Decision at Delphi (42 page)

Tommy touched his arm. “This goes, of course, no farther?”

“No farther.” And you and I, he was thinking, are now charter members of The Great Deceived.

“There must be some explanation, don’t you think?”

Strang nodded. But not the explanation that either of us wanted.

“Ah, well—” Tommy said, leaving the incomprehensible, turning to the immediate, as he took a step away. “You will
remember to bring Miss Hillard to tea some day?” he asked in a normal tone of voice, nodded to a passing friend, and moved toward the most knowledgeable Madame Kontos.

Strang stepped into the lobby. He was late, but Cecilia was later. He looked at his watch again, checked it with the clock. He had a moment of real panic, standing there in the lobby, normal faces and voices all around him, everyone safely assured, with only thoughts of food or drink or pleasant expeditions in their well-groomed heads. But just then, she appeared, coming down the last steps of the staircase that the baggage porters used.

“The elevators were packed,” she said. “They kept passing my floor. So at last I gave up, and walked. Am I late?”

It was too early, Greek time, for the huge dining-room to be busy. So luncheon was fairly quick, with several waiters in full evening dress to serve them lamb chops and coffee. “You’ll need more than that,” Cecilia said, looking at Strang’s plate.

“I guess that drink I had in the bar ruined my appetite.”

“Or something.” She looked at him.

So he had to smile cheerfully and pretend he could taste the food. “About this Nauplion trip,” he began, tactfully enough, once everything was eaten except the bones in little paper frills. “You’re not really serious about it, are you?”

“Why not? I have to start work sometime.”

“That’s a good idea,” he agreed. “But not Nauplion. Not for a few days, at least. Give your eye time to get accustomed to Greek light, all that sort of thing.”

She didn’t seem much impressed.

“You might as well wait until I can go there with you.”

“But I thought you liked to work on your own. You and Steve—”

“Steve was different,” he told her. “I had worked with him before. We had time to talk over our plans in New York. I knew his ideas, he knew mine. We could work alone. See?”

“I see.” But there was a slight curve on a well-marked eyebrow. “If we could talk over plans, this evening, wouldn’t that be enough?”

“No.”

“But—”

“I don’t want you wandering alone around the Peloponnese, at this time, Cecilia. Have you got that? Not alone.”

His face was so set, so serious that she stopped objecting. “Yes,” she said.

He took a deep breath of relief. It had been easier than he had expected, after all.

“Then,” she asked, “where can I wander around alone? In Athens?”

“That was the idea, this morning. But now—”

“Now?” she wondered.

“I’d like to put you on a flight for Rome, this afternoon.”

“Rome?” Her eyes widened. “You don’t want me for the
Perspective
job,” she said involuntarily.

“Of course I do,” he said sharply. “I just want you to stay in Rome for a few days. Or Paris. Or London. Anywhere you like—”

“But Lee Preston—what is he going to say? What is anyone going to say?”

“I don’t give one good damn.”

“Ken,” she said softly, “what I mean is this: if I went away from Greece right now, it would seem very strange. Wouldn’t
it? All last night, all this morning, you’ve been trying to keep everything looking—well, as normal as possible. We are just two visitors, with only their assignment from
Perspective
to worry about.”

He looked at her. She had noticed more than he had imagined.

“I am right, you know,” she said gently. “If you send me away, you might as well announce to the whole Grande Bretagne bar that you’ve got something more on your mind than Greek temples.”

“You’d be safe, at least.”

Perhaps, she thought. But he would have doubled his own danger. “Let’s bluff it out,” she said. “Let’s keep any most attractive character from confirming his suspicions, shall we?”

Yes, she had noticed much more than Strang had imagined.

“Besides,” she was saying, “how do you know that Rome or London would be any safer?”

He remembered Katherini’s passing reference to her aunt’s journeys abroad. The barbarians, today, had a long reach. “You have a point mere,” he admitted. As he signed the check, he was thinking gloomily that the battle of Nauplion might have been won, but he had lost the campaign. She was staying in Greece.

