Decision at Delphi

by Helen Macinnes

  “What action was taken?” Strang asked sharply.

  “At first, as I was saying,” Elias reminded him, “there seemed no action that was necessary. But Colonel Zafiris put the Parnassos district under a special alert after I telephoned from Tripolis, and the strange happenings here began to fit into a pattern.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Strang, trying to control his impatience. Elias and his patterns... The hell with them. Where is Cecilia? “Who is out searching?”

  “Two parties. Local men who know this terrain well. The wood has been searched, the hillside above it, too. They are now working over the hill slopes, there.” He pointed to the east. “That seems more likely than to the west.” He pointed to the open hillside above its sweeping buttress of precipices.

  “Why?”

  “There is more cover to the east. That is what the kidnappers want. Also, there is a good path; some huts; some summerhouses, now closed. Remember,” Elias said gently, “they are not climbing along any hills blindly. They are taking her some place. So we must search all the huts and the houses. You understand?”

  But Strang kept looking up at the western slopes. “What’s there, above the precipices? After that open hillside—what?”

  Elias turned to the impassive man who waited patiently beside them, listening to a conversation of which he could not understand one word. Now, as Elias spoke in Greek, he was delighted, and gave a long, detailed, and enthusiastic answer.

  “High meadows,” Elias reported back to Strang. “No houses, no villages. Shepherds have just taken up their flocks, there, for the spring. Later, they will go to higher meadows, farther to the west. They—”

  “Shepherds?”

  “The kidnappers will keep far away from the shepherds. They do not want to be seen. Besides, shepherds do not like people very much. That is why they are shepherds.” As Strang said nothing, but simply looked up towards the meadowland lying beyond the precipices, Elias added, “This search is extremely difficult. The searchers cannot call out. It might be dangerous for Miss Hillard, if the rescuers could not reach her before—that is to say, the kidnappers might take very stupid action if they thought that they were being tracked—what I mean is that—” Elias stopped, completely defeated in the battle of truth against tact. It would be so easy, he thought unhappily, to get rid of any evidence quickly on these hills. Didn’t the American understand that? “If only the man who came out of the woods would talk!” he said angrily.

  Strang’s face looked suddenly ugly. “Where can I see this son of a bitch?”

  “He is locked up in Levadia. Colonel Zafiris is probably talking to him, at this moment.”

  “I’m going up that hillside,” Strang said, and pointed to the west.

  “Wait until Colonel Zafiris arrives. Then I shall go with you. It is not wise for one man—”

  “I’ll manage. Ask your friend if there is only one path. If there are several, which is the quickest?”

  “Wait for one of the search parties to come back. It is not wise for a stranger to go near the shepherds. Their dogs are—” he shrugged, and then admitted the fact—“savage. Sometimes, quite wild.”

  “Have you a gun you could lend me?”

  Elias looked worried. He spoke to the policeman, who looked even more worried. Elias said to Strang, “If you hurt one of those dogs, the shepherds may hurt you.” He kept glancing toward the road to the southeast that led to Levadia, Thebes, Athens, as if he were willing Colonel Zafiris to appear. But there was no car speeding along between the bare hills. From the opposite direction there were only two rustic types, coming leisurely down the hill from Arachova.

  “Okay,” Strang said, and began walking toward the burned-out hut, where the path into the wood seemed to begin. Behind him, he heard Elias call. He didn’t look around. The call turned into a shout, two shouts. He turned, almost at the little heap of charred ashes, and glanced backward. Elias was sprinting after him, the police officer was waving his arms wildly.

  His first impulse was to go right on, into the wood. But he waited, as Elias let out another yell. “A shepherd!” Elias called, and pointed toward the man who was now talking to the policemen. “News—”

  Strang hesitated, looking back at the growing group. Everyone was crowding around the wild-haired man, who stood leaning on his long shepherd’s staff.

  “Or,” said Elias, regaining his breath, “he would not have left his meadow and gone down to the village. Or walked here—” He took Strang’s arm and urged him back.

