The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (28 page)

“We shall have to find out.”

“I shall have to find out.”

The set of Annellatt’s head took a
speculative slant.

“Does that mean you would consider
working with me?”

“No more than I have already. We
weren’t made to be
partners. We’d always be competing. Besides, as I’ve said
be
fore, I don’t change my loyalties so easily.”

“Neither do I. But my prime loyalty is
to myself. Surely
yours is too?”

“Not always. Believe it or not, I’m
quite old-fashioned
sometimes. I believe in honour and the code of a
gentleman. I
know it’s a bit out of date but purely practically it
does make civilisation work. I mean, even Hitler would find life easier if
one could
trust his word.”

Max laughed, a trifle ruefully. “You
mean you can’t trust
mine?”

“I haven’t said that.”

“Ah, but you have implied it. I have a
feeling that if I were
an Austrian aristocrat you would feel
differently.”

“I know a lot of aristocrats who are not
gentlemen at all,” smiled the Saint. “And conversely, I know a lot of
gentlemen
who are not aristocrats.”

“But I am neither. I am an Austrian
peasant who has made
good, as you say in your language.”

It was an extraordinary conversation, at
such a time. But
Simon had long since realised that Max Annellatt was no
or
dinary man, and he was intrigued enough to let the chat take
its
course.

“Good—or bad. It depends on which way
you look at it.”

“I am rich,” Max said flatly.
“That is always good for the
person who is rich.”

“Especially if he doesn’t care what
lengths he goes to to get
richer,” said the Saint, leaning back
lazily.

Max’s expression became serious.

“When I was a child, my father used to
beat me regularly, either because I had been bad, or to keep me from being bad
—but
mostly because he was drunk.” The smoke from his cig
arette
curled upwards, and suddenly there was a break in its
smooth flow. “I
have had a horror of violence ever since.”

“That’s why you ordered your men to grab
me and work
me over, I suppose,” said Simon sympathetically.
“Presumably when they shot Leopold and when they killed Anton it
was all in
the spirit of fun.”

Max shook his head.

“Anton’s death was a mistake, and I am
truly sorry for it.
My men did not know he was in the cabin, and when he
came in
through the door suddenly, one of them shot him
before he recognised him.”

“That takes a load off my mind, if not
off Anton’s,” said
the Saint. “It’s good to know you’re really
a nice chap at
heart. But it must be an awful disappointment to you not
to
have got the Hapsburg Necklace.”

Annellatt spread his hands all the way from
his shoulders
downwards.

“One cannot always win. There will be
other times and
other
businesses. Besides, I may yet get the real Necklace.”

“It’s highly unlikely,” the Saint
assured him. “When the
police hear about Anton and your other
activities, you’ll be
lucky if you just spend the rest of your life
in jail and not
dead, if you will forgive an Irishism.”

“We shall see about that. I have
resources—some of them in other places than Austria.”

“And this little shack—you could afford to just walk away
from it?”

“As you know, it is not in my own name.
And there is an
enormous mortgage, at atrocious interest. I might be much
better off without it.”

The Saint felt himself quite irresistibly
compelled to let Annellatt continue to entrench his theoretical position.

“I suppose you’ve got it all worked out, how we could carve
the joint between us.”

Max put all his considerable charm into a
smile.

“I think, Simon,” he said, “that this
conversation—and this necklace—had better be a secret between us.”

“Why?”

“Because it would do no good to tell
anyone else and
would probably be harmful.”

“To you, yes. To be honest, it wouldn’t
bother me at all.”

Annellatt’s reaction was vehement.

“No, if Frankie knew of it, she might
insist on going back
to Schloss Este to look for the real
one.”

“And suppose she already knew?”

“Then we should have to find out what
happened to it.”

“With the help of some of your special
operatives?” The
Saint’s voice was tinged with acid. “No,
dear old fruit, I think
we should have it out with Frankie and
Leopold face to face.
I suppose you’ve locked them in their rooms
too?”

“No, the only one I was afraid of was
you. They would not be likely to wander around the Castle after everyone had
gone
to bed. But
you, Simon, you have a propensity for poking
your
nose into other people’s business.”

“So
that’s
why you had me locked
up for the night”

Annellatt’s gesture was mildly apologetic.

“I wanted to make sure of not being
disturbed while I ex
amined the Necklace and arranged to have it
transported
away from the Schloss. There are people who are eagerly
awaiting it, and until just before you made your rather dra
matic entrance, I thought it
was the real thing. Your door would have been unlocked and you would probably
never
have known anything about it. How did
you get out, by the
way?”

“I flew,” Simon said with a
perfectly straight face. “That’s
something about me you didn’t know. I
grow wings after
dark.
All right, so Frankie and Leopold are not locked in.
Let’s talk it over with them right now.”

“I am ready.”

“And how will you explain how the
frontier guards knew
that the false papers which we presented at the frontier—
which you provided—were fakes, and they were
waiting for
them?”

