The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (6 page)

“They are downstairs,” she told
Max in German.

“Who?”

“The men who kidnapped me. I think they
are Gestapo.”

Max glanced at Simon.

“I think it would be polite to our
guest to speak English,”
he said in that tongue.

The girl followed suit.

“If you like, but he speaks fluent German.
Max, may I introduce Mr Simon Templar, otherwise known as the Saint?”

For a long while Max stared at Simon. Then he
gave a low
whistle.

“So, we are indeed honoured!”

“The pleasure is all mine,” Simon
replied blandly. “I’ve
had a very entertaining evening. And I find
the Gestapo adds
a new dimension to life.”

Max grimaced.

“It certainly does! Unfortunately it is
not such a nice one.
Anyway, you will have a whisky while you are
here, no?”

“Not no,” said the Saint.
“Yes, thank you very much.”

He sat down next to Thai on the sofa and
accepted the
drink which Max brought him. The cat looked at the whisky
with interest, his ears pricked, as if inviting the Saint to give
him a sip.

There was a sudden noise as the door was
flung open. A
young man entered.

He was slightly built, slim, and he moved
gracefully with
an impression of controlled strength. His thick black
hair was
brushed smoothly straight back and his tanned face was
aquiline and aristocratic.

“Frankie!” he cried when he saw the
girl.
“Wie bist du
denn entflohen? Ich habe die ganze
Zeit nach dir gesucht seit
wir deine Botschaft bekamen!”

He walked swiftly over to the girl, taking
both her hands in
his. He kissed one of them and then her cheek. She
looked
into his eyes and smiled. There was obviously a close bond be
tween
them.

Turning towards Simon she spoke in English.

“I owe my life to our friend here. He
just rescued me from
the Gestapo. Mr Templar, may I introduce
Count Leopold
Denksdorff, my cousin?”

Simon’s name apparently meant nothing to the
young
man, who bowed curtly.

“How do you do?” he said formally.

His English, like Frankie’s, though heavily
accented was ex
cellent. Most Austrian aristocrats, as Simon knew, felt
a close
affinity to the English and, even after having been their
enemies in
a terrible conflict, emulated them whenever possi
ble.

The Saint ignored young Denksdorff’s brusque
manner.

“I won’t be sending a bill,” he
said pleasantly. “Frankie’s
thanks are more than enough.”

Max intervened tactfully.

“Tell us the story of your escape,
Frankie.”

He and Leopold listened attentively to
Frankie’s vivid ac
count of her adventures, and explaining Simon’s part in
them.
The Saint
observed the others closely, assessing them and
their relationships. They seemed to be completely at home with each
other in spite of their different temperaments and
the fact that Max Annellatt’s background was
quite different from that of the two young aristocrats. This camaraderie was
surprising even in the new democratic Austria. Habits of over a thousand years
die hard, and the Austrian nobility were still
a very cliquey lot.

When she had finished, the girl turned
towards Simon.

“But all is well. Mr Templar is going
to help us to get the
Necklace. I have told him where it is.”
She gave Simon a
dazzling smile. “He will give us a plan.”

Flirting is an essential part of every
Viennese girl’s upbring
ing, but Max looked astonished.

“Was that wise, my dear? After all, you
haven’t even told
us.”

Frankie gave him a guilty glance. “I
mean, I—”

“We can be grateful to Mr Templar for
what he has
done,” the young Count interrupted rudely,
“but he can be of no further use. He is not one of us.”

There was a wealth of hauteur in his manner and the
implication that unless one were born an Austrian
aristocrat
one was not properly born
at all.

The Saint was only amused by the
churlishness of an arro
gant and probably jealous youth.

“You are quite right,” he said
benignly. “And every time
I’m reminded of it I feel I should go on a
Diet of Worms.”

Max Annellatt held up a hand.

“Leopold, you must understand that
Simon Templar is no
ordinary Englishman. He is known as the Saint and is an
in
ternational… er—”

“Crook?” suggested the Saint
helpfully.

For the first time Annellatt looked slightly
flustered.

“No, no! Perhaps ‘operator’ would be a better word.”

“Makes me sound as if I manned a
switchboard,” Simon
remarked. “What about Boy Scout?”

“I think I prefer ‘gentleman
adventurer,’ ” Frankie said.

“Anyway,” Max said firmly, “I
am in agreement with Leo
pold about one thing, Mr Templar. We cannot
ask you to
help us in our venture. It is too dangerous and it would
not be
fair to you.”

“Keep it up and you’ll really hook
me,” said the Saint.
“Tell
me
it’s dull and entirely
law-abiding and I’d be
delighted to stay out. But dangerous, well,
that’s quite some
thing else. My doctor told me I should have at least one
ad
venture a day to keep him away. We’ve had today’s, but
there’s
always tomorrow.”

Frankie moved swiftly over and kissed him
lightly on the
cheek.

“You are a dear!” she cried.
“I knew you’d agree to join us
in the end.”

“No!” exclaimed Leopold, looking as
if he were about to
stamp his foot with rage. “I won’t have it! Mr
Templar is
English. He knows nothing about Austria and nothing
about
us.”

