Saint and the Templar Treasure (14 page)

After dinner on the fourth day following his arrival, all the others excused themselves early for one reason or another, and for the first time in a long while he found himself alone again with Mimette in the salon.

She wasted no time in taking advantage of the opportunity.

“You must have a lot to tell me.”

It was so close to sounding like an imperious challenge that he was amused to treat it with elaborate carelessness.

“Not really-why should I?”

A slight flush tinged the girl’s cheeks.

“You mean you’ve been doing nothing?”

“I can’t say I’ve been a great help with the ricolte,” Simon granted. “And Philippe already has an enthusiastic assistant.”

“Which should have left you plenty of time to do something else useful.”

“What would you have proposed?” he teased her lazily. “Should I have brought in a steam shovel and started digging up your foundations until we found a treasure which may not even exist?”

“You know there is something wrong here, and I thought you were going to try to discover it.”

Suddenly she sounded very tired and lonely, and the Saint relented.

“Okay,” he said. “I’d like to show you something. Can we go back to the dining-room?”

Wonderingly, but without hesitation, she moved to the door.

The dining-room, meticulously cleared of all trace of dinner, looked stark and lifeless in the blaze that she switched on. Simon put a match to a single one of the candles in the massive silver candelabrum on the sideboard, and turned off the electricity.

“There, that’s a lot better,” he said. “More atmospheric and misteriose. Now, would you sneak into the nether regions and fetch us a large wine-glass. Empty.”

“But why?”

“I’m going to show you a party trick that I happened to remember.”

When she returned, he had laid out a rough circle of torn pieces of paper at one end of the table top, which he was lightly polishing with a silk handkerchief.

“Of course, Charles keeps this table waxed and shined like a flies’ skating rink,” he remarked, “which makes the trick much easier.” He placed the glass upside down in the center of the paper circle and tested its mobility with a fingertip. “Now, you sit down opposite me—”

“What is this-another seance?”

“With a difference. But we might as well get in the mood.”

As she reluctantly took the chair across from him, he went on:

“I’ve been making use of your library, swotting up on the history of your noble house.”

“And?”

“Your ancestors—and maybe mine—seem to have been a pretty barbaric crowd even for those days. It seems that one of the first Florians, who had rashly promised some characters that they would not be hurt, kept them in the dungeons beneath this very room and simply starved them to death. But every day he had a sumptuous meal prepared and placed outside their cells—just out of reach. ‘They must not be allowed to believe,’ he said, ‘that I am starving them to save money.’”

Mimette grimaced. “How horrible!”

“Of course, if you weren’t feeling subtle, there were always the good old fun things to do, like one master of Ingare who used any peasants who complained for crossbow practice.”

“That was a different age, a different world,” she said defensively. “It can’t be blamed on the Florians of today.”

“In another thirty years the Germans will be saying the same about the Nazis. And I suppose they’ll be right, too,” said the Saint philosophically. “All the same, it does make this a place where a spiritualist could expect a good crop of spooks. I wonder how many men have entered Ingare and never left? Just think of the cries of despair and the screams of agony these walls must have heard, the murder and mayhem they must have seen. …”

“I don’t want to think about it,” said Mimette obdurately.

She looked at the scraps of paper that he had laid out, and said: “Anyhow, these are all blank, so how is your spook going to communicate?”

“I hope the problem will drive him crazy,” Simon said happily. “Now, let’s see if we can make a contact. Put your finger on the glass.”

The Saint’s voice was quietly authoritative and Mimette obeyed.

In a few moments the glass moved a little.

She looked at him sharply.

“You’re cheating!”

“I am not.”

The movements became more pronounced and erratic.

“According to unbelievers,” Simon said steadily, “one of the players eventually, intentionally or involuntarily, gives the glass a tiny push. The others feel it, and unconsciously resist it or try to change its direction. The conflict of forces leads to stronger and wider movements as the pressures get more unbalanced… .”

Even while he was explaining it, the glass began to move more definitely about the table.

