The Saint and the Templar Treasure

1

Serious bibbers of wine tend to come in two classes. Discounting those who differentiate between bottles only by the color of the contents, there are those who know a little and talk a lot, and those who know a lot and talk little. Simon Templar was numbered among the latter.

The mystique that so often surrounds the appreciation of wine left him cold. He was indifferent to which side of the hill the grape had flourished on. Knowledge of the shoe size of the head grape treader left him unmoved. He found the family antecedents of the vigneron of yawning interest. All he was really concerned about was that the quality should be outstanding, without fretting too much over the technical trivia through which the quality had been achieved.

Fine wines, like good food, beautiful women, elegant clothes, and fast cars, were facets of a life style to which he had happily become accustomed. He could survive without such trappings, but he saw no reason to do so if he could afford them. They helped to make life exciting and that was a spice that he demanded.

The liquid which he was transferring from bottle to glass, that afternoon in one of the infant years of what had been optimistically hailed as the new era of World Peace at Last when it was signed in 1945, certainly answered that criterion. The sommelier, who was also the mâitre d’hôtel and the patron, had suggested and he had accepted a local product which he had never heard of before, and for him it was now a memorable discovery. He sipped again the deep red — almost purple — wine and savoured the strong fruity bouquet characteristic of the slopes of the Rhone. It was a taste that he would remember for the rest of his life; but at that moment he was blissfully unaware of what that chance sampling was destined eventually to involve him in and make itself totally unforgettable.

The wine was not the first new experience of the day. After leaving Avignon he had turned off the main road to wander through the back lanes of the countryside in search of a restaurant which had been recommended to him by a friend of impeccable discrimination, one of those epicurean hideaways to be found dotted around France whose whereabouts are the jealously guarded secret of an inner circle of gourmets, until somebody leaks it to the Guide Michelin, and the clientele and the prices take off on their inevitable escalade.

The building which he had finally found had previously been a water-mill and was set back from the road beside a narrow stream that gurgled under the now stationary water-wheel on its way down the valley towards the winding ribbon of the Rhone. The new owners had possessed the sense to keep the transformation simple. The dining area was a long high-ceilinged room that looked as if it had once served as a storehouse. The roof beams had been left rough and unstained, a few undemanding prints had been hung against the stone walls, and some rugs scattered across the flagged floor. The walls had been broken through to provide additional windows that allowed broad bands of sunlight to enter, while strategically placed electric fans kept the heat of the early autumn sun at bay.

In such a setting it was possible to concentrate on the important business of eating and drinking, unlike in so many pretentious restaurants where the purpose of the decor is to intimidate criticism of the cuisine and the tariff being paid for the privilege of eating it. The food had in fact justified everything that his discerning friend had claimed for it: The queues d’ecrevisses aux morilles had been a delightfully delicate surprise, and the gigot à la ficelle, boldly seasoned with herbs and garlic and roasted before an open wood fire, was worthy of an old-fashioned highwayman’s appetite.

Except for a few accidental holidaymakers who had had the good fortune to stumble on the restaurant by chance, his fellow customers had a general air of more sophisticated self-indulgence than one would have expected to find in such a rural setting. At the next table a large florid man whose buttons showed the strain of many years of dedicated gluttony was chomping through a double helping of alouettes sur canapé. Simon found the spectacle of such a big man devouring so many small birds both comical and sad, and turned his attention to the others in the room. Most of them, he guessed, must have made an excursion from one of the more important cities of Provence, if not from even farther afield, lured by the reports that circulated through the gastronomic grapevine.

Occasionally the other clients would glance across in their turn to where he sat, stare for a moment, and then return to their plates. There was something familiar about his face. Something slightly unsettling about the lean tanned features and the clear blue eyes with their light of mocking challenge. Something intangibly dangerous in the easy grace with which he sat alone in a corner, which might have reminded the more imaginative among them of a panther watching its prey at play before pouncing.

Simon Templar was resigned to arousing such interest. His days of anonymity were already somewhat past. His picture was to be found in the files of every major newspaper from New York to New Delhi and of every police department from Scotland Yard to Sydney filed not under T for Templar but S for Saint.

The same imaginative diner who sensed the predator behind his untroubled relaxation, even without identifying him, would probably have speculated on the reason for his presence; and the more fanciful assumptions would, as usual, have found most favour. But they would have been wrong, for the Saint’s sole motive was to enjoy the best of solid and liquid calories that would fuel the rest of his projected drive to St.-Tropez.

The Saint had been to Valencia with no more nefarious intent than to assess for himself the talent of the latest fenómeno of the bullring, a rising young matador whom he had been reading about; but, as he found so much pleasure in business that he felt no need to separate the two, it had proved a profitable vacation. A certain promoter of dubious real estate developments on the Costa Blanca, secure in the knowledge that the long arm of the British law could not touch him there, but who had forgotten that outlaws have an even lengthier reach, had costly reason to regret having been brought by chance to his notice. On the other hand, there had been Margarita, who would always have a happy memory — but that is another story.

