The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (26 page)

He was now hanging so that he faced the window. As
carelessly as if it were the most everyday thing
in the world
the Saint let go with
one hand. Then, taking the shoes from
around
his neck, he used one of them to break one of the
small panes in the top part of the window. A few
splinters fell to the cobblestones but most of the glass dropped inside, between
the glass panel below and the interior curtains. To the
Saint the noise seemed vastly magnified, but his
cool mind
told him that unless
somebody had been in the room or the
courtyard
no one would have heard it. He cleared the remain
ing splinters of glass from the wooden frame with
his shoe,
and then hung the pair of
them back round his neck. He
thrust
his arm through the hole he had made and let go of the
pediment above with his other hand, thus allowing
his body
to swing downwards until his
feet touched the sill.

He was now able to turn his body so that he
was half facing
outward. At this point he realised that the
“rustication” was
not going to do him any good—on his way down
at any rate. It
might be of help in climbing the face of Max’s wing, but
there was
no way in which he could get his feet off the ledge
and into the
crevices between the fake stone slabs below. He
considered for a long
moment what he should do and finally
decided that there was nothing for it
but to drop the remain
ing distance to the courtyard below. He had,
after all, reached
a point where he was standing only a floor above the ground,
and whereas a fall backwards off the sill would have proved
damaging
or even fatal, a deliberate drop for a man of the
Saint’s athletic
prowess was quite feasible. He might end up
with a few bruises but it was unlikely
that he would suffer
any more grievous harm.

He twisted himself so that his feet faced outward on the
sill. Then he dropped his shoes on to the
cobblestones. Fi
nally, he let go of
the lintel above his head.

For a moment he balanced, poised on the
windowsill like a
 
huge bird
ready for flight. Then he sank to a sitting position,
reducing by that
much the height from which he had to fall,
and pushed himself
off.

The drop was a bone-shaking one, to put it
mildly, but it
was no worse than a parachute landing, of which he had
done
a few. As his feet touched the ground he relaxed his knees and
body-rolled across the pavement. Of course, the cobblestones
were
distinctly unresilient cushions to land on, and had it
been anyone else who
was landing on them that person might
have been quite severely hurt. But the
Saint’s muscles, fitness and agility allowed him to get away with it.

He picked himself up off the stones and
straightened his
clothing.

“Well, well,
 
well,” he
 
remarked to
 
himself inaudibly.
“What a carry on. I must remember to bring a rope ladder
next time I go for a country visit.”

It was his own way of congratulating himself
on the
successful conclusion of his descent. It might of course have
been more
seemly if someone else had done it, but there was
no one else around to perform that
service. And in its own
way, perhaps, that
lack of an audience was itself a compensa
tion.

Simon took the shoes from around his neck,
untied the
laces, and put them back on. Then he surveyed the side
of the
wing beneath the light of Max’s study.

With any luck he should not have to do any more climbing. It was,
after all, only the central block of the Castle,
housing the state rooms and its treasures, that was fitted with
a burglar alarm system. If he could gain entrance
through a
ground-floor window of the
wing, therefore, there would be little risk of rousing anyone at this time of
night, or rather morning, and he could simply walk upstairs to Max’s study,
since
the only doors in the wing with burglar alarms were
those leading from it to the state rooms.

Using his knife, the Saint slipped the catch of a ground-
floor sash window. He opened the window and
quickly dealt
with the shutters
inside. Luckily for him they were only
secured
by a catch and not a bar. Obviously Max was not
worried about burglars in that part of the building. There was no
reason why he should be. A burglar would have to gain
entrance to the courtyard before arriving where
the Saint was,
something which would
be none too easy after the gates had
been
locked for the night. Only Annellatt’s obsession with his own security made a
burglar alarm even remotely necessary there.

Simon found himself in a small room. As far
as he could
see in the dark it was a sort of office. He did not
bother to
investigate, and went straight to the door opposite and
through
it into what proved to be a long passage. At the end
of this a flight of
stairs led upwards, and these he took on
soundless tiptoes.

On the landing at the top of the stairs two flights up the
light from under the door of Max’s study shone
like a beacon. Swiftly Simon crossed over to it and with infinite gentleness
turned the handle of the door and pushed it open.

Max was sitting behind a large desk. He
looked up in slack-
jawed startlement as the Saint entered.

On the blotter in front of him crouched
Thai, gazing at the
Hapsburg Necklace with unwinking eyes.

VII

How Thai did his bit, and sundry other

characters got their deserts

1

Max recovered himself in a moment and put
down the jew
eller’s eyeglass with which he had been examining the
Necklace. Master and cat looked at Simon steadily.

“Come in, my friend,” Max said
genially. “As you can see, we have got the Necklace back.”

Simon sauntered over and sat down in a chair
opposite the
desk. Though his attitude was relaxed, his eyes were on
the
alert in case the Austrian made a move to get a gun out of a
drawer.

“I think, old fruit, you and I had better
have a talk,” he
said pleasantly.

Max’s eyebrows rose.

“Ach, but certainly. What do you wish to
talk to me
about?”