The Saint asked no questions as Norbert had done, but simply allowed the glass to go where it seemed to want to. Mimette followed its peregrinations as if mesmerised. The glass moved faster and faster until it was darting to one point after another on the circle of paper scraps.

“Now, are you cheating?” Simon challenged.

As he expected, she snatched her finger indignantly off the glass. The Saint immediately followed suit. But the glass did not stop.

For a few seconds longer it went on moving as if it had a will of its own, until with gathering speed it flew straight off the edge of the table into the surrounding gloom.

“Well,” drawled the Saint, “I guess not finding any letters to spell with did drive our spook of the evening up the wall.”

Mimette had barely stifled a scream. She stared at Simon in wide-eyed disbelief and then ran and switched on the lights. Grinning, the Saint picked up the glass and replaced it on the table before blowing out the candle and collecting his pieces of paper.

Mimette remained standing by the light switch. She was deathly pale and her hands were clasped tightly together to stop them shaking. Despite her efforts at self-control her voice shook.

“It was a trick!” she babbled. “It must have been a trick!”

“It was,” he said cheerfully. “As I told myself when I saw it in the tower. And like most good tricks, so easy once you know how.”

“Please?” she implored. “What did you do?”

On the sideboard there was also an antique silver carrying-stand with a set of small stemless glasses in sockets around its base and a cut crystal decanter in the centre. The decanter held a liquid of encouragingly amber tint. Simon unstoppered it, sniffed the heady aroma of old marc, and poured two generous restorative shots. He handed one to Mimette before continuing.

“It’s all so obvious, really—straight out of the Amateur Sorcerer’s Handbook. First create an atmosphere, which is even easier if you have an old tower once occupied by Satanic knights. Enhance said atmosphere with lack of light. Then make sure everyone is concentrating as hard as possible because when you stare too hard at something for too long you end up not really seeing it at all. That’s why a conjuror always tells you to watch closely—what he wants you to watch. Then it’s easy to perform the required legerdemain.”

“But that glass moved by itself, when we weren’t touching it,” protested Mimette. “So did the one at the seance in the tower.”

“Not quite,” said the Saint.

He held up a single strand of black thread knotted at one end.

“Take a highly polished table and wine-glass, give the rim of the glass a film of oil perhaps, just with a fingertip from your own hair, and the glass will move at the lightest of touches. The pressure it needs is so slight that even the others who have a finger on the glass can’t detect who is starting it. When the glass comes to the edge of the table, slip the thread under the rim and the knot will keep it there. In semi-darkness it’s as good as invisible. When the time is right give the thread a quick tug and the glass flies off the table. Like I said, so simple when you know.”

“But who would go to all that trouble? And why?” she puzzled, and Simon shrugged.

“Who is easy. It’s the why that baffles me.”

“Who, then?”

“If you remember, the glass left the table and hit the pillar I was standing behind. Norbert was sitting at one end of the table and Philippe was facing me. That only leaves one person who was in exactly the right place.”

3

Mimette’s brow furrowed as she worked out the solution. She gave a short and uncertain laugh.

“Henri? Don’t be silly!”

Simon was unmoved.

“The limitation of that trick is that you can only move the glass towards you, or a little to one side, as you pull the thread under the edge of the table. Henri was the only one in a position to send it the way it went.”

She seemed to make an effort to remain sceptical.

“But why should Henri go to all that trouble?”

“That, as Hamlet always said, is the question,” Simon shrugged. “Perhaps he’s a secret practical joker.”

“Not Henri.”

“I didn’t think so. If the glass hadn’t smashed against the column, and brought me into the act, we might have found out. He couldn’t have known that I was standing there, so it was pure bad luck that I broke up the proceedings just as you made your appearance.”

“What are we going to do about it?” demanded Mimette.

The Saint lifted one free hand and shoulder.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing!”

“It’s no crime to fake a seance,” he contended.

“But no one would do it without a dishonest reason.”

“Did I have a dishonest reason just now?”

“No, but you—oh! You—you—”

She was almost spluttering with feminine exasperation at the idiocy of masculine logic.