“I expect I could muddle through,”
Simon offered
modestly. “It’s a tradition in my country. We
always win in
the end. Admittedly we give a lot of people a few nasty
turns
en route. But we do win, even if it means just not losing.”

Max’s face was impassive.

“With all respect to you, Mr Templar,
and with gratitude
for
the help you have already given us, I think Leopold is
right. We simply must not impose on you any further. It
would do neither you nor us any good.”

His voice and manner were friendly but the
Saint detected
an odd undercurrent of nervousness.

Frankie suddenly drew herself up. Her face
was pale but
her carriage was regal.

“I wish Mr Templar to help us,” she announced flatly.
“It
is
I
who am the Keeper of
the Hapsburg Necklace, not you
Leopold,
nor you Max. This is
my
decision to make, and I
have made it.”

Her two countrymen looked at her in
astonishment. There
was nothing that they could say. Apparently her case was
unanswerable, but they had obviously never before seen her
assert
herself so imperiously.

“All right,” said the Saint
cheerfully. “If Frankie’s the boss,
I can’t turn down the
job.
‘Ce que femme veut, Dieu le
veut’—
as my dear old grannie used to say whenever
they tried
to stop her having another double
gin. So let’s stop bickering
and let
me in on the rest of the plot. The readers are getting impatient.”

2

“Just for a start,” said the Saint,
“I’d like to get straight on a point of protocol. Frankie, as we call her,
has told me about
her father, Count Malffy, the hereditary Keeper of the
Neck
lace. Now, if
I should have to ask for her somewhere else, or
introduce her formally, what do I call her? Did she inherit
the title as well as the job?”

“My cousin Francesca,” Leopold said
proprietorially, and
with undisguised disdain for such ignorance, “is the
Gr
ä
fin—
Countess-Malffy.”

“But the name has a Hungarian sound. How
did Graf
Malffy
get so well in with the Hapsburgs?”

“Perhaps you did not learn in school
that before the war of
1914 this was a country called
Austria-Hungary.”

“Oh yes, so it was. And now Hitler has
made this part Ger
many-Austria. Well, that’s life in the Balkans. Never
mind.
One day Hungary could be back under the same flag—if
someone else doesn’t grab it
first.”

The Countess Malffy was nobly trying to conceal her mali
cious delight in this sparring. But she was
sensible enough to break it up again before it got out of hand.

“We are wasting time,” she said.
“And Mr Templar—”

“Since we’re all friends, you can call me Simon.”

“—Simon has a right to know how
difficult is the project in
which we are asking him to engage.”

“As I understand it,” said the
Saint, “the Necklace has just
been left somewhere in the ancestral Schloss.”

Max went over to a beautifully inlaid Empire
desk. From a
drawer he picked out a folded sheet of paper which he
spread
out on top of the desk.

“Here is a map of Schloss Este,”
he said, beckoning Simon.

The Saint walked over and looked at the map.
Max’s finger
pointed out its details.

“Here you can see,” he said,
“the Germans have fortified
the whole area around the Castle. It amounts
to some two
hundred hectares, or about five hundred of your
acres.”

“Not mine,” Simon disclaimed. “I don’t own a single
rod,
pole, or perch.”

“This area included both the Castle and
a small village of
just a few houses and a church. They have put barbed wire
fencing round the perimeter and an electrical fence as well.
There are
also sentry platforms at intervals and searchlights
for use at night.
They may even have mined certain vulnera
ble places—I’m afraid
I haven’t yet been able to find that
out.”

“But I take it you have made a thorough
survey of the Cas
tle and its environs—from the outside?”

Max nodded.

“Aber nat
ü
rlich,
I and my men have observed it all. In the
daytime
through high-powered binoculars, and at night we
have even crossed
the river which runs past one side of the
fortifications,
looking for some way through the barbed wire and electrical fences. One of my
men thought he had found it
but he was mistaken, unfortunately.” He
shrugged. “I had to give his widow a pension. She’s really better off. She
has a
steady income and no husband. That’s the best situation a
woman can
be in, so my married girlfriends tell me.”

“I must remember to give you the names
and addresses of
my four wives—I should have warned you that I was a Mos
lem,” murmured the Saint.
“So it seems that all we have to
do is
cross the river at night, avoid the searchlights, get over
electrical and barbed wire fences, and be careful
not to step
on any mines that may be
lying around. All we need is a few crocodiles in the river to make our fun
complete.”

Max laughed.

“I told you I liked your sense of
humour, Mr Templar. I
see now that it can also be what we call the
gallows kind.”

“It may sound funny,” Simon said,
“but it strikes me quite
seriously that to try to get into that
fortified area would be
rather like putting our heads in a
noose.”

Max shook his head. “It would be but for
one thing. The
Germans put up their fortifications in a hurry. What they
have
overlooked is that this whole valley”—his fingers traced
the
contours on the map—“between these hills is drained by a
very large
pipe buried deep in the earth. It is big enough for a
man to crawl up and
it comes out into the river. It was neces
sary because
otherwise at certain times of the year when the
heavy rains come the
whole valley would be flooded because it lies between these two ridges of hills
which run up to the
Castle on either side. As you can see, the terrain forms
a sort
of funnel with the Castle at one end and the river at the
other.”