Somewhere within his purview must be the place that the rest of that piece of parchment had been intended to pinpoint. But what real chance was there of locating it from the fragment in his possession.
He was abruptly snapped out of his own thoughts by the sound of footsteps reaching the top of the stairway. Startled from his reverie, he turned sharply and in doing so pressed his weight against the wall. Cracked by the frosts of six hundred winters the stone blocks were no longer up to the sudden strain. With a sound like the rumble of distant thunder they crashed outwards.
For one giddy instant the Saint stood poised on the edge of nothing before his feet slipped from the crumbling edge and he pitched down into space.
V
How Sergeant Olivet tried to Cope, and Mimette was not altogether Impartial
1
The gravitational velocity of the Saint’s fall adjusted by his aerodynamic resistance should have deposited him in an ungainly and lifeless heap at the foot of the tower precisely 1.38 seconds after his feet slipped off the ramparts. But speed, as any physicist worthy of his theorems will explain, is relative, and in matters of self-preservation the Saint’s brain functioned in an overdrive that threatened to smash the light barrier.
The stone blocks forming the castellations of the battlements broke outwards, but the Saint dropped straight down with his legs actually brushing the wall. Shock, dismay, fear, were all experienced and controlled in the instant it took for sixty of his seventy-four inches to pass below the level of the walkway.
At the moment of collapse he had instinctively flung his arms out in a vain attempt to maintain his balance, so that as the side of the tower flashed by, his fingers were already spread and bent, raking the air. His hands smacked against the top of the wall and somehow found something solid, and he winced as his shoulders took the sudden strain. His whole body stiffened and jerked outwards. For one giddy instant the earth seemed to tilt to meet him as the tower leant over towards a slanting horizon before he swung back and hit the wall with a jolt that might easily have dislodged his haphazard grip, but his fingers held on as stubbornly as steel grappling hooks.
He hung motionless and waited. His face was pressed against the wall and he was careful not to look down or think of the void below. As the seconds slipped away he was chilled by a new coldness that owed nothing to the freshening breeze.
Whoever had been following him could not have failed to see him fall. Now he was totally defenceless and at the mercy of anyone on the parapet.
Carefully he tested the resistance of the weakened stone by shifting bis weight first on to his left hand and then on to his right. Satisfied that there was a better than even chance of it taking the strain, he began to pull himself slowly up. His feet scraped the wall, seeking extra leverage from the cracks where the mortar had crumbled.
Inch by inch he hoisted his body higher, and as he did so he heard the footsteps again. They had been only a few yards behind when the battlements had collapsed, but now the sound came from farther away and was growing fainter with every step.
The Saint smiled grimly.
“Going to pick up the pieces, are we?” he murmured as his waist came level with the top of the wall. “Well, we’ll see.”
He kicked out, at the same time pushing down on the palms of his hands and throwing himself forward, and tumbled over on to the safety of the parapet.
The dusk was rapidly deepening into night, but the moon and stars were still too low in the sky to help him as he peered into the gloom below. He could just make out a figure nearing the bottom of the stairs, but the darkness and the distance between them made identification impossible.
Crouched low to avoid being silhouetted against the sky, he reached the top of the staircase and went down with the speed and sure-footedness of a mountain cat. He hardly glanced at the steps as he watched the figure reach the floor and begin to walk towards the door.
The Saint increased his speed, and as he gained the final flight he saw the figure stop and look up.
He covered the remaining steps three at a time, jumping the last half dozen, and landed within arm’s length of Louis Nor-bert.
“Bon soir,” said the Saint with rigid politeness, and Norbert reeled back as if he had been struck.
His face was as pale as wax and he stared incredulously at Simon.
“But I thought...”
His voice trailed away as the Saint took a step nearer.
“Yes?” prompted the Saint coldly. “You thought?”
“That... that you had fallen. I saw you. I was going to see... that is... if you were...” Again the words died in Norbert’s throat as he stood and gaped at the Saint.
“If I’d saved you the trouble of pushing me?”
Simon took another pace forward, and Norbert retreated until he felt the column at his back and was forced to stop and continue to face the Saint.
The professor shook his head vigorously and stammered: “No, no, you’re wrong! I wasn’t... why should I... you can’t think that—”
“Why can’t I?” Simon inquired reasonably, and Norbert flinched at the mockery in his voice. “I didn’t see you rushing to the rescue.”
Norbert wiped his hand across a forehead that was suddenly cold and damp.
“But I thought you had fallen. How could I know? You must believe me,” he whined.
“Must I? You took your time getting down.”
“I was confused. Scared. I waited. I did not know what to do. Then I decided I had better come down to see if you were... if there was anything I could do. To get help.”
“Of course, you just happened to be around. You weren’t following me, were you? Until I fell, you probably didn’t even notice me. Right?”
“No. I mean yes — that is, I saw you go into the tower and I came after you. The police want to talk to all of us. I came to tell you. That is all. I swear it. It is the truth. That was the only reason.”
The Saint regarded the twitching scholar without pity. He put out a hand and gently patted the other’s glistening dome, and Norbert cringed as if he had expected a punch.
“I hope so, Professor,” said the Saint softly. “You see, I have this dislike for characters who try to murder me. And I’m not much fonder of people who’d let me have a nasty accident without making any attempt to help me. I’d hate to think that of you, Louis.”
Once again Norbert began to babble his protestations of innocence and good intention, but Simon stopped him.
“You said the police wanted to see us. Well, we had better not keep the good gendarmes waiting.”
With Norbert in tow he cut across the lawn towards the house. Down by the outbuildings a uniformed man was talking to some workers, and he saw that an ambulance had arrived at the chai and a stretcher was being slid into it.
“Where?” asked the Saint as they entered the château, and Norbert mumbled, “The salon.”
The gendarme leaning against the wall outside the salon eyed them disinterestedly as they approached from the main hall. As they drew closer he reluctantly levered himself upright and opened the door. The opening let out Philippe Florian’s indignant voice:
“I object to being questioned as if we had something to hide. I shall...”
The protest tailed off as Philippe realised that he had lost the attention of his audience. The Saint took one step into the room and paused to survey the scene. It made him think of a still displayed outside a cinema.