Simon had been driving back at a leisurely pace, allowing time to take in the sights along the way like any tourist. He had spent a day and a night in Avignon, where he had walked the battlements of the medieval walls, filled with other sight-seers, through the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-des-Doms and the palace of the Popes, and tried to theorize about what kind of dancing could have caused the collapse of the famous bridge. So much history had proved rather suffocating, and the uncluttered lanes of the countryside and the finding of the restaurant to which they had led him had been particularly welcome.

But now his watch told him it was time to be moving again, and he drained his glass with genuine regret. He declined coffee and cognac so that he could retain the lingering aftertaste of the wine, and asked for his bill.

While he waited he picked up the bottle and studied the label again. It was simple to the point of plainness. Just the name of the vineyard — Château Ingare — above the date of the vintage. The only decoration was a discreet family crest consisting of an open shield with a crusader’s helmet in one half and an upright sword in the other. Since the name was completely new to him — a surprising fact in view of the quality of the wine and his own empirical knowledge of the product of the region — it could only have been a very limited but very special family affair, generating only enough for a select and exclusive distribution.

The Saint rose and paid the bill, leaving a generous tip, thanked and congratulated the patron, and sauntered out into the early afternoon sunshine. After the pleasant temperature of the restaurant the fierce dry heat of the valley seemed even more intense than it had done during the drive from Avignon that morning. He walked slowly to where the Hirondel was parked. The flamboyant cream and red roadster was surrounded by the sedate black sedans of the townsmen. A car like the Hirondel in such company looked like a Derby winner stabled in a donkey shed.

He eased in behind the wheel, being careful to touch as little of the searing-hot coachwork as possible. From the rear seat he retrieved a battered grey fedora that would have made Mr. Lock pale, and snapped the brim down to shade his eyes from the sun’s glare. The motor turned at the first touch and the purr of the perfectly tuned engine changed to a muted roar as he swung the big car around and headed towards the road.

The entrance to the parking space was partly hidden from the lane by a clump of trees, and half the bonnet of the Hirondel had passed them before the strident blare of a Klaxon and a screech of tyres made him stamp on the brake. A small blue Renault convertible swerved violently across his front fender before the driver brought it back under control and, with an angry glare at the Saint, lurched on and disappeared at speed around the next bend.

The Saint smiled. Such a driver could, he decided, glare angrily at him anytime, preferably when she was not in so great a hurry and at even closer quarters. Long black hair riding the slipstream, a small oval face that might almost have been plain had it not been made beautiful by a pair of dark flashing eyes, plus the upper contours of a figure that promised much for those areas of anatomy hidden by the car’s own bodywork.

He carried the image with him as he threaded the Hirondel gently through the spider’s web of meandering lanes which he hoped would eventually bring him back on to some adequately sign-posted highway on which he could set a course in the general direction of Aix-en-Provence. He was in no hurry, and the tranquillizing effect of his lunch made him decide against pursuing the Renault and telling its owner his thoughts about women drivers. Which, he later reflected, was just as well, for it would have closed the story before it opened.

The road he was on ended in a T junction. A sign-post stated that Avignon was now somewhere to his right but gave no indication of what lay to the left. Being reasonably sure that at least he should not head back towards Avignon, even though the other way might be leading north, he gambled and swung the wheel to port. It was a decision that brought him one step closer to the start of the adventure.

2

The vine is an amazingly stubborn vegetable that seems to flourish best in the worst conditions. In Portugal’s High Douro they are stuck into holes drilled in solid rock, while beside the Mosel they prosper on precipitous slopes of almost pure slate. Beside the road along which the Saint finally found himself driving, the ground seemed capable of producing only stones, but it was patterned with neat rows of low-growing vines. In the distance, a low line of hills had been terraced to provide a root hold for still more plants, giving the appearance of a huge overgrown staircase. The lower slopes and terraces were littered with bleached boulders from fist to head size that absorbed the sun’s rays during the day and slowly released their stored heat through the night, providing the plants with natural central heating.

It was late September and the vines were bending under the weight of their dark purple fruit. To the layman’s eye they all looked the same, but up to fourteen varieties might be blended to create such a beverage as the Saint had enjoyed at lunch. The harvest would begin any day, and the now deserted landscape would be alive with workers gathering the grapes and carting it back to the presses for the start of the time-honoured process of making the wine.

Simon was musing idly on the years it could take to produce a great wine compared to the minutes it takes to drink one, when he spotted the two hikers. Even from a distance they seemed an oddly mismatched pair. One was tall and blond with broad shoulders that made light of the heavy haversack he carried. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt, faded khaki shorts, and tough walking boots, and strode steadily along at an even pace. A step behind and struggling to keep up limped his companion. He was smaller and fatter and his clothes seemed more suitable for city shopping than for hiking. His back was bowed beneath a small pack and a blue jacket was slung over one shoulder that matched the serge of his tight-fitting trousers and complemented his equally tight-fitting shoes. As he heard the Hirondel approaching he turned, and the pleading look on his face was more eloquent than his raised thumb.

