“Jacques de Molay was the last Grand Master of the Order of the Templars. After King Philip he was the most important man in France. One of the most important in all Europe. Philip lured him and the other leading Templars into a trap. He invited them to Paris, pretended to befriend them, and when they were all gathered in the Temple he had them arrested. Simultaneously his men swooped on all the major Templar strongholds.”
“Including Ingare?”
“Of course. The Knights resisted, but De Molay let them down. Under torture he admitted all the crimes he was accused of — heresy, betrayal of the Crusades, treason to the Pope, everything. After that the Knights lost heart.”
“I wouldn’t be too hard on him, Professor,” said the Saint gently. “How would you feel if someone was offering to make you two metres tall in a few easy stretches?”
“But with his confession the Pope was forced to act,” said Norbert implacably. “He endorsed Philip’s actions and the Templars were officially proscribed. If De Molay had remained firm, they might have survived.”
“According to your séance, he died in 1314. But according to a student I met on the road yesterday, that was years after the Templars were disbanded. What happened in between?”
“The Templars were put on trial. It was all a sham, of course. De Molay was burnt at the stake. As he died, he summoned both the King and the Pope to meet him before the throne of judgement within a year. Both died within a few months. Something for even a sceptic like you to think over,” Norbert gibed.
“Impressive enough,” Simon assented. “De Molay would, of course, have known all about the treasure.”
“Of course. It was probably he who arranged for some of it to be brought to Ingare. Not that the fortress was known by that name then. The word was found carved into the stone in the great hall, and the new owners adopted it. For centuries it has been the only clue to the location of the treasure.”
“What does it mean?”
“It is an anagram of Regina,” Norbert said, as if only an idiot would have failed to recognize it.
The Saint frowned.
“The Latin word for Queen? Queen of what?”
“I do not know. If I did, I might have already found the treasure. Last night we might have been told, but you ruined it.”
“It was hardly my fault,” the Saint pointed out mildly. “Your spook seemed to take an instant dislike to me.”
The professor stopped his pacing. He stood glaring venomously at the Saint and shaking with anger.
“You were meddling in matters that did not concern you, and you are meddling again now.” Norbert’s voice rose to a shriek. “Get out! Go away. Leave me to my work. Leave me in peace!”
The Saint looked steadily into a pair of eyes that seemed to glow with a secret fire, and for the first time he wondered whether Professor Louis Norbert was completely sane. He could think of little that might be gained by staying, and turned compliantly away. By the time he reached the door Norbert was back on his knees, frantically scrubbing at the marks on the floor.
The Saint strolled out into the fresh air of the garden and sat on the edge of the wall. Except for some interesting historical background he had learnt little. He was wondering what to do next when the decision was made for him.
A scream and a crash of falling masonry drifted up from the direction of the chai and outbuildings below the château, and he was on his feet and racing towards them before the echo had died.
He covered the first hundred metres in a fraction over eleven seconds and reached the entrance to the nearest storehouse at the same time as the men who had been unloading the truck outside.
In the centre of the flagstone floor was a jagged hole, and lying ten feet down, half buried beneath broken wood and shattered paving, was the spread-eagled body of Gaston Pichot.
IV
How Gaston made a Discovery, and Philippe Florian took Charge
1
As he looked down at the sprawled figure Simon experienced a disorienting isolation from the surrounding confusion. The excited shouts of the labourers and the thud of their heavy boots on the flagstones drifted into a remote background. He was totally aware of everything that happened yet was apart from it. He stood motionless, numbed by an eerie feeling of déjà vu, as if the events of the preceding seconds were no more than stills from a film he had seen before.
With cool detachment he searched for a reason and found it in the veiled warning that Gaston had delivered a little earlier. The old man’s words returned to jar him back to reality.
“Accidents happen.”
In the instant of his return to his usual alertness Simon realised three things. The first was that Gaston was not fatally injured, for he was already clambering to his knees. The second was that the workmen were turning to him as if for an explanation. And the third was a vibration he could feel beneath his feet.
“Back!”
The urgency in his voice made the others jump to obey even before they appreciated the danger. No sooner had they retreated from the edge than another section of the floor collapsed on the opposite side of the hole from where the Saint stood.
A string of oaths rose with the cloud of dust that followed the cave-in, and the Saint grinned with relief in the assurance that no one capable of such a voluble and coherent attack on the parentage and peculiarities of his would-be rescuers could yet be written off. He knelt down, carefully spreading his weight more evenly, and peered into the gloom below. Gaston was on his feet, brushing the dust and dirt from his clothes and hair with one hand as he massaged the small of his back with the other.
“Are you all right?”
Gaston looked up, clearly surprised to hear the Saint’s voice, and winced at the pain the sudden movement caused him.
“I think so, monsieur,” he replied hesitantly. “At least there are no bones broken.”
“What happened?”
“I was rolling a barrel across the floor when it just gave way. You had best be careful, the supports down here are all rotten. I cannot imagine how they have lasted so long.”
“That’s what they said to Methuselah,” Simon rejoined. “We’ll have you out in a minute. Stay in the centre in case any more of the floor collapses.”
He moved cautiously back from the edge and turned to speak crisply to the men nearest to him.
“You, get some rope and a ladder. You get a flashlight. You go to the château, tell anyone you find there what has happened, and bring back a first-aid box. The rest of you stay outside, we don’t want any more accidents.”
The workmen hurried to carry out his instructions. Simon perched himself on one of the barrels stacked by the door and waited for them to return.
Had it not been for Gaston’s prophetic warning, he would have found nothing very extraordinary in what had happened. He recalled his visit to the chapel the previous day, and Gas-ton’s accident merely confirmed what he had surmised then, that the hill beneath the château was likely to be a warren of cellars and tunnels dating back to the building of the original fortress. Like the rest of the house they would have been extended piecemeal as required with little concern as to how long they would have to last. In such circumstances, subsidences were bound to be occasional events. It would have been satisfying to have found a more sinister explanation for what had happened, but it was evident that Gaston had been alone in the storehouse and the odds against the accident having been engineered were too long to be taken seriously.
The sounds that reached him indicated that Gaston Pichot had no intention of keeping still until he was rescued, and Simon had just decided to find out what he was doing when the labourers began to return.