Saint and the Templar Treasure (12 page)

“The Templars were put on trial. It was all a sham, of course. De Molay was burnt at the stake. As he died, he summoned both the King and the Pope to meet him before the throne of judgement within a year. Both died within a few months. Something for even a sceptic like you to think over,” Norbert gibed.

“Impressive enough,” Simon assented. “De Molay would, of course, have known all about the treasure.”

“Of course. It was probably he who arranged for some of it to be brought to Ingare. Not that the fortress was known by that name then. The word was found carved into the stone in the great hall, and the new owners adopted it. For centuries it has been the only clue to the location of the treasure.”

“What does it mean?”

“It is an anagram of Regina,” Norbert said, as if only an idiot would have failed to recognize it.

The Saint frowned.

“The Latin word for Queen? Queen of what?”

“I do not know. If I did, I might have already found the treasure. Last night we might have been told, but you ruined it.”

“It was hardly my fault,” the Saint pointed out mildly. “Your spook seemed to take an instant dislike to me.”

The professor stopped his pacing. He stood glaring venomously at the Saint and shaking with anger.

“You were meddling in matters that did not concern you, and you are meddling again now.” Norbert’s voice rose to a shriek. “Get out! Go away. Leave me to my work. Leave me in peace!”

The Saint looked steadily into a pair of eyes that seemed to glow with a secret fire, and for the first time he wondered whether Professor Louis Norbert was completely sane. He could think of little that might be gained by staying, and turned compliantly away. By the time he reached the door Norbert was back on his knees, frantically scrubbing at the marks on the floor.

The Saint strolled out into the fresh air of the garden and sat on the edge of the wall. Except for some interesting historical background he had learnt little. He was wondering what to do next when the decision was made for him.

A scream and a crash of falling masonry drifted up from the direction of the chai and outbuildings below the chateau, and he was on his feet and racing towards them before the echo had died.

He covered the first hundred metres in a fraction over eleven seconds and reached the entrance to the nearest storehouse at the same time as the men who had been unloading the truck outside.

In the centre of the flagstone floor was a jagged hole, and lying ten feet down, half buried beneath broken wood and shattered paving, was the spread-eagled body of Gaston Pichot.

IV

How Gaston made a Discovery, and Philippe Florian took Charge.

1

As he looked down at the sprawled figure Simon experienced a disorienting isolation from the surrounding confusion. The excited shouts of the labourers and the thud of their heavy boots on the flagstones drifted into a remote background. He was totally aware of everything that happened yet was apart from it. He stood motionless, numbed by an eerie feeling of deja vu, as if the events of the preceding seconds were no more than stills from a film he had seen before.

With cool detachment he searched for a reason and found it in the veiled warning that Gaston had delivered a little earlier. The old man’s words returned to jar him back to reality.

“Accidents happen.”

In the instant of his return to his usual alertness Simon realised three things. The first was that Gaston was not fatally injured, for he was already clambering to his knees. The second was that the workmen were turning to him as if for an explanation. And the third was a vibration he could feel beneath his feet.

“Back!”

The urgency in his voice made the others jump to obey even before they appreciated the danger. No sooner had they retreated from the edge than another section of the floor collapsed on the opposite side of the hole from where the Saint stood.

A string of oaths rose with the cloud of dust that followed the cave-in, and the Saint grinned with relief in the assurance that no one capable of such a voluble and coherent attack on the parentage and peculiarities of his would-be rescuers could yet be written off. He knelt down, carefully spreading his weight more evenly, and peered into the gloom below. Gaston was on his feet, brushing the dust and dirt from his clothes and hair with one hand as he massaged the small of his back with the other.

“Are you all right?”

Gaston looked up, clearly surprised to hear the Saint’s voice, and winced at the pain the sudden movement caused him.

“I think so, monsieur,” he replied hesitantly. “At least there are no bones broken.”

“What happened?”

“I was rolling a barrel across the floor when it just gave way. You had best be careful, the supports down here are all rotten. I cannot imagine how they have lasted so long.”