The Saint normally had little sympathy for hitch-hikers, holding that the hyphenation was itself a contradiction in terms, and feeling no obligation to provide free transport for those who were too lazy to walk or too imprudent to provide themselves with even a bicycle. But that afternoon caught him in a relaxed and mellow mood.

He brought the Hirondel to a gliding halt, and said in fluent French: “You seem ready to melt. Where are you going?”

Simon Templar was at ease in all the major languages of Europe and could make himself understood in most of the remainder. He spoke French as well as any native of that country and possibly better than many. Unlike so many English speakers he did not suffer from the arrogance which expects that everyone else should know the language which once ruled an empire and believes that if they don’t the way to make them understand it is to shout.

The blond youth — both of them looked to be in their late teens or earliest twenties — answered: “To Carpentras, then towards Beaumes-de-Venise.”

“And where the devil would that be?” Simon inquired cautiously.

“Not very far. I can show you the way.”

The Saint shrugged. Having made the stop, he might as well take the consequences.

“Well, that may be useful. Hop in.”

They heaved their packs into the narrow back seat where the smaller hitch-hiker also wedged himself, while his blond companion settled more comfortably in the front. Simon released the handbrake and as the car moved forward asked: “Where are you from?”

“The University of Grenoble. We are students. My name is Pascal, and he is Jules.”

In his driving mirror the Saint had a picture of Jules dabbing at his sweating face with a handkerchief and flapping the open front of his shirt to allow the breeze to circulate.

“Your friend doesn’t seem in training for a route march,” he observed dryly.

Pascal smiled.

“He is from Paris,” he explained in a condescending tone. “He thinks a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne is exhausting.”

“And you’re a country boy, is that it?”

“I was born at Châteauneuf and my family lived here until four years ago when we moved to Lyons. Since then I have come back every year to help with the harvest and to see my old friends. Jules thought he would come along this year to earn some money.”

“From what I know of work in the vineyards he is likely to lose more kilos than he gains francs,” said the Saint.

Pascal laughed but the object of their conversation either had not heard or was too tired to object.

They drove in silence for a few minutes before Simon asked: “Where exactly will you be working?”

“At Château Ingare. It is only a small vineyard and they do not pay as well as some of the larger ones, but all my friends will be there.”

The name had produced a creeping sensation across the Saint’s scalp that he could not explain, as if some sixth sense was trying to warn him. But of what? There was nothing really surprising in the fact that he should drink a bottle of local wine and then meet two people on their way to the vineyard that produced it. Just a minor coincidence of course but he could never accept coincidences entirely at their face value, just as years of living on a knife’s edge had taught him never to dismiss the instincts that such an existence had developed.

“Tell me about Château Ingare, Pascal,” he said thoughtfully, and the youth seemed happy to oblige.

“As I said, it is one of the smaller vineyards, but also one of the oldest. It has been in the Florian family for generations — in fact since the fourteenth century. The château itself is one of the most beautiful in the region. It was originally a castle and stands on a hill above the vineyards. From it you can see to the horizon.

“The family settled here around the time the Popes first built their summer palace at Châteauneuf. All this area around Avignon belonged not to France but to the Papacy right up until the Revolution. It was they who planted some of the first vines.”

“Is that why they call Châteauneuf the Pope of wines?” Simon suggested.

“Perhaps; though it wasn’t the wine of Popes, apparently. It is said they preferred Burgundy.”

“I tried a bottle of Château Ingare for the first time today.” The Saint was impelled to keep the conversation going in that direction. “It was excellent. Why haven’t I heard about it before?”

“Yes, it is very good,” Pascal agreed enthusiastically. “But unfortunately it is rarely sold outside this area because only a small quantity is produced and the family do not have the hectares to extend their market.”

“Noble but poor?” Simon prompted. “Do you know the family?”

Pascal wagged his head noncommittally.

“I am sure there is a lot to tell, but I do not know very much of it except that the war almost bankrupted the estate. Monsieur Yves — he is the head of the family — vowed that he would never make wine for the Germans, so every year the grapes were picked and pressed, and every year something happened. One year all the bottles were mysteriously broken, another year the wine was contaminated, and so it went on. Even when the Germans took over the château and billeted their officers there, the accidents continued.”

“That must have been an expensive piece of resistance,” the Saint commented.

“Very expensive. But since the war ended there have been other troubles. There is a legend locally that the Florian family is cursed,” Pascal added hesitantly.

“Vineyard workers are traditionally as superstitious as sailors,” said the Saint with a smile. “And who do they think cursed the family — the Germans?”

Pascal laughed harshly and said: “I think their methods of punishment were more direct. But the curse on the Florian family is supposed to be much older. In fact, it goes back to the Templiers.”

The name, dropped quite casually, sounded in the Saint’s ears like a tocsin.

Whereas a little earlier the recall of Château Ingare had caused only an almost caressing frisson at the roots of his hair, this new association set off a whole jangling of physic alarm bells which no facile scepticism could silence.

