“Listen to me,” Dorcas said. “Stop mixing up reality and fantasy. Constantine Katalonos was Gino’s partner. He stole that head from the museum at Gino’s instigation. Gino wants it now. This is criminal action he’s involved in. Constantine is dead and Gino is trying to take that head and Beth out of the country. If he succeeds, we’ll never see him again. We’ll never see Beth again, or the marble head. Get what’s happening straight this time, Fernanda. Stop fooling yourself about Gino.”
Fernanda regarded her indignantly. “I presume none of these wild notions of yours will come about. Madame Katalonos will return the head to the museum and everything will be settled as far as it is concerned. Beth, after all, is in my hands. Hush, dear, here comes the maid.”
Haltingly, the girl gave them Madame’s regrets. She was not well and she could see no one at the moment. They would forgive her, please. Another time—
“Well, that’s that,” Fernanda said. “There was some information I wanted from her, but it will have to wait. Coming, Dorcas? I’ll drive you back to the hotel.”
“No, thank you,” Dorcas said. “I’m going to stay here and see Madame Katalonos, whether she likes it or not.”
Fernanda hesitated as though she meant to argue, but something of Dorcas’s new determination seemed to make itself felt.
“I don’t think I want to force myself on the lady,” Fernanda said, and sailed a bit haughtily from the room.
While the maid waited, Dorcas picked up a packet of Greek cigarettes from a nearby table. The flat white under side of the box made a useful pad for notes. She had often seen Greeks put the boxes to this purpose. With a pencil from her bag she wrote some words on the packet and gave it to the girl. Then she waited, as Fernanda had done, before the portrait of Constantine. He seemed to return her look with sardonic amusement, as if he knew very well what a tortuous chain of events his tricks had set into motion. Yet there was a moodiness in the face as well—a touch of the despair she had sensed in him that time when Gino had sent him for her. She no longer needed to be afraid of Constantine.
The maid returned promptly with word that Madame would see Mrs. Brandt. She led the way to the sculptor’s studio, where the door stood open and Madame Xenia sat at her husband’s desk. Today she wore a flowing gown of light gray that gave her the look of a votive priestess. Only her eyes seemed alive in her white face as Dorcas crossed the room to greet her.
“You have word of my husband?” she said, rising.
“I’m sorry that it must be bad news,” Dorcas told her gently. “At least you will know now what happened.”
Madame Xenia sat down again. “Continue, please. He is dead?”
Dorcas explained what she had just learned from Gino—that Constantine had been in his place aboard the plane that had crashed. Gino was alive and in Rhodes. He had come here to find the marble head that Constantine had taken from the museum.
A mingling of comprehension, of grief, and of anger, flashed across Madame Xenia’s face. She stood up, leaning against the desk, one hand gathering the gray folds of her robe. Although her suffering was undoubtedly real, she could not refrain from making a performance of it.
“It was Gino who sent him to his death!” she cried. “It was Gino who killed Constantine!”
“Not deliberately,” Dorcas interposed. “He couldn’t have known the plane would crash.”
The woman paid no attention. “Those two wicked ones! It was the two of them who destroyed him!”
She walked swiftly to the bust of Vanda Petrus and snatched away the cloth that shrouded it.
“There you see the one who tried to steal my husband’s love. That perfidious woman! She is to blame for everything. She and her worthless brother!”
Dorcas repeated the last word warily. “Brother?”
“But of course. That woman is the sister of Gino Nikkaris. And she is his tool, as many women are.”
Dorcas stood very still as the truth, the illuminating truth, washed over her. When she spoke, she formed the words slowly, carefully.
“That woman—Mrs. Petrus—is the one Miss Farrar brought in to take care of my daughter Beth. Miss Farrar did not tell me—” She broke off, lost in the alarming ramifications of what she had just learned. How easy it had been to fool her. Gino’s pattern of life had always been secretive. He had never talked of the scattered remains of his family. After his parents had died, there had seemed to be no one with whom he was in touch. And of course Fernanda had not told her the truth. This, again, would be something she did for Gino. Now Beth was in the hands of Gino’s sister who would do whatever Gino wished. No wonder Gino had been so confident, so sure that he held the winning hand.
