The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace

LESLIE
CHARTERIS’
                

T
HE SAINT & THE HAPSBURG NECKLACE

written by
CHRISTOPHER SHORT

A
DIVISION OF CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS INC.

A GROSSET & DUNLAP
COMPANY

THE SAINT AND THE HAPSBURG NECKLACE

Copyright
© 1975 by Leslie Charteris
All rights reserved.

Published
by arrangement with Doubleday & Company,
Inc.

Charter Books

A
Division of Charter Communications

A Grosset
& Dunlap Company

360 Park
Avenue South

New York, New York 10010

Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

I
      
How Simon Templar dined alone,

and was
in
troduced to a cat

II
     
How Frankie laid down the law,

and the
Saint
was driven
into the country

 
III
      
How Leopold’s car was borrowed,

and Herr
Annellatt
provisioned a picnic

 
IV
    
How Simon Templar changed costume,

and a
Reichsmarshall
was deprived of transport

V
      
How maternity became Frankie,

and
there were
puns and punishment

 
VI
    
How Max received the news,

and the
Saint
went for a climb

 
VII
     
How Thai did his bit,

and
sundry other charac
ters got their deserts

VIII
     
How Simon
Templar had the last word

I

How Simon
Templar dined alone, and

was
introduced to a cat

1

The restaurant of the Hotel Hofer in Vienna
was called the
Hofburg, presumably after the Imperial Palace of that
name
not very far from it. It enjoyed a certain autonomy of its own,
for it was
in a separate building from the hotel, although it
could be reached
from the latter without going out of doors.
It was used as much
by the general public as by the guests of
the hotel. It was perhaps remarkable that
anyone used it at
all, for the food was
poor and the service matched it. It was,
however, conveniently situated in the central portion of the
town, not far from the Mariahilferstrasse.

That mild rainy evening in October 1938,
Simon Templar
regarded it with a jaundiced eye. It struck him that
although
the Hofburg went in strongly for atmosphere, the manage
ment did
not seem at all clear what sort of ambiance they
were trying to
attain. The decor was a mixture of traditional
and modern. The walls
were panelled with huge paintings
of Austrian scenes, done in crude
bright colours. They looked as if they had been executed by an enthusiastic
amateur, per
haps
the proprietor’s wife. On the other hand, the furniture
was of that varnished Swedish type which some regarded as
the height of
chic
even when it also
provided the height of
discomfort.

Simon wondered vaguely what he was doing in
the Hofburg
restaurant. His thoughts expressed a mood rather than a
conscious
question. Factually, he knew very well why he was
there. He was
staying at the Hotel Hofer because that day he
had had an
appointment there with Van Roeper, an interna
tionally known jewel
merchant of highly elastic ethics, an ap
pointment which at
that time and in that place was curious because Van Roeper was a Jew, and the
Nazis had earlier in
the year taken over Austria as being
rightfully a part of the
primordial German State. The Saint considered
this a some
what arbitrary concept in view of the fact that the
German
State had only been invented by Bismarck a little over half a
century
before.

Even more curious was the fact that the
Saint, as Simon
Templar was known in many cosmopolitan circles,
including
both criminal and police spheres, had been the
entrepreneur
in a deal between the German Government and Van Roeper,
which
piece of pragmatism showed that Nazi racial intolerance was nothing more than
totally unscrupulous opportunism. What the German Government did not know,
however, was that both the Saint and Van Roeper would prosper from
the
transaction, whereas the Third Reich would be the loser
—but
that, as the saying goes, is another story.

No, the Saint was merely wondering why he was
eating a
bad meal in the unfashionable surroundings of the
Hofburg
restaurant when he could have been dining with Patricia
Holm at
the Savoy in London, Maxim’s in Paris, or the 21
Club in New York.
The simple answer was, of course, that the
drizzle outside, and
plans for an early departure in the morn
ing, had made him
just apathetic enough about sallying forth
in search of
something more epicurean or exciting. The
thought of Patricia sent him into a
reverie which included
many pleasant and
very private memories; but his preoccupation with these did not prevent him
from taking note of what went on around him, particularly when this was female
and
unusually pretty to boot.

She came in with a certain regal swing to her
carriage and
sat down at the table next to Simon. She was dark with
the
olive skin
usually associated with the Mediterranean, but her
eyes were a wonderfully brilliant blue, a combination one
rarely sees outside of Ireland. She looked nervous
and un
happy and she appeared to be
waiting for someone, for when
the Herr
Ober approached with the menu she shook her
head, somewhat arrogantly, Simon
thought.

The Saint had finished his dinner. He called for his bill and
signed it, adding his room number. But he lingered
on for he
had nothing particular to do, and the young woman intrigued
him. He wondered about her. Something was wrong,
of that
he felt sure. She did not fit
into the Hofburg at all. She was
quite
a different class of person from the rest of its clientele.
Of course, she might be one of the ubiquitous Nazi
agents
who held the Third Reich together and kept a special eye on
foreigners such as himself. He would not have
minded this,
for so far as he knew
the Nazis still had nothing on their
books
against him. If the girl was a Nazi agent her surveil
lance would be purely routine, and a report of
his movements
would be given to the Gestapo where it would end up in
some
huge and dusty filing system.

On the other hand, Austria had been a police
state from
way
back, and if this girl was an agent of the Austrian police,
the situation could be awkward. The Saint was very
much wanted by the Austrian police for certain incidents in Inns
bruck and the Inn valley a few years previously
in which some
of their stalwarts had
suffered considerable violence and loss
of face.
(See
Saint’s
Getaway.
)
He himself had no guilty conscience about
the affair,
since in the beginning he had with the most laudable inten
tions taken
them for villains just because they looked and
acted like it. He had forgotten that
appearances can be very deceptive and that a lot of policemen look like
villains even
though beneath their
unrighteous exteriors may beat hearts of gold; but he was bound to doubt that
the Law would take
such a tolerant
view of his slight mistake.

It was typical of the Saint’s insouciant
recklessness that he hadn’t even bothered to disguise himself on his return to
Aus
tria, although he had acquired, from a certain shady character
in a flat
above a grocery in Soho, a new character and a pass
port to go with it
which stated that he was one Stephen
Taylor, profession
“gentleman” (which in those balmy days
was still an
officially recognised “occupation”), for whom His Britannic Majesty’s
Principal Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs requested
and required in the Name of His Majesty all
those whom it might
concern “to allow him to pass freely
without let or hindrance, and to afford
him such assistance
and protection” as
might be necessary. The fine ring of this
resounding injunction in its present context made Simon
smile.

In taking this gamble, Simon was acting less
foolishly than
perhaps it seemed. False moustaches, beards, and other
dis
guises often look unreal and are a nuisance to wear. Police photographs
of wanted criminals, moreover, are not generally
displayed where many
people see them, and rare indeed is the
individual in or out
of uniform capable of recognising the original of such a portrait. Simon
therefore felt fairly safe in
his assumption that he was not likely to meet
anyone, bureau
crat or otherwise, who would recognise him or even
suspect that Stephen Taylor was not the man his passport claimed he was. In any
case, he had not intended to spend much time in
Austria. He had
other pressing business back in London, to
say nothing of dining
with Patricia at the Savoy. Perhaps this
time he would take
her to the Ritz. He loved its
fin de si
è
cle
French baroque restrained ostentation. Or better still, per
haps the
Blue Train around the corner from it. The atmos
phere there was intimate and at the same
time impersonal,
just the right mixture for
an evening with a special per
son
…