Leslie Charteris: The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace

The girl had not been sitting at her table for long before a man joined her. He was not at all the sort of person one would have expected her to be waiting for. His slight frame was encased in a raincoat, the belt of which was drawn so tightly that the coat ballooned out below it almost like a skirt. His face was narrow, and the felt hat which he did not take off when he sat down was pulled over his forehead, giving him a somewhat sinister air. His appearance reminded Simon of nothing so much as a large rat, for his skin was grey, his eyes narrow and shifty, and his mouth thinly compressed. It showed petulance rather than strength, however. When he finally did take his hat off his sinister quality largely disappeared, for he was completely bald save for some wisps of hair which stuck out clownlike from the sides of his head.

The Saint watched the couple with idle interest. The man was talking to the girl in a low voice with great urgency. At intervals she shook her head violently and even angrily. Suddenly the man stopped talking, and fixing her with an almost hypnotic look he put on his hat and stood up, becoming once more the evil-looking rat.

She sat for a moment staring at him, an expression of astonishment on her face. Then she too rose — somewhat reluctantly, the Saint thought. Pulling her coat about her she started for the door.

For a moment her eyes met the Saint’s. To his surprise, they seemed to wish to say something, but he decided that that was just wishful thinking on his part. Then she was gone, probably leaving his life for ever.

The thought gave him a twinge of regret. Hotels are lonely places for men who do not have their wives or girlfriends along. Also, Simon was very choosey. A girl had to have that special quality, something exciting and unknown yet almost tangible, which made her different. This girl had it.

Simon wondered whether she and her companion were lovers. In Vienna this would be quite possible, even though he was obviously much older than she, and a distinctly unattractive type at that. In Vienna relationships between men and women, although tinged with the romance of a Strauss waltz, were usually totally down-to-earth as well. The man could have been rich and the girl poor. Simon decided against this little fantasy, principally because he did not like the idea himself. In any case, if the Rat was rich, he was too mean to buy himself a new raincoat.

He was idly speculating about other possible reasons that might have brought this unlikely pair together when he suddenly noticed that the girl had left her handbag behind. There might still be time to catch her. He sprang to his feet, grabbed up the bag, and hurried after her.

It was blowing and raining outside. In the gloom Simon could see the figures of the man and the girl hurrying up the street towards a parked car. Huge jagged shadows chased after them, created by the swaying sign of the Hofburg restaurant. Heedless of the rain, the Saint ran after them, moving silently like a great cat. He quickly caught up with the pair.

Simon spoke fluent German, as he did a number of languages. He held out the bag towards the girl and explained how he had come by it. Her face was pale and ghostly in the half light, and her blue eyes looked almost black and seemed very large. It suddenly struck Simon that she was frightened. “Danke, danke vielmals,” she said huskily.

The man grabbed her by the arm.

“Komm!” he commanded her roughly.

Simon noticed that he stood very close to her, pressing his body to hers in a protective fashion. Perhaps they were married after all. If that was the case he did not think much of her lot — or rather her “little.” The man looked a bit of a brute, but a mean rather than a strong one.

Simon never minded out-and-out badness. In fact, it rather appealed to him as long as it was openhearted and large-minded. But petty viciousness was anathema to him. It reminded him of tax collectors, customs officials, and all the other people who wanted to spoil a free and lusty enjoyment of life.

The girl stood firm.

“Nein. Ich muss diesem Herren danken.”

“Komm!” snarled the man again, tugging at her arm. “Wir haben uns verspätet.”

The girl shook him off. She opened her bag and fumbled in it.

“Hier ist etwas für Sie.”

She handed Simon a banknote.

The Saint was irritated, understandably so. No man who has done what he considers to be a gallant act likes to be tipped for it, unless he belongs to those vocations in which tipping is a part of income. He thrust the money curtly back at her.

“I am not a porter,” he told her in German.

She was finished with him however. Brushing the money aside, she turned and got into the parked car while the man held the rear door open for her. Simon saw there was another man in the driver’s seat. He was bulky and had a simian appearance. The rat-faced man joined the girl and slammed the door in Simon’s face. The car shot off, spattering him with rainwater from the gutter.

Cramming the banknote into his pocket, Simon walked back to the Hofburg restaurant fuming. When he got there he thought it might be soothing to have a drink and he ordered a glass of the apricot brandy which he considered to be Austria’s finest beverage. When the Barack came, he reached into his side pocket and pulled out the banknote the girl had just given him, thinking wryly that he might as well use it to solace the pride that it had wounded.

To his surprise he noticed that it was covered with writing.

He paid the waitress with another banknote from his wallet and spread the note with writing on it out on the table. The script was in German:

Emergency, help! Please ring U -58-331 and say that Frankie has been kidnapped. Keep this for your trouble.

The Saint felt an old familiar tingle of anticipation spreading through his ganglions. It was the physical confirmation of a psychic certainty. Something in his subconscious clicked and switched on that delicious anticipatory glow which assured that Adventure was rearing its lovely head. It was rather like water divining, or dowsing as the practitioners preferred to call it. One either had the extra sense or one didn’t. The Saint did.

He sat thoughtfully looking at the note. How did the message come to be on it? The girl had certainly written nothing in the restaurant. Therefore it must have been prepared beforehand, as a precaution against the need for it. But why should anyone go to the extravagance of writing out a message of this kind on a banknote?

Of course, it could be that the writing was a childish prank and the girl hadn’t even known it was there. But the Saint’s joyous glow told him that this was not the explanation.

Well, there was one way of finding out the truth. He went through to the front lobby of the hotel where there was a public telephone, an unusual amenity in Viennese hotels. He gave the operator the number. There was a short interval and mysterious clickings, and Simon had the sensation he frequently experienced while using foreign telephones that he was quite likely to end up talking to himself. The thought occurred to him that in the new Nazi Vienna a Gestapo agent might be monitoring all telephone calls. The idea of such an invasion of his privacy irritated him, but then making telephone calls through sluggish operators back home in Britain, where there was no such supervision, irritated him too.

Then a man’s voice said: “Allo, allo, ici Radio Paris.”

The Saint never allowed anything to take him aback. He might be surprised but he was never dumbfounded.

“Ici Radio Luxembourg,” he retorted. “Prenez Bovril pour combattre le sens coulant!”

There was a moment of silence. Then the other laughed.