Madame Xenia was paying no attention to Dorcas, lost in her own tragic performance. Not for a moment had she stepped down from her private stage. The words she spoke came as ringingly as though she played to far more than an audience of one.
“Euripides said it well:
“‘What can the face of Modesty
Or Virtue avail,
When what is unholy has power …’”
Then she broke off as though she had just heard the last words Dorcas had spoken.
“You say the child is with Vanda Petrus?” she demanded.
“Miss Farrar sent them away together. I don’t know where they are. That’s why I’ve come here to you. I thought you might help me.”
Madame Xenia swooped down upon her and grasped her by the shoulder. “But of course. This gives us the answer. And I am not helpless. I know where they are. Miss Farrar said you were not well, that the child must be away from you. She asked me to loan her my house in Lindos for the nurse and the child to stay. I agreed, of course. It was of no importance to me. I did not know about the nurse. But now—now it is important. Come, we must hurry.”
It was like being swept along by a spring torrent rushing down from the mountains. Dorcas did not resist. If the tide carried her toward Beth, that was all that mattered.
The car was brought from its garage and Madame Xenia absented herself, then reappeared wearing a Paris suit, though she still managed to look like a priestess of Delphi. She took Dorcas with her on the crest of the flood, all but pushing her out to the car. When Dorcas got into the back seat, Madame Xenia sat beside her. The door was left open and they waited.
After a few moments Stavros, the chauffeur, appeared, carrying a tenderly nestled bundle in his arms. This he deposited carefully on the seat between Dorcas and his mistress, and without meeting Dorcas’s eye. It was the marble head. Stavros got behind the wheel and the car pulled away from the curb. Dorcas stared at his back, while recognition dawned. Out of uniform and in a jacket with a turned-up collar, a cap visor pulled down over his eyes, he would match perfectly the picture in her mind.
“It was you who had us watched at the hotel,” Dorcas said to the woman beside her. “You who had us followed this morning?”
Madame Xenia denied nothing. She touched the bundle between them lovingly. “Naturally. When you showed me the words Constantine had written, I began to understand. I had known, of course, long before that he was making a copy of the head. It was I who made it possible for him to make a plaster cast of the original. The cast he was able to copy at his leisure at home. I myself bought him the fine pointing machine that enabled him to make all measurements accurately. What he was doing disturbed me, though the reasons he gave me were innocent. After the theft was discovered, I knew what must have happened.”
She stopped and covered her eyes dramatically with both hands. Dorcas said nothing and at length she went on.
“How could I sacrifice all and turn him over to the authorities? It was not possible. And while I struggled with this terrible problem he slipped out of my hands. I knew he would never return. It was better that I think him dead. When you came to work for me and found the words in his papers, I knew what they must mean. But I did not know enough. It was necessary for Stavros to watch you, to follow when you left the hotel in case yo
u went to Philerimos and led the way to the marble head. It was necessary to recover it at all costs.”
“Even at the cost of a life?” Dorcas asked indignantly. “Your chauffeur—I suppose it was he—might have killed Johnny Orion.”
“Not Stavros,” said Madame Xenia with confidence. “He had much practice during the war. He would know how to kill, or how not to kill. The young American—he is not badly hurt?”
“It was no light tap,” Dorcas said. “They won’t know for sure until there has been an X ray.”
Madame Xenia waved her bands. “The X ray will show nothing. I would trust Stavros with my life.”
“Our only purpose,” Dorcas pointed out, “was to return the head to the museum. If we had brought it home, it would have been safely there by now.”
Madame Xenia looked politely disbelieving. “You are Gino’s wife. Why should I trust you? Not even when I think Gino is dead, do I trust his wife. The treasure will be returned, of course. But in my own way. It will be done with honor and will in no way reflect upon the good name of my poor Constantine. First, however, I have a use for it. Now that I know Gino lives, we will go to Lindos and wait for him there. You and the child and the weeping boy.”
