The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (29 page)

Inspired by the thought, he stuffed the
necklace casually
into his shirt pocket and set off back down the stairs,
treading
as insouciantly as if he owned them.

Suddenly, from below came the sound of
voices and feet running along the echoing passage. Max, en route to freedom,
had alerted his bully boys and
told them to go and get the
Saint and do
him in. That way he wouldn’t be around when
the ultimate nastiness took place, and his sensitive soul would
remain unbruised.

Then Simon saw them, the Rat and the Gorilla,
waiting for
him at the foot of the stairs. Annellatt’s men.

Being the obedient thick-headed villains
they were, and
being
two to one, and armed, they must have figured they
were in an impregnable position. They were like two well-
trained and rather vicious dogs, and the Saint for
an instant
almost felt sorry for
them. Until he remembered the surprised
look on the dead face of Anton as he lay in a pool of his own
blood in the cabin.

If the Rat and the Gorilla had the advantage
of weaponry
and numbers, Simon Templar had the advantage of
surprise,
which he could create for himself by sheer quickness of
wit.
And in such an emergency his wits connected like lightning.

“Geronimo!” he yelled, at the most
startling top of his
lungs, and did something which his
adversaries could not pos
sibly have dreamed of his doing in such
circumstances. He
simply leapt on to the banister and slid downwards.

The Gorilla’s reflexes were too slow to
enable him to take
aim at such a fast-moving target. The Rat recovered
faster,
but by the time he had come out of shock sufficiently to bring
his gun
to bear, Simon had left the banisters halfway down
and dropped from view
on the floor below, and the Rat’s
bullet harmlessly splintered the rail.

The Saint was now concealed from the two
thugs by the
staircase itself, but he gave them no time to regroup.
Whirling like an avenging typhoon around the newel post at the
bottom of the stairs, he was
upon the Rat before the latter
could locate
him. The Rat, being small and not particularly
strong, didn’t stand a chance, which was all the more unfortu
nate for him since the Saint used him as a shield
between
himself and the Gorilla,
whose reactions were too sluggish to
stop
him pulling the trigger of the gun he was trying to aim at
the Saint. That bullet ended the Rat’s meager and
evil-filled
life for good and all—or
perhaps, more aptly, for bad and all.

The Rat’s pistol dropped from his dead hand,
and the Rat
followed it and cascaded on to the floor.

The Gorilla was still trying to take aim when
the Saint
threw his knife. The gun spoke, but the Gorilla’s shot
went
wide because of the swiftness with which the Saint was moving. The
knife flew straight and true as an arrow to bury itself
up to the
hilt in the Gorilla’s throat, and the Gorilla slumped
to the ground beside the Rat, choking his
last gasps on his
own blood.

The Saint did not wait to consider their
passing, any longer than to scoop up the handiest of the two fallen guns. The
two thugs, he considered, were better out of this world than in it.

His own tiredness had evaporated, the blood
raced through
his veins and zest filled his soul. He had done what he
liked doing best, triumphing over the Ungodly and thwarting their
knavish
tricks, as the British National Anthem called them.
So he told himself.
Actually, if he had been more analytical,
he would have been honest enough to admit
that it boiled
down to the fact that he had
enjoyed a good fight and coming
out
on top.

Which was all very fine, except that winning
a skirmish was
not winning a war. Or even a decisive battle. There were
still
hurdles to take, bridges to cross, and even metaphors to man
gle.

In plainer language, what was the back-up
organisation
behind the latest casualties? And/or what was the other
fac
tor which their clumsiness didn’t fully account for?

Who tipped off the border guards about the
fake passes?
Who, in another phrase, was the rotten apple in Max Annellatt’s
own
carefully sifted barrel?

Stepping over the prostrate bodies of his
two erstwhile op
ponents, Simon walked down to the end of the passage
where
there were two doors. The one straight ahead obviously led
into the main body of the
Schloss, and he knew the one on
the left
gave on to the courtyard.

The Saint tried the inner door. As he
expected, it was
locked. Behind it, all the state rooms would also be
locked
and wired with burglar alarms.

Simon Templar believed that the most direct
and obvious action was frequently the most brilliant. He therefore calmly
unbolted
the courtyard door and walked out into what still remained of the night.

As he moved briskly across the cobblestones,
he checked
the load and action of the gun he had taken over. One
hazard
he could do without was that of being penalised by any incompetence of
the enemy, who in some respects had betrayed
streaks of
vulnerable sloppiness. He tucked the pistol under
his belt, just inside
the unbuttoned front of his shirt.

He mounted the broad steps to the main front
door of the
Castle, and rang the bell just as if he were a casual
visitor—al
beit a casual visitor with bloody scratches on his face.
There
was no answer, so the Saint rang again, this time long and
hard.

After a while, the lights went up in the Great
Hall and
there was a noise of bolts being retracted. The lock
clicked as the key turned, and then the door slowly and silently opened,
the alarm
having been switched off.

