A Most Extraordinary Pursuit (20 page)

Mr. Poulakis whipped around.

“
THALIA?
” he roared.

“I mean Mrs. Poulakis, of course,” Silverton said hastily. “The honored Mrs. Poulakis—”

But the protest was wholly supererogatory. Comprehension had already dawned on that rugged face, followed by a full-blooded fraternal rage of the sort one rarely witnesses among the anemic races of the northern climes.

Mr. Poulakis struck out his long arm, secured Silverton by the collar, and with a thick right fist delivered his lordship a cracking blow exactly in the middle of his perfect left jaw.

And, to be perfectly honest, I can't say I blamed him.

“I could easily have fought back, of course, and avoided the blow,” said Lord Silverton, nursing a loin of beef to his cheek and a cup of strong hot Turkish coffee to his lips. “But a sense of honor compelled me to submit. Do stop gloating, Truelove.”

“I am not gloating.”

“I took my punishment like a gentleman, that's all, and furthermore it was worth the beating.”

“
What
was worth the beating? The crime itself, or the information gained from it?”

“Well, both. But particularly the former.”

“Unrepentant, I see.”

“Well, I could hardly refuse a lady in extremis, could I? Not gallant at all.” He lifted away the beefsteak. “How does it look?”

“Ghastly.”

He tossed the meat on the worn wooden table between us. We were sitting in a sort of restaurant, across the street from the familiar arched façade of the Hotel Alabaster, which seemed to model itself on the style of the Parisian café, presumably in the hope of winning the Heraklion tourist trade, such as it was. The tables were round, the walls a lurid crimson. I had asked for coffee and
sandwiches and the beefsteak for Lord Silverton's jaw; we had already eaten the sandwiches, and the coffee had at last arrived after a long delay. I frowned at his lordship's face, which now sported an interesting purple swelling, and wondered whether the jaw was actually broken. (He had claimed not, on the grounds that he was perfectly familiar with the sound of a snapping bone.)

Silverton turned his head away to stare at the hotel entrance across the street. “At least we know Max made it off Crete alive, and in the company of a beautiful woman. That's something.”

“I suppose, in your view, that's everything.”

“Company
is
everything in these little escapades, I find.” He finished his coffee. “Our trouble now, of course, is that there are perhaps a thousand islands in the Aegean to which he might have repaired, to say nothing of ports beyond.”

“Then his enemies will have as much trouble discovering him as we will, I believe.”

“An excellent point, Truelove. You're getting the hang of all this quite exceptionally well. The problem remains, however.” He was still staring out the window, and a frown had begun to develop on that wide mouth, insofar as it could bear any expression at all at the moment.

I followed his gaze. “Is something the matter?”

“I don't quite know.” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and produced his spectacles. “How are your eyes, Truelove?”

“My eyesight, do you mean? Perfect.”

“Of course it is.” He drew the glasses over his nose. “Hmm. Yes. Tell me what you think of that fellow lingering around the second column from the left.”

I peered about, not seeing anyone, until I moved closer to Silverton and a man appeared in view, leaning against the column in
question, hands shoved into his pockets. He was wearing a dark suit and a low hat, and his head swung back and forth as he observed the leisurely flow of traffic in the street.

“He seems to be waiting for someone,” I said at last.

“Yes, I thought so, too. And whom do you think he might be waiting for?”

I was about to reply that I could have no idea, could I, but as the man turned his head again, I thought I detected something familiar about his posture and profile. My pulse tripped over itself. I curled my fingers around the edge of the table, waiting for him to move again, and when he did, gazing for just a moment at the restaurant, seeming for all the world as if he saw right through the windows to our small round table with the beefsteak in the center, my breath caught in a gasp in the back of my throat.

The sunlight glinted on the lobe of his right ear.

“Us?” I said, rather more thready than I intended, but I suppose I should have been grateful that I retained any power of speech whatever.

