The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (30 page)

For a while there was silence. Erich was
obviously fitting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together, swiftly and competently,
in his mind.

“I think,” he said finally,
“that I shall have to kill you.”

The Saint actually laughed. A spectator would
have
thought that he was really enjoying himself. The spectator
would have
been right. This was just the sort of situation that
Simon Templar
revelled in: death only a few feet and perhaps
only a few seconds
away. Unless he could dodge it.

“I expect you’re right,” he said.
“But I must warn you that I’m probably quicker on the draw and a better
shot than you
are. It’s my Boy Scout training.”

Erich steadied his aim deliberately. For a
long moment
they faced each other. Then the Saint dipped into his
shirt
pocket and brought out the necklace. The movement was
slow and
relaxed, making sure not to give any suggestion that
he might be going
for a concealed weapon. Which he was
doing, of course; but this weapon was
psychological.

Erich’s eyes bulged as he saw the fiery
splendour of the stones. Obviously his mother hadn’t told him that artificial
gems
could sparkle as brightly as real ones. He drew in his
breath sharply.

“Das Halsband!”
he
whispered, as if he were admitting
something against his will. With an
effort he switched back
to English and his attention to Simon. “Where … how did
you get it?”

The Saint swung the necklace in languid
hypnotic arcs in
front
of the man’s eyes, and Erich had difficulty in keeping
his gaze from following it.

“Your master gave it to me,” Simon
answered. “He said he
didn’t want it any more—or you either. So
off he went, leaving me to dispose of both of you.”

Erich was not easily intimidated.

“In that case,” he said, “you
are wrong, Mr Templar. It is I
who will dispose.”

“Have it your own way,” said the
Saint accommodatingly.
“But if this is what you want most,
you’re welcome to it.
Help yourself—as one
Schmuck
to
another.”

And he tossed the Hapsburg necklace
carelessly to the foot
man, even more carelessly than Max Annellatt had recently
tossed it to him.

Adept as he was, Erich would scarcely have
been human if he had not grabbed at the necklace as it snaked towards him.
For one
fatal instant his attention was distracted from the Saint.

That was all Simon needed. A moment suddenly
seemed to
elongate itself as he filled it with sudden action.
Leaping
across, he knocked the gun from Erich’s hand and seized the
servant’s
arm in a grip which should normally have compelled
submission.

But the footman also knew some tricks of the trade. As the
Saint began to apply the pressure on his captive
arm which
would have forced him to
give in, Erich kicked him hard and
accurately
on the shin.

Simon was, after all, human, and a shin is a most painful
portion of one’s anatomy when it is struck a
violent blow. For a moment his concentration also wavered, and Erich was as
quick as the Saint had been to use that moment to his advan
tage, and while
Simon’s grip fractionally relaxed Erich wriggled free. He leapt back and
looked around for his gun.

It lay on the floor, just out of his reach and
even more out
of Simon’s.

Erich automatically dived for it, and the
Saint just as auto
matically did not try to beat him to it. Instead, the
Saint’s
right hand dived inside his shirt for the pistol that he had
tucked
away.

It was a moderately close thing, but in such
circumstances
moderation is more than enough.

“Well,” said the Saint, more or
less to himself, as Erich crumpled quite ummistakably out of active
participation, “I
suppose a devout cricketer would call this a hat trick.”

VIII

How Simon Templar had the last word

1

“Only nobody in the cast,” Simon continued to himself,
in
the same mournful vein, “ever seemed
to wear a hat.”

That line of reflection was mercifully
terminated by the ap
pearance on the landing above of Frankie and
Leopold in
their dressing-gowns.

“You can come down,” said the
Saint. “Everything’s safe
for now. But I’m afraid you missed all the
fun.”

The most perfunctory examination was enough
to confirm
that Erich would never take part in another crime, on his
own or anyone else’s behalf. It was the kind of permanent and in
contestable
reformation which the Saint found it easiest to
believe in.

He tucked his gun away and picked up the
necklace as
Frankie and Leopold joined him.

“What has been going on?” Leopold
demanded.

“And where did that come from?”
Frankie demanded.

Simon handed the necklace to her with a bow.

“Max gave it to me. He asked me to pass
it on to you with
his love and a farewell kiss.”

“Max?” She was completely
bewildered. “How on earth
… ? Where is he?”

“Probably on his way to the North
Pole,” said the Saint. “I
expect he’ll set up an igloo there,
with a sign offering rein
deer for hire and Christmas presents
delivered. And God
help
your presents once they’re in his sack.”

The girl literally stamped her foot.

“Simon, if you don’t stop your stupid
jokes I shall kill you.
What has happened?”

“Well, it’s a bit long for a bedtime
story,” said the Saint.
“But I suppose you’ll never sleep if I
don’t tell it.”

He made the telling as brief and concise as
it could be
without
leaving any of their inevitable questions unanswered.