The Saint stepped into the blazingly lighted
hall.

“Good evening—once again, Erich!”
he said.

4

The manservant’s eyes goggled and his jaw
hung open. In a
moment,
however, he had regained his composure and his
face once more wore its professional mask. In his hand was a
Luger automatic, and Simon noted that it was held
in a
manner which combined decorum
with instant readiness for action.

“Ach, Herr Templar!” Erich’s eyes
flicked as he tried to de
termine whether Simon was armed. “What
has happened,
sir? How do you come here?”

The Saint smiled genially.

“Locked doors do not a prison make, my
dear Erich, to misquote a famous English poet.”

The man’s dark eyes became expressionless
once again. The
Saint sensed, as indeed he had always felt about Erich,
that
here was potentially a really dangerous customer, far above
the
calibre of the Rat and the Gorilla. Had the man possessed
a sense
of humour he might even have approached Max’s stat
ure in villainy.
Even so, the Saint realised that he would have
to be very careful in
dealing with the humourless Erich.

“But what are you doing here,
sir?” the man repeated. “I
thought you had retired for the
night.”

“I had, but I’m given to sleep-walking,
especially down the
sides of buildings. The doctors tell me I’m a unique case.
It
only comes over me when I get close to Dracula country. Do
you have
any bats in your belfry?”

As he rambled on inconsequentially, the
Saint was edging
into the doorway. But Erich was not to be caught
unawares.
He stepped backwards, but his gun was still at the ready.

“You have not told me why you are
here,” he persisted
stubbornly.

“And why I am not still locked in my
room,” said the Saint
dryly. “But I have some bad news for
you. Your master has
vanished. I can’t find him anywhere.”

For an instant there was a glint of surprise in the other’s
eyes. Then his lids drooped partially over them.

“He is in his study, sir,” he
replied, giving the Saint a
calculating stare.

“Oh, no, he isn’t. I’ve just been up
there.”

“Impossible,” Erich said flatly.
“I have been in my
quarters, and at this time of night the only
entrance to the
East Wing is past my room because the state rooms are all
locked and their burglar alarm is switched on.”

“Perhaps he turned himself into a
bat,” responded the
Saint helpfully. “Or maybe he’s been
kidnapped. Didn’t you
hear a couple of shots a few minutes
ago?”

As he spoke he again attempted to edge
closer to Erich, but once more the manservant retreated, his gun held steadily
on
target.

“I was on my way to investigate them,
sir, when you rang
the bell.”

“There seems to have been some sort of
a fracas,” Simon informed him. “There are a couple of dead men at the
foot of
the stairs in that wing. Someone seems to have been playing
games
rather roughly with them.”

Erich’s eyes widened.

“Furchtbar!
Who are they, these
men?”

The Saint was watching him keenly.

“I don’t know their names, but I’ve seen
them around
before in other places, and they were never up to any
good.
One of them looks like a big ape and the other like a rat.”

Erich’s face was once more expressionless.

“Are you sure you did not kill them,
sir?” His query was
polite, but his voice had a menacing ring.

“No, I’m not,” said the Saint
cheerfully. “Or yes I am,
whichever way you want to look at it. What I
mean is, I am not sure I did not kill them because I did kill them.”

Erich’s eyes were suddenly as cold as agates.
So was his
voice.

“And possibly, sir, you have killed the
Herr Baron?”

“No, he was too quick for me. I didn’t
get the chance. He
jumped on his cat and rode off between the chimney pots.
A
very versatile chap, your master.”

Erich’s gun pointed directly at the Saint’s
heart.

“What have you done with him?”

“I tell you,” maintained the Saint,
“I haven’t touched the
blighter. But his cat touched me in several
places.” He in
dicated the scratches on his face. “Left his calling
card, he
did.”

“I think, Mr Templar, you had better
answer my ques
tion.”

“I have. Quite truthfully. Your master did a bunk. Or as
they say in America, he took it on the lam.
Sie
scheinen
schwer von Begriff
zu sein.
I expect he’s in his
car right now
heading for parts
unknown as fast as it will take him. Don’t
ask me which, any one will do for him in his present circum
stances. He’s a refugee from the Law, you see, as
well as from
me. You might be in a
bit of the same trouble yourself, just
from
having been associated with him. Unless you’d claim
that you were always really working for
yourself—but that
could be
embarrassing too, couldn’t it?”

“Was meinen Sie?”

“I
mean that Max’s beautiful organisation
had its weak
spot, like a lot of brilliant organisations have had
before. As the old saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest
link. In
this case, the weak link is you.”

“Ich
verstehe
nicht.”

“Oh, but you do understand. Like a lot
of smartie subordi
nates before you, you thought you were smarter than the
Boss. So
you thought you could use his set-up for a while, and
then take over and ditch him at the right
moment. It’s only
your bad luck that I got
wise to the double-cross. Maybe you
were
just that much too clever when you tipped somebody off
about our false papers.”