“Only,” Max said intelligently,
“if there was a leak in my
own organisation.”

“Then you’d better start thinking about
it,” said the Saint.

Max stood up. He was still exercising all his
usual charm of
manner,
but there was something suddenly remote about him
and curiously forceful.

“You have not counted on one thing,
while you are giving
me orders.”

“And that is?”

“I may not be as strong nor as brave as
you. But I am just as clever and I never get into a situation that I can’t get
out
of.”

There was utter silence in the room as they
re-assessed each
other. The cat still lay on the table and continued to
gaze
implacably at Simon, who was struck once again by the re
semblance between this animal
and its master.

Simon felt oddly uneasy. It was a rare
feeling and he did
not like it. He sensed uncomfortably that he was not in
complete
control of the situation. Max, he had to admit, was
an opponent with whom
nothing should be taken for granted.

The Saint also got to his feet, seemingly as
relaxed as ever
but
ready for instant action should his enemy make a move.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s cut
the chat and get it over
with.”

Max and Thai continued to look at him. There
was a queer
light in the eyes of both of them. Simon could not read
behind it,
but all his senses were on the alert. He drew the
flick knife from his pocket, and snapped
it open.

“I hate to get melodramatic,” he
said, “but if you’re thinking you can pull some kind of fast one, I
promise you that I can throw this much faster.”

“I would never try to compete with your
expertise.” It
sounded
almost as if the cat were purring Max’s words. There
was an aura which emanated from this man which was para
doxically
both stimulating and lulling. “But I do have these qualities at my
service, only they belong to another being.”

“Your tame bully boys?”

Max’s soft white hands stroked Thai.

“By the way, how did you get past them?”

“I came a different way. Now we’ll go
together—the regular
way—and be as friendly as anything when we
pass your
guards.” Simon made a movement with the knife to un
derline
his meaning.

Max’s eyes were wide and brilliant. He
looked like a fat cat
about to pounce. It was a greedy,
anticipatory look, excited
yet with a touch of fear.

The Saint had seen that look many times at
gambling
tables. It was the look of someone who expects to make a
killing.
Perhaps Annellatt was expecting just that. His body
was utterly still except for the hand
stroking Thai.

To Simon it seemed that time had stopped for
a long
moment. When it started again something would happen.

Then Max spoke.

“Get him, Thai,” he commanded, and
flung the cat at
Simon.

3

Simon was suddenly immersed in a flurry of fur and tearing
claws, which ripped at his face and neck in
savage frenzy. He felt as if he were being attacked by a miniature tiger.

If Max himself or any other human being had
attacked him like that, the Saint would have used his knife in an
almost
reflex action. Against a theoretically domestic pet, the
thought patterns of a lifetime
made it nearly as instinctive to hold back. And then, before he could overcome
his reluctance
to use the blade, the cat was
gone, leaping through the half-open window. Simon never did discover where Thai
went. It
was possible that the animal
simply leapt down into the
courtyard.
But that would have been a formidable jump even
for a cat, but Thai was certainly no ordinary cat, and re
minded
him more of the feline “familiar” with which super
stition used to credit witches.

Anyway, Simon was not concerned with Thai at
that mo
ment. It had vanished; but then, so had its master.

Max’s disappearance was more prosaic. He had
simply gone
through the door. It was still open as he had left it.

Simon did not rush after him. He figured
there would be
many
escape routes in the Castle, and Max would be well
clear before pursuit even got started, while the Saint himself would
risk blundering into an ambush. The man who had so
admirably and cleverly outwitted him might well
have more
tricks up his sleeve now.
It was not often that the Saint met
his
match.

What the future held for Max was something to
speculate
about another time. Simon imagined that such a
successful
and influential crook must have contacts in many
countries.
He would easily be able to build a new life for himself
in
some place like Argentina or Peru. Perhaps a peon in Columbia, sneaking
a sackful of stolen gems from an emerald mine,
would have merry
brown eyes and hum “The Blue Danube”
as he went. Or
perhaps Max would be the subject of a Grand
Jury investigation in New York. Simon
wondered if they
would let him wear Thai
like a fur collar while he invoked the
Fifth
Amendment.

The Saint was more concerned with his
immediate situa
tion. He could, of course, walk out of Max’s study and
down
the passage to the door which opened on to the gallery. As he
knew, it
was locked and possibly bolted on his side. Obviously
the sensible thing to do was to go along
and unlock it and
walk back across the
gallery to his room. But his room had also been locked by the indefatigable
Erich, who had taken the key away, and the Saint had not brought any tools for
lock-picking.

It seemed to him that for far too long he
had been on the
run from people intent on doing him harm. He was tired of
having to crawl
and climb around difficult, uncomfortable
and
even dangerous places, in order to elude this type of per
son. But then,
up to now, he had been handicapped by hav
ing
a young and impulsive woman to look after and an
equally young and even more impulsive boy. Now he was on
his own, which was how he liked it to be, and he
decided to
make the most of it.