For the translation of Templier is “Templar,” and les Templiers is French for what English historians call the Knights Templar — from whom, in the remote past, some ancestor of Simon’s must have taken his patronym.

“The legend is that the castle was built by the Templars, and when they fled it is said they cursed whoever should own it next.”

Although the Saint had always been aware of the historic connotation of his unusual name, he had never taken much interest in the snob sport of ancestor-tracing, and in fact had not even bothered to study the subject of the original Templars. He had a vague idea that they had protected pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land and had fought with distinction in the Crusades. He confessed as much to Pascal without revealing his own identity, and the young student seemed pleased to be given the chance to show off his own erudition.

He explained how they had banded together at the beginning of the eleventh century and had taken their title from the Temple in Jerusalem, swearing to win back the city for the Christians and rebuild the temple. Their bravery in battle and support for the Christian cause had won them the extremely rare privilege of appointing their own bishops and being answerable only to the Pope himself.

“By the end of the thirteenth century there were more than twenty thousand Knights in Europe,” Pascal continued, “and they were the single most powerful organisation on the continent. They owned vast areas of land, paid no taxes, and were often far wealthier than kings. They wore a surcoat with an eight-pointed cross on it which guaranteed them immunity wherever they went, and because they were so powerful they began to be feared.”

The Saint thought of his own emblem of a haloed matchstick figure and the near supernatural awe that it had once inspired among the ranks of the ungodly, before it had become so famous as to be virtually unusable any more.

“Jealousy bred rumours,” Pascal went on. “It was said that initiates had to spit on the Cross, that the Knights were often homosexuals, and that many of them practised black magic. As the Crusades failed, they concentrated on increasing their wealth and power and became generally corrupt.”

“A sort of medieval Mafia,” Simon murmured approvingly.

“In a way, yes. Eventually, under pressure, the Pope outlawed them and they were persecuted throughout Europe. Very many were tortured and burned. In France they were completely wiped out.”

“Was that what happened to the Templars at Château Ingare?”

Pascal shook his head.

“No. They were besieged for many weeks by the King’s army, but somehow most of them escaped just before the walls were breached. That is probably why there are so many legends about the place, for the Knights were never seen again and no one knows where the survivors went.”

At least one of them, the Saint figured, must have found his way to England. He decided that one day he would have to do some more research into his infamous ancestry.

A road sign told him that they were just entering the town of Carpentras, and with a trace of reluctance he inquired: “Which way do you go from here?”

“Château Ingare is to the north, but perhaps that is not your direction.”

Pascal turned and considered his friend, who appeared to have fallen into a light doze. He leaned over and prodded him sharply in the stomach, and the youth stirred and sat up. Pascal turned back to the Saint.

“It is only a few kilometres and I think Jules has had enough rest.”

A low moan of protest from Jules showed that he did not agree with his friend, but the Saint had already made his decision. At the next sign-posted intersection he spun the wheel to the left.

“Since I’ve come this far out of my way, a few more kilometres are not going to make much difference. And they might even let me buy a few bottles to take home with me.”

His tone was matter of fact but his eyes narrowed as he spoke. There was a strange, almost eerie, tingle of excitement beginning to bubble in the pit of his stomach, a tightening of nerves for which there was no logical explanation. He tried to shake off the feeling, but instead it grew stronger as the miles were covered.

Two coincidences involving the Château Ingare could be brushed off; but the third, linking it with his own name, looked too much like the weaving of fate to be fluke. Even in his most determined realism, Simon Templar had an Achilles’ heel for the sense of destiny that had made his life so different from all other lives.

After a while, following Pascal’s directions, he turned off the secondary D7 on to an even lesser road that wound up a range of rocky but still vine-clad foothills, and as they came over one of the lower rises he saw the smoke. It was curling into the sky from beyond a copse of tall cypress, halfway up the hillside about half a mile away.

“Looks like a fire,” he observed casually.

Pascal’s reaction was more dramatic.

“C’est la grange!”

“Does it belong to the château?” Simon asked, and already seemed to know the answer before the lad replied.

“It is where everything is stored ready for the récolte. They would not light a fire there!”

Before the final word was spoken the Saint was on his way. In a synchronized flow of movements he flicked the gear lever into third and pressed the accelerator towards the floor as the clutch bit. The big car awoke like a jungle cat, roared and catapulted itself forward.

If he had had any lingering doubt, the last trace of it had vanished. He knew now that all his premonitions had been right, and that he was irretrievably caught again in the web of Kismet.

3

Like a bolt from a crossbow the Hirondel sped towards its target. The lane snaked into a chicane of S bends, and the two students grabbed desperately at the side of the car as the Saint threw it into the corners with one hand juggling the steering wheel as the other changed gear with a smooth confidence that would have done credit to any Grand Prix professional. But then, the Saint could have qualified as one of those himself if he had not chosen a more hazardous way of life.

Just around the second curve, a horse-drawn cart suddenly appeared in front of him, barely fifteen yards ahead and taking up almost two thirds of the road. There was no time to stop and not enough room between the cart and the high sloping bank on the clearer side for the Hirondel to overtake.

