Free Decision at Delphi by Helen MacInnes Page B

astounded. Here, in Taormina?) “Perhaps we may even meet for dinner when my business is completed in Taormina. On Sunday? Meanwhile, if you could help me in a most urgent matter? I must see S. K. but discover he has left Taormina for a few days. Where can I find him? If you would let me know his address early tomorrow morning, I would be in your debt. Please leave the messagewhere you found this note. I am sorry this matter needs so much urgency and discretion. Aleco.”
    There was a very small postscript. “How are your two friends? Wallace and the Irishman with red hair?” And that, Strang decided, was a most tactful piece of identification. He hadn’t mentioned either Wallis or O’Brien by name in his letter to Christophorou. So Aleco was Alexander, in short, and no fake.
    Why should he have even thought of a fake? Only because the surprise of discovering Christophorou in Taormina was almost too big to swallow at one gulp. Or because Christophorou wanted to see Steve Kladas? Why not? Lawyers could turn publishers or editors of magazines. Kladas was a photographer in demand. What more in keeping with good Greek business sense than to combine a holiday at Taormina with signing up Kladas for some photographs before any competitor could make contact with him in Athens? Except that most Greeks with vacations headed straight for their own islands; and most people didn’t send their letters by a chamber-maid with elaborate, instructions (and a tip to match) for such fantastic secrecy.
    Yes, he was puzzled. He reread the letter thoughtfully. Aleco was the diminutive, familiar, and affectionate for Alexander. He wasn’t quite on Aleco terms with Christophorou. And yet the letter’s phrases were too precise, too calculated, to slip into Aleco at the end without a purpose. It was as if Christophorou were telling him, “I am your friend.” And friends trusted each other—all right, all right—and had dinner with each other. But not until Sunday. He had to smile. He caught sight of himself in the looking glass. And a damn fool he looked, grinning by himself in an empty room. This was one hell of a way to get his work done.
    So he wrote a brief note. It said, “S. K. is in Syracuse until Friday. Don’t know his address. Sunday will be fine. Ken.” He added a very small postscript as his own piece of identification: “Hope the sandbags on the Acropolis did their job:” He was smiling again as he slipped the note (in a sealed, unaddressed envelope) into the neat pile of Steve’s photographs. He didn’t bother to disarrange them. The maid knew where to look for his note when she came tomorrow morning. His smile broadened in spite of himself, and he ended in a fit of laughter. It was difficult, sometimes, even with all the good will in the world and lavish applications of international understanding, not to find foreigners comic. And how they must find him, sitting in here, when everyone else was dancing or drinking or walking a pretty girl on the. terrace, was something he didn’t even want to imagine. They’ll think I fancy myself as the reincarnation of the old monk who once lived in this cell, he decided. And settled to work.

5
    Late on Friday afternoon, the siege was lifted. All-or-nothing Strang, he reflected, looking around the battlefield. The bedroom was in complete chaos, not one horizontal surface uncovered, not one vertical that wasn’t a prop. But he had won, only six hours later than the deadline he had set himself, which wasn’t too bad. Neither were the drawings. He looked at them again, anxiously, critically; then felt the stirring of excitement. They were all right, they were very much all right. All right, so they’re all right, he told himself sharply, all right! Keep your hat on and your overcoat buttoned, Strang. But it gave him sweet pleasure to file the finished job carefully away in the waiting compartment in his portfolio.
    He looked as much a mess as the room. He had been needing a haircut