The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace (9 page)

They hurried along to the next block, where
Annellatt
headed authoritatively for the door on the driver’s side
and
opened it. The Saint just as naturally accepted the passenger
position.
He found that he still had the ignition key, and
handed it over.

“She goes well, doesn’t she?”
Annellatt said as he started
the engine. “But it was careless of you
to leave the doors
unlocked, especially with your luggage in the car. You
should
never leave things in unlocked cars in Vienna. The inhabit
ants of
this town are strictly honest, but that doesn’t stop
them stealing and cheating
the tax inspectors. Only the Vien
nese can be moral and immoral at the
same time.”

“That isn’t just Viennese, it’s an
Austrian national characteristic,” Simon permitted himself to generalise.
“But if you
take that personally, I hope it’s in the nicest
way.”

Max seemed to take no umbrage. There was a
slight smile
on
his lips as he kept his eyes on the road. One would not have taken him for a
rally driver, but he handled the Mer
cedes
impeccably.

“Would you like to tell me now how you
escaped?”

Simon filled him in briefly on the details.

“My head still aches,” he
concluded, “but I think the Go
rilla will be aching a bit
longer.”

“It will not make him more friendly if
you ever meet
again,” Annellatt opined. “Let us hope that
will not happen.
But I’m now convinced that your reputation is well de
served.”

“I only wish,” said the Saint
frankly, “that I knew more
about yours.”

“It would depend entirely on who you
heard it from. But I expect that is something we have in common.”

The Saint looked out of the window.

“Where are we now? Isn’t that the Stadt
Park?”

“Yes. You know Vienna well,
Simon?”

“Well enough. I know where to eat, sleep, and enjoy my
self. That’s all one need know about a
town.”

Max laughed.

“Especially the last. Perhaps we can
trade some addresses.
By the way, have you been to Baden?”

“Not often. I’m not old or rheumatic
enough to need the
spa waters, and the Casino is really pretty small time.
Young
Leopold’s
mother wouldn’t be seen dead there, I’m sure, and
the town strikes me as being a sort of undertaker’s happy
hunting ground. But why do you ask?”

“My place is near there,” replied Annellatt, pressing
his
foot down on the accelerator as they
came out on the main
road to Sch
ö
nbrun. “At this hour of the day it should
not take us long to reach it.”

For a while he devoted himself to thrusting
the car along
the broad avenue without further talk. As they passed
Sch
ö
nbrun Palace, the Saint wondered, as he always
did when
he saw that great edifice, about the composition of an
Impe
rial mind which could think in terms of a summer cottage
with a
thousand rooms. They left the Palace behind them
and headed south-west
towards the Neusiedlersee, skirting the Wienerwald.

When they were in the country, Max really let
the Mer
cedes go. It seemed to handle itself as if it had a spirit and a
| mind of
its own. Max glanced at Simon.

“I love driving fast,” he remarked. “Life is so
slow. Any
thing which can speed it up and
make it amusing is so much
to the
good.”

Simon concurred, with a reservation.

“Almost anything. I can’t stand roller
coasters, or those
other machines that spin you around in three or four
directions
at once. I’m afraid you’ll never see me having a big
time
in the
Prater.”

“That is childish stuff, fit only for
the Viennese who are all
children at heart. That’s what makes them so
dangerous.
They
are loving, happy, and utterly ruthless, like children.
You and I are adults. I think we understand each other, yes?”

“I might understand you better,”
said the Saint levelly, “if
I really knew anything about you.”

“I thought I had told you a lot, for such
a short ac
quaintance.”

“Not about yourself.”

“Do I seem such a mysterious
personage?”

“It’s a bit of a mystery to me,”
said the Saint bluntly, “how
a man who makes such mistakes as you
have can be as
successful as you’ve obviously been. Or expect to go on
getting away with it.”

“What mistakes, for instance?”

“For instance, assuming that the
Gestapo wouldn’t be wise
to your back garage exit.”

“I still think it was true at the time.
I did not say they
would never find it.”

“But it was a bad under-estimate, all
the same. Now, you
were sure that the Malffy Palais wasn’t being watched,
at least
tonight.
Perhaps because they were waiting for Frankie at
your flat. But they know you’re involved in the Necklace busi
ness with her. The Rat used your name when he
started to
question me. So why
wouldn’t they know about this country
place
of yours? Why are you sure they’re such an inefficient
lot, this Viennese Gestapo?”

Max shrugged.

“The Austrians are not a very efficient
race. But we do get things done all the same. You may remember the old joke in
the War.
‘The situation in Berlin is serious but not hopeless.
The situation in
Vienna is hopeless but not serious.’ That re
ally sums up our
national character.”

“But you lost the War.”

“In a sense, yes. But we made a very
good recovery. And when Hitler took over this year he did so because he wanted
our gold
reserves, which were amongst the highest in Europe —better, I believe, even
than those of England.”

The Saint did not reply for a long while.
When he finally
spoke it was thoughtfully.