A thin smile touched the Saint’s lips as he kept his foot on the accelerator and turned the wheel to the left. For an instant it seemed certain that they must plough into either the bank or the cart or both, but he had judged the angle of the slope and his own speed to perfection.

The Hirondel mounted the bank and seemed to hang poised in the air for the space of a heartbeat before the left rear wheel gripped and he could reverse the steering to bring the car parallel to the road. He caught a blurred glimpse of the drayman’s amazed expression, and then they were past and bumping back on to the solid tarmac of the lane in a shower of dust and small pebbles, safely in front of the equally startled horse.

“That’s how the stunt men do it in the movies,” he informed his ashen-faced passengers as he negotiated the next bend without slackening speed.

Pascal said nothing but continued to clutch at the door, his knees braced to absorb the impact he felt must come at any second. In the rear-view mirror, Jules looked as if he was about to be sick.

The lane had climbed enough by then to give them a sight of several buildings rising picturesquely beyond the screen of cypress. The smoke was thicker now, with the original light grey spiral streaked with ominous black.

“The track to the barn is beyond those posts,” Pascal said breathlessly, pointing to a narrow opening ahead.

The Saint nodded and heeled the car around between the white painted posts with an inch to spare on either wing.

The track ran diagonally across the sloping hillside to the copse where it was hidden by the trees before continuing towards the complex of other buildings. The surface was sun-cracked mud thinly covered by gravel-sized fragments of crushed boulders. It had been designed for horses and tractors rather than low-slung sports cars, and their progress was accompanied by the rattle of stones flung against the chassis like hail against a window. At any moment he expected to hear a roar as the exhaust was ripped away, but their luck held and they reached the trees without apparent harm.

What had looked like a thick copse from a distance turned out to be simply a double row of cypress planted close together to act as a windbreak to the north of the vineyard, and also to provide some shade for the workers between their spells of labour. Beyond the trees was a long low-roofed barn, its walls made from the hillside rocks and looking capable of withstanding a broadside of twenty-five-pounders. But the timbers of the roof were clearly more vulnerable. Already the far end was well alight, and the flames were licking greedily along the ridge and eaves. It could only be a matter of minutes before the whole roof would be ablaze.

A black Citröen was parked in front of the barn facing back down the track. Simon pulled the Hirondel to a protesting halt beside it. He vaulted out of the car and was sprinting towards the building even before the last piston had come to rest.

Two massive double doors comprised most of the end of the barn nearest to him, but he ignored them and ran towards the small service door that stood open halfway along the side.

As he approached two men ran out. The first was tall in a wide-lapelled pin-stripe suit with shoulders padded almost to the width of the doorway he had just emerged from. The second was a head shorter but huskier and wore a black leather zipper jacket and baggy black corduroys. They looked so much like the classical double act of a Hollywood B picture that the Saint felt the laughter rising within him. But he paid them the compliment of lengthening his stride, well aware that even cliche crooks can carry guns.

At the sight of the Saint racing towards them the two men looked uncertainly at each other, their expressions showing that they had not anticipated any trouble. As Simon reached them the big man lashed out at the place where the Saint’s head should have been. But the target was no longer there. The Saint ducked low, his left hand catching the man’s wrist as his right arm flashed between his legs. The man yelled in pain as the Saint’s arm jarred up into his crotch, and in the same fluid movement Simon rose out of his crouch and the man felt his feet lose contact with the ground as he was held in an excruciating parody of a fireman’s lift, before the Saint stepped out from under him and left the force of gravity to help the unlucky arsonist return to earth.

The Saint looked inquiringly at his leather-clad side-kick, but the latter turned and scooted towards the Citröen. Out of the corner of his eye, Simon saw Pascal make a grab for him and shouted: “Leave him. There’s an extinguisher in my car, get it.”

He pointed to a standpipe at the corner of the barn.

“And you should know where to find a hose. Tell Jules!”

Without waiting to watch his orders carried out, he plunged into the barn.

The open door had created an updraught that had pushed the eddying billows of smoke back up into the roof and the Saint was able to see the general layout and take stock of the situation. It was worse than he had feared.

The flames he had seen from the outside were nothing compared to those rapidly engulfing the triangles of beams supporting the roof. The far end of the barn where the fire had clearly been started was already an inferno, and an open loft stacked with wickerwork hoppers was beyond saving. Even as he watched he saw the plank floor sag and heard the timbers crack under the strain. Sparks from the beams had kindled half a dozen smaller fires among heaps of baskets by the walls, which in turn were igniting a line of wooden hand-carts.

A truck was parked in the centre of the building facing the double doors and he made his way towards it. The deeper he moved into the barn the denser the smoke became, and by the time he reached the lorry his eyes were running with water. He knelt down and sucked the fresher air nearer the floor into his lungs while he considered his next move.

The barn had been stocked with everything needed for the coming harvest. The baskets and hoppers would be used to carry the grapes from the fields to where the truck would transport them back to the chai for pressing. He remembered Pascal’s talk of the recent accidents that had plagued the vineyard and smiled grimly.

