The Gorilla shrieked aloud, and released the cloth he had been knotting and everything else.
Simon whirled around, keeping his balance as adeptly as a dancer. The Gorilla was bent double, clutching his anguished organs. This callisthenic exercise brought his head down to waist level. The Saint, poised on one foot, kicked it like a football, with compound interest for the kick which he himself had received.
The Gorilla instantly stopped screaming, and crumpled into blissful anaesthesia.
Simon Templar dropped to his knees, and somewhat laboriously, as it had to be with his hands tied behind him, located the Gorilla’s switch knife. After that, it took him less than a minute to cut the cords from his wrists.
So far, so good! The Saint flexed his muscles and massaged the circulation back into his arms. All he had to do now was to get through the locked door and out of a building whose plan was unknown to him, and past any guards who might be still around. The thought of these obstacles made him feel quite pleased with his situation. He only hoped he would meet the Rat on his way out. He wanted to give him an object-lesson in the perils of arrogance that was not sustained by personal prowess in the arts of self-defence. It should be possible to get this into his head, even without surgery, perhaps by throwing him out of a convenient window or down a staircase. Viennese staircases are usually very long, winding, and particularly hard, being made of stone.
He was not daunted by the unknown quantity of other Gestapo cohorts whom he might encounter. At that hour, there were likely to be very few on duty, and a free and untrammelled Saint would certainly be able to cope with a couple of Nazi-type thugs, especially as he would have the advantage of the element of surprise. To paraphrase the poet, his strength was as the strength of ten, not for the reason that his heart was all that pure, but just because it was. Even though he was no Sir Galahad, he was never awed by being to some extent outnumbered. And now, thanks to the Gorilla’s knife, he was not even unarmed.
His ears had told him that the Rat had not locked the cell door when he left, and in fact there would have been no reason to do so. Simon opened it cautiously, and stepped out into a dimly lit grey-walled corridor.
He had hardly stepped out when he recognised it.
It was the passage through which Annellatt had led him from the courtyard of the apartment building to the garage. The “cell” which he had escaped from lay behind one of the unpainted doors which he had seen in passing, and must have been some kind of former store-room.
The Rat and the Gorilla must have thrown him in there simply for temporary storage. And this explained why they could not use it for a prolonged “interrogation,” and the Rat’s reference to a car which had apparently been sent for.
It also disposed of Annellatt’s rash statement that they would not have discovered the connection between the garage and the residential building.
Having found his bearings, the Saint was faced with an immediate decision: to continue his escape through the garage, or to return to the flat and warn the others — if it wasn’t already too late for that...
It took him exactly two seconds to choose the latter. Whatever the risk, he couldn’t make good his own getaway without knowing what had happened to Frankie.
He retraced the passage through the door to the central courtyard. Its baroque splendour was silent and deserted.
The door to Annellatt’s principal stairway was locked. Before ringing the bell beside it, he tried to recall the position of the other door by which Annellatt had brought him out. This was a little more difficult, but he thought he located it correctly, and tried the handle.
Either by accident or design, it was not locked.
But he had barely moved the door the necessary minimum of millimetres to discover this when there was a creak of hinges from the building’s main entrance. Turning his head, he saw the inset door starting to open. It might only be another perfectly innocent tenant coming home, but the Saint could not take a chance on it. With the silent stealth of a bashful ghost, he backed off so that one of the courtyard’s massive marble columns was between him and the incomer.
Pressing himself tight against the pillar, and tracking the other’s progress by the echoing sound of his footsteps, Simon kept himself completely hidden until his ears told him that the man had passed and was moving away from him. Only then did he come from behind his cover and see the back of a short figure in a raincoat and hat which he felt sure of recognising.
He stepped out of cover, caught up in three soundless strides, and collared the man around the throat in the crook of his left arm. In a simultaneous movement, he brought the Gorilla’s knife, in his right hand, into full view before his captive’s face.
“Halb so wild,” he advised gently. “Didn’t you just say we had something to finish?”
The man’s hat, at first knocked over his eyes by the stranglehold, fell off completely, and the Saint found himself looking down at the unmistakable, even from that awkward angle, snub-nosed pudding features of Max Annellatt.
4
“Pardon me,” said the Saint politely, releasing him. “But for a moment I thought you were someone else. Is Frankie upstairs?”
“No, I sent her off with Leopold soon after you left, in his car. To the Malffy Palais, to pack a bag and go straight on to my country place. I promised her we would join them there.”
“Why weren’t you in the garage to meet me?”
“I went with them to the Palais, to be sure it was not under surveillance. I don’t think Leopold would have known what to do if it had been. Then it took me an infernal time to get a taxi to bring me back. I apologise for being late — but how did you get in?”
“Those lads from the Gestapo let me in, and coshed me before I could find out they weren’t you.”
Max’s eyes widened.
“Then they have found out about the garage! But it must have been since we left.” He glanced apprehensively across the courtyard at the door to the passageway. “But you—”
“I managed to get away, by a trick which would have horrified the Marquis of Queensbury. If not his son. But even if one of them isn’t in top form at the moment, we’d better not spend any more time nattering here.”
“I saw you had left my car up the street, as I came in the taxi,” Annellatt said. “And now you have explained to me why no one was watching the front of the building. Let us take advantage of it before they realise that two people can be in two places at once.”
“You took the words out of my mouth,” said the Saint.
They crossed quickly to the front door, which Max opened and pre-empted the first step out — “As a resident here, I have every right to come and go as I please.” But the street outside was deserted.
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 inhabitants of this town are strictly honest, but that doesn’t stop them stealing and cheating the tax inspectors. Only the Viennese 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.”