The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (25 page)

Simon took out of his pocket a piece of wire
which he
usually kept in his suitcase ready for emergencies, and
picked
the lock.
It was to no avail. The door was barred or bolted on
the other side, and the hinges were on that side too.

Well, Max was going to have a visitor tonight
whether he
liked it or not. The Saint was determined on that. There
was
too much at stake to allow Max the perfect seclusion he
desired.
There was only one snag. All normal methods of get
ting to Max’s study
were barred and the entire ground floor of
the central block,
as Anton had explained to him, was wired
with burglar alarms,
including the inside doorways leading
from the main hall to the state rooms.
Thus all com
munication with the wings was prevented at that level.

On the floor where he was there were no
burglar alarms,
and had not the door leading to Max’s wing been barred,
he
could have walked straight through and along to Max’s study.
He could,
of course, go around to the other side of the balcony and into the wing which
housed Frankie and Leopold,
for this must surely be open. Then he could
make his way to
the ground floor and unbolt a door into the courtyard.
But he did not know the set-up in that part of the Castle. That wing
could be
bristling with henchmen and servants—and no one must be allowed to get in the
way of his private session with
Max that night.

But it rather looked as if someone did mean
to interfere. The door leading to the stairway from the main hall to the
rooms
below the state apartments suddenly opened, and the
black and white
flagstones of the great hall far below were
brightly lit up by a
wedge of electric light as someone came
through that door
into the hall. It was Erich. The Saint could not see him but he heard his voice
calling out some instruc
tion to another person still in the basement.
Then Erich
began to mount the stairs, curiously without turning on
the
lights and treading lightly.

There was nothing for it but to beat a
retreat unless Simon was willing to be involved in a tiresome extempore explana
tion of
why he himself was coming down the stairs. The Saint
did not want any
such encounter. For personal reasons he
wanted his visit to
Max to be completely private.

He slipped noiselessly back round the balcony
and into his
room.
He heard Erich’s footsteps coming stealthily nearer,
and then they stopped outside his door.

The. situation was piquant enough to be just
to the Saint’s
liking. He figured that for some reason Erich apparently
was
about to enter his room, presuming that by now the Saint was
fast
asleep. If he found the Saint awake he would probably
make some excuse and
depart, possibly taking with him the
Saint’s shoes to polish, or some
article of clothing for press
ing.
Indulging himself,
the Saint gave vent to a loud snore.
There was nothing he would have liked
better than to catch
Erich sneaking into his room and surprise him by jumping
out of the dark and saying “Boo!” He
could picture the astonishment, dismay, fright, and total incomprehension on
the
man’s face.

The door slowly opened, inch by inch. This
time the Saint
added a grace note to his snore. It was a truly operatic
produc
tion and he was pleased with it.

But surprisingly Erich did not open the door
further. In
stead, Simon could see in the moonlight the manservant’s
arm curl
silently around the door and equally silently remove the key from the lock.

It took a lot to confuse the Saint, but for
a moment he was
completely flummoxed. Then the door closed without a
sound. A
moment later there was a click as the lock turned,
and there was a
grating noise, slight but unmistakable, as the
key was withdrawn.

The Saint realised that for some reason Erich
had made
him a prisoner. He would probably come back in the morn
ing,
unlock the door, and wake Simon just as if nothing had
happened. The thought
amused Simon.

But the fact that he had been barred from
wandering
spelled out clearly that something was going on in the
Castle that visitors must not know about. Well, Erich and any of his pals could
play their games and he could play his. But it was
now imperative that
he get to Max as quickly as possible.

He went to the window and leaned out. The height from
the courtyard had looked alarming enough in
daylight, but at night there was one
thing about it: Erich and his
colleagues would never think
that the Saint
would leave his room by such a dangerous
route.

Now he was reminded that one happening after
another
had bereft him of conventional fire-power. But in the bottom
of his suitcase,
still untouched, was the switch knife which he
had taken from the
Gorilla in Vienna and kept as a souvenir of that encounter. As he slipped it
into his hip pocket, he felt
a surge of invincible excitement that had its
source in days of youthful recklessness that he had sometimes almost forgotten.

The thought that he might not survive such a
vertiginous
descent did not bother him at all. His theory had always
been that his time would come when it did, and that certainly was
not yet. He
expected to go on operating on this theory for
many years to come. It
had got him out of scrapes which
would not only have daunted others but which
would have been lethal to them as well. “High ho, the long drop O,”
he
sung gently to himself as he swung one leg over the window-
sill and
prepared to climb down the face of the building to
the courtyard below.

It was going to be a difficult, almost
impossible journey. His
room was at a corner of the central portion
of the Castle,
which meant that he did not have the aid of the
colonnaded
balconies that adorned the wings. Once on the ground, it
would be
relatively easy for him to break into the wing which housed Max’s study, since
this was not equipped with burglar
alarms. But first he had to get down
to the courtyard.