Silverton rose from the table. “We think on identical lines, Truelove. I shall return in half an hour. In the meantime, I suggest you order yourself another cup of coffee.”

Throughout the next day, the Lady hoped to send a message of warning to the Hero, but to no avail, for the Prince kept a jealous watch on her at every minute. That evening, when the youths were led under blindfold to the Hall of the Labrys, the Prince stood before them and explained that, in defiance of custom, the hunt would begin that very night, once the Lady of the Labyrinth had washed their feet and anointed their skin with oil.

The Lady was distressed, for she had no time to send word to her brother, but she did as her husband commanded and washed the feet of the youths, and anointed their skin with oil. When she came to the Hero, she took care to avert her eyes from his beauty, but as she bent to spread the oil across his forehead, she whispered that he was not to fear, for she would find a way to locate him in the intricate chambers of the palace.

Yet when she finished the ritual, the Prince dismissed all the retainers, and with his own hands placed a blindfold over the Lady's eyes, and said to the youths, ‘This night shall the Lady of the Labyrinth join the hunt with you, and if any of you seek to escape your fate, her life shall be forfeit . . .'

T
HE
B
OOK
OF
T
IME
, A. M. H
AYWOOD
(1921)

I
had protested, of course. I ought to go with him; could there be any act so singularly unprofitable to our investigation as that of sitting at a table, drinking coffee?

He would not hear of it. I had no training or experience in these sorts of confrontations, nor had he any time to prepare me.

I had demanded particulars: What was his lordship planning to do? Did he mean to catch the man? Interrogate him?

What if he didn't return in half an hour? What if something happened to him?

“My dear Truelove,” he said, tugging a few coins from his pocket and laying them on the table, “I have promised to return to you in half an hour. I do not break my word.”

And he had turned and left, as if that settled the matter.

During the course of our conversation—I will not call it an argument—the man with the earring had straightened himself
away from the column and ducked into the hotel itself, so quickly that I nearly missed the maneuver. But Lord Silverton had not. He crossed the street nimbly, paused, and went around back through the narrow alley between the Hotel Alabaster and a neighboring tavern, where I lost him from view.

I checked my watch briefly—seven minutes past one o'clock—and continued for some time to stare at the columns forming the shallow portico of the Hotel Alabaster, as if I might actually conjure some vision of what was occurring within. But the exterior of the hotel remained somnolent, in the manner of a Mediterranean town in the middle hours of the day, even in winter, and after twelve minutes (having checked my watch a second time, and dropped it with exasperation back into my jacket pocket) I raised the first two fingers of my right hand and signaled the waiter for more coffee.

Six excruciating minutes later, during which the front portico of the Hotel Alabaster remained wholly complacent, a waiter arrived bearing the coffee, a welcome distraction. He removed Silverton's empty cup and raw beefsteak with an air of decided distaste. I added two teaspoons of sugar, and had only just taken the first tentative sip when the door opened and a man walked in, wearing a gray suit and a familiar black moustache.

Very quietly, I turned my chair away.

“Beg your pardon,” the man said to the waiter, “but I don't suppose you could spare a plate of sandwiches?”

“Sandwiches?”

“Yes. Famished. I've just arrived off the boat from Piraeus, and the hotel doesn't seem to be serving yet.”

I shrank into my collar and bent my head over my coffee cup.

The waiter appeared not to understand him—he hadn't
understood us very well either, until Silverton had switched to Greek—and the Englishman tried again, this time in the local tongue. An animated discussion ensued, during which I finished my coffee and disappeared further into my clothes. I had just begun to measure the distance to the door when the man's voice switched abruptly from incomprehensible patois to a sound, sharp, unmistakable English.
Damn!

The word made me jolt, a fatal error. I faced the window, and could not see the Englishman directly, but a certain airless quality shaped the silence that followed, instructing me that I had won his attention.

I sat absolutely still, in the manner of a stag caught in the open.