  News? Strang wondered. He wouldn’t let himself count on that. Yet the word “news” had a magic quality. News...

  The group was silent around the shepherd. He was pointing to the western hill slope, talking in short phrases. Strang could not follow the man’s dialect.

  “What is it?” he asked in frustration. Everyone could listen and understand except himself. “Elias—”

  Elias said, “He came to tell the police that two outlaws— brigands, he calls them—are on that hillside.”

  “And Cecilia—”

  “One moment,” Elias said, listening intently. You could not hurry this shepherd. He had come to tell about brigands and that was what he would talk about until his message was complete. Either he would describe today as he had seen it or he would become bewildered and start repeating his story, thinking that his listeners were the stupid ones. The shepherd was looking at the hut now and saw its ruins. He stopped speaking altogether. Then he let out a cry in anger, and began speaking again. He pulled a small book from inside his shirt.

  “He says people were there, last night,” Elias translated quickly. “He found this book near the hut. He heard two women talking. Climbers, he thought they were.”

  Strang knew Cecilia’s notebook at once. He reached for it. But the shepherd would not give it up.

  Strang said in very slow Greek, “Did you see the women today?” He pointed up to the hillside. “Women?” he asked again.

  The shepherd held up one finger.

  Elias began questioning him. The man seemed surprised. What was all this excitement about a young woman? She was safe enough. He answered Elias gruffly, and went back to his story about the two brigands wandering so far into peaceful territory. That was something to worry about.

  Elias said to Strang, “There is a young woman up in the ravine. Alone. She is safe.”

  “What ravine?”

  “Between the hillside and the western meadows.” Strang turned and ran.

  “Wait—” called Elias. “It may not be Miss Hillard. There were two women—” But nothing was stopping Strang now. It was Cecilia, he knew. It was Cecilia.

  It was easy to follow the path through the wood, and where it forked—one spur to the left, one to the right—it was easy to choose the trail that mounted to the west. At the cascading stream and its little pool, he hesitated between the two tracks that diverged at the boulders. He chose the higher one; it climbed over open ground, it would give him a better view. He started up it as he heard men’s voices from the wood behind him. He didn’t wait for them to catch up with him. High up on the hillside, he paused to gain his breath and loosen his collar and tie. Then this inexplicable sense of urgency drove him on.

  His eyes could see no one on the side of the hill. She must still be in the ravine. Safe, the shepherd had said. But how did the man know that? He must have taken an hour or more to walk to Arachova, another hour or so, perhaps, to tell his story and be sent to the policemen down at the roadside meadow. Safe. Anything could happen to a stranger on this hillside, once she was off the path. Anxiety and urgency, that was all Strang could feel. He couldn’t even explain them. And that, itself, drove him on.

  Ahead of him, he saw a gully. Was this the ravine? A shallow place, shallow enough for the path to cross on to the meadows that sloped away on the other side. He stopped, breathing hard, looking down the gully. It twisted and deepened, deepened dangerously. It must end at the precipices he had seen from the road. His a
nxiety returned. And then he heard a dog barking, barking wildly, far down the ravine.

  “Cecilia!” he yelled. “Cecilia!” He began to run.

  It was still too early to leave, Cecilia had thought. The sun was well over to the west, the shadows from the steep wall of the ravine had fallen across the stream’s rocky bed and were moving up to where she lay on the other side. But the light was good. She would be seen very easily if she came out of cover. She had heard nothing at all, neither feet on stones nor far-off voices, for several hours. They must have gone. Yet she couldn’t believe that the woman had given up the search. Anastas, perhaps. But Xenia, no. In the last extreme, Xenia wouldn’t hesitate to shoot—if she could be sure of killing. Not as a criminal, Xenia would say. Simply as a matter of necessity, which—in Xenia’s cold-eyed world—justified everything. It hadn’t been any touch of compassion, Cecilia realised now, that made her throw me a slice of bread, or allowed me to drink from the stream, or kept her from drugging me in the car, or let her leave my legs and hands unbound. It was necessity, her kind of necessity: I had to be able to walk. Did Xenia really have so much contempt for ordinary people that she thought they’d walk, at the point of a gun, so despairing and lost and hopeless, right into their own graves? But then, Xenia had not known I wanted so very much, more than I’ve ever wanted, to live. She chose the wrong day.