Although most of his enemies, and indeed the
majority of
his friends too, would not credit it, the Saint was
subject to
human failings, including the very natural protective
fear of
heights which is instilled into humans to keep them from
thinking
they are mountain goats. On the other hand, his
whole training had
been to neutralise these weaknesses. In
dealing with heights,
therefore, he was as cautious as the best
mountain climber,
but he had long ago evolved a system of
overcoming vertigo
and muscle-freezing panic. It was very
simple. He just
pretended that the height on which he stood was two feet off the ground and
told himself firmly that he
could therefore not possibly be hurt if he
fell. It was a psy
chological trick, deliberately practised to fool himself,
but it
worked.

He leaned now over the cobblestone
courtyard, casually
holding on with one hand to the jamb of the window, and
ex
amined the face of the building. He might have been surveying the
North Face of the Eiger, looking for footholds pre
paratory to an
organised climb complete with ropes,
crampons, ice axes and all the
necessary equipment. But in
this case he had nothing to rely on except
his own strength,
agility and coolness.

The climb at first sight appeared totally
impossible, even
for him. His idea had been to get on to the roof and walk
across to a point above Max’s window, and then climb down.
But he
could see now that this scheme was not feasible. There was simply no surface
between him and the roof which would
give the necessary holds. Nor was
there anything which would
provide an opportunity for him to work his way sideways along the
front of the building to the wing. The stuccoed
plaster on either side of his window was as smooth as a board,
and the neighbouring windows were too far away for
him to
swing across to, even if he
cared to take such a potentially
lethal
risk.

On the other hand, perhaps the Saint’s greatest asset was
his conviction that no problem was unsolvable, if
you approached it with an open mind. He had to reach Max’s wing
somehow, and if he could not do it by climbing
upwards,
then the feat might be
accomplished by making a descent.

As in most Renaissance buildings, the State
Apartments were on the floor above the ground floor and below the one
on which
the Saint was. The windows of these large rooms
opened on to an
ornamental stone ledge above the top of the
ground floor which on
the outside was “rusticated” with
plaster imitation
slabs of stone. The tops of these state room
windows were covered
with a jutting pediment of stone. If he
could drop on to the
one below him, he could climb down on
to the windowsill and then simply
work his way down the rus
ticated stonework of the ground floor to the
courtyard. Then
he could walk across to Max’s wing and climb up the outside
of it to the canopied verandah. From the roof of this it would
be a
relatively easy climb to Max’s study.

Some might have considered that only a
superb gymnast
with a lunatic mind could seriously consider this
enterprise.
The Saint would have laughed and agreed with them. But
without further hesitation, he
gripped the windowsill with
both hands and
gently lowered himself downwards, singing
“Onward, Christian Soldiers” in a low voice as he did so. It
was not the most appropriate of songs but it had a strong
vigorous tune and remembering the words kept his
mind oc
cupied and away from
thoughts of the void below. When his
arms
were fully extended he let himself drop.

4

His descent was short and sharp and he
landed on the ledge on top of the window underneath. The drop had to be com
pletely
accurate, for the stone pediment was not more than about a foot wide and if his
body had swayed outwards in
landing he would have crashed backwards to
the courtyard
below. As it was, in order to save himself from the
natural in
clination to teeter, and to keep his body pressed
against the
face of the building, he had to use every ounce of his
determination, will-power and muscular strength.

With infinite caution, and this time humming “Rock of
Ages” by way of a change, he turned around
and lowered his
body to a sitting
position on the ledge.

So far so good, but his difficulties were
not yet over. He had
to get down to the windowsill some twelve
feet below, and
this sill sloped slightly outwards to cast rain off into
the court
yard below. That slight declivity might also throw a
Saint on
to the cobblestones—and the sill was high enough to make
that a formidable fall.

One thing was certain. He could not go back.
He must go
on, even if it meant purposefully dropping the rest of
the way
on to the cobblestones. But that might easily result in a
broken
leg or at least a sprained ankle—and possibly even in
death if the drop were miscalculated. The
Saint felt very
strongly that death would
curtail his activities, and there were certain of them he was not yet ready to
give up.

Then he remembered that the window below him
was in
two sections: a relatively small area of glass permanently fixed
at the
top above a transverse wooden lintel, and below this
two large window
sections which opened outward on hinges like doors. If he could break part of
the top section without setting off an alarm, he could get an arm through it
and lever himself down on to the sill.

Thought was followed by immediate action.
Taking off his
shoes he tied the laces together. Then he hung the shoes
around
his neck. He manoeuvred himself so that once more
he faced inwards, and
then lowered his body off the ledge
slightly to one side of the window.