Decision at Delphi (34 page)

That decided Strang. Thugs did not ask questions. These men might not be dressed in police uniform, but they had the confidence of those who acted on the side of the law. He identified himself quickly. “Do you speak English?” he added urgently. He had a feeling that his Greek might not be adequate enough for this kind of situation.

The small man nodded. He glanced at the front door, where two other men were entering, and nodded again, this time approvingly. “Search him,” he said to his companion.

“Did a girl come this way in the last ten or fifteen minutes?” Strang asked, ignoring the adept hands that slapped his pockets and found them flat enough.

“A girl?” The man’s sharp eyes were wary but not astonished. He was a neat little man with neat expressions; dark of hair, eyes, moustache, and suit; as sparing of movement as he was with words.

“I sent a message—” Strang paused. He glanced across the hall at Christophorou’s door, and wondered for a split second if Christophorou had returned home and could hear them. He dropped his voice almost to a whisper. “Then she must have gone out through the back gate.” The searching hands were at his waist, at his ribs. He resisted the impulse to tell their owner that he never did believe in shoulder holsters. The searcher found his wallet and was studying his driver’s licence. He seemed satisfied, for he slipped the wallet back in place.

“The gate?” the small man asked, too carefully.

“There is a gate from the yard at the back of the house.” And I don’t carry a knife strapped to my leg, either, he refrained from telling the man with the practised hand, who was insisting on completing his search. The man—even if he didn’t speak English could certainly understand it, for his hand froze on Strang’s ankle—looked up quickly.

The other man let go of Strang’s wrist. He gestured down the staircase to the corridor. “Show me this gate,” he said. “You first!”

Strang started down the stairs, trying to rub some of the paralysis out of his wrist. There was no use losing his temper; he was at this moment, quite frankly, a nuisance of an amateur who was complicating a professional man’s difficult job. He said, “The girl ran away. I came down from the top floor to see if I could find any—”

“Sh!” the man silenced him abruptly. They both halted. There was the sound of a light footstep. From the door at the end of the corridor, there came a decided click, as if a heavy key had been turned too quickly in its lock. The Greek shoved Strang aside and leaped down into the corridor and raced towards the back door. It was looked.

Strang tried the handle for himself. He looked at the Greek, and the Greek looked at him. Outside, in the small courtyard, there was only the silence of stealth. They heard the brief rattle of an iron chain, abruptly stilled. “That,” said Strang, “was someone locking the gate.” Now, there was no sound at all except the sudden crackle of a child’s night cough.

The Greek moved quickly to the caretaker’s door and thumped hard on it. Then he raced back along the corridor, called sharply up to the hall, set a flurry of footsteps in motion and a quick fluster of low voices in cannon-like echo. He came running back to the caretaker’s door and crashed his fist impatiently on its panel again. “Open, open!” he kept repeating. Over his shoulder, he asked, “That gate outside— where does it lead?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps to the next street.”

“I have sent two men to look there.” He was still worried, and angry. “All that time wasted—with you!” he said bitterly, as the caretaker’s door opened, and a woman stood, frightened,
wary, uncertain, her eyes still puffed with sleep. She screamed. The whimpering child in the room behind her burst into a terrified yell. The woman screamed again.

That’s all we needed, thought Strang. He looked up the service staircase, listening for any sound of a door being opened. But he could hear nothing. The little man had quieted the woman and got the back-door key. Strang said, “There was only one pair of footsteps, wasn’t there?” But the Greek was already in the yard, examining the gate. Strang waited anxiously, watching the staircase, wondering who would come down first—Duval or Nikos Kladas, feeling naked with only his two bare hands to cope with that problem, wishing that he had borrowed Tommy’s stick at least, willing the Greek to come back from the gate with that revolver, which had become a most comforting object. But when the man did return, the look of deepened suspicion on his hard-set face was far from comforting.

“Look—” began Strang, and stopped. Explanations might only confuse everything still more. He asked, “Why haven’t they come down? They must have heard the woman’s scream.”

“We shall wait here,” the man told him. He looked at his revolver, then at the staircase.

I suppose that makes sense, Strang thought. Two men had been sent to the other street; one man left to guard the front hall, one man here alone with an unarmed nuisance of a foreigner: that wasn’t much of a boarding party to force its way into a barricaded apartment. But wait for how long, wait for what?

Behind him, he heard the Greek question the woman. And her answers were exactly as one might expect: she had the only key for the door to the yard, she kept it in her kitchen, it was always there unless she was using the yard: the gate was always
locked; she had a key for that, too, but no one else had these keys; why should they?

