Saint and the Templar Treasure (21 page)

“Did you think that up all by yourselves, or did someone give you lessons?” Simon inquired of the men. “And who suggested dealing with me on your own?”

The two men looked warily at each other and each understood something that was not spoken. Dubois indicated the big man who had tried to bear-hug the Saint and was now beginning to stir back to an awareness of the world.

“It was his idea,” Dubois state flatly.

“Louis?” Mimette scoffed. “He’s an ox. He never had an idea in his life.”

“Let it ride, Mimette,” said the Saint. “They’re not going to tell us unless we beat it out of them and I don’t have the time.”

Both fallen warriors were now starting to climb back to the vertical. They glared murderously at the Saint but made no move to restart the battle.

“Take your friends and get out,” Simon told the deflated
quartet, and they hurried to obey.

He waited until they had left before turning to Mimette.

“And what brought you to the rescue?” he asked as he retrieved his flashlight from where it had fallen during the scuffle.

“I was looking for you. When you told me about the car and Philippe, it made me forget that I’d remembered.”

“You’re getting confusing.”

“Pardon. What I meant was that while you were away I realised where I’d seen that drawing on the parchment before. There’s something like it on the stone in the hall.”

“Interesting.”

She pouted.

“You don’t seem very excited. I thought you’d be pleased.”

The Saint grinned mischievously.

“Allow me to upstage you.”

He moved over to the hole in the floor, switching on the flashlight as he began to descend the steps. The generator had been turned off, and except for the beam of his torch centred on the statue the chamber was in total darkness. Mimette joined him and shuddered as she gazed at the hideous figure.

“This is my party piece,” he said grandly. “Watch carefully.”

He stepped over to the statue and operated the hidden mechanism. Slowly the section of wall swung back.

“Voila! How about that?”

Mimette was fascinated. The Saint shone his torch through the opening to show the passage beyond.

“How did you find it?” she asked at last.

“Luck,” Simon admitted candidly. “To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention to it at first. After all, there must be quite a few other tunnels and cellars under the chateau. Then I remembered something Louis Norbert had said, and it all fitted into place.”

“What was that?”

“When he was telling me about the Templars a few days ago, he mentioned that ‘Ingare’ was an anagram of ‘Regina.’ It didn’t seem to mean much to him either—then. Later, Gaston fell into this chamber, complete with statue of Hecate. Still no significance, until you know that she was supposed to be Queen of the Underworld and the ‘guardian of the crossroads.’” He tied a graphic knot in the air with his empty hand. “Then it all slots together. She is the Regina the Templars referred to, and she’s at a crossroads, albeit a hidden one. The parchment showed the tower and some squiggly lines underneath. I kept thinking it was a river, but it was a tunnel.”

Her lively intelligence was impatient to overtake him.

“So this passage leads to the tower?”

“It seems likely. Remember I told you I saw a man leave the tower and talk to the two villains who set fire to the barn? Well, he never re-appeared, and I thought he must have kept behind the wall and beat it back to the chateau. No need if there was a tunnel running from the tower.”

“But that was before this place was found,” she argued.

He nodded.

“Yes. Which means there’s another way in and out. I heard voices in the chapel, but I found only Louis there. My guess is that this passage links up with a tunnel running from the tower to the chapel.”

“And Norbert knows about it? But why didn’t he say anything?”

“He certainly knows about it, and a good deal more. I’m sure of that,” Simon replied. “I don’t believe our professor is altogether the dotty academic he likes people to think he is.”

“But surely you don’t believe he could have killed Gaston?”

“No, I don’t think he did that. I figure him more as a schemer than a doer. But I’ll bet he has a fair idea who done it.”

She put a reflective finger to her lower lip.

“So you came down here to trace out the passage.”

“That was the idea, and still is,” he said.

“We’ll go together,” announced Mimette.

He shook his head. “No. This is my little project,” he said firmly. “We’re dealing with a murderer, and just in case I bump into him I’d rather not have you to worry about.”

“But …”

“No buts. I’ll feel a lot better if I know that someone somewhere safe knows where I’ve gone. Go back to the chateau and wait. If I haven’t surfaced in an hour or so, start ringing the alarm bells. Okay?”

“I suppose so,” she agreed reluctantly.

Simon bent over and kissed her lightly on the nose.

“A tres tot,” he said softly.

He shone the beam of his flashlight on the ladder as she climbed up. She stopped at the top.

“Good luck, Simon.”

“I might need it,” he called back cheerfully, and with a wave of his hand he strode into the darkness of the passage.

For the first several paces the floor was smooth and straight, but then it began to veer and turn until even his sense of direction had a problem to keep track of it. The tunnel was cut through the solid rock of the hill, and was so irregular that at one moment he could not touch the roof and at others had to bend low to avoid hitting his head.

Counting his steps, he estimated that he had travelled nearly one hundred metres when the passage merged with another. His sense of direction told him that the left-hand branch would lead towards the chateau, and he decided to explore that one first. The tunnel became wider and straighter, and the air was remarkably fresh, indicating that the passage had certainly not been hermetically sealed for hundreds of years.

Presently the way began to slope upwards and the floor became smoother, the rock eventually giving way to flagstones.

He came to a couple of smaller passages that ran off on either side, but they dead-ended in a few yards, and he reckoned that he was now on the other side of some of the brick walls he had seen in the wine-cellar.

Finally he found himself confronted by a heavy oak door. Like the one leading from the great hall to the chapel, it was studded with square-topped iron nails and had a heavy ring for a handle. He reached out and turned it and pulled. The door opened soundlessly on recently oiled hinges.

He stood against the wall and waited, but there was no sound from the other side. After a moment, he opened the door wide and entered the room beyond.