He brooded over that as she added a touch of lipstick to her lower lip without distorting her mouth or grimacing, gathered her bag and gloves together, and rose. They started the long walk to the door, in the midst of a mild clatter of plates, a polite scraping of forks, a continuous chorus in five languages or more. “Come to Sparta with me,” he said. “Visit Steve’s sister.”

She was completely startled. Then she recovered a little. “That would seem quite normal?” she teased him.

“Completely in line,” he assured her.

“I—I really don’t know.” She pretended to be interested in a table banked with flowers, where a Greek-American and his family were being given a welcome-back party. Her attention was caught by two elegant saris, swaying gracefully into the room, two paces behind their Western-suited husbands. “Aren’t they divine—” she began.

“Plenty of wild mountains,” he said, “spring flowers, blue sky, white clouds. What more does a photographer want?”

She said nothing.

“Shepherds and their dogs, peasants on donkeys, villages perched away among the crags. And there is Mistra to see, only a couple of miles from Sparta. What self-respecting photographer would miss Mistra?”

Mistra... “That’s ruined Byzantine, not classical Greek,” she protested. But she was interested. What heaven, she thought, what absolute bliss! She pulled herself up, sharply. She might not have wanted to run away as far as Rome, but she had better run farther than Sparta.

They passed through the crowded anteroom, into the crowded lobby. Strang glanced sharply back again at a neat little man, partly obscured by a group of Frenchmen. But the little man, in the unobtrusive, dark suit, had disappeared entirely. For a moment, there, Strang had imagined he was Elias. But Colonel Zafiris would hardly send Elias to watch over us, he decided. Elias had more important work to do than that. At least, he thought, I hope so.

“Yes?” asked Cecilia.

“Nothing,” he said. “Let’s pick up our mail and then get a cab.”

* * *

She had a cable from New York, a letter postmarked Athens, a hand-delivered note in a sealed envelope. She had time to notice he had two letters, both with American stamps, both addressed in blatantly female writing. More jade earrings?

Strang stuck the letters into his pocket and helped her into the cab. He glanced around before he followed her; no, he couldn’t see Elias looking into any shop window or dodging quickly into a doorway.

Cecilia looked back at the sidewalk, between the pleated silk curtains draped across the rear window. “The sponge sellers have gone,” she said. She touched the curtains’ bobbed fringe. Was this really a cab? Two-tone Plymouths, at home, were never like this: lace mats for heads and arms, a rug on the floor, a pink paper rose in a little vase fastened above the dashboard, three small framed photographs of wife and child, a three-inch doll dangling above them. Let’s hope our man can drive, she thought, what with all these curtains and swaying charms and polite head turnings to talk to Ken. Nothing seemed to fascinate a Greek more than a foreigner’s attempt to speak his language. But she relaxed a little as she saw the man could drive, even at high speed with his profile presented to the street ahead.

She opened the cable. It was brief:
DID YOU ARRIVE
?
LEE PRESTON
.

The letter was from Robert Pringle’s wife, first name either Affie or Iffie or Effie, suggesting they all drive out to Sunium for dinner next Wednesday. Nice, she thought regretfully, but dinner parties and work don’t always mix. Perhaps the Pringles would give her a rain check on Wednesday.

Now for the note... It was from Katherini. She read it with relief and delight. “It’s from—” she began, and then looked at
the driver (now telling Ken about the new cement works down toward the Piraeus, which were well worth seeing), and slipped the note into her handbag. That news would be better kept for the Acropolis.

Strang finished explaining, regretfully, that they would have to visit the cement works some other time; also Daphni, also Eleusis, also Marathon. Today—yes, all afternoon—would be spent at the Acropolis. Then he sat back, exhausted with his battle, and returned thankfully to English. “From whom?”

Cecilia handed him the cable.

One glance and, “Very poignant,” he observed. “Tell him we’ve been busy.”

“We ought to cable, though.”

“And what do we tell him about Steve?”

“Yes, there’s that,” she said, frowning.

“Especially as Preston is probably reading about his death right now. He’ll be on the telephone to us, any hour. Perhaps we better not answer any long-distance calls for the next few days. Not until we can tell him something definite.”

“He’s going to start fretting.”

“When you have got to tell a lie, keep silent.” Strang crumpled up the cable and tossed it out of the window.