Why should they, indeed? Strang thought wryly. This whole set-up was perfect for anyone leading a double life, for a conspirator who needed an unobtrusive exit in that emergency for which all conspirators must plan.

“Your child is crying,” the Greek told the woman severely. “Why do you stay here? Go inside. Lock the door. Let no one enter. Keep out of the way!”

Strang said, “I’m going upstairs. You’ll find me in the Englishman’s apartment on the top—”

“You will wait here,” the man told him, and he meant it. And then, as he heard the sound of cars from the front of the house and quick footsteps entering the hall above him, he relaxed a little. “Now,” he said, “you can lead the way. I shall follow.”

Strang heard him stop at Christophorou’s door. He was studying it curiously. “No lock?” he said softly, almost to himself. He reached out and turned the handle gently. But the door was bolted from within. He seemed puzzled. This man is no fool, Strang thought; whoever came down the staircase and slipped into the yard must have left an open door behind him. It was so obvious the minute the Greek made his quiet check, but it was the kind of thing I’d have remembered to do by the time I reached Tommy’s doorway. And then he thought, Was that a routine check or was there any particular interest in Christophorou?

The Greek signalled to him to wait. Behind them, four men were ascending the staircase quickly. For a moment, Strang stared in amazement at Colonel Zafiris, no less, who was leading the way. Is this usual? he wondered in surprise, and
then found his answer in the look of stupefaction that showed on his companion’s face for a moment, to be quickly covered by a slightly nervous smile. He began explaining the series of small disasters in a quick, low voice. (He didn’t blame himself. But he didn’t blame Strang, either. Strang was impressed.)

“Enough, Elias, enough!” The Colonel waved him into silence, and pointed up the stairs toward the next floor. He wasted no time, either, on greeting Strang. A brief nod, a quick sharp look, and his eyes were turned to Christophorou’s door as he passed it. He took a decided grip on its handle and tested it for himself. And that, Strang decided as he noted the Colonel’s pursed lips and drawn brow, had not been a merely routine test. Then the Colonel was ascending the staircase. Strang had to stretch his legs to keep up with him. It was surprising that a man so solidly built and compact in shape could move so quickly, so lightly.

Nothing seemed to have changed at Drakon’s apartment. The light still shone through the barred kitchen window. The silence was complete.

The Colonel gestured to the window, and one of his men was given a hoist up to its level. But he must have seen and heard nothing, for the expression on his face as he looked around at the Colonel was blank. They have gone, the woman Duval and Nikos have gone, Strang thought worriedly; they slipped through that confounded gate while I sat upstairs and waited for a telephone call. And then Drakon went out, after them, carefully locking door and gate behind him. They’ve gone, that’s certain; there is no one in there. Strang looked at the Colonel and wondered how this volcano would erupt when he heard the witness had vanished as well. He watched the men fan out
on either side of the door, while one of them tried its handle gently. The door was not bolted. It moved a cautious inch. The gap widened to six inches. The door wasn’t chained, either. The men looked at the Colonel. And at that moment the silence was cracked by the sharp clack of loose slippers overhead.

Strang looked upward. An elderly man, sparse hair fuzzed into a grey mat above a long and doleful yellowed face, his hands clutching his dressing gown around him, peered down. “Did a woman scream?” he asked Strang. His eyes travelled to the group of men around the door. His toothless gums gaped. He turned and scuttered back to his own apartment. “Police!” he was screaming in a piercing falsetto. “Police! Get the police!” His door rattled shut. Silence returned.

Well, thought Strang, we can now all break into a song and dance. Anyone inside, if there is anyone there, has certainly been fully briefed on this situation by now. “Civilians are always so helpful,” he said very quietly. The Colonel heaved a deep sigh, walked briskly over to the door as he unbuttoned the flap of his gun holster, kicked the six-inch gap into a wide open sweep and drew sharply aside for a few moments. Strang counted silently, in the photographer’s formula: one bloody second, two bloody seconds, three bloody seconds, four—and the Colonel was in the kitchen. Impatient fellow, Strang thought, or very brave. Or a man with all his hunches in good working order. For the Colonel had been right: there was no resistance. And Strang had been wrong: the apartment was not empty.

Nikos Kladas was lying in the hall, spread-eagled and stiff, face twisted sideways, mouth open in a last protest, a neat hole between his eyes. Madame Duval, in the sitting-room, was resting permanently in a high-backed chair. One side of her
face was unrecognisable. There was a small revolver at her feet, dropped—it could have been—from the hand that hung limply by her side.

