Decision at Delphi Read Free Page A

to talk to him about. He wished him well.
    Then came the others—Jerry Garfield, from Perspective; Judith Robbins, from Maclehose, Mitchem and Moore; Tom Wallis and Matt O’Brien, old friends from Strang’s Navy days.
    O’Brien was saying, “Wouldn’t mind seeing Athens again myself. At least you won’t be dodging machine-gun bullets this time, Ken.”
    “What’s that?” Preston asked quickly. “Machine-gun bullets?”
    “After the Germans cleared out,” Wallis explained, making everything still more bewildering.
    “December, 1944,” added O’Brien. “Boy, what a Christmas that was! Everyone starving and shooting each other.” He shook his head, remembering his introduction to power politics in action. “And the British caught in the middle—trying to chase the Communists back into the mountains without blowing Athens or the Athenians to pieces.”
    “Wonder if that Greek is still alive?” Wallis speculated. He ignored the worried steward who had suddenly appeared at the cabin door. “The one who smuggled us through the street-fighting back to the ship. What was his name again? Chris— Chris something—”
    “Christophorou,” Strang said. “Alexander Christophorou.”
    “All visitors must leave, all visitors ashore!” the steward announced loudly. “All—”
    “That’s it! Christophorou,” said Wallis. “Quite a guy. As crazy as they come. Took Ken right up to the Acropolis walls to let him get a close look at the Parthenon by moonlight. We could have wrung both their necks.”
    “Not so much by moonlight,” Strang said, giving the steward a reassuring signal. “It was more by the rocket’s red glare. Just coming, steward.”
    But the man was crossing, much perturbed, to close the opened porthole. He kept saying, “It is not permitted. Vietato —”
    “I know, I know,” Strang said in Italian, “but this lady fainted, and so...” He shrugged helplessly. The steward eyed Miss Hillard doubtfully, and she restrained the beginning of a laugh. Did she understand Italian? Strang wondered, and was caught off balance. He turned quickly back to the steward. “There is a small case under the bed. It isn’t mine. Take it to the right cabin, will you?” And then he was finishing the last good-byes. “I’ll walk to the gangplank with you,” he told Lee Preston and Miss Hillard. I’ll have that one small chance to talk with her, he thought, to watch these incredible eyes.
    But, as they all left the cabin, the steward called to him urgently. “Signore Strang! Signore Strang!” The man was bending over the small case he had pulled out from under the bed. “This is your case, signore.”
    Strang halted at the door. “Can’t be. I know what I packed,” he told Miss Hillard. Then, as the steward pointed at the label, he came back into the cabin. The label, in heavy block letters, all too clear, said KENNETH C. STRANG . It was the regulation label for the Italian Line, first class, main deck, with the correct cabin number most definitely marked. “All right, all right,” he said, completely defeated. “I’ll straighten this out later. Thanks.” He turned back to the door. The others had gone.
    Preston was waiting outside in the corridor. Miss Hillard was far away, escorted by Wallis and O’Brien. Too late now, Strang thought: Wallis and O’Brien would not give her up soeasily. There’s a general conspiracy, he told himself, to keep me from talking to that girl.
    “Don’t forget, Ken, to tell Kladas about my strange visitor,” Preston was saying as they reached the promenade deck, where the covered gangplank was secured. “And when you see the temple at Segesta, give it a salute from me, will you? It’s a beauty, almost intact in spite of the Carthaginians. Been standing there for twenty-five hundred years and still—” He stopped shaking Strang’s hand, looked past him. “By God,” he said in a startled voice, “she’s sailing!”
    “Who?”
    From above their heads,