The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (22 page)

Frankie was suddenly subdued.

“I’m sorry. I never thought of
that,” she said in a small
voice.

“That’s what I mean,” grumbled
Leopold. “You never do.
think of anyone else.”

Her eyes were moist and her lips trembled.
All at once she
had ceased being a poised young woman and was a girl.

“You know that’s not true. Everything I
did was for the
sake of our family and our country.”

“In that case,” Simon put in,
“it’s about time you took a
day off from being the keeper of the
Hapsburg Necklace.”

“What do you mean? Are you just being
rude?”

“Not at all,” said the Saint.
“I’m being very polite—even
complimentary. You’d make a terrific
woman.”

Frankie blushed warmly and was momentarily
silenced.
Leopold, on the other hand, was anything but at a loss
for
words.

“You are just making things worse,”
he snapped at the
Saint.

Simon’s brows lifted.

“By encouraging her to be a woman
instead of a Guardian
Angel? Isn’t that what you would like?”

The other was becoming irascible again.

“That is none of your business. Frankie
has been incredibly foolish, but what she does in her private life is her
affair, or at
least only the concern of our family. We do not permit
strangers
to intrude into our business.”

The Saint was amused by Leopold’s turnabout.

“Perhaps, dear old chap, that’s what’s
been your trouble.
With a good manager, you and Frankie might make the big
leagues,
but on your own you’ll never sell yourselves. Puppet
shows are out these
days.”

Although he was smiling, there was a hint of steel in his
blue eyes.

This time it was Frankie who was the
peacemaker.

“Come on, you two,” she said
soothingly, suddenly becom
ing very adult in her manner. “There’s no
point in our quar
relling. We have been through too much together.” She
turned to the Saint. “What do you think we are supposed to
do
now?”

“I’ll go and ask Anton,” he said.
“Max must have given
him instructions for us. Anyway, we need a
good night’s sleep.
I for one won’t mind bunking down here, then …”

He was interrupted by the sound of a motor.
The head
lights of a car raked the cabin as it came up the rutted
path
through the woods.

“This must be Max now,” Frankie
said with relief.

The Saint looked thoughtful.

“I wonder how he knew we were back?
There’s no tele
phone here, I presume, and smoke signals don’t work at
night.”

“But naturally, he has simply come to see
if we are back
yet.”
Leopold sounded slightly impatient.

“Hold it,” said the Saint sharply.
“I don’t think it’s—”

Before he could finish his sentence the door
was flung open
from outside and two figures stepped into the room.

They were an incongruous pair, almost like a
music hall
turn:
one large, one small, and both in ballooning raincoats.

“Achtung!”
the small
one said, and his gun lent authority
to his words.

“Kommt Zeit, kommt Rat,”
murmured
the Saint, making a
bilingual pun which he could only hope some bilingual
reader would appreciate.
 

4

“Raise your hands, all of you,”
ordered the Rat in a flat
business-like voice.

They did as they were told. The Saint was
definitely an
noyed. Even when it is a matter of life or death,
standing
with one’s arms above one’s head makes a man feel un
dignified. The Saint did not
like the feeling. On the other
hand, he was
sure he wouldn’t like the feeling of being dead,
and just at the moment there was no other choice open to
him.

Leopold’s mouth was twitching as he gazed at
the two
men, hatred in his eyes. Frankie was calm, but her strained
white face
betrayed how desperate she was.

“Which of you has the Necklace?”
inquired the Rat. He
looked at Frankie. “Is it you, Frau Gr
ä
fin?”

She shook her head.

“We did not get it.” Her lips were
stiff.

“Well, we need not waste any more
time,” said the Rat.
“There is one certain way of finding
out. Strip, all of you!”

Leopold’s eyes blazed as he took a step
forward in spite of the gun trained unwaveringly at him.

“I will kill you for this,” he said
furiously.

“You will be lucky to stay alive very
much longer, Herr
Graf, if you go on behaving this way.” The Rat’s
tone was
infinitely sinister. “But perhaps we can save us all
some trou
ble.” He turned his gun on Frankie. Behind him the
Gorilla stood with his pistol at the ready. “Come here please, Frau
Gr
ä
fin.”

Frankie stepped forward haltingly. She cast
her eyes around
desperately, as if looking for some escape from a
hopeless situ
ation.

Suddenly the Rat reached out and tore the
shawl from her
shoulders, pulling the top part of her blouse with it.
Frankie’s flesh gleamed like satin, and the Necklace rested on the soft
cushion of
her breast. For some reason, perhaps because of his
heightened
sensibilities, the Saint thought it looked more
alive than ever.

“Ah,” approved the Rat, “that
is better.” He turned to the
Gorilla. “Keep them
covered.”

He stepped around Frankie and unfastened the
Necklace,
his fingers caressing her bare shoulders as he did so.
She shiv
ered and her face expressed her repugnance. The Rat held
the
Necklace up so it splintered the light into a myriad different
colours.

“Wundersch
ö
n!”
he breathed. “It would be worth killing
an
army to get this.” He turned to the Saint. “And thanks to
you,
mein
Herr,
we have got it without any bloodshed at all.”