Strang turned away.

“Can you name them?” the Colonel asked.

“Madame Etienne Duval. Nikos Kladas. So Duval’s niece said, at least.”

“And what is her name?”

“Katherini Roilos.”

The Colonel was surprised enough to say “Ah!” Then his eyes became expressionless again. “Is she the witness you have upstairs?”

“She was. She left.”

“You let her go?” There was the hint of real anger in the careful voice.

“She slipped out by the back door. That is why your men found me downstairs. I thought she might still be in the building, or in the street outside.”

The Colonel took a deep breath. “So you let her escape,” he said. He sounded sad now, and fatalistic, as if so many disappointments had come his way that one more was not too hard to bear.

“She wasn’t a prisoner. She could have walked out any time. She didn’t have to leave like that.” Strang’s own anger was showing. He muzzled it. “At least, they didn’t get her.” He looked at Nikos Kladas. “Katherini said he was also known as Sideros. And Duval used the name of Elektra. The man Drakon was known as Odysseus. They all worked with Ares, during the war.”

The Colonel was quite impassive. It would be impossible for him not to recognise the name of Ares, Strang thought; everyone,
even people like Tommy, knew that name. So it was also possible that he recognised the other aliases, too. Strang searched in his pocket and drew out the sheets of paper from Cecilia’s notebook. “You’ll find all that, and more, written down here.”

The Colonel took the sheets of paper. “Your handwriting?”

And Strang, who hoped he had managed very neatly to keep Cecilia’s name out of all this, looked at him and said, “No.”

“Whose writing?”

“Miss Hillard’s.”

“Ah!” The Colonel seemed to know about Cecilia. He frowned at her notes. “Don’t worry,” he said, “we shall arrange for someone to guard her, of course.”

Strang looked at him. “Thank you,” he said very quietly. “Is it necessary to ask her any questions?” He glanced at his watch. “I’d like to get Miss Hillard back to the Grande Bretagne. She is dropping with exhaustion. If you need me, I’ll come back and fill you in on any of these details.” He pointed to the notes in the Colonel’s hand, tried to conceal his own fatigue.

The Colonel studied the American’s face. “I have enough to work on, tonight, both here and at my office.” He gave his first smile. “Do not be so depressed, Mr. Strang. We may know more than, you think we do.” His brown eyes were bland, friendly, sympathetic. “Who told you about the conspiracy?” he asked.

“Christoph—” Strang began. He took a deep breath. “He was explaining the urgency of the situation to me. That’s how I heard. No details. Or very few. Just enough to let me know that—” he paused again—“everything was very urgent,” he ended lamely.

The Colonel’s eyes showed a brief gleam of sardonic humour. “Indeed it is,” he murmured.

Strang glanced at the men, hands carefully gloved, who were quickly searching the room with complete absorption. They had opened every drawer and closet, examined every bookshelf, picture frame, chair. Not that there was so much to search: the apartment was a stilted place, barely furnished, characterless. The only thing that didn’t attract any attention, now that pockets had been examined, was the two bodies.

The Colonel said, as if he had been following Strang’s thoughts, “They are police business, now.”

“Double murder,” Strang risked guessing.

A heavy dark eyebrow was raised. “Execution,” the grave voice corrected him.

Strang hid his surprise. “Drakon must be pretty desperate if he’d kill them right here, in his own special hideaway.”

“It might be the only place where he could get them together without any suspicion of danger. They obviously expected nothing.” He glanced down at the wrist of Nikos Kladas’s outstretched arm. “He didn’t even have time to throw that knife.” It was true; the hilt of a knife had been slipped out of Nikos’s cuff, but not quickly enough. “This is all very far removed from your world, is it not, Mr. Strang?” the Colonel asked, watching the American’s amazement. “I think you should return to it. Your friends will be anxious. By this time, Mr. Pringle will have joined them.” He paused, then said, “Do not worry so much about these two. They would never have worried about you. We have been spared much trouble. If they had come to trial, there would have been organised protests; and they would have been described as great patriots during the Nazi war. Their guilt would have been covered in a cloud of doubt, so that those who had proof of their treason would have been made to look tyrants. It is strange, is
it not, that the real patriots of the war, who were killed by these two and their friends, should so seldom be remembered? I had a friend. Colonel Psarros. He was murdered by them. On Mount Parnassos.” The Colonel looked down at Nikos Kladas. “There we have complete justice: the traitor betrayed, the murderer murdered.” He seemed to have forgotten Strang.