Decision at Delphi Read Free Page B

the siren’s blast seared every eardrum, even set the deck tingling under their feet.
    Preston waited, frowning, impatient. “The profile,” he could say at last. “The girl who was frightened. The girl in my office. Don’t look now, you damn fool, she’s got her duenna right at her elbow.”
    “Did she recognise you?”
    “Sure. She froze. No pin curls now, but plenty of mink. Platinum, at that! Yes, yes, officer, I’m just leaving.” He waved and ran, barely reaching the pier before the gangway was being swung off. His exit, thought Strang, was scarcely what Preston had planned. The final bon mot about Segesta was for ever silenced. The siren gave a last and triumphant blast, overwhelming the babel of voices on the pier, the shouts, the laughter. He couldn’t see Preston, any more. Where were the others? His eyes searched the mass of faces and waving handkerchiefs. Was he expected to stay and wave? Possibly. Before beginning that duty, he turned to light a cigarette. Now he could look at the girl in the platinum mink coat. Yes, thatprofile would be hard to forget. Standing beside her, a small squat woman, in sombre black, was speaking in a torrent of sharp syllables.
    “That is all that is to be seen,” the woman was saying in Greek. “You will catch cold, and your aunt will blame me. Come!” She stumped away on her sensible, black leather shoes. “Katherini!” she called over her shoulder. And the girl, who had been looking at the laughing crowd below, her with an expression of—yes, it had been sadness—turned obediently and followed. She passed two feet away from Strang. She glanced at him for a brief moment. Her eyes flickered as if she had identified him, known who he was. Suddenly they were blank again. Her face had become a cold, impersonal mask. She was very young, he saw, probably no more than twenty; much too young to need any mask on that bale, dark-eyed face.
    So she is Greek, he thought, as he took his position at the rail. Lee Preston had not guessed that; her English accent must be good. Well educated, travelled, mink, pearls, expensive gloves holding a large crocodile handbag, a vague perfume of roses. The very best roses. Her father must own three shipping lines, at least.
    Strang couldn’t find any face he could recognise on the pier below him. Hundreds were pressing forward from under the roof of the shed, to see and be seen; but there was no one he knew. Then, just as, unexpectedly, he felt a chill of loneliness among all the warmth of emotion sweeping around him, he saw O’Brien’s red hair and Wallis’s semaphoric arm. And, between them, he saw the Hillard girl. He gave a shout and waved wildly. Suddenly, she was waving too. It was very pleasant, after all, to have someone to whom you could wave.
    The bustling tugs hauled and pushed and prodded the towering ship, until its prow pointed down the Hudson toward the ocean. Then, with chests proudly out and heads held high, they gave a piercing hoot of farewell before they sped, skirts gathered up and around them, back to the long row of piers on the Manhattan shore. From Jersey, the late-afternoon sun turned the high windows of the tall buildings into flaming gold. Strang stood, collar turned up against the cold Hudson wind, watching the midtown sky-scrapers, shadow behind shadow, wheel and recede into a world that was both a dream and a reality.
    He went back to his cabin for his overcoat. The steward had worked a miracle—the place had been cleared of glasses and bottles and cigarette stubs. The telegrams were stacked neatly on his dressing table beside the penknife Jennifer had used. It smelled of caviar, the one witness left to the noise and confusion of an hour ago. Oh, yes, there was that damned suitcase, too. He stood looking at it, the intruding stranger sitting so calmly on his floor with his name tied round its neck. He’d see about that. He rang for the steward.
    The man came, bringing three more telegrams and a