“I’m not going to wait for Gino anywhere,” Dorcas said. “As soon as I have Beth, I’ll bring her back to Rhodes and take the first plane home I can manage.”
The knowledge that she might already be too late and that Vanda and Beth might be gone from Lindos was something she must thrust back in her consciousness. She did not need to face that now.
“Tomorrow, perhaps,” Madame Xenia said calmly. “Perhaps tomorrow I will permit you to return. For tonight you are my guest. Gino will come. There will be no change in my plans.”
Dorcas studied the regal profile of the woman beside her. She looked as Greek as the head of Athena upon the owl coin. And she looked as regally immovable as Athena might have been. She wished that she had telephoned Johnny before leaving Rhodes. She should have told him where she was going. That, at least. But it was too late to worry about it now. And there was still nothing he could do. Once she had found Beth, she would manage to get away from Lindos.
She was silent for a time, staring at the passing scene. They were now on the side of the island nearest the Turkish coast and the character of the country was different. They traveled inland roads and there were more open valleys, well cultivated, with farms and olive groves. The mountains were higher and more formidable than on the other coast, but for the most part the road mounted no heights, remaining always near sea level. Stavros drove with native aplomb and seemed to head for each new obstacle as if with a fierce desire to demolish it. Miraculously, they missed other cars, scarcely grazed the donkeys, and merely scattered pedestrians.
Dorcas’s impatience to reach the end of the journey increased with every passing moment. “Why do you think Gino will come to Lindos?” she asked as the silence grew long.
“Miss Farrar saw the head, did she not?” Madame Xenia said. “Maria watched when she uncovered it to show you. The girl could not understand your words, but she saw. If Gino is like a son to this woman, then she will tell him of the head. Already he must know where his child is held.”
Yes, he knew, and he had only to instruct Vanda. As he must have instructed her to make those circles of chalk.
“But why would he come this distance?” Dorcas persisted. “Why shouldn’t he wait for you to return to Rhodes?”
“It is a simple thing,” Madame Xenia said. “Gino Nikkaris and my husband have in partnership a caïque in which they used to make trips out of the harbor at Lindos. It is kept there. The coast of Turkey is an easy run for a caïque with an engine. Gino has friends in Turkey.”
And a buyer for the marble head waiting in Istanbul? Yes, under such circumstances Gino might very well come to Lindos. Which made it all the more imperative for her to find Beth and get her away.
“And if he comes, how will you stop him from taking what he wants?” she asked.
Without warning Madame Xenia burst into tears. “Please—you do not talk to me now. I must mourn for Constantine.”
She mourned audibly for several kilometers more, halting Dorcas’s questions effectively. Then she dried her eyes, quieted her sobs, and sat up to pay attention to the scene outside the car.
“Nothing in all Greece is so beautiful, so perfect as what you will see at Lindos,” she announced. “Soon now we will be there.”
It had been a longer drive than the trips Dorcas had made with Johnny, and her own anxiety had made the miles seem endless.
Now the character of the island had changed again and the coastline was intermittently visible, with crescents of sandy beach carved into by rough outcroppings of rock. This was a wilder coast line than she had seen on the other side of the island.
Around a bend of the road the sea disappeared and they seemed to be turning inland. Madame Xenia looked out the window and an excitement seemed to fill her. For this moment which she owed to Greece, to Rhodes, even the thought of Constantine had been put aside.
“Now you will see,” she said, and addressed Stavros in Greek.
Dorcas did not care whether she saw or not. She yearned toward the moment when Beth would be in her arms again.
Stavros slowed the car. In the distance could be heard the pounding of surf. The road seemed to dive into a narrow corridor of solid rock—a passage that curved and turned steeply downward, plunging suddenly into the open, still high above the town of Lindos.
