The Sword of the Templars by Paul Christopher Page B

made bookcases. Between two of the bookcases there was a tall, Victorian walnut gun case with a glass door. There was a vaguely musty smell that came either from the books or the moldy thatch in the roof. There wasn’t the faintest sign of a woman’s touch anywhere in the room.
    Peggy wrinkled her nose.
    The furniture was old, worn, and unpretentious, club chairs and a couch or two drawn up in a vague circle around an oval hearth rug that stood in front of an enormous stone fireplace. There was a large utilitarian desk off to one side with an old IBM Selectric typewriter on it surrounded by piles of books and papers. Carr-Harris folded himself into one of the club chairs and waved Peggy and Holliday to a couch. They sat.
    “So how is dear old Henry?” Carr-Harris asked. “Well, I hope, although one mustn’t expect too much at our age of course.”
    “He’s passed away,” said Holliday.
    “Oh, dear,” murmured Carr-Harris. He took a long swallow of his drink and sighed. “He was very old,” he said philosophically. “Like me.” He took another sip of whiskey and looked lost in thought for a few moments. “I saw him quite recently,” he said finally. “The Old Members Lunch at the College, you know.”
    “In March,” said Holliday.
    “That’s right,” said the elderly man.
    “That’s why we’re here,” said Holliday.
    “Ah,” nodded the old man. “You found the sword then. Well done, young fellow. Henry said you would, you know!”
    It was a long time since Holliday had been referred to as “young fellow.” He smiled.
    “You knew about the sword?” Peggy asked, surprised.
    “Of course I knew about the sword, young lady. I’ve known about it since Postmaster. Nineteen forty-one or thereabouts.”
    “Postmaster,” said Holliday, making the connection. “The photograph of you and Henry on the wall of his office.”
    “That’s right,” said Carr-Harris. “It was no great secret. Henry and I were working with that young Fleming lad in Naval Intelligence, the one who wrote all those dreadful penny dreadfuls.”
    “James Bond,” supplied Peggy.
    “Umm,” nodded Carr-Harris, polishing off his drink. He set the glass down on a small table beside his chair, then fumbled around in the pocket of his sweater and brought out a package of unfiltered cigarettes and a lighter. He lit one and took a deep drag, easing himself back into his chair.
    It was an odd sight; Holliday was used to seeing smokers in craven little huddles in their narrow ghettos outside of office buildings, not in mixed company, and he certainly wasn’t used to seeing smokers in their eighties. Carr-Harris was clearly a man from a different age and time.
    “What was Postmaster?” Peggy asked.
    “Like something from a Hornblower novel,” said Carr-Harris, chortling happily. “A cutting-out expedition.”
    Peggy frowned. “Cutting out what?”
    “A ship,” answered the old man. “An Italian liner called the Duchess of Aosta . We suspected her of being used as a mother ship for German U-boats. She was based on the island of Fernando Póo off the coast of Guinea in West Africa. I believe they call the island Bioko or some such now.”
    Holliday wondered what any of this had to do with the sword, but he kept silent and let the old man rummage in his memories.
    “The name Postmaster was something of a joke,” said Carr-Harris, puffing on his cigarette. “It’s what they call an undergraduate student at Merton College, and all of us were from Balliol. Silly. They were the ones who’d organized the whole thing, including Maid of Honour .”
    “ Maid of Honour ?” Peggy asked.
    “A Brixham trawler,” explained Carr-Harris. “Part of the Small Scale Raiding Force. Special Operations Executive, and all that lot. The sort of thing that Fleming and his sort thrived on, at least in the planning if not the execution.”
    “Leonard Guise and Donald Mitchie,” said Holliday, “the two other men with you and Uncle Henry in