It is physically impossible to jump out of one’s skin, but Louis Norbert made the best attempt that the Saint had ever seen. His whole body jerked so violently that the flashlight flew from his hand. He whirled around but the Saint was no longer there. Simon side-stepped, picked up the torch, and shone it straight into the professor’s ashen face.
“Bon soir, maître. How nice of you to drop in.”
“Templar!” Norbert gasped the name.
“Who were you expecting? Turn around slowly and raise your hands.”
“Why?” Norbert sounded genuinely puzzled.
“Because I’m getting cautious in my old age,” the Saint explained patiently, but with an edge to his voice that told the professor it would be wise to obey.
Norbert did as he was told and the Saint ran an expert hand over him.
“Excuse my suspicions, but one can’t be too careful,” he remarked when he was satisfied that the most dangerous weapon the professor possessed was a fountain pen. “Now let’s have more light on the subject.”
He moved across the crypt and switched on the lamps. He leant against one of the columns and eyed the professor thoughtfully. Norbert was staring at the casket.
“You have been reading the scroll?” he asked.
“I was trying to, but it’s all Greek to me.”
Norbert appeared too relieved to enjoy the joke and was in a hurry to change the subject.
“How did you get in here?”
Simon indicated the locked door.
“Through there. Hecate let me in, and I just followed my nose.”
“You found the tunnel yourself?”
“Purely by luck — but whether it was good or bad remains to be seen,” replied the Saint. He pointed towards the parchment. “What do you know about that piece of antique toilet paper?”
Norbert hesitated as he sought the right reply.
“Nothing much. Why should I?”
It was such an obvious lie that the Saint felt like laughing.
“Couldn’t you understand it?”
Norbert shook his head, and even managed a half-hearted shrug.
“It is too fragile to unroll, without special treatment. And unhappily I am not very versed in ancient Greek. But from the few lines I have seen, it would appear to be a history of Ingare. Interesting in its own way, but no, not important.”
The Saint picked up the parchment. His eyes narrowed.
“A history of Ingare in ancient Greek,” he repeated. “Obviously, not very interesting. So we needn’t bother with it.”
With deliberate slowness he broke off a small corner and let it fall to the floor.
Norbert watched horrified as he prepared to repeat the operation. Suddenly he threw himself forward, clawing for the scroll, but the Saint was waiting for just such a move. He raised the parchment out of Norbert’s reach as he pushed the little man away with the palm of his free hand.
“Well?”
Norbert glared at him in an impotent frenzy.
“I told you, it...”
“Try again.”
The professor looked from the scroll to the Saint and realised that the time for bluff was past. He spoke slowly and distinctly.
“It is the treasure of the Templars.”
Simon laid the parchment back on the marble slab beside the casket, his expression a mixture of perplexity and disbelief.
“This?”
Tenderly Norbert rolled it up, retied the thongs, and put it back in the casket and closed the lid. He turned to face the Saint.
“Yes, that is the treasure. No gold or jewels, but something more priceless than any amount of them,” he announced calmly.
“But what is it?” Simon persisted impatiently.
“I believe...” the professor began and then stopped abruptly. He looked directly at the Saint, and his voice was almost defiant as if he anticipated the response his words would receive. “No, I am sure. It is the Testament of Judas Iscariot.”
The idea seemed so absurd that the Saint could hardly keep a straight face.
“The Gospel according to Judas? You’ll have to do better than that.”
Norbert spread his hands in a gesture of resignation.
“I did not believe it either at first, but I have studied it as best I can. The writing, the parchment, everything can be scientifically dated and verified.”
“But surely Judas gave back the blood money and hanged himself. He didn’t have time to write anything,” Simon protested.
Norbert’s lips curled in a patronising smile.
“You were there? St. Matthew says he hanged himself. In the Acts of the Apostles, it is written that after using the money to buy a field, later given the cursed name of Accidama, he fell down and ‘burst asunder.’ Who knows? When the Gospels were written, and remember that was more than thirty years after the Crucifixion, it would be important to show that the man responsible for Christ’s death had come to a bad end. How could the converts believe in a God that allowed such a man to live? It would have been an impossible question for them to answer.”
The professor was no longer looking at the Saint but at the casket. His hands were clasped at his waist and the original excitement in his voice when he had revealed his discovery had given way to the dry monotone of a don addressing his students on an academic puzzle.
“There is no reason why he should not have escaped the wrath of the other disciples and later told his story to someone who wrote it down. Judas has always been an enigma, yet in many ways he is the second most important person in the Gospels. Without Judas there might have been no Crucifixion, without a Crucifixion no Resurrection, and without a Resurrection no Christian religion. In his own way, he has a greater claim to sanctity than any of the other disciples.”
Simon was fascinated by the idea. “St. Judas and All Traitors? That sounds like a fun parish. How did you find it — from the map or the stone?”
Norbert visibly stiffened.
“So you know about the map, too,” he said slowly. “Well, I suppose it does not matter now... No, not from the map or from the stone, but from my own observations. I, Louis Norbert, discovered it. I did it all on my own. While he was chasing gold, I pursued truth. I solved the riddle the Templars left behind them. They were clever, clever enough to keep their secret for six hundred years, but not clever enough to fool me.”
The professor’s voice had tightened until it almost choked him. His hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically as he spoke, and his staring eyes seemed to look straight through the Saint. For the first time Simon felt the real force of an obsession.
“The stone and the map were deliberately left to mislead. Why do you think they left them where they might be found? They were useless. Anyone who found them would search for a hoard of loot but find nothing, while the real prize was under their noses all the time. In there!”
Norbert pointed to the sarcophagus and then stepped towards it. His shaking hands caressed the recumbent figure sculpted on it.
“It was mere accident that neither the map nor the stone were found when the Templars left, but those who followed knew all about the tomb and they ignored it. Just a tomb in a crypt, and then they blocked up the crypt and even forgot about that. It was left to me, me, to open the crypt again and ask the questions no one else had asked. Why was such a magnificent tomb hidden in a crypt? Why was it not in the chapel where all could see it? An important person’s tomb, but whose? There is no name on it. And why an altar at the foot of a tomb? To put something on. But what?”
Norbert grasped the corner of the sarcophagus beside the Crusader’s left foot and pushed hard. The whole top slid halfway back on invisible rollers to reveal the hollow interior of the base, big enough to have held a giant’s coffin, but now empty.