Decision at Delphi by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online Page B

me to find a cab that would wait? Listen, Ken—for a man who fancies himself as a hard-boiled bachelor, you’re as easy to cut into as a poached egg on toast.” His annoyance wore off. “I’ve often wondered how you ever did stay free. You’re just the type to be caught by a sweet-faced widow, with five children, and two of them crippled. Now don’t get sore! All I’m saying is that you’re a romantic. And I’m a realist. It’s a good thing you’ve got me around, this trip.” He settled himself in the seat of the high-walled taxi, smoothed his hair back from his brow, and gave one of his broad grins. “If that had been a man, back there,” he said, “you’d have told him to get the hell out. But what’s the difference? Women got the vote, didn’t they? They’re equal, aren’t they? That’s what they wanted. So they’ve got it, and we’re all happy. Or aren’t we?” He broke into Italian. “Not that way! Take the direct route. To your right! By God,” he said to Strang, “you would think I was a newly arrived tourist, too.”
    In the large, carefully appointed hotel overlooking the sea front, Strang was given a room with a small balcony and a large-scale view of the bay. That pleased him. And the room itself would be a good place to finish his sketches of Paestum— plenty of light from the wall of window, plenty of air from the glass door that led to the balcony, grey tiled floor, white walls, simple furniture, a desk that was steady to the touch, an adequate lamp.
    Steve Kladas prodded the bed, tried the two armchairs, ran the shower, flushed the toilet, and pronounced everything—much to his surprise—to be all right. He ordered Scotch and soda and ice, hung up his raincoat in the little entry hall, switched on all the lights, and chose the more comfortable chair. “Haven’t you had enough of sea breezes?” he wanted to know, for Strang had pulled aside the panel of pleated grey silk curtain and opened the glass door that was part of the window wall. He was now watching the high spring tide sending its surging waves across a causeway that led to the little island not much more than fifty yards offshore. Lights were on, down there, blazing cheerfully in the empty restaurants grouped around the island’s small harbour; behind them rose the dark massive shadow of the oldcastle whose rugged walls plunged into the sea. Usually, the little restaurants were filled with people and noise and music, making the castle only a backdrop for Il Trovatore. But tonight it had reasserted itself. It was the Castel dell’ Ovo, guarding the tiny pleasure harbour of Santa Lucia from the storm as stoutly as it had once fought against Saracen invaders from the sea.
    “Shut that door, Ken! You’re blowing the curtains off their hooks.”
    Strang came back into the room and made everything fast against the night. “I like it this way,” he said. “It smells better.”
    “Better than what?”
    “Better than Naples in August.”
    “And when were you here in August?”
    “At the end of the war.”
    “Oh—that!” Steve Kladas lost interest.
    Strang said jokingly, “You know, there was a war—in fact, five or six wars—outside of Greece.”
    Steve looked at him sharply, and then laughed. “Well, I like Naples at any time of year.”
    “Sure. It was founded by the Greeks.”
    Steve said, “When Preston started enthusing over the Greek western empire, I thought he was nuts. Nuttier than usual, that is. But now, sure I admit it, I’m beginning to catch some of that excitement he kept talking about.”
    “Did you never feel it before? When you lived in Greece, did you never look at the ruins and—”
    Steve cut in, with a laugh. “Ken, my good friend, if you lived in a village like a thousand other villages where people spent all their days working in the fields and half their nights worrying about the food they couldn’t produce from a rocky hillside, youwouldn’t have much time to admire the beauty