The Saint and the Hapsburg Necklace by Leslie Charteris, Christopher Short Read Free Book Online Page B

hotel
bed until he realised that he was lying on a
cold bare floor with his wrists tightly bound behind him. “No,” he said to himself, as cheerfully as he could in the circumstances, “I never tie
myself up before going to bed.
Someone’s been a bit naughty.”
    He tried to loosen his bonds, but they were tied firmly enough to tell him that it would take even his
escapologist’s skill quite some time to get out of them.
    Then that attempt had to be deferred as a key
turned in a lock, a door was opened, and the room was flooded with
harsh light from a naked bulb switched on overhead.
    It was a small grey room about the size of a
prison cell, which it depressingly resembled, and as he rolled over
he saw that it was devoid of furniture.
    Two men entered. Both wore raincoats and
turned-down Trilby
hats. The Saint recognised them at once. They were the Rat and the Gorilla. The
names of convenience that he had given them
could not have fitted more neatly. They were two perfect stereotypes from a C-grade film.
    The Rat spoke in English. He had a heavy and
rather gut tural accent blended with that of the American locality
where he had learned it, which sounded rather like Yonkers. And Simon had
no doubt that in the same school he had acquired some of the less
attractive characteristics of the American cul ture.
    “So you are awake already?” he
said.
    As a remark it was superfluous, but it helpfully told the Saint that he could not have been knocked out for
long.
    Simon looked at him with distaste. The man
had the sneer ing manner of a professional sadist. Such types, in the
Saint’s experience, were always vulnerable. Compensating for their own physical inadequacy with
another man’s muscle, they were always aware
of their dependence and made more in secure
by it.
    “I’m not sure,” Simon replied, his
gaze meeting the other’s steadily. “I could be having a
particularly nasty dream.”
    “Perhaps you won’t be quite so fresh, my
friend, when we’ve finished with you,” said the Rat.
    “And what exactly is it you want to
finish?”
    The Rat lit a cigarette.
    ”We want to know what you are doing in
Vienna.”
    “I came to see the Zoo,” Simon told
him. “But I didn’t know the animals were wandering around loose
in the streets.”
    The Gorilla stepped over and kicked the
Saint viciously in the ribs. Simon could not quite cut off a reflex gasp of
pain, but managed to turn it into a laugh.
    “There’s a good Nazi,” he observed.
“Be sure a man isn’t only down but has his hands tied before you
kick him.”
    The Gorilla’s face was suffused with rage. He
bent down and deliberately struck the Saint across the face. He
looked as if it made him feel a little better.
    “You must have practised that on your
girlfriend,” said the Saint. “Or is she a boy?”
    The Gorilla reached in his pocket and brought
out a switch knife. The blade flicked out like a silver snake’s
tongue. He thrust the point to within half an inch of the Saint’s left eye.
    “How would you like to have only one
eye?” The blade twitched sideways. “Or no eyes at all?”
    “Listen,” said the Rat. “We
know that you did not meet the Countess Malffy or Herr Annellatt before
tonight. But the
Saint wouldn’t come to Vienna, at this time, just as a tourist. We want to know what you came to do, if you have already done it, and all about it.”
    “Und ve haf vays off making you
talk,” said the Saint, in contemptuously exaggerated burlesque.
    “You will also tell us exactly where the
Hapsburg Necklace is hidden.”
    So that was part of it. They thought that
Frankie might have confided her secret to him. That could make things more
difficult. Ignorance is one thing which is more easily shown up than it is
proved. And this pair looked as if they would take a lot of
convincing.
    “I’m sorry,” said the Saint,
“but I keep my tiara in the bank and only wear paste. One meets so many
unpleasant characters around these days. After