“Oh, I say,” the Englishman said, so softly I might have missed him, had I not been straining every nerve underneath my outward petrification. He said something in Greek to the proprietor, who responded in kind, and an instant later his footsteps sounded briskly on the paved floor, approaching me.

When I was perhaps eight, I had been caught in a small lie; I can't remember what. Something to do with missing cake, I believe. The crime itself was not important. It was the concealment that disturbed my father. We all commit transgressions, he told me gravely. It is the manner in which we conduct ourselves afterward that marks our true character. And the trouble with a lie, Emmeline, is that you shortly discover you must continue in a series of further lies to support the first, until you end inevitably entangled inside a massive skein of falsity, which you must slice through with a knife in order to free yourself, in an act altogether more painful than the snapping of a single thread.

Yes, Papa
, I had said dutifully, and I meant it. I have passionately defended the truth ever since. But every so often, I find
myself in what the duke's London housekeeper used to call a fix: a skein of falsity, the fault (I'm afraid) not of some deliberate and cold-blooded lie, but only my own pride.

I don't know why I pretended not to understand the Englishman on the quay, but I suspect I was ashamed: flat on my posterior on the cobbles, leading a mule, swearing like a common fishwife. If I spoke to him, I should have had to explain myself. Now, as his footsteps drew closer, I remembered my father's advice, and thought,
I should come clean at once.

The Englishman stopped next to my chair. Courtesy obliged me to look up.

“What a charming coincidence,” he said. “Are you a visitor to Heraklion, too?”

My lips flailed for response.

“Ah, damn.” He removed his hat and pushed a hand through his hair, which was thick and dark, a pleasing shade of walnut brown. “Let me see. Vis-it-or?”

Come clean, Emmeline.
(Quite stern.)

I opened my mouth and said, “Vis-it-or?”

The man's face brightened. “Exactly! So am I. Not for pleasure, alas, but—well. Do you mind if I join you?” He motioned to the other chair.

As I nodded a reluctant acquiescence, it occurred to me that this man's appearance might not prove a coincidence at all. If so fearsome a man as the earring-wearer lurked about the hotel, waiting for our return, perhaps he had a less-threatening accomplice to search the rest of the town?

You see? I was right to disguise my nationality. Silverton would certainly approve. Now I had only to continue the subterfuge
until his lordship returned, or else the Englishman departed in—so I hoped—utter frustration.

I bent my head once more over my cup and studied the man while he settled himself across the table, hitching up his trousers slightly as he crossed one leg over the other, straightening his sober jacket. His hair had been brushed back with pomade, and his moustache was precisely trimmed. The sign of a villain, or simply a man of exact grooming? He dropped his hat on his knee and smiled benignly at me, in the style of a grandparent trying to think of something to say to a child. He patted his pockets. “Dear me. I wish I had a notepad with me. We might communicate in pictographs.”

I stole a glance through the window. No sign of activity at the Hotel Alabaster. Where the devil was Silverton? If only Silverton would turn up. On the other hand, if this man were dangerous, then it was best if—

“Ah! Are you staying at the Alabaster?” said the Englishman.

I shrugged noncommittally.

“Al-a-bas-ter? Yes?” He patted his pockets again, and again the expression of illumination spread across his regular features. His eyes were brown and soft and heavy-lidded, and as he lifted his brows in anticipation of whatever idea had just occurred to him, I conceded that he looked rather handsome. He produced a small book from his pocket, a rumpled red Baedeker's guide, and unfolded a map from the inside cover. “Now, see here. Suppose you point to that part of the world where you're from, and chances are, I'll know at least a few odd words of the language. What do you say, eh?”

I looked at his face, and down at the map. I suppose I must have appeared terrified.

“There's no harm, I assure you. Are you from Romania?” He pointed to a small blue spot on the map.

I shook my head. His finger moved. “Bulgaria? East Prussia? Denmark, perhaps?”