The Saint was wise enough not to try to score any more intellectual points.

“All we have at the moment is a good reason to keep an eye on Henri,” he said quietly. “And we’ll have a much better chance of spotting something more if he doesn’t know he’s being watched. So just for now, will you keep my little demonstration private, between the two of us?”

Mimette frowned.

“Excusez-moi.” The words were difficult for her to say. “I have no right to speak to you as if I had hired you. It’s only because, since you came here, I’ve been hoping so much—”

“And believe me, Mimette,” he said steadily, “I’m hoping I won’t let you down.”

She looked up at him uncertainly, desperately wanting to believe. Simon Templar looked down into her dark troubled eyes and put down his glass. Before she realized what was happening, his lips were against hers. Her eyes opened wide in astonishment for a moment, but only for a moment. Slowly they closed as the tension dissolved, and she relaxed gratefully into the security of his arms.

As usual the following morning Simon breakfasted alone. Those with work to do were busy doing it, while Jeanne Cor-day’s ideas on the proper time for reveille were even more sybaritic than his own. Today, however, he knew that there would be a surfeit of conviviality to make up for it later. The last of the grapes would be brought in that afternoon, and in the evening there would be the traditional party for all who had worked on the harvest.

He was looking forward to the festivities. Not simply because they would be enjoyable in themselves, but because it would be his first opportunity to observe all the Florian clan and their cohorts in the informal bustle of a sociable free-for-all, which might provide an interesting floor show.

A stroll around the chateau grounds after breakfast had become something of a ritual, and that morning his route rook him first towards the chai and its dependent storehouse. In the cobbled courtyard which they partly enclosed he found Gaston Pichot leaning on a stout stick and watching a mound of laden baskets being carried in from the truck.

“These are the Petit Syrah,” Gaston explained. “Blended in our own proportion with the usual Cabernet grapes, they are what give the wines of Ingare their unique flavor.”

“I’m glad to see you’re on the job again,” said the Saint sincerely. “And feeling a lot better?”

“I could have felt so much worse,” said the indomitable old man. “But I was born in a good year. My vintage has outlasted many younger ones, and it will outlast many more. We have a proverb in Provencale: Vau mies pourta lou dou que lou lingou —it is better to wear the mourning than the coffin.”

“I shall adopt that as my motto,” Simon laughed. “A bien-tot, mon ami.”

He sauntered on, around to the storehouse where Gaston had literally stumbled into one of the long-lost secrets of the chateau.

The floor was now securely pit-propped and the ladder had been solidly braced so that it practically became a steep flight of stairs. The debris had been removed, and a cable run from the generator in the adjoining pressing house supplied power for a couple of light bulbs.

Unexpectedly, the underground chamber was temporarily deserted. Since its discovery Norbert had virtually lived there, leaving it reluctantly only for hurried meals and snatched sleep. Reasoning that even professors are subject to the dictates of nature, Simon decided to wait for Norbert to return.

The statue looked somehow less sinister in the unglamorous glare of three hundred watts than it had in the wavering candle-power of flashlights. As he stood beside it facing the chilling emptiness of its eyes, he saw that it was not set flush against the wall as he had originally supposed. Only the plinth was attached to the wall, but the figure centred on it was well clear. A fetishist, if so inclined, could have put his arms around its horrors and embraced it.

The Saint did almost that, but with the purely idle object of testing whether the statue was integrated with its base or merely planted on it.

And the statue moved, with an ease quite disproportionate to the effort he had applied with respect to its presumable weight. In fact, so smoothly that he was momentarily thrown off balance. It was as if the statue had responded by coming to life in weird co-operation. And to add to the eeriness of the effect, a ghostly squeak and clink of chain whined through the chamber, while he had a visual hallucination of a part of the wall within his field of vision moving away from him.

As he regained his footing, both physically and intelligently, he realised that the wall actually had moved. In fact, a whole section of masonry had turned, in perfect synchronisation with the turning of the statue, opening a door into a passageway that instantly lost itself in total darkness.