The Saint and the Templar Treasure
- Автор: Чартерис Лесли
- Серия: Saint #48
- Год: 1979
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Crime Club, Doubleday
- ISBN: 978-0-385-15097-2
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Saint and the Templar Treasure». Краткое содержание книги:
Not knowing what the gendarme’s instructions might be, Simon gave him a cheerful and confident good day, and added, while giving Mimette’s arm a warning squeeze: “Monsieur Florian will see you as soon as he has finished breakfast.”
They went on out to the forecourt, and the man made no move to detain or follow them.
Mimette guided the Saint around the house to where a stable block had been converted into a row of garages. She unlocked the one at the far end, and he helped her to drag back the double doors. His eyes widened in amazement and delight at the gleaming white Mercedes inside.
“A German car?”
Mimette smiled.
“It was the staff car of the local commandant. When the soldiers pulled out it was left behind, and my father kept it as part payment for their use of the château.”
It was a late thirties model, a four-door open limousine of majestic proportions with the rear seat raised to add to the stature and prestige of its former owner.
Simon slid behind the wheel and was silent for a few minutes while he familiarised himself with the controls. He started the engine and rolled the big car out into the courtyard.
“Why couldn’t you just phone the garage?” Mimette asked suddenly.
The Saint shook his head.
“The Hirondel is like my baby. I want to see for myself what they’re doing to it.”
“When will you be back?”
“Some time after lunch,” he said. “I promise.”
She stepped aside and he let in the clutch again. The Mercedes leapt forward, and he spun the wheel and accelerated, to disappear through the gateway of the courtyard with an impudent squeal of rubber which from any ordinary driver would have raised doubts about the seriousness of his pledge to treat the car with great care.
Despite its age, the Merc handled magnificently and had obviously been meticulously maintained. The Saint settled back into the soft leather of the seat and revelled in the feel of the rushing wind on his face. His hands caressed the wheel as he steered the car out of the lane which served the château on to the main road and turned the gun-sight radiator emblem towards Carpentras.
He allowed the problems of the Florians to fade temporarily from his mind as the château was reduced to a miniature on the hilltop behind and then disappeared completely. He felt glad to be away from the tension for a while, and gave himself up wholeheartedly to enjoying the drive.
Gradually the vine-covered slopes were left behind to be replaced by small fruit farms and market gardens. In the distance, the sharply sculptured peaks of the Dentelles de Montmirail made a picture in the rear-view mirror. He drove at speed not because he was in any hurry to reach the town but simply for the pleasure it gave him and the exhilarating sensation of freedom that pumped from the engine’s eight cylinders.
Simon Templar’s life had been saved in many strange ways and by a weird assortment of people whom his ever watchful guardian angel had caused to be in the right place at the appointed time, but never before had he had cause to thank a cat. He was passing a small row of cottages on the outskirts of Aubignan when the animal darted across his path in a blur of black and white fur that had him stamping on the brake instinctively. His foot drove the pedal to the floor, but the speedometer needle only registered the effect of taking his foot off the accelerator.
He swung the wheel, deducting one of the animal’s nine lives, and pulled on the handbrake. The lever rose with sickening ease and the car continued to hurtle on.
The Saint crashed down through the gears with a violence that had the engine screaming in protest, but the braking result was then too late for any possibility of taking the sharp curve that loomed suddenly ahead, with a tidily spaced border of shade trees ruling out any chance of shunting on to soft shoulder.
In a matter of microseconds, his brain worked out equations of distance, speed, and centrifugal force. Like a galvanized jack-in-the-box, he jumped from his seat on to the door, braced a foot against the windshield pillar, and launched himself out and backwards, giving the maximum neutralization to his inherent momentum. If he got it right, he should be able to hit a gap between the tree trunks.
4
He landed with legs flexing to take the first shock, and rolled like a parachutist. His left arm and shoulder curled into the impact, and the reflex action that relaxed the rest of his body saved him from injury as he somersaulted across the verge and cannoned into the base of the hedge beyond. As he finally came to rest, he heard the sickening crunch of tortured metal and shattering glass which told him that the car too had finished its journey.
He lay still for a moment while he regained his breath, and then climbed to his feet and walked towards the wreck.
The Mercedes lay upside down beside the road. His final spin of the wheel had caused it to skid off the bend, and it had hit a tree broadside, rebounded, and overturned. One rear wheel was still forlornly turning as he reached it.
The offside wing had been all but ripped away, and the rest of that coachwork stove in. The headlights, front fender, and most of the other external attachments had been torn off. The Saint snaked a hand under the dashboard and killed the engine. The air was heavy with the stench of petrol, and he was surprised that the tank had not exploded on impact. The steering column was embedded in the back of the driver’s seat, and he did not care to dwell on what his fate would have been if he had stayed there.
He breathed silent thanks to the impetuous feline whose sudden appearance had saved him. If he had not been forced to brake so sharply when he did, he would have drifted into the corner at full speed and by then it would have been of purely academic interest. He thought back over the drive and realised that it was only because of the negligible traffic that the braking systems had not been put under pressure before.
One brake failure may be an accident; two brakes failing simultaneously is almost certainly attempted murder. Simon did not bother to investigate the wreckage to prove his hypothesis but scanned the surrounding terrain for signs of a telephone or transport.
His predicament was so obvious that the first truck that came along stopped at once. Fortunately the driver’s home base was Carpentras, and he sympathetically took the Saint all the way to the garage he had set out to look for.
The Hirondel stood in a bay next to the entrance, where passers-by could not fail to notice it, as proof of the establishment’s quality of clientele. The paintwork had been waxed until it blazed, and the light sparkled along the recently polished chrome trimmings. It shamed the production-line boxes around it like a peacock amid a flock of barnyard hens. He glanced inside at the dashboard but bore no grudge when the tripmeter showed that it had already been given a lengthy and unauthorised road test.
He was starting to open the front to check the radiator when a voice behind him suggested forcefully that he should desist and depart. The words chosen to convey the message have no place in a narrative that may be read by minors, maiden aunts, or deacons of the Faith. The Saint turned, and the unfriendly expression on the mechanic’s grease-smeared countenance turned to one of welcome and contrition. He offered a thousand apologies for not having recognised the Saint, and Simon accepted one.
“Is she ready?” he asked.
The mechanic beamed.
“What a beautiful car!”
Simon smiled tolerantly.
“Yes, I know, but is she ready?”
The mechanic admitted that she was, and went on to explain how in addition to replacing the radiator he had tuned the carburettor, balanced the wheels, repaired a small hole in the silencer of which the Saint was unaware, and given the entire vehicle a complete lubrication.