Decision at Delphi by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online

full of upbeat and uplift. But let’s keep a balance, boys. Let’s advertise: “Come to Jolly Old England, but not when April’s there unless you bring wool underwear and a coat to wear indoors.” Or: “Come to Romantic Brittany, but bring a sweater for sun-tanning on the beach.” Or: “Come to Subtropical Heaven, fanned by summer breezes, but these three-inch things with wings to fly when they get tired running over the floor or crawling into your bureau drawers are only roaches. Ladies, short skirts for dancing on the terrace are preferable, so that land crabs won’t cling and climb. Gentlemen, your job is to empty out all shoes each morning.” Or: “Come to the Sunny Riviera, but hire a pneumatic mattress for lazing on the pebbles.” Or—no, this game could go on for ever, and the suitcase was now being trundled past him under a pile of many people’s luggage.
    He had a brief battle of wills with the porter, who wanted to trundle to some distant section of the shed, but he won it by yanking his possession clear. “All ready,” he told one of the waiting men behind the low wooden counter marked “S.” He lined up his luggage not without a sense of achievement, produced passport and camera, took out his keys and began unlocking. Customs officers who had had their siestas interrupted for a ship’s afternoon arrival, and then had to stand in a cold shed for nearly three hours, might be less patient than usual.
    “Nothing open until all here,” one hard-eyed man said, and kept his hands in his overcoat pockets. He was both angry and bored with tourists’ stupidities.
    “It is all here,” Strang said.
    The expression did not change, but the examination was thorough though brief. Strangely, it was the portfolio that caused the customs officer most doubt. He was so interested in it that he accepted the small case of camera film without a second glance. He went over to confer with the colleague who had taken Strang’s passport and was now studying it with great intensity. That’s right, Strang thought as the passport man looked down at the little green book and then up at the American and then down again, then up: this is Kenneth Clark Strang. Height: 5 ft. 11 in. Hair: brown. Eyes: grey. No visible marks. Born: Princeton, New Jersey, on February 7, 1925. Occupation architect. Address; 124a East 54th Street, New York City. Yes, indeed, that is I, as my more refined friends would say.
    “You are arquitetto?” the officer asked suspiciously.
    Strang nodded. “An architect,” he assured the man.
    “But this is for a pittore —a paint—” He looked most dubiously at the opened portfolio, lifted a tube of colour as if the Hope diamond had decided to cross the Atlantic in gamboge.
    “I am an architect who draws buildings.” That didn’t appear to be helpful. Desperately, he said, “Paestum. I go to draw the temples at Paestum.”
    “There are only ruins at Paestum.”
    “I shall draw ruins.”
    The two men looked at each other. At this moment, they reminded him of his two brothers-in-law.
    “Ah,” said one, dawn breaking at the end of a cloudy night, “it is a little thing to amuse oneself?”
    Strang grappled with that. “A hobby?” My God, perhaps they are my brothers-in-law in disguise. But he nodded gravely: it was the easiest way out. And all was well. With many understanding nods, the opened cases were commanded to be closed and carried away. That was more difficult to do than giving a commanding wave. The crowd along the counter had reached the desperate stage of elbowing and pressing. He locked the cases with a struggle, could find no porter who wasn’t already trundling (there must have been a law against carrying, in Naples), and chose to battle his way to the exit barrier with a precarious but painful hold on his luggage. Listing slightly to starboard as the heavy brief case in his right hand and the portfolio slipping from under his right arm outmatched the two cases on his left