“That’s what they said to Methuselah,” Simon rejoined. “We’ll have you out in a minute. Stay in the centre in case any more of the floor collapses.”

He moved cautiously back from the edge and turned to speak crisply to the men nearest to him.

“You, get some rope and a ladder. You get a flashlight. You go to the chateau, tell anyone you find there what has happened, and bring back a first-aid box. The rest of you stay outside, we don’t want any more accidents.”

The workmen hurried to carry out his instructions. Simon perched himself on one of the barrels stacked by the door and waited for them to return.

Had it not been for Gaston’s prophetic warning, he would have found nothing very extraordinary in what had happened. He recalled his visit to the chapel the previous day, and Gas-ton’s accident merely confirmed what he had surmised then, that the hill beneath the chateau was likely to be a warren of cellars and tunnels dating back to the building of the original fortress. Like the rest of the house they would have been extended piecemeal as required with little concern as to how long they would have to last. In such circumstances, subsidences were bound to be occasional events. It would have been satisfying to have found a more sinister explanation for what had happened, but it was evident that Gaston had been alone in the storehouse and the odds against the accident having been engineered were too long to be taken seriously.

The sounds that reached him indicated that Gaston Pichot had no intention of keeping still until he was rescued, and Simon had just decided to find out what he was doing when the labourers began to return.

The Saint tied an end of the rope to one of the two powerful flashlights they had brought and then laid the ladder on the floor and slid it towards the hole. Treading as lightly as possible on the rungs, he carried the rope and the flashlights to the hole.

Gaston was on his hands and knees in the gloom and appeared to be sifting through the debris when the Saint found him with the beam of the second torch.

“I’m lowering a light so that you can see where to guide the ladder,” Simon told him as he began to pay out the rope.

Once he had a clear view of the bottom of the hole, Simon tipped the ladder over the edge, positioning it as near vertically as possible to lessen the strain on the floor. As soon as it was in place he shinned nimbly down with the other lamp.

“There is no need, I can manage,” said Gaston huffily, but Simon ignored him.

Now that he was sure that the overseer was not gravely hurt he was impatient to find out what lay below. Gaston held his light on the bottom of the ladder until the Saint reached it, and then raised the beam to illuminate the room they stood in.

The combined brilliance of their two lamps showed it in detail. It was about twenty feet square and nine feet high. The walls and what was left of the ceiling were made of trimly hewn stone blocks, while the floor consisted only of the smoothed rock of the hill. Jutting from three of the walls seat-high from the ground were boxed-in stone benches that reminded Simon of the tombs of monks he had seen in abbeys, although the general appearance suggested an ante-room rather than a burial chamber.

He took in the lay-out of the room with one sweeping glance until his gaze reached the far wall.

On a low intricately carved plinth stood one of the strangest statues he had ever seen.

It was a life-sized marble sculpture of a woman dressed in a flowing Grecian style costume. Pawing at her dress like lap dogs were a pair of baying wolves which she was affectionately stroking. The Saint had an involuntary shudder as he took in the head. There was no sign of the classical beauty he had half expected: Instead, the sculptor had fashioned not one face but three, each as hideous as the other. The mouths were fixed in tight-lipped snarls that copied the menace of the wolves, and the noses were hooked like scythes. The eyes held no expression at all. They were simply deep black voids. Framing the features was a wild mass of tangled hair that tumbled down the figure’s back and over her breasts like a nest of angry snakes. Between her feet stood a small iron-bound oak casket which seemed to contain a few tiny scraps of brittle yellow parchment.

“Must have been somebody’s dream girl,” the Saint remarked, and was surprised to find himself whispering like a tourist in a cathedral.

He walked around the rubble in the middle of the floor and approached the statue, conscious that wherever he moved the sightless eyes seemed to follow him.

Gaston stayed where he was.

“It is evil, monsieur,” he declared.

The old man was both excited and afraid. He shuffled his feet nervously and glanced anxiously at the ladder as he waited for the Saint.

