Лесли Чартерис - The Saint and the Templar Treasure

He weighed with icy detachment the significance of what he saw. Pichot’s drawn features glimpsed in the dim illumination reflected by his flashlight from the walls, his too rigid stance offset by a slight trembling of the hand that gripped the automatic, revealed his inner desperation, and the Saint had found that there are few men more dangerous than a frightened amateur. By contrast, Mimette appeared almost relaxed. She stared straight ahead, her face calm and composed but her eyes wide and frozen. Grimly he recognized that shock would shield her for a short while, but if hysteria took over it would be a dangerous complication.

Still he waited.

Norbert began to wriggle, and the Saint was forced to shift his position slightly to straddle the professor’s body, pinning his arms and legs against the floor. It made only the thinnest scuff of cloth against stone, but it was enough. The light beam swung towards the tomb, and when Pichot spoke his voice faltered and he could not quite control a rising pitch.

“Templar. I am going to count to three. Come out into the light with your hands up or I shall shoot Mimette.”

He spotlighted the floor a dozen feet away and jabbed the muzzle of his gun into the girl’s side.

“One.”

Simon rolled off the professor and glided towards the other end of the tomb. Behind him he heard Norbert clambering to his feet. Henri started and swung his flashlight towards the noise.

“No, don’t shoot, it’s me!” Norbert shouted frantically, and superfluously, as the light pinned him.

For a second, Pichot lost his place in the countdown.

“What are you doing here?” he rasped.

“I just came to have another look—”

“N’importe,” Henri cut him off. “Templar, this is — two!”

Perhaps the professor’s appearance broke the spell or the first shock simply subsided, but at that moment Mimette snapped back into full personality.

“Simon?” she cried. “Simon — if you are there, don’t listen! This no-good—”

She began to strain furiously against the cord that bound her wrists. Henri grabbed her roughly around the waist and held her body against his own. His lips began to shape “Three.”

The Saint stepped out into the light.

He stood completely relaxed and regarded Henri Pichot with the ghost of a mocking smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“You’ve been watching too many old B movies, Henri. One, two, three, fire? How very unoriginal!”

Pichot ignored the taunt. The sight of the Saint apparently surrendering injected a new confidence into his voice and actions. He called to the professor to turn on the lamps, and when the crypt was fully lit he shoved the girl towards the Saint, at the same time side-stepping so that he could keep them both covered.

“So the great Simon Templar isn’t so clever after all,” he sneered, but the Saint only shook his head reproachfully.

“I’m sorry, Henri, but that isn’t a unique observation either. You must get another writer. It’s the stock line at the end of Act Three, Scene Two. I’ve seen the play more times than you.”

He put his arm around Mimette and drew her close. His main hope now was to play on Pichot’s nerves until he goaded the lawyer into a mistake, while at the same time building up the girl’s confidence until he could rely on her reactions. As a plan of campaign it was about as watertight as the Titanic but there was no alternative.

Henri gestured towards the tomb.

“Get over there.”

Still holding Mimette, Simon backtracked towards the foot of the sarcophagus until he felt the cold stone behind him. Nor-bert was standing on the other side of the tomb, his eyes switching uncertainly from Henri to the Saint. Pichot spoke without looking at him.

“Search him.”

The professor opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, and in the end said nothing. He scuttled around the casket table and patted the Saint’s clothes in the same way he himself had been checked over a short while before. His clumsiness made it impossible for Pichot to keep a steady bead on the Saint, and it would have been ridiculously easy to grab the little man and use him as a shield if it would not have meant leaving Mimette unprotected. Regretfully Simon let the opportunity pass.

Norbert turned to shake his head at Henri and the young lawyer smiled.

“No weapon? How reckless of you,” he observed, with a little more assurance.

Silently the Saint agreed, although he was inclined to place the oversight in the category of criminal negligence rather than mere recklessness. Aloud he said: “I didn’t know it was going to be this kind of party. Anyway, I thought pokers were more in your line.”

He was surprised by the effect his words had on Norbert. As soon as Henri had entered the crypt, Simon had accepted the lawyer’s guilt as a matter of fact and had since been mentally fitting the final pieces of the pattern into place. He knew that Mimette must already have observed the revelation, and in the same way he had assumed the professor to be Henri’s full partner and had not given that association a second thought. Now he realised that his assumption had been wrong.

“Henri! No! You killed Gaston?”

There was no doubting the genuineness of Norbert’s shocked disbelief.

Henri’s lips curled. He was clearly beginning to enjoy his moment in the centre of the stage.

“Why so astonished, Professor?” His tone was bitingly sarcastic. “Scruples? They never bothered you before.”

“But not murder!” Norbert protested vehemently. “You told me—”

“What I thought you would accept. To keep you quiet, while I could use you.”

“But why kill Gaston, Henri?” demanded Mimette fiercely. “What did your uncle ever do to hurt you?”

Simon supplied the answer, working out the details as he spoke them.

“He realised that Henri was trying to ruin the business, but he hesitated to expose his own nephew. He tried to warn me by telling me not to trust anyone, whoever they might be, but I was still thinking about Philippe. I should have realised that Henri was the only one who could have stirred up the workers against me. He was the only one they would have listened to. They were his friends and he’d grown up among them.”

Pichot said tonelessly: “He kept going on about loyalty, about the family. Like all the Pichots he was a serf at heart. He couldn’t understand that the Florians are not royalty and Ingare is not a kingdom. Only I had the will and the brains to outgrow that antiquated mental bondage. He wouldn’t see that we had as much right to the treasure as the Florians, if we found it. He told me he was going to show the map to Yves. I couldn’t let that happen.”

The Saint had always been mildly sceptical about the propensity of story-book villains for unravelling their own mysteries in the final showdown scene, but if Henri was determined to conform to that convenient convention he was not going to discourage him.

“After all,” he prompted, “you’d gone to a lot of trouble to get it.”

“For years I’ve searched for it,” said Pichot forcefully. “Why do you think I kept coming back here, Mimette? So you and your father could patronise me?”

“We should have known better than to expect any gratitude for all we’d done for you,” she retorted scornfully.

Norbert sagged against the side of the tomb. His face was grey and he clutched at the stone to steady himself. The self-satisfaction of a few minutes before was gone as if it had never existed.

“But you said there would be no violence. You promised!” he protested furiously. “Just let Philippe get control of the château, and he would put you in charge and we could look for the treasure openly...”