It was obvious that the building was doomed, but he refused to admit total defeat so quickly.

“Whatever makes anyone want to be a fireman?” he asked himself as he wiped the water from his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket and stood up.

As he did so the floor of the loft finally gave way and crashed down in an explosion of sparks. Some of the burning spars fell across the open door, cutting off any attempt at retreat in that direction. The entire roof was alight now and the heat scorched his face as he ran to the cab of the truck.

The vehicle was of pre-war lineage, and he cursed as he realised that self-starters had been considered a luxury when it had first been put on the road. He pulled himself up into the cab and gave silent thanks when he saw that at least the key had been left in the ignition. He turned it and jumped out again. The smoke was becoming thicker every second and it was all he could do to see his way to the front of the radiator. Every breath was becoming a painful effort, and he knew that if the starting handle was not already in place there would be no time to search for it. But again the gods were with him, and he took hold of it and began to crank the engine.

At the first turn the engine coughed. At the second it spluttered briefly and died again. Sparks rained down on him and threatened to singe his hair and clothes. His chest felt as if he had swallowed vitriol, but he calmly swung the handle a third time, stubbornly refusing to be beaten. And the old engine, as if realising that this was its last chance, fired and kept running.

The Saint stumbled back into the cab. The beams above him were burning fiercely, and he knew that they could only last for a few minutes. There was no time to unbar the double doors, and he prayed fervently that the engine would not stall. He released the handbrake and gently engaged the gears. The run-up was only a few feet, and he opened the throttle wide as the truck moved forward.

He hit the double doors squarely in the centre. For one paralysing moment they seemed to hold before the metal bolts were ripped from their mountings and they flew open under the impact.

Simon kept the truck moving until the building was a safe distance behind him before he stopped. In the same instant the roof of the barn collapsed.

The Saint gulped down the clean air as he used his handkerchief to mop the sweat from his forehead. As he waited for the adrenaline to dissolve and his pulse rate to subside he looked in the driver’s mirror and discovered the ravages to his appearance. Most areas of his face that were not powdered with ash were smeared with soot. His eyes were bloodshot, and the front of what ten minutes before had been a spotless white shirt was sodden and grimy.

“One day I should learn to mind my own business,” he told his reflection disgustedly, and turned to climb out of the cab.

He placed one hand on the open window and quickly drew it away as a searing twinge shot up his arm. He looked at the blackened burn on his palm in amazement. A smouldering ember must have fallen from the roof and lodged on the sill, but he had been so busy with more urgent problems that he had not even noticed it. Now, as the excitement wore off, the penalty of his preoccupation was more exasperating than painful. He twisted his handkerchief angrily over the injury and swung himself down to the ground.

The Citröen and the arsonists had disappeared. Pascal and Jules were running towards him.

“Are you all right?” they shouted.

“As you see,” Simon replied.

“There was nothing we could do,” panted Jules. “No buckets, no hose, nothing.”

“I emptied your extinguisher, but it was not enough,” Pascal said. “When the door was blocked I thought you would never come out.” He noticed the Saint’s handkerchief bandage. “Are you sure you are not hurt?”

“I’ll mend.”

“They got away,” said Jules apologetically.

“You told us to leave them,” Pascal put in quickly.

“But I got the number of their car,” said Jules proudly, and the Saint clapped him on the shoulder.

“Well done. That’s something, anyway.”

He was prepared to lay ten to one that the car had been stolen, but it would have been mean to have disparaged the lad’s achievement.

While they had been talking he had been watching a battered jeep coming down the drive from the château. It stopped by the barn and its crew of four jumped out. Two of them were obviously outdoor workers on the estate, and leading them was a much older man and a young girl, who had been driving. Even in that situation, the French ritual of handshaking was observed.

Pascal performed the introduction.

“Je vous présente à Mademoiselle Mimette Florian — et Monsieur Gaston.”

“Enchanté,” murmured the Saint, with a more than perfunctory intonation.

If three coincidences could seem to betray the machination of fate, then a fourth on top of them could be little short of an order from the gods. At any rate, the Saint was willing to accept it as that. For the last time he had seen the girl she had been driving a very different car, and had narrowly missed meeting him a lot sooner, in a very different atmosphere.

4

As with fine wines, fine food, and fine cars, the Saint’s taste in fine-feathered birds was highly discriminating. This girl satisfied even his demanding standards.

“Lovely” is an overworked adjective. It is used to describe any pleasant experience from a holiday to a movie. Simon had little doubt that Mimette Florian would be an enjoyable experience, and none whatsoever that she lived up to the word’s true definition of beautiful and attractive.

The mental picture he had carried with him since their near miss on the road paled beside the original. Her plain dress of green cotton highlighted the grace of her figure without revealing it. She walked with the litheness of youth, but there was a confidence and authority about her that suggested a maturity beyond her years. Her hair curled as it touched her shoulders and framed a face that needed no cosmetics to enhance its appeal. But it was her eyes that held the Saint’s attention. They were at the same time the wide wondering eyes of a child and the dark secretive eyes of a worldly woman.

