Leslie Charteris - The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace

“As a matter of fact, I imagine you probably wouldn’t be too keen yourself on the police nosing into your affairs,” he remarked pleasantly.

There was a long pause. Max’s eyes reminded Simon of the glacial snows on the mountains above Innsbruck. They had that same quality of cold blue timeless menace, as if their owner had existed since the dawn of history. Well, in a sense he had. Every generation has its quota of Max Annellatts. In his own way, the Saint was one of them. The thought amused him. It also pleased him. He liked dealing with people of his own calibre, and Max looked like measuring up to this.

Annellatt suddenly gave Simon a brilliant and charming smile.

“All right, what do you want to know? I should have thought you would have realised by now that the less you do know the better it will be for you.”

“Well, for a start you can tell me if I’m breaking the law by not going to the police. I don’t really care, but I am interested.”

The other shook his head.

“No, because the police would never be able to prove that a crime has been committed.” He shot Simon a knowing look. “I also am a good judge of men. I have to be in my business — in fact in order to stay alive. My intuition tells me that perhaps you too would not want the police making enquiries about you, Mr er... Taylor?”

Simon erupted into laughter. He was genuinely delighted. In his lonely and dangerous life he was seldom able to find such instant rapport as he had achieved with Max Annellatt They were two of a kind.

It remained to be seen whether they were equal in quality. Simon felt sure he knew the answer to that one. But he was always pleased to meet a really formidable opponent, especially a likeable one. He rarely got a chance to stretch his own powers to the full, and even less frequently against someone he admired. Perhaps one day he would lose to someone like Max Annellatt and like it, just as he had almost lost to Crown Prince Rudolf in the same country some years before. It had been a near thing, and the Saint had liked Rudolf even when they were doing their best to kill each other. He felt the stirrings of the same sort of appreciation for Max.

“Anyway,” Max continued, “you will have the comfort of knowing that you have helped a young woman in difficulties and perhaps even saved her life. Believe me, matters can be left safely in my hands.”

“What sort of difficulties?” inquired the Saint. “They must be pretty big to involve kidnapping.”

“I cannot tell you that without your getting involved; And for your sake, to say nothing of Frankie’s, I cannot allow that.”

The Saint shrugged. There was obviously no point in arguing or probing further. But what Herr Annellatt did not know was that the Saint was going to get involved anyway. His dander was up and he was not going to be fobbed off. The Saint had never in his life settled for the role of pawn. A knight, or a rook (spelt with a silent “c”?) perhaps, but never a pawn.

But he would get involved in his own way and in his own time. He got up to go.

“Well, thanks for nothing, but I’ve enjoyed it.”

Herr Annellatt clasped Simon’s hand warmly.

“Goodbye, my friend. I am so sorry you had all this bother. But do not worry, the girl will be all right.”

Simon looked back over his shoulder as he went through the door. Max was finishing his last brandy. The cat was back on his shoulders. Its eyes momentarily caught Simon’s.

The Saint could have sworn that Thai winked at him.

The Hotel Hofer was one of the new commercial hotels, still blessedly rare, which the burghers of Vienna considered to be in tune with the times.

Hotels in Vienna, for the most part, have always been noted for their old-world charm. Guests in them were treated as if they were Hapsburgian nobility, which made the Austrian aristocrats feel at home and foreigners that they were experiencing something of a culture other, and possibly higher, than their own.

In the new commercial hotels, however, guests were treated like the travelling salesmen most of them were. The emphasis was less on politeness than on efficiency. Viennese efficiency being what it has always been, the guests were the losers all round and were neither made to feel at home nor welcomed with the deference due to honoured clients. They were, in fact, as far as possible ignored by management and staff, who were in the grip of that most pathetic fallacy of the twentieth century, namely that efficiency means less work and less courtesy.

The night clerk at the Hotel Hofer appeared to be completely disinterested in his job.and indeed in life itself. But then, Simon decided, being a night clerk must be rather like being in limbo and living in a half-world of demi-reality and semi-emotions.

The clerk just managed to summon up enough energy to fumble in the pigeonhole for the key to Simon’s room. It was not there, and the clerk suggested bitterly, as if this was the last straw in a stack of irritations, that it must have been left in the door. Simon abandoned him to his subtle reproaches and went up in the lift, which was one of that strange Continental variety that can be said only to go upwards, since they return immediately to the ground floor without being able to stop at any stations en route. Simon could never understand why. Perhaps the theory behind them was that even someone with a weak heart or a gamey leg should, with typical Austrian reasoning, walk downstairs for the exercise.

His key was in his door. He turned it cautiously, for of one thing he was certain: he had not left it there. Some chambermaid or other hotel employee might have done so, although this was unlikely since chambermaids had master keys, and there would be no legitimate reason for anyone else to enter his room, using Simon’s key to do so.

He opened the door inch by inch. The bedside light was on. From where he stood in the passage he could see the body on his bed.

It was a girl. Simon recognised her immediately. Her name was “Frankie.” Or perhaps it had been up to now. Her arm hung limply down the side of the bed — and lifelessly.

But Frankie wasn’t dead — just dead to the world. As the Saint closed the door behind him and approached the bed her eyes flew open, and she sat up with a gasp.

“The face is familiar,” Simon said with a smile. “And I can even put a name to it. How did you get un-kidnapped, Frankie?”

He spoke in German, but she replied in English.

“I am sorry,” she said, and her voice shook slightly. “I had to come here. There was nowhere else to go.”

The Saint walked over to his suitcase, unlocked it, and took out a hip flask.

“How about a little medicine? Cognac. Very special 1924 Delamain. Nice and dry.” He poured the pale amber liquid into the silver top of the flask and sniffed the aroma appreciatively. “The best way to drink it is to gargle it first and then swallow. Of course, a purist would just taste it and spit it out on the floor.” He handed the drink to the girl. “But perhaps that would be a bit unladylike. Not to say wasteful. Just try sipping it.”

He sat down on the end of the bed and took a swig from the flask, rolling the brandy sensuously around his tongue and swallowing it as slowly as possible.

“I hate waste, even for the purest reasons,” he said. “Now tell me all.”

Frankie sipped her drink, eyeing the Saint cautiously over the top of it. He guessed that she was making up her mind just how to pitch her story.

“You say there was nowhere else to go,” he offered helpfully. “Not even Uncle Max’s?”

She looked startled.

“So he told you his name when you telephoned him?”

“More than that, he invited me out for a drink. When I left him about half an hour ago he and Thai were knocking back brandies by the half dozen.”