It was long and rectangular, with a low slightly curved ceiling supported by four stout columns running down the centre. In alcoves along the walls rested coffins of stone or lead with the name of the knight they contained inscribed on the side. They were simple boxes, the complete opposite of the large elaborately carved tomb that stood squarely in the centre of the crypt between the middle two columns. Its sides were adorned with what appeared to be battle scenes, and on top lay the figure of a Crusader, his armour covered by the overmantle of the Templars. His arms were folded across his chest, and his hands clasped the hilt of a huge double-edged sword that was almost as long as himself.

Hanging from each of the columns was a heavy battery lamp similar to those in the chamber the Saint had just left. Two were positioned so that they shed their light directly on to the tomb, while the others were angled to illuminate each end of the crypt.

He located the main connection and turned them on. In their cold light the crypt looked less sinister than it had by the shifting beam of his torch, but no more comforting. He could see the far end of the room for the first time. Starting from the centre of the wall was a flight of steps leading to a narrow landing which he figured would originally have been the entrance from the chapel.

The sarcophagus had clearly been designed to be the focal point of the room. At its foot was a small table of black marble that reminded him of some altars he had seen in side chapels in cathedrals, a smooth slab supported by four spiral columns rising from the floor. In the centre of the slab was a large oblong casket with a rounded lid.

As Simon bent to examine it, the door behind him slammed. He spun around and sprinted across the room, but knew even as he did so that it was a futile gesture. He hurled his weight at it, but he might just as well have battered himself against the stone wall it was set in. Nothing short of dynamite was going to make an impression on those four inches of seasoned oak.

2

The lock was massive, but given even the most rudimentary implement would have been about as difficult to crack as a can of sardines. As far as the Saint was concerned, not having on him any such utensil, it might just as well have been the front door of Fort Knox.

He turned and walked the length of the room and mounted the steps at the end. It required no searching to locate where the door to the chapel had once been. Judging by the shape and size of the arch, it had probably been a twin of the one he had just been inspecting. Most of the entrance had been filled in with chunks of broken flagstones crudely mortared together and the gaps between them crammed with small stones. On the other side, he surmised, a much neater job must have been done, hiding the old opening completely, for he had noticed no sign of a doorway in the chapel other than the entrance from the great hall.

It was obvious that the way had been stopped for many centuries, probably when the chateau had replaced the fortress.

“But the professor was tapping around the chapel looking for it,” he mused. “And the second voice I thought I heard … somebody could have had a way out, like the man who came out of the tower and gave a package—of money?—to the arsonists… . Therefore—”

He looked up. Directly above his head, a rectangular opening had been cut in the ceiling. By the beam of his flashlight he could see through the thickness of the lath and plaster roof to the underside of flagstones. The stone in the centre of the hole seemed to be supported only by two beams of new wood.

By standing on his toes he could just touch the stone with his fingertips but it was impossible to exert enough pressure to lift it. He cast around the crypt for something to stand on, and saw again the casket at the foot of the master tomb.

Being imprisoned in a vault by a murderer and separated from the remains of devil-worshipping knights by a few centimetres of stone or lead is not a very hilarious situation, but the smile that played on Simon Templar’s lips was as genuine as any that ever lingered there. Running around in circles had never been his favourite method of keeping fit but had been the commonest form of exercise since his arrival at Ingare. The one incontrovertible, self-evident, and very definite result of his present discovery was that, for the moment at least, the running was over.

He felt a new vitality that came from the prospect of action. In less than an hour Mimette would raise the household and start a search, but instinct told him that by then there would be no need. His imprisonment, he was sure, was only meant to be temporary. Whoever was responsible would return to make quite certain he did not escape, and would come prepared. But not, perhaps, for the reception that the Saint might contrive to arrange.

He allowed himself a few moments to examine the casket. It was more than two feet long and almost a foot high. The metal was almost black, but a section of the lid and front had been cleaned to reveal the pure gleam of silver. In spite of the overall tarnish, it was possible to make out every detail of the embossed figures of knights and horses that formed a frieze around the edge of the lid. It had once been locked by a flap attached to the lid that fitted over a stanchion set halfway down the front and presumably secured by some form of padlock. Now both flap and stanchion were twisted and the lip of the casket was dented.

For such a rich container the contents seemed disappointingly dull. Inside was only a roll of parchment, brown with age and brittle to the touch. Carefully the Saint lifted it out and untied the two leather thongs at each end. He laid it beside the casket and delicately unrolled it until the first three or four inches became visible.

The parchment was so cracked and dark and the letters so faint that he had to strain his eyes to distinguish them. They ran in closely spaced lines without a break or capital to show where one word ended and another began. The last time he had seen such a text it had been in the clear print of a Bible appendix illustrating some of the original source material, with a translation underneath. For the first time since those days he wished he had paid more attention to the schoolmaster who had tried to convince him of the beauty of ancient Greek. Here and there he recognised a word or a short phrase, but not enough to make any sense of the meaning.

Even while he studied the scroll he was listening, alert now for the slightest sound. When he heard it, it was only a faint scrape of stone against stone. It came from the direction of the hole in the ceiling, and told him that someone was opening the improvised trap-door in the chapel.

The Saint moved like lightning. He killed the lamps and padded as swiftly and silently as a ghost across the room. He was already standing against the wall beside the steps when the noise grew louder and a shaft of weak light speared the floor beneath the opening as the flagstone above was removed. He watched as a short ladder was lowered and a pair of legs climbed down.

They brought after them the dwarfish body and gnomish head of Professor Louis Norbert.

The professor stood for a moment regaining his breath, and switched on a flashlight. He directed the beam on to the floor and followed its path towards the plinth. The Saint fell soundlessly into step behind him. As they neared the centre of the crypt, Norbert raised the beam and stopped so abruptly when he saw the open casket that the Saint almost bumped into him.