The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (23 page)

That was his greatest trick. But he taught me one or two
others.”

As he spoke, the Saint was flexing his arms.

“The secret is to keep your wrists
edgeways-on while they’re
being tied. This gives the rope the greatest
possible circumfer
ence to go around. Then when you turn them flat-to-flat,
you get quite a bit of slack. Work that all to one side, and the loop
may be
big enough to pull one hand through. Of course it doesn’t work if you’re
unconscious while they’re tying you.
But once you’ve done that, it’s all
downhill.”

And suddenly his left hand came from behind
his back,
free and unencumbered, to give his audience a
triumphantly
mocking salute.

“Then,” the Saint went on, as he
shook the cords off his
other hand and bent over to untie his ankles,
“the rest is quite
easy.”

A minute or two later he kicked off the bonds
and set
about releasing Frankie.

The girl sat up and rubbed her wrists and
ankles.

“I’ve gone all numb,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” the Saint told her. “It always
happens in
cases of unrequited love.
Feeling will come back soon, but
you
may get pins and needles for a while, as the seamstress said to the
Bishop.”

He stepped over to Leopold, who still lay
bound and glar
ing at him.

“How would it be, old son, if we left
you here as a corpus
delicti? We ought to have some evidence that a crime has
been committed. I mean mayhem as well as
murder.”

“You forget he is wounded,”
Frankie protested. “Set him
free at once without making any more of your
silly jokes.”

“I’m sorry,” Simon said numbly.
“Being such a silly fellow,
I suppose they come naturally.”

He knelt down and began untying Leopold, and
then
helped the young man to a chair. Frankie came over and
cradled
Leopold’s head on her shoulder. The young man
looked quite pleased
with life at the moment. He closed his
eyes and a rather
smug expression spread over his face.

“If you two were in a Victorian
painting,” Simon observed,
“it would be entitled
The Prodigal’s
Return, or True Love
Discovered.”

Frankie flashed him a scathing glance.

“Even when poor Leopold may be dying and
Anton is dead
you try to turn everything into a joke. Have you no
heart?”

The Saint stepped over to Anton, knelt down
and felt the
old servant’s pulse.

“It’s no joke about him,” he said
sombrely. “He must have
died instantly. That trigger-happy gorilla
must have thought
the old boy was coming to our rescue. That’s the trouble
with
these amateur hatchet men, or torpedoes as they’re called in
America.
They often shoot first and hang later. I find I like
that pair less and
less every time I meet them. Perhaps we’ll
see to it that the
next time is the last,” he added grimly.

He crossed over to examine Leopold’s
shoulder.

“Not fatal,” he announced shortly.
“Luckily the bullet
went clean through, and you don’t have any
vital organs up
there unless you’re built most peculiarly.” He turned
to
Frankie. “I hate to ask you, but do you have any more under
wear to
spare? I mean, you must be getting down to bare es
sentials. But if you
had a piece of
…
er
…
something
…
?”

Frankie tore a strip off her last petticoat
and tried ineffec
tually to bind up Leopold’s wound. The boy gave a yelp
of
pain, and Frankie turned pleadingly back to Simon.

“All right,” said the Saint easily.
“Let Matron do it. In the
Regiment they used to call me Florence the
Nightlight, and strong soldiers wept in gratitude for my tender ministrations.
At least,
I think that’s what they were crying about. Of
course, they might
have just been biting on an onion. They
did that a lot in
those days.”

As he chatted nonsensically the Saint was
efficiently and swiftly binding up Leopold’s shoulder.

“There you are, sonny boy,” he said
when he had finished,
“that’ll do for the time being. See
your local doctor when you
get home and just remember to use your other
arm when
swinging from trees or hugging your girlfriend—or both.
I’d
put it in a
sling but I don’t think we can ask Frankie for any
 
more sacrifices.”

The young man sat up straight.

“You let them get away,” he said
uncompromisingly.

“I wasn’t exactly in a position to stop
them. I mean, I
could have invited them to stop and play spelling games,
but
somehow I don’t think they were in the mood.”

“You don’t seem to care at all that
they’ve taken the
Necklace,” said Frankie acidly.

The Saint massaged his chafed wrists.

“My dear,” he said blandly, “I
would even have held the
“door open for them. We’re well rid of
them—and it.”

VI

How Max received the news, and the

Saint went for a climb

“You would have done
what?”
exploded Leopold.

“Escorted them out,” Simon
repeated. “Very politely. If
they’d offered me a tip, I’d have
taken it.”

Frankie’s incredulity was no less violent.

“You can’t mean it, Simon!”

“I do, you know. They were very naughty
boys, and they I
still had guns. I believe one should never get killed
unless one has to—and then only as a last resort.”

“But-but-but… they took the
Necklace!”

“Ah yes, so they did,” Simon agreed smoothly.
“Well,
perhaps it won’t do them as much
good as they think.”

Frankie was taken aback.

“What do you mean?”

