Norbert still sat at the table. He looked up at the Saint and spoke as if questioning a student at a tutorial.
“Well, Monsieur Templar? What are you doing here?”
“I came out for a breath of fresh air. I saw the light and wondered what was happening,” Simon replied easily. “By the way, what is happening?”
“A scientific experiment,” the professor answered just as glibly.
“Funny, I thought you were prospecting.”
The Saint had not intended to say it. The words had simply formed themselves of their own accord and he had spoken them. Mimette’s explanation for Norbert’s late arrival at dinner and the amusement it caused must, he decided, have been playing on his subconscious which had duly produced an unexpected flash of insight.
Whatever its origin, his remark elicited an illuminating response. Philippe swore, and it was only Henri’s grip on his shoulder that prevented him from trying to get close to the Saint again. For his part, Henri seemed suddenly very tense. But it was Norbert who provided the most surprising reaction. He simply smiled and rose slowly to his feet.
“So you are interested in the treasure?” he observed benignly.
Simon looked down into eyes as warm and welcoming as a pair of icebergs, and something he saw in their chill depths told him that the little professor was not just the comical gnome he appeared to be.
“Of course,” said the Saint guardedly.
“Why are you interested?” Florian snarled, but Norbert waved him to silence.
There was a new air of miniaturised authority about the professor which the Saint found fascinating.
“People have talked about the Templar treasure for hundreds of years, Monsieur Philippe. It is hardly a secret. The question is — how much does Monsieur Templar know?”
“Just what I’ve heard since I’ve been here,” the Saint answered adroitly, and before the point could be pressed he nodded towards the table and added: “I take it you were asking for a little help from heaven or the other place.”
“I gather that you do not believe in such things,” said Norbert.
“Frankly, my tastes are more spiritueux than spiritistes.”
“I would have expected someone with your experience of the world to have a more open mind about such matters.”
The Saint heard the words but was no longer listening to them. He was looking past the three men towards the shadows beneath the far wall, and as he did so a strange chill rippled through him, as if his veins had turned into tiny rivers of ice.
From the gloom, a white-shrouded figure was watching them.
“We have a visitor,” Simon mentioned diffidently.
The professor had still been rambling on about poltergeists, faith healing, and clairvoyance, as absorbed in propounding his own knowledge as only a man whose best friends are books can be. He was completely unaware that he had lost the attention of his audience until the Saint spoke. The others swung around. Henri gave a passable impression of someone trying to jump out of his skin, and almost tripped in his haste to place himself behind the table. Philippe was much calmer, or perhaps too befuddled to react sharply. He looked blearily from the Saint to the figure and waited on events. Norbert, taken completely aback, gawped at it with bulging eyes.
The Saint’s own imperturbability was being put to a severe test. In the course of his eventful travels he had seen too much to be a total unbeliever, but for one quiet evening in Provence the spooky phenomena seemed to be coming somewhat thick and fast.
The figure began to move towards them. Slowly it emerged from the shade of the wall into one of the patches of moonlight that chequered the floor. The hazy white-shrouded outline became focused into a flowing cotton cloak, and the apparition raised one hand and pulled back the cowl as it drew nearer. As they all saw the face, their relief might have seemed only a different kind of shock.
“A really spectacular entrance, mademoiselle,” Simon congratulated her, with a slightly ironic bow.
The girl gave him a withering glance but appeared more concerned with the others. Her face was pale with rage and the knuckles of her clenched fists showed white. She stopped at the table and stood there with her hands on her hips inspecting each of them in turn like a head mistress might have surveyed a group of truants.
Philippe was the first to recover.
“What do you mean by creeping up on us like that?” he blustered, stepping out to confront his niece. “What are you doing here?”
Mimette rounded on him like a tigress.
“What am I doing here? This is my home! How dare you question me?”
“I hope we were not doing any harm,” Norbert put in placatingly. “But you gave us all a start.”
“You deserved it,” Mimette retorted. “I am surprised at you all. I thought you would have been above such childishness, Professor.”
“Our intention was far from childish, mademoiselle,” Norbert countered. “One should not make the mistake of thinking that because children do things they are necessarily childish.”
Mimette picked up a handful of the cards and threw them contemptuously back on to the table.
“Calling up the spirit of the glass? Most children forget such games before they are allowed to stay up so late.”
“A primitive method, I’ll agree,” said Henri, as if conceding a minor point in a legal debate. “But as we have no medium among us it had to serve our purpose.”
“Henri, I am disappointed in you,” Mimette replied. “I would have thought you at least would have had more sense than to dabble in such rubbish.”
The young man avoided her eyes and seemed genuinely abashed.
“I’m sorry, Mimette. It was my silly idea. Just a little fun.”
The Saint rested his shoulders against the pillar completely at ease.
“I’m sorry if I broke any of the house rules,” he said. “I couldn’t get to sleep, and I was just wandering around—”
“You were not a party to it. I saw what happened. It was seeing you in the garden that brought me here.”
“Well, I am dreadfully sorry to have given offence, Mademoiselle Mimette,” Philippe declared aggressively, with as much dignity as he could muster.
With a parting scowl at his niece, he shouldered his way past Henri and Norbert and strode unsteadily out into the garden. Henri looked apologetically at Mimette.
“I think I’d better go and make sure he is all right,” he said, and hurried after him.
“Seeing that our experiment has been disrupted, I think I too shall retire,” the professor said pompously. As he passed Mimette he stopped and pointed to the crucifix hanging on a golden chain around her neck. “Childish foolishness?” he sneered. “I hope your talisman protects you.”
Grinning impishly, he ambled after the others.
“Alone again, at last,” Simon remarked when the professor had disappeared from view.
The girl was still quivering with suppressed rage, and for a moment he thought she was going to run after the professor and physically assault him. He moved over and put a restraining hand on her shoulder.
“It wouldn’t be worth it,” he said, reading her mind.
Slowly she relaxed and he felt the tenseness drain away from her. She looked up at him with wide wondering eyes and seemed for a moment as vulnerable as a lost child.
“As if we didn’t have enough to worry about,” she said at lastr and there was a deep tiredness in her voice that revealed all the uncertainty behind her bold front of almost arrogant assurance.
“This place gives me the creeps — how about a nightcap?” he suggested, and she nodded.