  Sharply, Cecilia looked up at the sky line to the west. Above the rim of cliff opposite, there was the dark shape of the dog. It was racing now, uphill, toward the shallower banks of the gully.

  Where’s the shepherd? she thought, as she rose in sudden panic. See where the dog is going first, she told herself. It may be only on the trail of a fox. But, no, it was crossing the gully at the path, turning to run down this bank of the ravine.

  She moved quickly, over the bed of the stream to the steeper side of the ravine, to the cliff she had thought she could never manage. Her hands felt desperately for every possible fingerhold. She pulled herself up, her fingers searching, her body straining, her feet bracing themselves against every small ledge. A stone slipped and clattered into the stream bed underneath. She dragged herself up another stretch of cliff. Now, she could hear a strange, eager whining. Suddenly, something hit the rock below her and fell back. There was a yelp of pain, an angry bark.

  She tried to take one more step upward, and couldn’t. She hung on where she was. At least she was sure of this ledge on which her feet rested. She must not look down. Desperately, she stared at the grey rock streaked with coarsely mottled veins of gleaming crystals. The dog jumped again, and fell back. Not a friendly animal, she thought, and knew she had overcome her paralysing terror: she was frightened sick, she could climb no more, but at least her mind was functioning again. She laid her cheek against the cold rock. She heard one more leap, one more thud against the cliff below her feet, and the wild barking filled the whole ravine like the early spring torrents. If I can just stand on this ledge long enough, she thought, the shepherd will come. Or Xenia? No, Xenia would not risk coming near that dog. But she could see me here; she would wait; she could—

  “Cecilia!” It was Ken’s voice. “Cecilia!”

  Or was that only what she wanted to hear? The barking came in waves, lapped at her, tried to pull her backward into the surge of hideous sound. She pressed her body to the rock, closed her eyes, tried to close her ears, and hung on.

  Strang, as he ran and jumped down the sloping side of the ravine, saw the dog leap and fall again. Each time, as it landed back on the harsh, dried bed of the stream, it yelped with pain and rage. He picked up a couple of stones, a fallen branch from a stunted tree. It would be useless; it felt rotten even to his touch, but it looked better than nothing.

  He moved instinctively. He threw a stone hard, struck the dog’s flank. The dog jerked around to face him. He ran at it, shouting, the branch raised to strike. The dog hesitated. For a long minute, they faced each other, the dog’s growl beginning to rise with its mane. Then, as he watched it, ready to throw the second stone when the dog charged, he heard a yell behind him, an avalanche of curses. The shepherd came rushing down the bank of the ravine, and the dog stood still. With a whine, it turned and in a limping run tried to escape the blows that fell around its head. The shepherd had it by the neck, pulling it away from the ravine, cursing, pulling.

  Two policemen, and Costas—with his revolver ready—and the shepherd’s friend from the village came clattering down the bank towards Strang. He snapped the stick he was holding in his hand and threw it away.

  “I hope,” said Costas, white-lipped, “he beats its brains out.”

  Strang walked across the bed of the ravine. “Cecilia!” he called, gently.

  She didn’t move.

  “Cecilia—” She has frozen, he thought. She can’t even turn around.

  Her voice said, as if she were a great distance away, “Ken! I can’t—I just can’t—”

  “Then don’t move l Just stay there. We’ll get you. Darling, just hold on!”

  It was a short climb, only twelve or fifteen feet above the base of jagged rocks. While the others grouped underneath to break any slip, Strang pulled himself carefully up over the face of the cliff. He found an easier way than Cecilia had taken, but he hadn’t a hundred and thirty pounds of dog at his heels. He reached the ledge where she stood, and moved sideways along it until he could reach out and grasp her wrist. “That feels good,” he said.

