Лесли Чартерис - The Saint and the Templar Treasure

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.

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.