“And still you haven’t given me the
answers. You just come
out as a charming and delightful chap, and
probably a
thorough-going crook. Perhaps that’s the real reason
Frankie
picked you as a colleague. You must have some useful contacts both in
high places and in the underworld.”

Max plucked a cigarette from a gold case,
deftly performing
the operation with one hand. Simon pulled out the car
lighter and lit it for him. Annellatt’s face appeared weary and almost
sad in the
brightening glow.

“You are right, of course. I have the
entr
é
e into many circles. But the story
of my life is long and rather unhappy. I do
not like to think
about it myself, although admittedly it
always lies in the
back of my mind.”

“All right,” said the Saint
indifferently. “Keep it to yourself
then.”

But Max ignored him. He kept his eyes fixed
on the road
ahead and had the aspect of someone utterly alone, lost
in his
own bitter memories.

“I was born in Tyrol, the son of a poor
farmer. Tourists find that Alpine region very picturesque and beautiful, and
they
think its inhabitants always look happy and contented.
So they do. But that
is only to please the tourists!”

He changed gear to negotiate a hill.

“What visitors don’t know is that many
of the Tyrolese
have an entirely subnormal level of existence. Indeed,
the kindly tourist would be horrified if he knew the extent of
poverty
there. That is why it is kept from him, because the
Tyrolese need his
money, even though, to speak frankly, they
don’t much like
tourists.”

The car surged forward as he changed back
into high.

“I’m not too keen on most tourists
myself,” Simon admit
ted. “Somehow, every country always seems to export its
worst specimens. Or maybe going abroad brings out
the worst
in them.”

“Yes, but you dislike them from the
vantage point of supe
riority. You are rich and aristocratic. I
can tell you it is not
very pleasant to know that others are wealthy and wasting
food when you and your family are poor and
hungry. My
mother died when I was
ten of consumption, aggravated by
malnutrition.
No, let’s be honest, starvation would be more
accurate. The fact that
she was regularly knocked about by
my
father, who was a drunken brute, did not help. But per
haps he only drank to forget how unable he was to
cope with
the miserable situation of
his family.”

Simon noticed that the knuckles of Max’s
hands showed
white as he gripped the wheel with sudden intensity.
Then, as
if coming back from a long distance, he continued.

“We were a large family. Poor families
often are, in this
country at any rate. There were too many for my father to
provide for. We had to fend for ourselves. Two of my sisters
and a brother died, simply
because they could not, how do
you say it,
make the grade. Another brother emigrated to the United States, where he has
obviously done quite well, for
though
we have never heard from him since, I saw his name
in the paper connected with a Grand Jury
investigation in
New York.” Max
chuckled. “It was my brother who was
being investigated.”

His expression became sombre again.

“Two of my other sisters were forced to
sell themselves to
tourists who admired the beauties of Tyrol a little too
personally. One of them now lives in Innsbruck and the other in
St Anton.
Both are married and run excellent pensions of ex
treme respectability.”
His irrepressible Austrian humour
flashed back for an instant in his
eyes. “They do not approve of me. I am the black sheep of the
family.”

The Saint was sympathetic to Max’s story,
but he was also
aware that it was a pitch for his good will.

“You don’t seem to have done so badly
for yourself,” he ob
served.

“I’ve done very well. I realised early
that life is what you make it. I decided to make mine extremely comfortable.
That
I have done.”

“I’m glad your story has a happy
ending.”

Max gave him a steady look. “That was
not part of my bar
gain with life. I did not ask for happiness. People who
are
happy are either saints or idiots.”

“Point taken,” Simon conceded.
“I’m happy!”

“Yes, you may be a ‘Saint’ but not quite
the usual kind,
and that naturally makes me want to ask questions of my
own.”

“Fire away,” said the Saint.
“It costs nothing to ask.”

“I was wondering what brought you to
Vienna, before you so providentially met Frankie.”

The Saint sighed.

“Everyone seems to be curious about
that,” he said. “But
I’m afraid that’s one I’m not answering. Perhaps I’ll tell you
all about it in a couple of hundred years, and I
think it might
amuse you. But for
now you’ll have to take my word that it
had absolutely nothing to do with you, Frankie, or the Haps
burg Necklace.”

He knew now that Annellatt’s reminiscence
had also been a
bid for reciprocal confidence, but Max seemed to accept
its
failure with good grace.

“That at least is worth knowing,”
Annellatt said, and drove
on in silence for several kilometres.

After some time he braked suddenly and swung
the car off
on to a side road, which joined the main one where two
ruined
castles flanked it on opposite sides. Simon had seen
them before and knew
that to get to them they must have by
passed the town of Baden. They were
called Rauhenstein and
Rauheneck, and they flanked the road to Mayerling. Simon figured
they must have been built by two rival barons who
wanted to be near enough to each other to have a good bash-up when they
felt like it. It occurred to him that the Middle
Ages must have been
full of fun like that.