He moved quickly to the door on the far side of the room. Opening it cautiously, he peered through. Had there been anyone on the other side the man would not have known what hit him, for the Saint was ready for fast and decisive action. The room was empty, however. It was apparently an outer office, for it contained a desk, a typewriter, a telephone, and some more filing cabinets. German bureaucracy evidently required a lot of paper work, even in the Gestapo. There should have been an orderly or a secretary about, but he or she was probably having the German equivalent of elevenses: perhaps a stein of lager and a triple-decker leberwurst sandwich.
He walked almost casually across the room. The door on the other side gave on to a landing and a wide flight of stairs leading to the floors above and below. Here there was a storm trooper, but his attention had been seduced by the noise outside, and he was leaning out of a window, the broad expanse of his bottom looking comical in the frame.
Cat-like, the Saint tip-toed across the landing. He took the flight of stairs leading downwards. Although Simon had entered the Castle on the ground floor on the north side, on the cliff side there were several lower floors, and the steps led to a hall on another north side ground floor at a lower level.
Simon went noiselessly down the stairs. They doubled back under themselves, out of sight of the trooper, and after another zig or zag, debouched into a large marble-paved hall, hung with the usual antlered trophies and some old family paintings. One of the portraits, a girl in a ruff and a dress embroidered with pearls, was the image of Frankie. It had that same air of careless arrogance mixed with friendly amusement, a look which said, “You may like me, and I like you, in spite of the fact that I am much better than you are.”
Simon halted for a moment to think things out. He was faced with the choice of more doors, all of them closed. Which should he choose to go through? The muted sound of firing still came from above and he could hear the echo of hurrying footsteps in distant corridors. He had no time to waste.
It seemed probable that Frankie would be held in the most inaccessible part of the Castle. That would be in the tower, or even in a dungeon beneath it. Medieval towers were built as keeps — to keep people out, in fact! — in which to make a stand should the rest of the castle be captured. Its inaccessibility could still be used to keep prisoners or secrets in. Simon figured his best bet, therefore, was to head for the keep.
He judged this to be in a direction opposite to the staircase. He traversed the marble floor and opened one of the heavy double doors. He had guessed right. On the other side, the massive walls of a large room still furnished in somewhat medieval style with trestle tables and benches indicated that he had entered the oldest part of the Castle. At the other end of this room, which could well have been the original banqueting hall, stone stairs led upwards and downwards, spiralling as they went
He was now faced with another decision: whether to look for Frankie in an upstairs chamber, or in a subterranean prison below. He decided that the Teutonic mind would hold that prisoners should be kept in dungeons, and he headed down the stairs.
At the bottom was another passage. The only light came from some tiny windows set high up in the outside wall. These were barred, although they were too small for any adult to get through. A heavy oaken door at the end of the passage was half open. The Saint crept up to it and squinted through.
He was looking into a small anteroom. Two soldiers were seated at a table playing cards. The Saint had caught them in flagrant dereliction of their duty: they were certainly supposed to be on guard, for their guns leant against the table and they must have felt quite sure of being able to hear anybody approaching in time to put away their cards and resume their duty positions.
Simon felt a surge of exhilaration in his always sanguine spirits. Guards, except at royal palaces, where they are largely for show, usually guard something. In this case it was likely that these two were watching over a prisoner: Frankie...
From this room another flight of stone steps led downwards, to a dungeon, or perhaps a number of them, the Saint surmised. In the old days, escape from such a set-up, past guards and locked doors, would have been virtually impossible. It was not going to be a Cakewalk even now, but for the moment Simon had the initiative.
Pulling down his tunic and adopting a ramrod Prussian air, he stomped into the room, for the first time letting his borrowed boots make the sort of sound they were designed for. The two soldiers looked up with complete consternation writ largely on their countenances. They were so taken aback that they could not even rise to their feet.
The Saint did not give them a chance to pull themselves together. Freezingly he glared at them and then pointed to the dungeon staircase. “Take me to the prisoner,” he commanded in his harshest and most arrogant German.
The two men did not question his authority. There was no reason why they should. An SS officer in uniform could only appear in the midst of a Gestapo fortress with the proper accreditation and in fact could only be a real officer in the SS. That was their simple and logical reasoning. They leapt to their feet and hastened downstairs ahead of Simon, babbling abject excuses for their conduct.
At the foot of the steps there was another heavy door. This one had a grille in it. Haughtily the Saint pointed to the lock. One of the guards produced a large iron key and opened it Simon waved the soldiers back and strode in.
Frankie was sitting in a corner on a truckle bed. She looked pale and dispirited. She glanced up as the Saint entered, and instantly her posture changed. She gave no sign of recognition, but her back straightened and her chin assumed a disdainful aristocratic angle.
“Come with me. I wish to talk to you,” Simon said imperiously, in the bullying tone that he had adopted to fit his uniform.
Grabbing her by the arm, he pulled her to her feet and sent her spinning through the door with such force that she fell heavily outside.
The guards laughed sycophantically at this display of Aryan superiority. Simon allowed them a tight-lipped smile. Then, very deliberately, he kicked one of them on the shins and the other up the backside.
“Imbeciles!” he shouted. “Pigs like you are a disgrace to the Fatherland. You will stand here at attention until I get back, and you had better hope that I shall be in a good mood and will not have you flogged.”
Then, holding Frankie by the elbow, he propelled her up the stairs ahead of him.
“Thank you for keeping your head and not giving me away,” he whispered as they reached the anteroom.
“I was waiting for you,” she said. “I knew you’d come, somehow.”
“God save your trusting fat head,” said the Saint fervently, as they crossed the room and fled up the flight of stairs to the banqueting hall.
The main hall was still empty, but the sound of firing had ceased. The SS officer must either have got away or be lying low — unless, of course, he had been shot by his own men.
The Saint halted.
“There is a small matter of a necklace,” he remarked coolly. “I suppose we might as well pick it up while we’re here. I mean, it’ll save us another trip. Not that I haven’t enjoyed this one. I just love climbing along other people’s sewers. But as the saying goes, when you’ve seen one drain you’ve seen ’em all.”