The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (27 page)

“But why, may I ask, if I was working,
as you say, against
her, could I not have seized her in the first place and
forced
her to tell me everything I needed to know?”

“Because until you knew exactly where
the Necklace was
hidden, you didn’t know if it might be impossible for
any
body except Frankie herself to get at it.”

“But then why would I let you join the
party, to add
another complication?” Max smiled disarmingly.
“Even for an
Austrian, is that not a bit exotic?”

“You wanted to keep all your options
open, and you didn’t
let me join—Frankie stuck you with me. You
had to accept
me or have me bumped off, fast, to maintain your
credibility,
for you knew I was a dangerous customer to fool around
with.
You wanted to keep an eye on me. Also you decided I might
be more
useful alive than dead. You’d figured out another
angle.”

“What was that?” Max might have
been listening with
polite fascination to a tale Simon was inventing.

“It was that you might be able to get
me to work for you.”

“Phantastisch!”
said Herr
Annellatt.

Thai seemed to blink in sleepy agreement.

“Maybe. But it’s all true.”

Max’s head moved in negation.

“It is a very interesting story, but you
give yourself a little
too much credit. After all, I am a wealthy
man and I could employ any number of people to do the job of getting the
Necklace.
Why should I be so ready to engage you?”

“For two reasons. When you realised I
didn’t know exactly where the Necklace was hidden in the Castle, you figured
that
Frankie might trust me more than you. You’ve been up
against that deadlock for
months. Frankie would never tell
you where
it was. You thought I might perhaps get it out of
her.”

“Why you rather than me?”

The Saint smiled with shameless impudence.

“Possibly because I’m -a more romantic
type.”

“And the second reason?”

“Because I am the Saint. You knew my
reputation, and so
do a lot of dreary policemen. You thought you could let
me
get the Necklace for you, and then steal it from me, and still throw me
to the cops as the fall guy.”

“And so I persuaded Frankie to run away
to Hungary just
to get you to go after her?” Max spoke drily.

“Not at all. You were genuinely
surprised and upset by her going. So was I. It loused up both our plans
completely. You
had to improvise a new one in a hurry.”

“And what was this new one?”

Max’s voice was silky. Both he and Thai
regarded Simon
from between narrowed lids.

“I must say you kept your head. You had
to act fast
because Frankie was going into Gestapo territory, and if
she
got captured your chances of getting the Necklace would have
been
finished. That meant you had to work with me and against me at the same time,
once I had volunteered to go
and get her out.”

“Surely all this is too clever, even for
me,” Max protested.

Simon’s smile held genuine warmth.

“No, it’s not too clever for you, nor
for me. It’s a pity we’re
on opposite sides. We have very much the same
kind of brain.
But perhaps it’s inevitable that we should compete.
There’s
only room for one at the top, and I have a big advantage over
you.”

“What is that?”

“I work on my own and do all my own dirty work. You
have to rely on other people to do yours for you.
That makes
you as vulnerable as they
are. For instance, your tame Rat
made
the mistake of addressing me by name, which he
shouldn’t have known
unless he’d been told. That was another thing that helped to confirm my
suspicion that those
two nasties were hooked
up with you.”

Annellatt’s mouth turned down at one corner.

“It cuts both ways. If you lose once
you lose totally. I can lose a lot of times and still win in the end.”

“In other words, your associates are
expendable,” said the
Saint sardonically.

“Exactly.”

“Like Anton.” The Saint looked
directly into Max’s eyes.

For a moment Max’s gaze flickered.

“Believe it or not, that was a mistake.
He was only a ser
vant. I never thought he would be in any danger. It made
me very sad. He was such a nice man.”

“He only made the mistake of working for
you, in fact.”

“Possibly. But I tell you, I am sorry
about Anton.” Max’s
voice became warm, almost caressing, as he
leant forward
across the desk. “I still think we might work
together, my
friend.”

The Saint shook his head. “No dice. I
don’t change my
habits
so easily. But to get back to your cunning little scheme.
It was pretty clever, I admit. You’d probably
worked out a method of getting across the border a long time ago. In fact,
you told me as much. The cleverness lay in
incorporating
these old plans with the new and in keeping out of the
whole
affair yourself.”

“Explain yourself a bit further.”

“On the surface you were helping us. But
you arranged to
have
your men hijack the Necklace when we got back to the cabin. Though how they
knew when we got back I still don’t
know. I
suppose you just told them to check the cabin at regular intervals. Wouldn’t it
have been simpler if they’d
waited
for us there?”

Max flashed him a shrewd look.

“Were I the villain you think I am, I
might not have
wanted
to run the risk of your seeing them or their car before
you got settled in and relaxed.”

The Saint nodded.

“That would add up, especially as you
told Anton to hold
us there until someone arrived.” He looked at Max
levelly.
“You know, that Gorilla of yours really shouldn’t be
allowed
out. Is he a dope addict or something? I mean, for anyone to be so
slug-happy is plain ridiculous. He shot Anton without
even looking to see
who he was!”

