When she had finished, she gave Robbie the letter to read through. He said that he thought it a little masterpiece, for Barak could not show it to the police without incriminating himself for attempted murder. Even if he informed them only that he had good reason to believe that the man they wanted was in Crete, they would still, from the way Stephanie had put things, have to look for a needle in a hay-stack.
'All the same,' he added glumly, 'this means that after Monday I won't even be able to see you until you come to tip me off if Barak takes the bait, and I'm going to miss you desperately.'
She smiled at him. 'Things won't be so bad. We'll have to live apart, of course, but that bit was put in only to give Vaclav the impression that there is very little chance of catching up with you unless he comes over to do the job himself. If he does go to the police, which I think very unlikely, the only way they could pick me up is by lying in wait for me to go to the G.P.O. to collect his reply. But there is no charge upon which they can arrest me and, naturally, I should say I hadn't the faintest idea where you had got to. So, until that happens—if it ever does— there is no reason why we shouldn't continue to spend most of our days together, provided we are not seen too much in the town.'
By then it was past ten o'clock, but posting the letter that night would ensure its getting on the morning flight to Athens. Robbie got a stamp from the hall porter and went out to post it at the G.P.O., while Stephanie went upstairs and undressed.
On the Sunday Robbie woke early; but the window curtains were of very flimsy material, so light was already flooding the room. In the other bed, barely a yard from him, Stephanie was still sleeping peacefully, her face turned towards him. Her chestnut curls made a halo for her head against the white background of her pillow, her eyelashes made little fans upon her pink cheeks and her full red lips were slightly parted.
He had kept faith with her only by forcing himself to think of something else every time the fact that they were together in the same bedroom consciously entered his mind. Now, he wondered if he had been a fool to be so scrupulous. He had heard it said that women who extracted from men promises to behave themselves never expected those promises to be kept, and rarely wanted them to be. Stephanie had never again referred to the episode by the pool and, from her attitude during the past week, had shown that she harboured no resentment against him on account of it. That she liked him was beyond all doubt. Indeed, the lengths to which she had gone for his protection showed that, apart from being grateful to him for having saved her life, she had come to regard him with real affection. Yet she had given him no shadow of encouragement to break his word and attempt again to make love to her.
This, he knew, was his last chance. From now on, they would no longer be sleeping in the same room, and even their separate rooms would be in different hotels. For five nights he had exerted all his willpower to exclude the nearness of her presence from his senses; in another hour or two the opportunity would be gone of feeling his arms again round her strong-limbed yet deliciously soft-skinned little body and, so far as he could possibly foresee, it would have gone for ever.
He got out of bed and stood staring down at her, his heart pounding in his chest so hard that it hurt and made him breathless. Then, with sudden resolution, he turned away, choked back a sob and tiptoed swiftly out of the room to the bathroom next door. He had undressed there the previous night; so he shaved, bathed and dressed himself. When, three-quarters of an hour later, he returned to the bedroom to collect his wallet, he found Stephanie awake.
Normally, whenever he was in the room, she kept the bedclothes up to her chin; but this morning she was sitting up against her pillows with her plump bare arms, shoulders and neck freely displayed. As he came in, she said in surprise: M thought you were only having a bath. Why have you dressed so early?'
'It's nearly half-past-eight, so not all that early,' he replied. 'And I thought I'd walk down to the harbour. Barak may ignore your letter. Even if he doesn't, while we are waiting to hear from him I can't just sit about doing nothing. I mean to find out when the Bratislava docked here and, if possible, whereabouts the group she landed is operating. There is at least a chance that I might be able to get in touch with them, as I did with that first party at Patras, and maybe I could pick up something.'
'But this is Sunday,' she protested. 'There will be nobody at the harbour office, anyhow not at this hour.'
'Oh, by nine o'clock there will be plenty of longshoremen about, and probably a few Customs officers off duty. Not many ships call at a small port like this, and a Czechoslovakian ship must be quite an exception. I've no doubt plenty of people who frequent the docks will remember her.'
Stephanie gave a little moue. 'As there is no restaurant downstairs for you to breakfast in, and this being our last morning together, I had thought that we might both have had our breakfast on trays in bed, while we talked over what we mean to do later in the day. But since you have dressed and are going out, it doesn't matter.'
Turning over, she gave her pillow a thump, thrust herself down in the bed, pulled the sheets up round her shoulders and shut her eyes again. Robbie cast an unhappy look at her, as he wondered if that idea of hers had been due to the trust she now placed in him or if, with feminine unpredictability, she had suddenly been seized with an impulse to make an overture to him. But he thought the latter unlikely and her attitude made it plain that, now he had dressed, she certainly did not expect him to undress and get into bed again.
Downstairs, he found that he could get coffee and rolls in the bar. Twenty minutes later, he walked down the depressing main street to the harbour. At the extremity of the mole it had a castle very similar to that of St. Nicholas at Rhodes, and on the inland side of the port there were still to be seen the outlines of large, vaulted berths. These forerunners of the modern submarine pens had housed the Venetian galleys during the four-hundred-and-fifty-year-long occupation of Crete by the Serene Republic—from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century —until the Turks, after a siege lasting twenty-four years, had wrested the island from that great seafaring nation.
There were plenty of people about: women and old men hawking fruit, Turkish delight, roast nuts and hot rings of dough sprinkled with sugar, and the usual collection of loungers to be found in any small port. For an hour Robbie moved about, entering into conversation, on one excuse or another, with more than a score of them; but not one could tell him anything about a Czechoslovakian ship that had berthed there early in the month. A number of them assured him that, had the Bratislava called there, they could not possibly have missed her. Much puzzled, but convinced at last that she could not have put in at Heraklion, Robbie returned to the Astir about half-past-ten.
He found Stephanie dressed and packing. She had already telephoned down to the hall porter and found out about bus services. There was one to Kliania, the principal town at the western end of the island, that left from the main square of the town at twelve o'clock. The bus would get them to Khania about five o'clock, so she had said they would take it.
It would have been easier to have covered their trail by having themselves dropped at a railway station; but there were no railways in Crete, so they would have to manage as best they could at the place where the long-distance buses picked up their passengers. As this was only a few hundred yards up the street, the head porter urged them to walk and would have sent one of his underlings with them to carry their bags. But Robbie insisted on having a taxi. By doing so, they freed themselves of the underling who would have waited to put their bags on the bus, and prevented his telling the hall porter later that they had not, after all, gone to Khania.