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

worst specimens. Or maybe going abroad brings out
the worst in them.”
    “Yes, but you dislike them from the
vantage point of supe riority. You are rich and aristocratic. I
can tell you it is not very pleasant to know that others are wealthy and wasting food when you and your family are poor and
hungry. My mother died when I was
ten of consumption, aggravated by malnutrition.
No, let’s be honest, starvation would be more accurate. The fact that
she was regularly knocked about by my
father, who was a drunken brute, did not help. But per haps he only drank to forget how unable he was to
cope with the miserable situation of
his family.”
    Simon noticed that the knuckles of Max’s
hands showed white as he gripped the wheel with sudden intensity.
Then, as if coming back from a long distance, he continued.
    “We were a large family. Poor families
often are, in this country at any rate. There were too many for my father to provide for. We had to fend for ourselves. Two of my sisters and a brother died, simply
because they could not, how do you say it,
make the grade. Another brother emigrated to the United States, where he has
obviously done quite well, for though
we have never heard from him since, I saw his name in the paper connected with a Grand Jury
investigation in New York.” Max
chuckled. “It was my brother who was being investigated.”
    His expression became sombre again.
    “Two of my other sisters were forced to
sell themselves to tourists who admired the beauties of Tyrol a little too
personally. One of them now lives in Innsbruck and the other in St Anton.
Both are married and run excellent pensions of ex treme respectability.”
His irrepressible Austrian humour flashed back for an instant in his
eyes. “They do not approve of me. I am the black sheep of the
family.”
    The Saint was sympathetic to Max’s story,
but he was also aware that it was a pitch for his good will.
    “You don’t seem to have done so badly
for yourself,” he ob served.
    “I’ve done very well. I realised early
that life is what you make it. I decided to make mine extremely comfortable.
That I have done.”
    “I’m glad your story has a happy
ending.”
    Max gave him a steady look. “That was
not part of my bar gain with life. I did not ask for happiness. People who
are happy are either saints or idiots.”
    “Point taken,” Simon conceded.
“I’m happy!”
    “Yes, you may be a ‘Saint’ but not quite
the usual kind, and that naturally makes me want to ask questions of my own.”
    “Fire away,” said the Saint.
“It costs nothing to ask.”
    “I was wondering what brought you to
Vienna, before you so providentially met Frankie.”
    The Saint sighed.
    “Everyone seems to be curious about
that,” he said. “But I’m afraid that’s one I’m not answering. Perhaps I’ll tell you all about it in a couple of hundred years, and I
think it might amuse you. But for
now you’ll have to take my word that it had absolutely nothing to do with you, Frankie, or the Haps burg Necklace.”
    He knew now that Annellatt’s reminiscence
had also been a bid for reciprocal confidence, but Max seemed to accept
its failure with good grace.
    “That at least is worth knowing,”
Annellatt said, and drove on in silence for several kilometres.
    After some time he braked suddenly and swung
the car off on to a side road, which joined the main one where two ruined
castles flanked it on opposite sides. Simon had seen them before and knew
that to get to them they must have by passed the town of Baden. They were
called Rauhenstein and Rauheneck, and they flanked the road to Mayerling. Simon figured
they must have been built by two rival barons who wanted to be near enough to each other to have a good bash-up when they
felt like it. It occurred to him that the Middle Ages must have been
full of fun like that.
    They travelled a short while down the lane,
twisting and turning as the road took them. Then suddenly ahead of them loomed another