“Oh!—”

“Don’t worry, Cecilia. Soon we’ll be able to talk to Uncle Preston without any faking.”

“Soon?” she asked hopefully.

“We’ll have definite news soon,” he said. One way or another, he thought angrily. “I could use some good news, right now.”

She looked down at her handbag and hesitated. Then she couldn’t keep the secret any longer. She took Katherini’s note out
of her handbag. “Here is one good piece of news to go on with.” Delightedly, she watched the astonishment that flickered over his face. She looked out of the window while he read the note. The shops and business houses were barred and locked. The streets were strangely quiet. Even the tables in the coffee shops were almost empty, except for a few die-hard philosophers. “What has happened? Everything has shut down.”

Strang looked up from the note, abstractedly. For once, he was slow to catch her meaning. “Until four o’clock,” he said at last. He said nothing at all about the note. Suddenly, he reached out and grasped her hand. He stared out of the window, seeing nothing.

Cecilia watched him, anxiously. Perhaps he didn’t like the idea of her going to meet Katherini alone, this evening. But it was to be such a simple, quick meeting at the corner of Constitution Square. What could be more open? Or easier? It was only a few steps from the hotel And all Katherini needed was a little help—money for the bus fare back to her village: two single tickets, one for Maria, one for herself. That was all.

Strang’s grip on her hand tightened. He was seeing a busy corner, filled with the movement of people at the end of a work day. Darkness falling. Everyone hurrying home. Cecilia arriving at half past seven. A cab starting forward from the hotel rank, stopping beside her. A door opening, and a woman’s friendly voice calling, “Here! Here!” And Cecilia going over to the car (for so many cabs looked like private cars in Athens); the woman’s hand grasping hers, the voice saying urgently, “I am Maria. It was not safe for Katherini to come. Let us drive around this block, while I tell you what has happened. There is much news to give you.” That was all that was needed. That was all.

Cecilia was saying, “Ken!”

He released her hand. He folded the note. “Do you mind if I keep this?” He hoped he sounded casual enough. But she still looked puzzled. So he adopted a jocular kind of tone. “One thing is definite, my girl. No Athens for you. Not alone. Not for the next few days. You’re coming with me.”

“You’re worrying too much.” She sounded fretful, she knew, but she couldn’t help that.

“You still won’t think of Rome?”

She shook her head.

“Stubborn, aren’t you?”

“So are you.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, “I guess I am.” He slipped the note into his pocket.

The cab made the last twist and turn in the road and drew up at an open stretch of high ground, well-paved, landscaped with trees and shrubs, lying at the foot of a broad, steep slope of hard-packed earth and outcropping rock. Above the slope, the rock began to dominate and then, abruptly, flowed upward into a precipice, a vast encircling arm thrown around the high island of the Acropolis. The giant columns, rising from the rampart of precipices with a grace that turned solid stone into delicate movement, caught the sun’s warmth and glowed, a golden white, above the cold grey rock. Everything flowed up, carrying man’s eye from earth to heaven.

“I’ll wait for you,” the cabdriver told them, breaking the spell. He pointed to a parking space near some young trees and a booth where terra-cotta ash-trays and black-figure vases
were for sale. There were some tourists, some loiterers—other drivers, guides, the eternal post-card sellers.

Strang said, “It will be a long wait.” Two hours, at least. Another cab was driving up now. But no one got out. That’s odd, Strang thought.

“I’ll wait,” their driver said. He knew best. He flashed a bright Greek smile, white teeth against olive skin.

I doubt that, thought Strang. I must have overtipped again. He took Cecilia’s arm and started back toward the other cab. “This way, this way!” his own driver called quickly, and pointed up to a wandering path which led to the admission gate.

Strang turned and retraced his steps, “Stupid of me,” he said. But he had had a glimpse of the man who sat in the back of the other cab. If it had been Christophorou, he thought, I’d have smashed his bloody jaw right here and now. But it had been Elias. Colonel Zafiris was taking no chances, seemingly.

Cecilia said quietly, “The man in that cab—I saw him, back at the Grande Bretagne. He took the cab after ours. Is he following us?”

“You’d break his heart if he could hear you.”

“You aren’t worried?”