Flirting is an essential part of every Viennese girl’s upbringing, but Max looked astonished.
“Was that wise, my dear? After all, you haven’t even told us.”
Frankie gave him a guilty glance. “I mean, I—”
“We can be grateful to Mr Templar for what he has done,” the young Count interrupted rudely, “but he can be of no further use. He is not one of us.”
There was a wealth of hauteur in his manner and the implication that unless one were born an Austrian aristocrat one was not properly born at all.
The Saint was only amused by the churlishness of an arrogant and probably jealous youth.
“You are quite right,” he said benignly. “And every time I’m reminded of it I feel I should go on a Diet of Worms.”
Max Annellatt held up a hand.
“Leopold, you must understand that Simon Templar is no ordinary Englishman. He is known as the Saint and is an international... er—”
“Crook?” suggested the Saint helpfully.
For the first time Annellatt looked slightly flustered.
“No, no! Perhaps ‘operator’ would be a better word.”
“Makes me sound as if I manned a switchboard,” Simon remarked. “What about Boy Scout?”
“I think I prefer ‘gentleman adventurer,’ ” Frankie said.
“Anyway,” Max said firmly, “I am in agreement with Leopold about one thing, Mr Templar. We cannot ask you to help us in our venture. It is too dangerous and it would not be fair to you.”
“Keep it up and you’ll really hook me,” said the Saint. “Tell me it’s dull and entirely law-abiding and I’d be delighted to stay out. But dangerous, well, that’s quite something else. My doctor told me I should have at least one adventure a day to keep him away. We’ve had today’s, but there’s always tomorrow.”
Frankie moved swiftly over and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
“You are a dear!” she cried. “I knew you’d agree to join us in the end.”
“No!” exclaimed Leopold, looking as if he were about to stamp his foot with rage. “I won’t have it! Mr Templar is English. He knows nothing about Austria and nothing about us.”
“I expect I could muddle through,” Simon offered modestly. “It’s a tradition in my country. We always win in the end. Admittedly we give a lot of people a few nasty turns en route. But we do win, even if it means just not losing.”
Max’s face was impassive.
“With all respect to you, Mr Templar, and with gratitude for the help you have already given us, I think Leopold is right. We simply must not impose on you any further. It would do neither you nor us any good.”
His voice and manner were friendly but the Saint detected an odd undercurrent of nervousness.
Frankie suddenly drew herself up. Her face was pale but her carriage was regal.
“I wish Mr Templar to help us,” she announced flatly. “It is I who am the Keeper of the Hapsburg Necklace, not you Leopold, nor you Max. This is my decision to make, and I have made it.”
Her two countrymen looked at her in astonishment. There was nothing that they could say. Apparently her case was unanswerable, but they had obviously never before seen her assert herself so imperiously.
“All right,” said the Saint cheerfully. “If Frankie’s the boss, I can’t turn down the job. ‘Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut’ — as my dear old grannie used to say whenever they tried to stop her having another double gin. So let’s stop bickering and let me in on the rest of the plot. The readers are getting impatient.”
2
“Just for a start,” said the Saint, “I’d like to get straight on a point of protocol. Frankie, as we call her, has told me about her father, Count Malffy, the hereditary Keeper of the Necklace. Now, if I should have to ask for her somewhere else, or introduce her formally, what do I call her? Did she inherit the title as well as the job?”
“My cousin Francesca,” Leopold said proprietorially, and with undisguised disdain for such ignorance, “is the Gräfin — Countess-Malffy.”
“But the name has a Hungarian sound. How did Graf Malffy get so well in with the Hapsburgs?”
“Perhaps you did not learn in school that before the war of 1914 this was a country called Austria-Hungary.”
“Oh yes, so it was. And now Hitler has made this part Germany-Austria. Well, that’s life in the Balkans. Never mind. One day Hungary could be back under the same flag — if someone else doesn’t grab it first.”
The Countess Malffy was nobly trying to conceal her malicious delight in this sparring. But she was sensible enough to break it up again before it got out of hand.
“We are wasting time,” she said. “And Mr Templar—”
“Since we’re all friends, you can call me Simon.”
“—Simon has a right to know how difficult is the project in which we are asking him to engage.”
“As I understand it,” said the Saint, “the Necklace has just been left somewhere in the ancestral Schloss.”
Max went over to a beautifully inlaid Empire desk. From a drawer he picked out a folded sheet of paper which he spread out on top of the desk.
“Here is a map of Schloss Este,” he said, beckoning Simon.
The Saint walked over and looked at the map. Max’s finger pointed out its details.
“Here you can see,” he said, “the Germans have fortified the whole area around the Castle. It amounts to some two hundred hectares, or about five hundred of your acres.”
“Not mine,” Simon disclaimed. “I don’t own a single rod, pole, or perch.”
“This area included both the Castle and a small village of just a few houses and a church. They have put barbed wire fencing round the perimeter and an electrical fence as well. There are also sentry platforms at intervals and searchlights for use at night. They may even have mined certain vulnerable places — I’m afraid I haven’t yet been able to find that out.”
“But I take it you have made a thorough survey of the Castle and its environs — from the outside?”
Max nodded.
“Aber natürlich, I and my men have observed it all. In the daytime through high-powered binoculars, and at night we have even crossed the river which runs past one side of the fortifications, looking for some way through the barbed wire and electrical fences. One of my men thought he had found it but he was mistaken, unfortunately.” He shrugged. “I had to give his widow a pension. She’s really better off. She has a steady income and no husband. That’s the best situation a woman can be in, so my married girlfriends tell me.”
“I must remember to give you the names and addresses of my four wives — I should have warned you that I was a Moslem,” murmured the Saint. “So it seems that all we have to do is cross the river at night, avoid the searchlights, get over electrical and barbed wire fences, and be careful not to step on any mines that may be lying around. All we need is a few crocodiles in the river to make our fun complete.”
Max laughed.
“I told you I liked your sense of humour, Mr Templar. I see now that it can also be what we call the gallows kind.”
“It may sound funny,” Simon said, “but it strikes me quite seriously that to try to get into that fortified area would be rather like putting our heads in a noose.”
Max shook his head. “It would be but for one thing. The Germans put up their fortifications in a hurry. What they have overlooked is that this whole valley” — his fingers traced the contours on the map — “between these hills is drained by a very large pipe buried deep in the earth. It is big enough for a man to crawl up and it comes out into the river. It was necessary because otherwise at certain times of the year when the heavy rains come the whole valley would be flooded because it lies between these two ridges of hills which run up to the Castle on either side. As you can see, the terrain forms a sort of funnel with the Castle at one end and the river at the other.”