“Could be,” agreed the Saint. “On the other hand, it’s her easiest way into the Castle.”
“What do you mean?”
“Simply, that if you arrive at the village of Este, or even at the gates of the compound, and let it be known that you are the Countess Malffy and the real owner of the Castle, the guards are bound to pay attention to you. They’d be neglecting their duty if they failed to take you up to the Commandant for questioning.”
“You mean, she did it on purpose?”
The Saint nodded.
“Knowing your cousin, it’s on the cards. She’s clever enough and daring enough — I’d almost say mad enough — to think it up and perhaps even get away with it.”
“But she is captured. No one can save her now. They know she has the secret of the Necklace, and the Gestapo stop at nothing.”
“Since she thought this up, she must have a plan to save herself,” said the Saint optimistically. “That is, after she’s got the Necklace.”
“I’m going to rescue her,” declared Leopold, struggling to his feet.
Simon pulled him down again.
“It won’t help if somebody sees you. Anyway, you can’t take on a whole squad of soldiers single-handed.”
The young man was almost beside himself with emotion.
“What better way to die?”
“As somebody once remarked,” Simon said patiently, “the only trouble with death is that it is a permanent occupation. Wouldn’t you be more useful alive?”
“Not so long as Frankie is in danger,” replied Leopold, somewhat obscurely.
“I don’t think she’s in any actual danger at the moment. If I were the Commandant I’d find out what the higher-ups wanted me to do, and in German bureaucracy that means that the higher-ups will want to find out what their superiors think, and so on and so forth. That sort of thing takes time.”
His words struck home.
“You are right,” Leopold agreed. “But what can we do?”
“Well, to begin with, we can try to let Frankie know that we’re around.”
“I know.” Leopold’s eyes lit up. “I’ll go back to the village. She must have friends there. Someone will be able to get a message to her.”
“Not on your nelly you won’t. They’d get a message straight to the Commandant. If that village doesn’t have its quota of collaborators, I’m a bishop.”
“What can we do then?”
The Saint stretched himself like a great lithe animal, but keeping well down behind the rock.
“You wait here. I’ll go and recce.”
“But what if you are captured?”
The Saint grinned.
“If I’m not back in three weeks, send a St Bernard with a cask of brandy after me, and don’t forget it’s got to be a 1914 Delamain.”
“You make a joke of everything!” Leopold said petulantly. “You seem to forget that my cousin is in danger of being killed — or worse.”
Simon put a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry, laddie, just because I try to see the lighter side of something doesn’t mean I don’t take it seriously. Now you wait back in the woods. Try not to expose yourself, as the bishop said to the actress. If I’m not back by nightfall, try to go back the way we came — swim across the river — and tell Max. He’ll figure out what to do. He’s got a vested interest in this business, aside from liking Frankie.”
“Why can’t I come with you?”
“Because someone’s got to be sure to be able to take the bad news to Max.” The Saint was swiftly transferring everything he considered unessential from his satchel to Leopold’s, concluding with the cognac bottle. “Look after this for me, will you? And no dipping into it until I get back. We may need it to celebrate.”
Then he turned and began climbing nimbly over the rocks in the direction of the Castle. He gained the woods on the other side of the cliff fall and turned to check on Leopold. The other waved to him rather forlornly.
Simon waved back, a buoyantly swashbuckling salute that conveyed its message of invincible confidence as eloquently as any words, and melted into the trees.
It was not long before he came out on a bluff overlooking the Castle. On this side it looked much more vulnerable to an attacking force, especially as the main entrance was here. A lone sentry paced back and forth across the open gate.
The Saint thought things over. The part of the Schloss he now overlooked was relatively low compared to the other opposite side which overhung the cliff. Here it was only three storeys high, except for the main keep tower rising from the centre of the edifice. Simon considered the possibility of climbing up to one of the windows overlooking the driveway to the main entrance. The snag, of course, was that he could easily be seen, and would in all likelihood anyway be spotted by the guard at the gateway if he made such an attempt. The Saint was always ready to take chances, but not the kind which would almost inevitably end in disaster.
There was nothing for it, he decided, but to work his way around in the edge of the woods on the bluff overlooking the Castle and see if one of the other sides did not offer a better prospect. He set off accordingly, keeping as far as possible out of sight, and assuming the plodding gait of a labourer going stolidly about some lawful business.
He soon found himself looking at an almost blank stone wall. On this side the Castle rose only two storeys from the ground because the bluff on which he stood ran right up to the Castle wall. As the Saint figured it, because of the sloping terrain on which the Castle stood, the inside of the building must consist of rooms on many different levels, and on the other side of the Castle there would be several floors below the point on which he stood.
The Saint stood back in the shade of the trees and took stock of the situation. Two windows overlooked his position, one above the other, but they were high up, and the sheer wall could only have been climbed with pitons.
Then his eye alighted on another potential method of getting into the Castle, which would not entail so many hazards as trying to scale the wall.
This was a basement window, half sunk into the ground. As Simon judged it, though small, it was still too large to be a dungeon light and probably led into one of the floors of the Castle which, because of the slope of the hill, would not necessarily be a basement on the other side. But good things usually have a snag, and in this case the catch was that the window was bisected by an iron bar. Nevertheless, the set‑up looked promising, and he decided to investigate it more closely.
He took a deep breath, and sprinted across the intervening ground like a hunting panther. The distance was about forty yards, and he must have covered it in less than four seconds, veering at the end to roll prone into the narrow stone trough surrounding the window. Once there, he could only have been seen through the window itself, or from directly overhead: therefore if only nobody had been looking in exactly the right direction during those four fateful seconds, he would have got away with it.
After two or three breathless spine-tingling minutes, he ventured to believe that his luck might have held that long.
He peered through the window into what was obviously a storage room because it was filled with crates and boxes packed in an orderly fashion. It probably had been a storage place for some years and the window bar had been placed there not to keep anyone in but to keep intruders out.
The windowpane was an impediment for only as long as it took him to dig out the brittle putty which held it in its frame. The glass came out quietly, in one piece. Then he had plenty of room to work on the iron bar. It was thick and solidly set in stone, but its outer scale of rust was no tougher than a bride’s first cake, and the core of ancient iron was no match for a modern hacksaw blade, which cut it almost as easily as hardwood.