“Yes,” Leopold said harshly.
“Now they’ve got it, our
whole cause is lost.”

“You never know,” Simon replied
inscrutably. “The
strangest things do happen, as the hen said
when she hatched
out an ostrich.”

Frankie stamped her foot.

“Always you make a joke. Nothing is
important to you. But
that doesn’t mean it isn’t important to
someone else. What
about me? Is it nothing to you that I have betrayed my
charge as
Keeper of the Hapsburg Necklace?”

“To tell the truth, in words of one
syllable,” responded the
Saint amiably—“No.”

“You are impossible.”

“Worse,” Leopold amplified.
“He is a coward.”

The Saint was unmoved.

“That’s right. I am. Only mugs get
medals. Sensible men
take good care to live to fight another
day.”

“Your reputation as a hero seems to have
been easily
earned,” said Leopold sarcastically.

Still the Saint was not ruffled.

“Reputations don’t matter. It is what a
man knows about
himself that counts.”

“And does it mean nothing to you that
Anton is dead?”

The Saint’s eyes were expressionless
although he smiled.

“I expect it means more to him.
Presumably he was mixed
up in this business of his own free will. I
mean, he didn’t have
to work for Max, and he must have known that
Max likes to
live dangerously—and that goes for his associates,
including
me!”

Frankie shook her head.

“Sometimes I think you are just a
machine.”

The Saint shrugged.

“It’s not such a bad thing to be if the
machine is good
enough.
I’d like to be Rolls Phantom III Continental Tour
ing Saloon with a V
₁₂
cylinder engine, 7,340 cc capacity. But
right now I’d settle for almost
anything on wheels in good
running
order.”

“Simon, will you please stop! I’m not
interested in your
silly cars. I want to get my Necklace back.”

The Saint moved towards the door.

“All right then, but aren’t you a bit tired of hiking? It’s a
long way to walk.”

“Where?” asked Leopold in
perplexity.

“Back to Schloss Duppelstein.”

“But if the Gestapo know about this place,” Frankie ar
gued, “Max must have been arrested, and—”

The Saint’s voice was suddenly steely.
“Look here, sweet
heart, let’s get something straight. You asked for my help.
You got it—for better or for worse—until death
do, etcetera.
I’ll get your Necklace
back, but you must trust me.”

“You did not try to stop them taking
it,” Leopold insisted.

“True,” agreed the Saint.
“But one of us might have been
killed in the attempt, probably
Frankie as she was the nearest.
Look what happened to Anton. That reminds
me. I suppose
we’ll have to notify the police eventually, so we’d
better leave
everything here just as it is.”

“Since he was shot by the
Gestapo,” Leopold said, “why
would the police be
interested?”

Simon regarded him pityingly.

“You blessed innocent dimwit,” he
said. “Those two goons
weren’t the Gestapo. If they had been, and
they were under orders not to shoot us out of hand, they’d at least have loaded
us up and carted
us off to one of their special rest homes.
They
wouldn’t have left us here to get loose or be rescued by
somebody.”

The other two stared at him open-mouthed.

Leopold said: “Then you think—”

“That we were much too ready to buy that
Gestapo story. There are still plenty of other villains in the world, plain
ordinary commercial ones, and they haven’t gone out of business
just
because Himmler came in. Obviously some of them,
somehow, have got
wind of you and your necklace, and they
want it for purely
mercenary reasons.”

Frankie finally made up her mind.

“We’re in your hands completely from
now on, Simon.”

“Okay,” said the Saint. “Then
may I go back to that car
business I was talking about? I feel that
there ought to be
something here that Anton could have used if necessary,
even
if it isn’t a Rolls.”

It turned out to be a rather ancient Adler
van, stabled in an
open shed adjoining the cottage; but the key was
trustfully in
the ignition and the engine started after a few turns and
ran
purposefully if noisily.

Simon went back indoors and happily reported
his find.

“We’ll never catch our two playmates in it,” he said,
“but it should get us back to Max’s. And that’s an immediate
priority—except to change these clothes, which
the cops have
probably had
descriptions of by now.”

“Max must have left something for us
here,” Leopold said,
“in case we arrived wet from having to
swim back across the
river. Wait a minute. I’ll go and
look.”

He went into the bedroom, and in a moment or
so he returned bearing an armful of clothes.

“It’s all right,” he said, looking
pleased with himself.
“These are our own things. Frankie, there
is an outfit in there
for you.”

“Good thinking, Leo,” Simon approved generously.
“So
you hop in there, Frankie, and put
on your party dress or
whatever it is, while Leopold and I get changed
here, and
we’ll be off. I must say I’m ready
for some of the amenities of
Max’s
ch
â
teau.”

It did not take them long to get changed and
packed into
the
one banquette seat of the shabby little van. The Saint
drove, with Frankie pleasantly squeezed close to him in the
middle. He had no doubt that a similar contact on
her other
side helped Leopold to
endure the discomfort of his wound.