Simon’s face was inscrutable.

“It strikes me,” he remarked,
“that you know a surprising
amount for someone who just dropped in to
pass the time of day, or night rather.”

The Rat ignored his comment.

“Search the other,” he commanded
his mate as he stepped
up to the Saint and frisked him swiftly, removing Simon’s
gun in the process.

The Gorilla did the same with Leopold. The Rat stepped
to one side of the open door.

“We are leaving you now, but first we
must tie you up.”
Turning to his companion, “Go fetch the
rope,” he said in
German.

Suddenly the kitchen door opened and Anton
entered.

The Gorilla’s reaction was automatic. He did
not even wait
to think or see who it was. His gun spat once. The old
man
servant slumped to the floor, an astonished expression on his
face.

Then Leopold made his heroic move, which is
something only heroes should attempt. He rushed blindly towards the
Gorilla
whose gun spoke again. Leopold stopped in his tracks,
clutching his
shoulder from which blood was beginning to
seep.

Frankie gasped, and ran to him.

“Leopold, my darling!” she sobbed.
She turned to the Go
rilla. “You scum! You do not deserve to
live!”

The Rat answered her. His smile was evil as
he swung the
Necklace tauntingly in front of her.

“And you,
Gn
ä
diges Fr
ä
ulein,
are
lucky to be left alive.” He spoke to the Gorilla out of the corner of his
mouth: “Get
the rope, I said.”

“Why not just kill them?” grumbled
the Gorilla. “They
know too much anyway. And I know how I would
like to do
it to that other one.”

“You are a fool,” said the Rat
contemptuously. “What he
did to you was a proper punishment for your
own stupidity. I
order you to stop thinking about revenge and try to learn
a lesson from it. The Boss said no killing, and now you have
killed a
man. Because of you we are already in deep trouble. Go get the rope, I am
telling you.”

Simon saw that the time had come for someone
to take action. There was, of course, only one person capable of taking
it:
himself. Yet for reasons of his own that was the one thing
he did
not wish to do at that particular moment, and these
reasons were totally
unconnected with the fact that the odds
were stacked so
steeply against him. Nevertheless, it was a sit
uation where discretion was the better
part of valour, since
the Rat had him well
covered with his gun.

He therefore relaxed and lounged against the
table while
the Gorilla went out and quickly returned with a coil of
cord,
with which he set about tying up the Saint and his party.

Simon submitted co-operatively to having his wrists bound,
but was ready for the blow that the Gorilla
launched at his
face directly that
was done, and ducked it easily, but could
not keep his balance in evading the crotch kick that followed,
and fell sideways.

“Halt!”
commanded the Rat sharply, as the Gorilla’s foot
drew back for another kick. “You tie them
up, nothing more.
And you”—the
muzzle of his gun fanned over his captives—
“will not resist, unless you want to be painfully wounded.”

The Gorilla muttered sulkily but got on with
his job, and it
was
not long before the Saint, Leopold and Frankie were
tightly trussed. Leopold’s face turned dark red when the Go
rilla leeringly gave Frankie some special pawing
in the
process, but his anger had to
remain pent up. The Rat’s gun
saw to that. Frankie remained icily
unmoved, and her eyes
and expression showed
scorn for his crudeness.

“There we are,” said the Rat
finally. “It would have been
easier to kill you but we have our
orders.” He smiled cruelly
at Simon. “And in your case, Mr.
Templar, you are fortunate
that I have had to restrain my associate in
order to complete
his punishment, not out of pity for you. But perhaps
another time it will be different.”

“Bless your tender heart, old
fruit,” drawled the Saint.
“Any time you like. But I should warn
you that I very seldom
get killed—it’s usually the other chap. I’d
love to play some
more games with your little friend. I think he needs to
brush
up on his knots, and we could do some practising on his neck.”

The Rat’s only response was to coldly motion
with his
gun for the Gorilla to precede him through the door into
the
darkness. The Gorilla swung a final kick at the Saint as he
went, but
Simon twisted away from it and sustained nothing
worse than a brutal
pain in his thigh. Then the Rat’s gun itself peremptorily drove the Gorilla on
his way, and the Rat
followed. A few moments later the car starter hummed, and
the engine burst into life. There was a clash of
gears as it tore
off down the bumpy
lane, its headlights weaving wildly as it
went.

“You gave up very easily,” Leopold
sneered. “Simon Templar
, the Saint, the great champion—where was
he?”

The Saint declined to take umbrage.

“He who lets them get away, gets his
chance another day,
as the Bard says. One can be brave and sensible at the
same
time. The Rat could have deaded me with one shot if I’d
tried
anything.”

Leopold snorted. Frankie shot Simon a
curious look but remained neutral.

“What do we do now?” she asked.
“We could stay here for
days, unless Max comes to find out what has
happened to us.”

“Cheer up, me hearties, all is not
lost!” said the Saint
jovially. “You are about to witness a
marvel of escapology per
formed by none other than Simon H. Templar.
The H stands for Houdini, of course. He was my aunt on my mother’s side.