His hand caressed the back of Thai’s neck.
The cat gave
Simon a sardonic look.

“Well, to begin with,” said the
Saint, ‘let’s clear up one
thing. Are you working for yourself or the
Germans?”

“I do not know why you should ask. You
and I are on the
same side. We have been all along.”

Simon shook his head. “No, we haven’t.
You’ve tried to bamboozle me right from the beginning. I let you think you’d
succeeded
because I was curious to find out what you were up
to.”

Max leaned back in his chair. His eyes did
not waver. The cat moved over and climbed on his shoulder where he ap
parently went to sleep. But
Thai had a strange quality of
seeming to be
dangerous even when at his mildest. It struck
the Saint that this characteristic was shared by the cat’s
master.

“All right,” said Max, “I am
curious to find out where you
get such absurd ideas. Let me hear some of
your thoughts,
wrong though they may be. When did you first begin to suspect
me in your mistaken way?”

The Saint thought of the Rat and the
Gorilla—and Anton
lying dead on the floor of the hut. Max’s undeniable
charm
concealed some very nasty secrets.

“I mistrusted you all along, but that
didn’t mean a thing. I mistrusted Frankie and Leopold as well to begin with. Of
course, I should have rumbled it that night in Vienna, when
you were
so conveniently delayed and let me in to be banged
on the head by those
two thugs who were waiting for me in
the garage
.
But I only thought
of that later. No, I think I first,
began to suspect you when you were so
cool about the inter
vention of the “Gestapo.” Any
ordinary person would have
been scared reasonably spitless. But when I
realised that the
Rat and the Gorilla could be working for you, I knew you
might be against Frankie also.”

“I don’t understand.” Max sighed
wearily. “Forgive me,
but what reason had you for not believing
that the thought of
the Gestapo did not automatically terrify me?” Thai
sud
denly opened his eyes wide and gave the Saint a look which seemed to say
“Answer that if you can!”

“I didn’t believe it because it wasn’t
in character. An Aus
trian might have fallen for it, it was crazy
enough to appeal to
the Austrian mind. But to me it was completely phoney.
I’ve
been around, Max, and I know your type. A smart operator
and
manipulator, yes, but only when you have first chance at
stacking
the deck. Not the type who goes into anything with the odds against him, or
when he runs the risk of getting per
sonally and physically hurt.”

Annellatt looked mildly offended.

“It’s the sort of thing you do, Mr
Templar.”

The Saint could not help but admire his
coolness. The Aus
trian was in a nasty spot but he might have been
discussing
the high price of coffee for all the tension that he
showed.

“No one would ever accuse me of being
your type,” Simon
said. “But to get back to you. Why
didn’t you just go to the
police if you thought Frankie had been
kidnapped? After all,
she hadn’t done anything illegal—if she
really was the heredi
tary Keeper of the Necklace.”

Max wagged his head patiently.

“In normal times, yes. But nowadays
even the police are not entirely respectable. Don’t forget that the Gestapo con
trols
Vienna and its police and I am sure the Germans would not be willing to see the
Necklace taken away, perhaps al
together out of their hands. My concern was
only to help
Frankie in what she thought was her duty.”

The Saint shook his head.

“The Gestapo were never involved. The
Rat and the Gorilla were not Gestapo, not even the Austrian branch. They
were too
inefficient for one thing.” His voice was suddenly
cold and
his blue eyes grew icy. “You thought you were
dealing with a
foreigner who wouldn’t understand the Aus
trian character. You
thought I would buy your story that you
just were in your quaint
Austrian way trying to strike a blow
against the invading tyrants.” His tone grew even
chillier.
“You were not just unlucky,
you picked on the wrong man.
Most
foreigners think that because the Austrians do crazy
things they are all a bit mad. I happen to think
that there are
few races that are
more sane. The Gemans live in a dream
world and try to make it real. The
Austrians live in a real
world and only
pretend to dream.”

Max chuckled.

“That is a good epigram, but like all
good epigrams it is as false as it is true. So now you have decided that I am a
villain,
and the
men you have been fighting were in my employ.
What,
may I ask, could I have possibly have gained from
such actions?”

“In Austria,” said the Saint,
“you have to be aware that one
and one often make three. In this case the Rat and the Gorilla
added up to a third person who controlled them, you.
You stood to gain quite a lot and to lose nothing at all.”

“Oh yes?” Max’s eyes sparkled with
interest. He actually
seemed to be enjoying himself.

“Yes. You see, I remembered that when we
met in your
apartment Frankie told you I knew where the Necklace
was.
She merely meant that she had informed me that it was in
Schloss
Este, and she was about to explain this when Leopold
interrupted and lost
his temper. After that the whole thing
got sidetracked, but
you concluded that she had told me more
than she had you.
From that moment on, I became useful to
you. So you had me
slugged in the garage by your men, who
were told to extort
the information from me. If they got it, you’d be in the clear all along the
line, for if I survived I’d
think I’d been kidnapped by the Gestapo, and
you would be
free to double-cross Frankie at the most propitious
moment.”