I glanced desperately at the hotel and back at the map. The Englishman was now working his way doggedly through Scandinavia, and as his finger slid east into Finland, I nodded, just to stop him.

“Finland! What luck!
Vietin kaksi kuukautta Suomessa, kun olin kahdenkymmenen vuotisista
.”

His smile was broad and encouraging. I dropped another spoonful of sugar in my coffee and stirred, stirred. “Eh?” I said at last.

“Ei, se on totta. Olen pahoillani minun Suomi ei ole parempi. Ymmärrätkö minua?”

“Neh?”

“Oh, dear. I'm afraid I'm sadly out of practice. I only wish to— Look. I haven't even introduced myself.” He held out his right hand. “Horace Higganbotham, British School at Athens.”

As luck would have it, I had just begun to drain the last of my oversweet coffee, hoping to hide my expression of dismay. I coughed it up at once.

“Dear me,” said Mr. Higganbotham. “Are you all right?”

He took out a handkerchief and pressed it into my hand, and when a few more barks failed to halt the spasm, he rose from his chair in concern and came around to deliver a solid thump to the middle of my back. The coffee rose up the channel of my throat and into the cavities of my nose. I made a noise of distress that ended in a choke.

“Hey there! What the devil are you doing?”

I looked up through watery eyes to find Lord Silverton, at
last, standing at the door of the restaurant, quite unharmed and looking as if he meant to debone someone in order to make the evening's soup.

“Oh! Hello!” Mr. Higganbotham straightened away from me. “You must be Lord Silverton.”

His lordship formed his hands into fists and roared, “Never mind who
I
am. Who the devil are
you
, and what
in God's name
do you think you're doing with that woman?”

“Oh. Right. Horace Higganbotham, British School, Athens. This dear young lady has had a spot of trouble with her coffee, that's all.” Mr. Higganbotham leaned forward and tapped his temple. “A little bit slow, I suspect. I don't suppose you happen to speak Finnish?”

I shall spare you the scene of humiliation that followed. Suffice to say that his lordship nearly disgraced himself from laughing, and it was quite some time before we could get a sober word from him. When we did, it was only to learn that he had not been able to find the man with the earring, though he searched the hotel diligently.

“But I saw him go in,” I said.

“So did I. Regardless, he's given me the slip, which is dashed confounding. Makes a chap wonder if he's lost his touch.”

“I don't mean to interrupt,” said Mr. Higganbotham, “but am I to understand that we stand in some sort of physical danger at the present time?”

“Yes. Do you object?”

The sandwiches had arrived a moment ago, and Mr. Higganbotham had already finished the first. At Silverton's casual
yes
, however, he set down the remaining crust and turned a little pale.

“Dear me,” he said.

“Quite.” Silverton drummed his fingers on the table, which had grown much too small with the addition of the two men. His lordship's long legs stretched halfway across the room, crossed at the ankles, for the singular purpose of showing off his unnatural height to the smaller man.

Or so I suspected, as I observed the laconic scowl that had settled upon his ordinarily amiable face in the wake of his laughter: a face made infinitely more fearsome by the purple bruise on the side of his jaw. From time to time, he cast a watchful glance through the window, though he had taken off his spectacles, and was now removing his pipe from his jacket pocket as if he meant to settle in for a comfortable afternoon's conversation.

Mr. Higganbotham swallowed. “I see. Well, since you ask, I don't suppose I
can
object to a bit of danger. I am, after all, a party concerned.”

“So I understand,” said his lordship. “And how, exactly, are you concerned in the matter? You were corresponding with my friend Max, isn't that right?”

“Oh, yes. He sent me a letter last October, inquiring into various aspects of classical mythology. My particular area of study at the school, you understand. I have had regular conversations with Mr. Evans and his colleagues, over the course of the past five or six years.” He gained a little confidence as he spoke, straightening both his shoulders and his moustache.