Лесли Чартерис - The Saint and the Templar Treasure

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 château. 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 château 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 très tôt,” 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 château, 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.

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 château 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.