Leslie Charteris: The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace

The restaurant of the Hotel Hofer in Vienna was called the Hofburg, presumably after the Imperial Palace of that name not very far from it. It enjoyed a certain autonomy of its own, for it was in a separate building from the hotel, although it could be reached from the latter without going out of doors. It was used as much by the general public as by the guests of the hotel. It was perhaps remarkable that anyone used it at all, for the food was poor and the service matched it. It was, however, conveniently situated in the central portion of the town, not far from the Mariahilferstrasse.

That mild rainy evening in October 1938, Simon Templar regarded it with a jaundiced eye. It struck him that although the Hofburg went in strongly for atmosphere, the management did not seem at all clear what sort of ambiance they were trying to attain. The decor was a mixture of traditional and modern. The walls were panelled with huge paintings of Austrian scenes, done in crude bright colours. They looked as if they had been executed by an enthusiastic amateur, perhaps the proprietor’s wife. On the other hand, the furniture was of that varnished Swedish type which some regarded as the height of chic even when it also provided the height of discomfort.

Simon wondered vaguely what he was doing in the Hofburg restaurant. His thoughts expressed a mood rather than a conscious question. Factually, he knew very well why he was there. He was staying at the Hotel Hofer because that day he had had an appointment there with Van Roeper, an internationally known jewel merchant of highly elastic ethics, an appointment which at that time and in that place was curious because Van Roeper was a Jew, and the Nazis had earlier in the year taken over Austria as being rightfully a part of the primordial German State. The Saint considered this a somewhat arbitrary concept in view of the fact that the German State had only been invented by Bismarck a little over half a century before.

Even more curious was the fact that the Saint, as Simon Templar was known in many cosmopolitan circles, including both criminal and police spheres, had been the entrepreneur in a deal between the German Government and Van Roeper, which piece of pragmatism showed that Nazi racial intolerance was nothing more than totally unscrupulous opportunism. What the German Government did not know, however, was that both the Saint and Van Roeper would prosper from the transaction, whereas the Third Reich would be the loser — but that, as the saying goes, is another story.

No, the Saint was merely wondering why he was eating a bad meal in the unfashionable surroundings of the Hofburg restaurant when he could have been dining with Patricia Holm at the Savoy in London, Maxim’s in Paris, or the 21 Club in New York. The simple answer was, of course, that the drizzle outside, and plans for an early departure in the morning, had made him just apathetic enough about sallying forth in search of something more epicurean or exciting. The thought of Patricia sent him into a reverie which included many pleasant and very private memories; but his preoccupation with these did not prevent him from taking note of what went on around him, particularly when this was female and unusually pretty to boot.

She came in with a certain regal swing to her carriage and sat down at the table next to Simon. She was dark with the olive skin usually associated with the Mediterranean, but her eyes were a wonderfully brilliant blue, a combination one rarely sees outside of Ireland. She looked nervous and unhappy and she appeared to be waiting for someone, for when the Herr Ober approached with the menu she shook her head, somewhat arrogantly, Simon thought.

The Saint had finished his dinner. He called for his bill and signed it, adding his room number. But he lingered on for he had nothing particular to do, and the young woman intrigued him. He wondered about her. Something was wrong, of that he felt sure. She did not fit into the Hofburg at all. She was quite a different class of person from the rest of its clientele. Of course, she might be one of the ubiquitous Nazi agents who held the Third Reich together and kept a special eye on foreigners such as himself. He would not have minded this, for so far as he knew the Nazis still had nothing on their books against him. If the girl was a Nazi agent her surveillance would be purely routine, and a report of his movements would be given to the Gestapo where it would end up in some huge and dusty filing system.

On the other hand, Austria had been a police state from way back, and if this girl was an agent of the Austrian police, the situation could be awkward. The Saint was very much wanted by the Austrian police for certain incidents in Innsbruck and the Inn valley a few years previously in which some of their stalwarts had suffered considerable violence and loss of face. (See Saint’s Getaway. ) He himself had no guilty conscience about the affair, since in the beginning he had with the most laudable intentions taken them for villains just because they looked and acted like it. He had forgotten that appearances can be very deceptive and that a lot of policemen look like villains even though beneath their unrighteous exteriors may beat hearts of gold; but he was bound to doubt that the Law would take such a tolerant view of his slight mistake.

It was typical of the Saint’s insouciant recklessness that he hadn’t even bothered to disguise himself on his return to Austria, although he had acquired, from a certain shady character in a flat above a grocery in Soho, a new character and a passport to go with it which stated that he was one Stephen Taylor, profession “gentleman” (which in those balmy days was still an officially recognised “occupation”), for whom His Britannic Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs requested and required in the Name of His Majesty all those whom it might concern “to allow him to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford him such assistance and protection” as might be necessary. The fine ring of this resounding injunction in its present context made Simon smile.

In taking this gamble, Simon was acting less foolishly than perhaps it seemed. False moustaches, beards, and other disguises often look unreal and are a nuisance to wear. Police photographs of wanted criminals, moreover, are not generally displayed where many people see them, and rare indeed is the individual in or out of uniform capable of recognising the original of such a portrait. Simon therefore felt fairly safe in his assumption that he was not likely to meet anyone, bureaucrat or otherwise, who would recognise him or even suspect that Stephen Taylor was not the man his passport claimed he was. In any case, he had not intended to spend much time in Austria. He had other pressing business back in London, to say nothing of dining with Patricia at the Savoy. Perhaps this time he would take her to the Ritz. He loved its fin de siècle French baroque restrained ostentation. Or better still, perhaps the Blue Train around the corner from it. The atmosphere there was intimate and at the same time impersonal, just the right mixture for an evening with a special person...

Meanwhile, however, he felt no monastic obligation to ignore anyone else of that gender who pleased the eye and the imagination.