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 observed.
“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 bargain 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 Hapsburg 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 bypassed 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.
They travelled a short while down the lane, twisting and turning as the road took them. Then suddenly ahead of them loomed another castle, looking in the bright morning sunlight like something painted on the backdrop of an operetta. This one was not ruined and indeed seemed to be in excellent repair.
Max drove the car to the entrance gate which was guarded by two towers and blocked by heavy wooden doors.
“Here we are,” he said, and blew a tattoo on his car horn.
In a moment or two the doors opened on silent, well-oiled hinges. Max drove the car through the gate and into a stone-flagged courtyard.
“Let me relieve at least one of your anxieties,” he said. “This place, in the official records, is owned by a Baron von Birkehügel of Salzburg. I think it will take even the Gestapo a long time to discover that I have ennobled myself, and to identify him with me.”
The Castle was of that typical Austrian kind in which Renaissance classical details had been added to plaster over a medieval stone framework. The walls, Simon judged, would probably be about six feet thick, but the effect of the Renaissance overlay was graceful, light, and charming. He turned to his host.
“Very nice. Just what everyone should have. When does the chorus come on?”
Max laughed and got out of the car. Simon followed suit An elderly man hurried towards them from under the gateway arch. He was evidently a retainer of sorts for he was wearing a green baize apron.
“Good evening, Anton,” said his master in German. “I have brought a friend with me, Mr Templar, an English gentleman. Please see that a room is prepared for him at once.”
The old man bowed towards the Saint, bending almost double.
“Good morning, sir,” he said in English. “Welcome to Schloss Duppelstein.”
Simon returned his greeting and glanced around the courtyard before following him into the Castle, which consisted of a main central portion which obviously housed the state rooms, as indicated by a row of large windows overhung with carved pediments, and two wings, each fronted by an arcade, above which ran a roofed wooden gallery, carved in a fanciful manner and painted in gay colours. Above these rose plaster-covered walls and two tiers of windows. The battlements of the Castle had been removed in Renaissance days and the structure had been given a tile roof in the French style.
A figure came out on to the wooden gallery of the left wing. It was female, lovely, and Frankie.
III
How Leopold’s car was borrowed, and Herr Annellatt provisioned a picnic
1
The Saint slept until midday. Then he got up and had a long hot bath and a shave. Feeling much rested and quite peckish, he followed Anton who came to lead him to the dining-room.
The inside of the Castle betrayed its medieval origin, although the stone walls had been plastered over and slit windows replaced by wider ones. According to upper-class Austrian custom, wall spaces whenever possible were embellished with the skulls, horns, and antlers of slaughtered animals. The passion which aristocrats in all lands have for killing wild creatures in great numbers always struck the Saint as distasteful, although he had shot some big game himself when it had seemed adventurous. But whatever killing he did was very selective, and it would not have done to hang the heads of his victims on the walls of his home, since many of them were human.
Anton led him through an enormous drawing-room, furnished for the most part in Louis Quinze style, but containing some comfortable-looking sofas and armchairs as well.
He stopped for a moment by another door.
“May I point out to your lordship,” he said in English, “that the central part of this house is wired with burglar alarms on this floor because of the great value of its contents. One cannot go even from one of the state rooms into another without setting off an alarm in this part of the building.” He cast his eyes to heaven. “Alas, it is necessary in these schreckliche modern days of danger and violence. In the old times before the War such a thing would never have been thought of.”
“I take it,” said the Saint, “that guests are expendable. I mean, the guest wing isn’t wired, or is it?”
Anton shook his head.
“No, sir. There is nothing of great value there.”
“I suppose that goes for me,” murmured the Saint, as Anton opened the door to the dining-room for him.
Max, Frankie and Leopold were seated at the table and had already begun their meal. Thai was once again curled in his favourite position round his master’s shoulders. It was a pleasant domestic scene of upper-crust life in Central Europe. But it had overtones which jarred slightly.
For one thing, Annellatt, suave and well-mannered though he was, was not upper-crust. The Saint could not help but feel that the other two were only there because of Max’s dubious respect for conventional ethics and procedures. Of course, that should not be held against them. Their partnership with Max was a purely pragmatic one. In the ordinary course of society life they and Max would have been in different orbits.
But there was more to it than that. The Saint felt almost as if he were looking at one of those drawings in magazine competitions which incorporate deliberate errors. There was something wrong with this picture, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. Perhaps it was no more than the rather bizarre events which had brought them all together.