“A very stupid man, almost an
animal,” agreed Max be
nignly. “Such people are dangerous, but they are also sometimes
useful.”

“You figured we’d never know he was
working for you and
would think that the Gestapo must somehow have got on to
your
plans. That’s why you were able to welcome us back
with such
hospitality. Otherwise you would have made sure
we were all killed,
either in the cabin or somewhere along the
line. Like me, you
prefer to avoid complications whenever
possible. It must
have been a nasty shock when you found you
were a candidate for
a murder rap.”

Max stiffened.

“I was a candidate for what?”

“A murder rap. It’s American slang. It
means you were
responsible for Anton’s death even though you didn’t
plan it,
do it, or even want it.”

“But how can that be?”

“I imagine Austrian law recognises some
universal princi
ples. Anyone who is an accessory to a crime must take the
consequences as much as the person or persons who commit
it. That
makes you guilty.”

Max leaned back in his chair and surveyed
the Saint
thoughtfully.

“You know,” he said, “I like
you. I like you very much. I
don’t know how old you are, but you look
young enough to be
the
son I never had, and I am not all that old myself. If we
had been on the same side, perhaps you might have
inherited
my
…
er
…
connections.” He unleashed a smile. “But
with regard to the Hapsburg Necklace—”

“That proves your guilt if nothing
else,” interrupted
Simon.

Annellatt raised his shoulders.

“My lawyers would put up a good defence.
You still don’t
really know how I got it.”

“You could only have got it from the Rat
or the Gorilla.
That’s another crime in this country, I’m sure. There
must be
a law against stealing national monuments.”

Max’s smirk was almost triumphant.

“Ah, but I did not steal anything of the
kind.”

“What do you mean? There it is.”
Simon pointed to the
Necklace which glimmered in a heap of fire on
the desk.

“Do you know anything about
jewels?” Annellatt asked.

“Enough to get by.”

Max picked up the Necklace from the desk and
tossed it
over to Simon.
“It’s a fake,” he said.

2

Simon caught the Necklace deftly.

It shimmered and glittered with a thousand
facets of light.
Reaching over, he picked up Max’s jeweller’s magnifying
glass
and examined it. He was expert enough to be able to confirm at once that
Max was telling the truth. The feel of the gems,
moreover, gave them
away. They lacked the voltage quality of
real stones. The
fires, though beguiling to the eye, were as
false as those created
for the grates of luxury flats or for
sinners by evangelical missionaries.

Again he was shaken but not rocked out of reason.
In his
life, anything could happen and often did. But there was
always a
good reason for even the most extraordinary occur
rences.

The explanation behind this one was fairly
easy to see.
Frankie’s father, grandfather, or one of her ancestors,
must
have had a duplicate made, perhaps with a view of selling the original
secretly. Such a plot might have been a criminal con
spiracy, but this did
not make it any more improbable. To
aristocrats, honour was all
important, second only to exposed
insolvency. If a distinguished
bankruptcy could have been
averted by the substitution of a string of
baubles that would
bedazzle anyone but a probing expert, what was the harm?
Besides,
the Necklace might even have been hocked with the
connivance of the
Austrian Government, to raise money for
the State Treasury.
Such things had been known to happen in
the convolutions of
Balkans economics.

On the other hand, the false necklace could
have been
made to
safeguard the real one, for use as a decoy, red herring
or other fraud to occupy the attentions of crooks, while the
genuine one rested safely in secret custody.

In any case, the necklace he held in his hand
was worthless
to him, Max, Frankie, the Third Reich, or anyone else
con
cerned with the value of the original. It was a beautiful piece
of work and undoubtedly cost a
tidy sum, but compared to
the real thing it
was only worth its weight in peanuts.

“You must be very disappointed,”
remarked Simon. “I
mean, after all your hard work and the
efforts of your bully boys, to end up with a pup must be disheartening to say
the least. Oh, well, don’t let it get you down. Every silver lining
has a
cloud, as my Aunt Agatha used to say about her rich fat
husband.”

Max smiled wryly. “You are an incredible
man. We Austrians may make a joke about everything, but underneath we
take it
seriously. I believe you really do see everything as a
joke.”

“A very serious joke.”

Annellatt sighed.

“What interests me very much now is
where is the real
Necklace?”

“Well, if it’s not still at Schloss Este
or some Swiss bank or
other, I have a business pal who could find
out who sold it to
whom recently—if it was recently. I have just concluded
a
deal with him myself, and there isn’t much that goes on
above board or under the
counter in the international dia
mond
markets that he doesn’t know about.”

Max’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Do you
think Frankie
knows?”

“Who knows? She might be trying to cover
up some ances
tral fiddling, for the honour of the family. Or she might
be
trying to outsmart all of us.”