a psychic certainty. Something in his subconscious clicked
and
switched on that delicious anticipatory glow which as
sured that Adventure
was rearing its lovely head. It was rather
like water divining,
or dowsing as the practitioners preferred
to call it. One either had the extra sense
or one didn’t. The
Saint did.

He sat thoughtfully looking at the note. How
did the message come to be on it? The girl had certainly written nothing
in the
restaurant. Therefore it must have been prepared be
forehand, as a
precaution against the need for it. But why
should anyone go to
the extravagance of writing out a mes
sage of this kind on a banknote?

Of course, it could be that the writing was a
childish prank
and the girl hadn’t even known it was there. But the
Saint’s
joyous glow told him that this was not the explanation.

Well, there was one way of finding out the
truth. He went
through to the front lobby of the hotel where there was a
public telephone, an unusual amenity in Viennese hotels. He gave the
operator the number. There was a short interval and
mysterious clickings,
and Simon had the sensation he fre
quently experienced while using
foreign telephones that he
was quite likely to end up talking to
himself. The thought oc
curred to him that in the new Nazi Vienna a
Gestapo agent
might be monitoring all telephone calls. The idea of such
an
invasion of his privacy irritated him, but then making tele
phone
calls through sluggish operators back home in Britain,
where there was no
such supervision, irritated him too.

Then a man’s voice said: “
Allo, allo,
ici Radio Paris.”

The Saint never allowed anything to take him
aback. He
might be surprised but he was never dumbfounded.

“Ici Radio Luxembourg,”
he
retorted.
“Prenez Bovril pour combattre le sens coulant!”

There was a moment of silence. Then the
other laughed.

“Tr
è
s
comique,
but Radio Luxembourg advertises in Eng
lish. You
are English, no?”

“Well, actually I’m a Nigerian
Eskimo,” Simon replied. “I learnt my English at Eton, Borstal, and
Quaglino’s. But my education doesn’t come into it. I have a message for you.
It’s
from someone called Frankie.”

“So?” The voice had lost its
booming affability and was suddenly coldly guarded. “What is this message,
then?”

“She says she has been kidnapped.”

There was such a long silence Simon thought
he had been
disconnected. Finally the man spoke. His English, though
fluent, had an unmistakable Austrian lilt.

“If you would tell me your name … ?”

“It is unimportant. Anonymous Bosch
Unimportant, Es
quire. Who are you?”

“See here, my friend!” the other
snapped back. “This is
serious. Her life may be in danger.”

The Saint was as bland as a poker player
bluffing a weak
hand into a good one.

“Suppose we meet somewhere? We must have
a long talk.
I’m dying to catch up on all your news.”

There was another pause. Then the man
chuckled.

“And I should like to meet you, Mr
…
er
…
Unimpor
tant. I
admire your sense of humour. Let us arrange a rendez
vous at the Edelweiss
in half an hour, if you are near enough
to make it. Do you
know the place?”

“No, I don’t, but I daresay a taxi
driver will.”

“They all do. And stick a piece of white
paper in your lapel
so I will recognise you.”

“And how shall I recognise you?”

“I shall be wearing a Siamese
cat,” the man replied, and
hung up.

2

Vienna is really two cities, the Alte Stadt,
dating from the
Middle
Ages, and the baroque city of Maria Theresa with
later additions under the Emperor Franz Joseph. To some ex
tent the two parts mingle. The Alte Stadt is
bounded by The
Ring, Vienna’s main
thoroughfare, built in the nineteenth
century
on the site of the old city wall. But the baroque style
of the outer city has breached this boundary in
many places,
and nowadays most of the medieval buildings of the Alte
Stadt are to be found in the region around its
shopping street,
the Graben.

The Edelweiss was a small cosy restaurant in
this old part
of the town. It was furnished in the Tyrolean manner
with plain wooden chairs and tables, and its walls were covered
with
unvarnished panelling.

At close on ten o’clock that night it was
fairly empty. The
Saint chose a central table where he could see anyone who
came in yet which was in a comparatively isolated position.
He tore
off a corner of a newspaper he was carrying and rolled
it up and stuffed it
in his lapel.

He ordered an apricot brandy and sipped it
while he
watched the door. He wondered vaguely if he might have
mis
understood the man on the telephone. Perhaps he had really
said
Siamese “cap” with a “p,” instead of “cat,” and
would
turn out to be an oriental gentleman wearing his national
headdress.