Saint and the Templar Treasure Read Online Free Page B

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 runup 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 Citroen 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 chateau. 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 presente a Mademoiselle Mimette Florian—et Monsieur Gaston.”
    “Enchante,” 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.
    4
    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