“And so,” he concluded, “apart
from the great Annellatt
himself, the opposition seems to have been
disposed of. The
ghosts of our three other playmates, wherever they are,
can
only be
comparing notes on how they got there. Which leaves us in the clear, so long as
nobody connects us with that little
misunderstanding
at the frontier.”

“But there are three dead men here,”
Leopold uttered,
almost in disbelief.

“That’s nothing compared with the last
act of most of
Shakespeare’s plays,” the Saint reassured him.
“Anyhow, with
a little rearrangement I think I can make it look as if
they
perished in a friendly shoot-out between themselves. At least
convincingly enough to give the
local
polizei
a reasonable excuse
for
not working themselves into exhaustion over it. Or it
might even be amusing to pin the rap on this
two-timing
Jeeves.”

Leopold dragged his eyes away from Erich’s
uninterested
body.

“We shall have to call the police,” he said
conventionally.

“Not just yet,” said the Saint.
“I don’t want to get in
volved. Let the Gestapo and the Austrian
Sherlock-holmes-
gesellschaft
sweat it out between them.”

Frankie looked again, somewhat blankly, at
the necklace
which
she was holding as if she was still in a trance that had
come on when the Saint gave it to her.

“And this?” she said. “If it is really an
imitation—”

“I’m not interested in your family
skeletons, whatever dun
geons you keep them in,” said the Saint
curtly. “But even at
this unearthly hour, I think we should be heading
back to
Vienna as soon as we can get organised, to set up any alibis
that we
might inconceivably need. As for the Hapsburg Neck
lace, the Keeper has
it, or what’s left to keep now. So I hope that closes the book.”

“You are forgetting,” Frankie
said, “I gave my real name when I went to Schloss Este.”

“That was an impostor,” said the Saint. “Like the
man in
SS uniform who sprung her. It must
all have been part of
some fiendish
Jewish plot, maybe to steal the necklace. But
you never left Vienna. So let’s pack up and hustle back there. This
place is beginning to feel like a morgue.”

2

They met that evening for a farewell supper
at the Kursalon
by Vienna’s Stadtpark.

It was the Saint’s idea. For one thing he
liked the place,
which was oldfashioned, romantically dusted with the
atmos
phere of the Hapsburg Empire, when it had been the scene
of many
an illicit amatory rendezvous. It still was, although
its manner was less
ostentatious and it seemed slightly anach
ronistic in the rather
brutal climate of the times. Never
theless, discreet waiters served one
expertly and then left one
alone, which made it just the place for a
quiet talk in one of
the cubicles it considerately provided for
dallying couples.

Secondly, it was not an establishment
frequented by high
society. They could dine there, surrounded by chomping
Viennese
petite bourgeoisie, without the likelihood of being
recognised. Not that
the Saint was expecting trouble, but he
did want them to be
by themselves. At Sachers, Demmels, or
any of the other
smart restaurants or caf
é
s, some friend
of
Frankie’s or Leopold’s might come up and, Viennese fashion,
stay for
a long gossip.

When they were seated in the secluded alcove
and their
orders had been taken by a waiter who gave the impression
that he regarded culinary dishes as state secrets the Saint
raised his
cocktail glass.

“Here’s to us, we three musketeers. All
for one and one for
all—and all for the Queen’s Necklace that wasn’t.”

Frankie was looking marvellous in a dark blue
dress shot
with silver which did wonderful things for her figure
and vice
versa. The colour was a perfect foil for her raven hair
and matched the brilliant blue of her eyes.

The Saint smiled at her.

“You look good enough to eat or
something. Mostly some
thing.”

Leopold yawned involuntarily and seemed
slightly guilty at having done so.

“Still tired?” asked the Saint.
“I’ve been asleep all day in
my hotel.”

“So have I been asleep all day,”
said Leopold, “but I think
I need at least a week.”

“I
only had a little
sleep,” said Frankie, “and I’m not tired
at all. I had
something to attend to—and then I bought this
dress. Do you like
it? I thought of you, Simon, when I chose
it.”

The Saint raised an eyebrow. The warning
system which every confirmed bachelor always keeps switched on gave a
faint
signal.

“You’d better not think of me too often
or you’ll go
broke.”

“You are leaving tomorrow?”
Leopold inquired pleasantly
—but somewhat pointedly, the Saint thought.

“Yes—with much regret. It’s been great fun, kids, but I
must get back to real life. It’s a bit hard to
find it here in Aus
tria.”

“You cannot believe that,” Frankie
said.

Her eyes were big and full of meaning. Her
perfume
smelled expensive and expensively exciting, which just about
summed up
Frankie. It struck Simon that it might have been
very pleasant to
linger awhile in this
opera bouffe
country
where dreams and
reality were hard to distinguish and often
were the same thing.

“Oh, I know we’ve seen some real
death,” he said. “But
that isn’t exactly what I meant.”

“You really did risk your life,”
said the girl softly, “and I
want to thank you for saving
mine.”

“Think nothing of it,” Simon
replied with careful
lightness. “I’m always rescuing
beautiful damsels in distress.
I’m only sorry I’m not so good at saving
necklaces.”