  Slowly, she turned her head to look at him. Slowly, she nodded. She even managed a smile.

  “This way,” he told her. “It is much easier. Your right foot a little toward me. Now your left. Face the cliff. Keep the flat of your other hand against the rock. That’s the way. You chassez very prettily, Miss Hillard.”

  She laughed a little, and then caught her breath sharply as if even a laugh might topple her backward. But would he be talking so lightly if this were not easy? She listened to his quiet, confident voice, to his funny little remarks, and her confidence came slowly back. His grasp on her wrist was gentle and yet firm. Her thighs were no longer rigid, her feet were obeying her mind at last. “I’m all right,” she said delightedly. “Ken—I’m all right!”

  “I’ll go down first, just beneath you.” He let go of her hand slowly. “I’ll guide your feet on to the ledges. Right?” Now he was below her. He said, “I’m going to grip your right ankle— steer it—see? There! The foot has got a good grip of that ledge. There’s room for another. That’s the way. Only two more efforts like that, and then— That’s the way.” At last, he could stand on a boulder at the base of the cliff, and reach up to catch her waist and lift her down beside him. He stood looking at her, his arms around her.

  Now, all the joking was over, the light, easy voice had gone. He said, the strain showing naked in his eyes, “Oh, God! Cecilia—” The tight voice broke. “Oh, God!” he said again, and buried his mouth in her hair.

  They were pulled apart by three quick shots. “The signal,” Costas called to them from the opposite bank, his revolver still held up above his head. “I let everyone know she is safe.”

  Which was, Strang considered, a polite but practical way of jogging them all into motion out of the ravine. He picked Cecilia up and carried her across the rocks and the gravel to the other side.

  “I left my coat,” Cecilia said. “Up there, by those bushes. That’s where I lay—”

  He sat her down on a boulder. “Don’t walk. We’ll carry you and get your feet attended to, at once.”

  “Poor feet!” Cecilia said. “They were all right until that last dash across the ravine.” There had not been much time for picking and choosing her way then.

  He knelt to look at the cuts and scrapes.

  “Oh, it isn’t too bad,” Cecilia said cheerfully. “Blood always makes things look worse than they are.” She laughed. “It’s extraordinary how brave I am when you are around, Ken.”

  He kissed her, caught Costas’s polite but impatient eye, and went to get her coat. Her
shoes were over there, too. He paused for a moment, as he picked them up, and looked at the bushes that had sheltered her. From whom? He had a lot to learn.

  He returned, and wrapped her inside the warm cashmere. It was cool now on the hillside. The sun had not much more than another hour to travel before it slid behind the far mountains. And from the east, the grey-white mist was thickening, lowering slowly. The two policemen and the man from Arachova had left. He saw them climbing quickly, far up the hill.

  Costas noticed his surprise. He said, “There is a cave up there. They go to see it before the light is bad. The shepherd said the bandits—” He paused, looked at Cecilia, and said nothing more. “We carry her. Yes?”

  Strang looked at him, looked back up the hill toward the hidden cave. His lips tightened, and he nodded.

  By the pool at the top of the wood, they halted. Strang bathed her feet gently in the cold, clear water. He moistened a handkerchief and wiped the dust and tearstains from her face. She had not spoken at all since they had climbed out of the ravine. But now she said, “They have gone? They really have gone?”

  “The police caught one of them. A man. He was trying to get his motorcycle out of some bushes—”

  “Anastas. That was Anastas... But wasn’t the woman with him?”

  “No, darling.”

  “Alone? He was alone?”

  “Yes.” Strang smoothed her hair, and kissed the questions out of her eyes. “Forget them both,” he told her. “Let’s concentrate on us.”

  She nodded and tightened her grip on his arm. But as they left the clearing and started down through the wood, she looked back for a moment. “I never thought Xenia would give up the search so easily,” she said slowly.