Simon picked up the casket and inspected it. The wood was splintered where the lid had been levered open and there were bright scratches on the edges of the lock. It carried no clue to its original owner and was too small to contain a hidden compartment. The pieces of parchment were brittle to the touch and blank except for a few faded strokes that might have been the tops of letters. Regretfully he replaced it on the ledge and turned to face Gaston.

“Too bad it’s empty,” he said.

“Yes, yes, it is,” Pichot agreed restlessly. “A great pity.”

Simon promptly turned back to the ladder.

“I’m sorry, Gaston. I was forgetting that you must still be very shaken.”

“I have strained my back,” the other said with a grimace. “But it could have been much worse.”

“Can you climb?”

“I think so.”

“I’ll hold the ladder for you. Take your time.”

The old man began to pull himself up rung by rung. Simon waited until he was at the top and then followed. One of the labourers helped his foreman to safety, and as Gaston sat on a cask to regain his breath the workman Simon had sent to the chateau returned accompanied by Henri and Norbert.

Briefly Gaston told them what had happened. Henri took a small bottle from his pocket and his uncle gratefully sampled its contents.

“It was very fortunate that you were here, Monsieur Templar,” Henri said stiffly. “It seems that once again we are in your debt.”

“I do seem to have a habit of being around when things happen, don’t I?” said the Saint. “But I didn’t really do anything.” He directed Henri back to Gaston, who was again on his feet. “Don’t you think you had better see him home?”

“Of course,” Henri agreed. “Come, Uncle. I have a car outside, and the doctor has been sent for.”

“There is no need for so much fuss,” Gaston grumbled; but he allowed Henri to take his arm and lead him out. Norbert did not follow. He was trying to peer into the hole in the floor, hopping about like an excited bird.

“A hidden chamber—this is really exciting!”

“I thought that’s what you’d be most concerned about,” Simon said dryly. “Here, take a flashlight and go have a look.”

Even though the Saint had become accustomed to Norbert’s excitable nature, the intensity of his reaction when he finally managed to negotiate the descent and saw the statue for the first time was quite a spectacle. The professor gawped at the figure, his face a study of joyous amazement like a child unexpectedly presented with a long-coveted toy.

“Incredible! Quite incredible,” he breathed, and almost tripped over it in his hurry to get a closer look.

Simon had followed more coolly, and was content to leave the professor alone until his examination was completed and his excitement had subsided enough to allow him to answer questions.

Louis Norbert ran his hands over the grotesque figure as gently as if it were made of the finest bone china. He got down on his knees and traced the carving on the plinth. Simon took in the details of the column for the first time and saw that they depicted a tree through whose heavy foliage peered the contorted faces of what were presumably meant to be wood spirits and devils.

Norbert minutely studied each of the wolves in turn before running his hands up the folds of the dress until by stretching on tiptoe he could glide his fingers over the features of the face. All the while the examination was in progress a steady flow of mumbled superlatives told Simon how important the professor believed the statue to be.

“Well?” Simon prompted at last, when both Norbert’s examination and supply of adjectives appeared to be temporarily exhausted.

The professor turned sharply, irritated at having his thoughts disturbed.

“What?”

“That kind of dialogue will get us nowhere,” Simon rebuked him with a smile. However hard he tried, he found it difficult to take the academic’s antics seriously. “What is it?”

“Hecate,” Norbert replied as if exasperated by such basic ignorance.

Simon searched back through the mythology he had picked up in serendipitous reading. Except for the amorous exploits of Zeus and a feeling of kinship with Odysseus and Jason, he admitted that he had never been deeply drawn into the subject.

“Greek goddess?” he hazarded, hoping that it would act as a cue for one of the professor’s instant lectures.

He was not disappointed. Norbert backtracked until he stood by the Saint’s side, but his eyes continued to absorb every detail of the statue as he spoke.

“Originally, yes. A minor deity. Not one of the true Olympians.”

“Poor girl,” said the Saint.