The man Gaston looked old enough to be her grandfather, but the way in which he waited for her to speak and stood a respectful half a pace behind immediately stamped the relationship as one of employer and employee. Dressed in homespun breeches of old-fashioned cut, heavy workman’s boots, and a black unbuttoned waistcoat over his striped shirt, he was the perfect prototype of a vanishing tradition of life-long family retainer. Years of working in the open had burned his face to the colour and texture of worn leather, yet the lines that were the legacy of at least half a century of toil were offset by eyes that were as bright and clear as the sky.

The girl asked Pascal: “What happened?”

Her voice was as devoid of emotion as if she had been asking the time. The Saint gave her full marks for self-control.

Pascal rapidly explained how the Saint had only been giving them a lift, and told her the story from the time they had spotted the smoke to how the Saint had rescued the truck. As he spoke of the two arsonists the old man’s eyes glittered and his lips framed words he was too well trained to utter in the presence of a lady. Mimette listened calmly, the only sign of her thoughts being the compression of her lips and a hardening of her eyes. When Pascal had finished she turned to the Saint.

“We are in your debt, monsieur. You must let us repay you for your trouble.”

She spoke as if she were addressing a tradesman who had performed a special favour, but her gaze held on the Saint’s face and she seemed a little disconcerted by what she saw there.

Simon smiled and bowed with an air that was more mocking than obsequious and did more than any words could have done to take him out of the pigeonhole she had allotted to him.

“My mother told me never to accept money from strange women,” he said solemnly. He spread out his hands so that the handkerchief wrapping was visible. “But I’d be grateful for a chance to clean up and put something on this.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the gentleman was hurt, Pascal?” she said sternly.

Before the youth could answer the Saint intervened, his face serious but his voice bantering.

“I’ve always fancied myself as the strong silent type but it is just a little painful.”

In fact it was not hurting too much, but he felt that the circumstances permitted a slight exaggeration. He had no intention of being patted on the head and sent on his way, when he had such a ready-made pretext for developing the acquaintance. And he had an idea that for all her attitude of stoical authority Mimette might prove a very sympathetic nurse.

Gaston told her almost too helpfully: “If you want to take him to the château, mademoiselle, I and the others will take care of everything here. Although there is really almost nothing to be done.”

The fire was too solidly established by then for amateur extinguishing. It would have to burn itself out until it exhausted the contents of the barn and failed to make an impression on the stone walls. Mimette saw the sense of the old man’s words and sighed.

“Yes, I suppose you are right, Gaston,” she said, and there was more than a hint of tiredness in her voice. “As you always are. Pascal and-?” She looked questioningly at the other student.

“Jules.”

“And Jules will help, too. Afterwards you will find them quarters with the other pickers.”

Gaston nodded. “Of course.”

“Oui, mademoiselle.”

Simon showed Mimette the Hirondel.

“That is my car. Perhaps you would like to drive, since you know where we are going.”

“Thank you.”

She took the keys he held out as they walked over to the car.

“She’s rather fierce on the throttle. Be careful how you put your foot down, or you might find you’re where you were going before you realise you’ve started.”

His warning was answered with a withering look, and the Saint held up his hands in a pantomime of surrender.

“I’m sorry! I was forgetting that you know how to handle a car. But then if I hadn’t braked so quickly I’d have had a new mascot for the bonnet.”

Her frown slowly dissolved into a smile.

“Of course! I was trying to remember where I had seen it before.” She examined the sleek lines of the Hirondel with evident approval. “You were the man who nearly hit me.”

The Saint laughed as he held the door open for her.

“Actually I was under the impression that it was the other way round, but we won’t labour the point.”

He climbed in and turned in his seat so that he could watch her. She started the engine and let in the clutch. After an initial kangeroo hop she handled the car competently enough.

They took the driveway down which the jeep had come, towards the backdrop of buildings that he had not yet had time to sort out. The Saint admired her coolness, but it puzzled him. She could not have been much over twenty-one, but she had accepted the destruction of the barn and the threat it posed to the harvest without the dramatics he would have expected from someone of that age.

As they climbed the slope he was surprised to see that what had looked from below like the crest of an escarpment was in fact only the first of a series of hills set close together, each one topping the one before it. Only the dependencies which he had seen from the barn were actually on the first ridge: The château which overlooked them stood in fact on the next hill, with a narrow valley between. Only an illusion of perspective had made its turrets and battlements seem to grow directly out of the nearer buildings.

Mimette seemed prepared to complete the trip in silence, but the Saint had no intention of wasting such an opportunity for conversation.

“I suppose you’re getting hardened to disasters like this by now,” he remarked, as if he was just making an idle comment to pass the time.

“What do you know about the things that have been happening here?” said Mimette sharply.

“Only what Pascal told me on the drive here. That you’ve been having a lot of problems lately. Something about a curse.”

Mimette laughed scornfully.

“That is superstitious nonsense.”