This sudden ringing up of a curtain struck Dorcas into awareness. In spite of her preoccupation, she was caught and held by the scene that lay spread below her. An expanse of tightly packed white houses tipped like a tilted saucer toward the small harbor they faced. Across the flat rooftops of the town the eye was drawn to the steep hill of the Acropolis. The hill itself was set between two bays. Its ramparts rode the blue air, seeming to grow from solid rock. Here were no soaring pillars, yet the flat-topped rock ruled the scene with the pride of its own impregnable strength. One looked and was challenged—and could not look away.
“It is the oldest acropolis of all,” Madame Xenia said with a ring of pride in her voice. “Men have built there since perhaps twenty-five hundred years before Christ. The fortress of the knights—of which you see only the wall—is comparatively new. You cannot view from here what remains of the temple of Athena Lindia. It is above the sea cliffs on the far side.”
The road dropped again, and the car took a tight curve without concern for what might be coming, and arrived in an open square a level above the housetops of the town. The rock was closer now and the castellated walls that crowned it were clearly visible.
On the square an inn offered tables set in the open for dining, and a stone wall rimmed the place where cars could park. The inevitable tourist bus waited there and nearby a group of trippers bargained for donkeys to take them up to the rock.
Though this was clearly not where Madame Xenia had her house, Stavros stopped the car in the center of the square. Dorcas fumed inwardly at the delay, but Madame Xenia did not hurry. She studied the tourists, looked carefully at the parked cars, and shook her head.
“I know none of these,” she said, and spoke again to her driver.
He turned the car back to a cutoff on the road and they went down among cypress and olive trees to a white house built in straight geometric lines. It was flat of roof and graced by slender columns across an inset of porch that had been painted a warm bright rose.
The streets of the village were too narrow to permit a car to pass, Madame Xenia explained, so she had built her house on the hillside, with its own roadway and an unrestricted view of the impressive scene.
Dorcas did not wait for her hostess. Calling Beth’s name, she got out of the car and ran up the steps to the porch. There was no answer. A plump Greek woman came through the door and stared at her in astonishment. Madame Xenia, mounting the steps more slowly, explained, and the woman stepped aside
to allow Dorcas to enter a long, white-walled room that stretched from front to rear of the house.
A doll of Beth’s lay upon a chair and Dorcas picked it up. Anxiety had mounted to a pitch she could not hide.
“Ask them about Beth,” she urged. “I want to see her right away!”
There was an interchange in Greek between Madame Xenia and the maid.
“The servants do not know where the child is,” Madame Xenia said. “The nurse has taken her for a walk. Do not worry. They will return soon.”
Dorcas held the doll in both her hands as though she might gain some reassurance because Beth had touched it recently. Was it as she feared? Was she already too late? Gino could have telephoned from Rhodes and Vanda might by now have taken Beth wherever he directed. Yet she could not very well rush out and walk the streets of Lindos, seeking at random for her daughter.
Stavros had followed them into the room with the marble head in his hands. Madame Xenia took it from him and set it gently into the corner of a sofa. Then she picked up a small blanket and wrapped it around the head. Her movements were confident and deliberate and Dorcas felt even more uneasy watching her. The woman seemed so sure of her plan to bring Gino here.
“Can you send someone to look for Beth?” she asked. “Vanda can’t have taken her far in this small place.”
Madame Xenia seemed unconcerned by Dorcas’s worry. “Content yourself,” she said. “There is no need to be upset. Come, I will show you your room.”
Dorcas had no wish for a room. She had no intention of staying for the night. But her hostess prevailed, and at least there was cool water to soothe flushed cheeks and hot wrists.
When she returned to the living room, the maid was bringing in a silver tea tray. There was nothing to do but sit stiffly in a chair and try to contain her growing alarm a little longer. Madame Xenia poured tea and passed plates of small sandwiches and sweet cakes. The tea was hot and reviving and the taste of food reminded Dorcas that she’d had no lunch. She ate for strength, and kept her eyes upon the door.
Seven Tears for Apollo Page 23
