Even with liberal applications of oil, however, the sawing could not be completely noiseless, and the tension of waiting for someone to hear it and come to investigate it stretched every second of the time it took into what felt like an hour.
The instant his last saw stroke freed the bar, Simon squirmed through the opening and dropped on to a packing case below the window.
Before taking another step, he replaced the iron bar where he had cut it from, fixing it in position with a couple of wedges of black insulating tape. From quite a short distance, the repair would be invisible enough to deceive anyone who gave it a casual inspection from outside.
Only then did he feel free to boost himself down off the crate and review his immediate surroundings in more detail.
He found himself in a large room with whitewashed walls. Opposite the window was the door. It was shut. He walked over and tried the latch. It worked smoothly. But no amount of tugging would open the door. It was obviously locked on the other side.
The Saint studied it thoughtfully. That it would open inwards towards him was indicated by its hinges which were on his side of the door. Therefore, to even a first-term student of housebreaking, it might almost as well have been unlocked. Of course, the naive souls who were relying on the lock might not have been concerned with its vulnerability from the inside...
With the aid of pliers and the leverage of a screwdriver from his kit, Simon simply extracted the pins from the hinges. Luckily they were in good working condition and unrusted. It was then easy to prise the door out of its frame from that side, letting the lock itself serve as a clumsy but not irresistibly recalcitrant hinge.
He walked through the opening, and for the sake of appearances pulled the door back as near shut as possible behind him.
He was now in a passage leading off to his left and ending in a window which probably looked out over the cliff on the south side of the Castle and across the valley. Across from him were three doors. Two of them were small and looked as if they might lead into other storerooms. The one by the window, however, was larger and more imposing. The Saint decided that this one probably provided a route from the storeroom into the main body of the Castle. He walked up to it and stood for a moment listening. The only sound he could hear was a puzzling one. It was like the noise made by a buzz-saw with some of its teeth missing. At any rate, it did not sound human. The Saint tried the handle of the door, which then opened easily away from him. Swiftly the Saint slipped through.
The room on the other side looked as if it might have been a kitchen at one time, for there was a chimney-breast which could have contained a cooking stove. The room had, however, been turned into an office, complete with filing cabinets and a kneehole desk. In a swivel chair with his feet up on the latter was an officer in the black uniform of the SS. He was fast asleep, and the noise the Saint had heard was him snoring.
The Saint gently closed the door behind him and began to edge his way past the desk towards another door on the far side of the room. He stepped noiselessly but it made no difference. The German officer’s head slipped off the cushioning palm of his hand. He gave one last snort and woke up.
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the Saint.
2
Simon Templar was not taken aback or even bothered. He had figured that it would be a long shot if he got by the sleeping soldier. Experience had taught him that most risks could be turned into good chances. If they didn’t work out, then one had to improvise something new out of them.
He slipped his pistol from its shoulder holster. Its muzzle covered the startled officer implacably.
“Guten Tag,” said the Saint affably. He continued in his fluent German. “I have come to fix your main drain. They tell me you are blocked up. Would you mind removing your clothes?”
In spite of his facetious manner, the Saint’s cold blue eyes brooked no argument. Their message was clear.
German officers in long underwear look no more impressive than any other men and just as absurd. Indeed, the purpose of uniforms is primarily to lend dignity where it is not naturally bestowed. This SS officer, who had looked awesome in his black uniform, without it was just a rather heavy-set potbellied man.
“Menschenskind, wie sehen sie aus!” Simon said unkindly, looking him up and down. “But I suppose all the SS aren’t recruited from lingerie models.”
Rapidly the Saint got into the other’s uniform, contriving to do it without, ever letting his Walther waver from its hollow-eyed concentration on its target. The change of costume which had been so unexpectedly offered to him, he figured, could only be a godsend. It was a little short for him; but keeping his labourer’s clothes on underneath, and flattening his canvas shoes above the belt under his shirt, helped to make up the equatorial bulk which he lacked. It would have been a disaster if the jackboots had been impossibly smalclass="underline" even he would have found it hard to impersonate an SS officer parading around Schloss Este in his socks. Fortunately, they were not impossibly loose on him, and hid the shortness of the breeches; and the officer’s cap was just the right size. Simon put it on at a rakish angle.
The problem now was what to do with his captive.
The Saint was suddenly inspired with an idea straight out of the blue, which could only have been sent by some particularly impish devil to a kindred spirit.
Keeping his prisoner covered, he backed to the window and looked out. His surmise had been right. The room was on the south flank of the Castle, opposite the main entrance. Below it was the cliff which protected the defences on this side and which overhung the village of Este. It was a steep and rugged cliff. An enemy under fire would find it almost impossible to scale. On the other hand, going from top to bottom would be a relatively easy matter, although it might take some time.
Simon beckoned the officer.
“You are about to take a walk, my friend,” he said.
The other stared at him with bulging eyes.
“You must be mad.”
The Saint walked over to him. He stuck his gun into the man’s ribs and prodded him to the window.
“There you are.” He pointed downwards. “Take it slowly and you’ll have no trouble. Get up too much momentum and you’ll have to take your meals off the mantelshelf for a while.”
A gleam of hope shone for an instant in the man’s eyes. The Saint could tell what was going through his mind. He evidently regarded Simon as a fool for not shooting him out of hand. Once he had got beyond the range of Simon’s gun he could raise the alarm. Happily for his peace of mind, he didn’t know what the Saint had in store for him.
He gave Simon a scornful look as he climbed through the window and dropped down on to a ledge below. The Saint watched him begin his descent. Much of the cliff consisted of long shale slides. These were not too perilous, although some of them ended in a potentially lethal sheer drop. Nevertheless, there was no reason why the German should not get down safely if he kept his head. All Simon was going to do was to complicate his life for a little while and give him something with which to occupy his mind. After all, one didn’t want even members of the SS to get too bored. That would have been unkind. The Saint was all for being kind. He leaned out of the window and fired several shots in the direction of the German, who quickly ducked down behind a big rock.
The shots had the effect he desired. Guards rushed to windows and parapets. Whenever the German showed himself they promptly fired at him, reasonably enough, for no one had any business climbing that cliff up or down, especially a man in his underwear. Anyway, soldiers are not given to asking the whys and wherefores in a top-security situation. They prefer to shoot first, partly because it gives them a chance to do what they are trained to do, and ask or answer questions later. The officer was going to have his work cut out to inch his way down the cliff under fire from his own men. Moreover, the attention of the garrison would be centred on trying to shoot one of their own leaders. The piquancy of the situation struck Simon as purely hilarious, but he couldn’t afford to stay and enjoy it. He had to take the maximum advantage of its help as a distraction.