“Of course,” Simon assented readily. “There was certainly nothing ghostly about the two men who set fire to the barn. I know. I tackled one of them. I was amazed when my arm didn’t go right through him.”

Mimette laughed again, and this time it was with genuine amusement.

“I’m quite sure they were real, just as all the other things that have happened have been done by real people and not the spooks the workers prefer to believe in.”

They had reached the foot of the valley and were climbing the second hill. In a few minutes they would reach the château and then it might be too late to gather all the information he wanted. There was no time for subtlety.

“What other things?”

“They are no concern of yours.”

“Perhaps not,” he agreed, but there was a new and harsher edge to his voice that she could not ignore. “But I risked my skin to try to save your property. I think that entitles me to be curious.”

“Excuse me,” Mimette said penitently. “I was very rude.”

“So what is the story?”

“It all started last year, shortly after the stone was dug up...”

“The stone?”

“Yes. A sort of tombstone. Very old and covered in ancient writing. One of the workmen discovered it when they were planting some new vines. Apparently it is some relic of the Templiers. They used to own the château.”

“Pascal told me about them.”

“Well, from then on things started happening. The vines we planted were sprayed with weed-killer. A few weeks later there was a fire in the pressing house, and a month after that my father was taken seriously ill with food poisoning. It’s just gone on and on, one thing after another. Now nobody is surprised at anything that happens. The staff believe it is all to do with the stone. They say that it has awoken the Templars’ curse. Some have even become so scared that they have left us.”

“And what do you believe, Mimette?” he asked gently.

He had been watching her as she talked and for the first time felt he had penetrated behind the mask of aloof efficiency.

The girl sighed.

“Quite honestly I don’t know what to believe any more. Perhaps someone hates us enough to want the family bankrupted. Perhaps there really is a curse on the Florians. I really don’t know.”

As they approached the château Simon surveyed it in more detail. It was exactly as Pascal had described it, half mansion, half castle. The Saint had seen bigger and more grandiose châteaux in the Loire but never one more appropriate to its setting. There was at least four hundred years between the building of each element, yet they blended as harmoniously as if they had been designed by the same architect.

From where the driveway curved in front of it, the land rolled gently down to meet the fertile plain to the east through which a tributary river wound southwards on its way to join the Rhone. The remains of the walls of the ancient fortress ringed the site like a coronet. Made from stone hewn from the hillside and skilfully pieced together, they stretched from either side of an imposing gatehouse to completely enclose the château and the formal gardens behind it. The height of the wall varied, in some places twice the height of a man, in others only a few stones remained. The only part that appeared quite untouched by the centuries was a castellated tower in the west corner. It rose sheer for seventy feet, and the ivy that covered other sections of the wall appeared to have found no hold there.

The castle-mansion itself dominated the hilltop. The main central building of four storeys had clearly been restored from the old fortress, while the lower newer wings had been built with square sawn blocks of more modern masonry. The Saint guessed that the château had developed from the original keep, and that the remains of the wall that ran straight across the hill in front of it would have served as the last line of defence. Perhaps it was there, he mused, that the Templars had made their final stand. It was the sort of place that made one think of knights and archers and sieges. As they drove past the massive base of the once imposing towers of the gatehouse he would not have been surprised if D’Artagnan had swaggered out to greet them.

Between the remains of the inner wall and the château was a rectangular courtyard. Mimette drove across it and stopped in front of a flight of stone steps that swept up to a pair of high iron-studded double doors. Instead of D’Artagnan, a bent-backed major-domo who looked half as old as the house opened a door for them as they reached the top step. He had the appearance and the manner of someone who had been bowing and opening doors all his life, as impersonal as a portrait, listening to everything and hearing nothing.

“Thank you, Charles. You can bring some whisky to the small salon,” said Mimette, hardly glancing at him.

The butler bowed from the shoulders and shuffled off. The Saint looked around him and observed the simplicity of the hall. It was large and airy but almost bare. The floor was paved in plain white marble and a broad staircase of the same stone rose from the far end to serve a wooden gallery that ran around three sides of the hall. A few paintings of long dead Florians hung in ornately gilded frames, and equally heavy armchairs stood against the walls on each side of the three doors that led off it. With the exception of a long trestle table in the centre and the large porcelain bowl that rested upon it, there was no other furniture.

The only other object of interest was a large rock shaped like a gravestone that stood in a recess by the stairs. It was covered with hieroglyphics that appeared to be some form of writing.

As Simon sauntered towards it, the door on his left opened to admit a small man who would have seemed quite at home keeping Snow White company. He could not have been much more than five feet tall, and his lack of inches was not helped by a pair of rounded shoulders and a toddling kind of gait. His chubby face was as round as a full moon, and apart from a few tufts of white hair above his ears he was completely bald.

The new arrival wavered apologetically between the Saint and Mimette.

“Monsieur Norbert, this is...” She had to appeal to the Saint. “I’m sorry, but you haven’t told me your name.”

The Saint smiled. This, finally, was the moment of truth.

“So I haven’t. And you’re going to find it hard to believe. My name is Templar. Simon Templar.”