Indiana Jones & the Peril at Delphi

read: Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causes.

'Fortune is he who can know the inner meaning of things,' he muttered.

He closed the cover. The book was called, Choir Gaur; The Grand Orrey of the Ancient Druids, Commonly Called Stonehenge. He laughed to himself. He didn't have to look any further for the meaning of his dream. He'd been reading the book before he'd fallen asleep. Why black robes, though, he wondered. He was sure Druids wore white. But who said dreams made sense.

The train started up again. He tapped his fingers on the package. Trains were so monotonous, always stopping. Everyone was saying that airplanes would soon make trains obsolete. It hadn't happened yet, but he was all for it.

He lifted the cover off the candy box, and reached inside for a chocolate. It took a moment before he compre hended what he was seeing and feeling. Something black and hairy was crawling up his fingers, and it wasn't made of chocolate. His jaw dropped; he shouted and shook his hand. Then he gaped at the box.

He saw a few chocolates, but the rest of the compartments were filled with walnut-sized spiders. At the same time, his knees kicked the box into the air. Chocolates and spiders spewed over him. He swept them off his legs, his arms. He leaped to his feet. He stomped on spiders, squashed chocolates, swept his arms and legs and body clean of the crawling creatures.

Finally, he examined his seat, then sat down again, but as he did felt one creeping inside his pants leg, and another on the inside of his collar. He nearly leaped out of his clothes. He shook his leg until the spider fell to the floor, and he squashed it. Then carefully he reached up to his collar and brushed at his neck.

He laughed nervously as a chocolate dropped to the floor. Relieved he sat down, exhaled. But now he felt a tingling on his calf, and pulled up his pant leg. Dozens of tiny, newly hatched spiders were crawling over his calf and behind his knee.

'AW. . . AW. . .' His teeth chattered; he shuddered.

He brushed them off, swatted them with a rolled up newspaper. Then, carefully he inspected his leg to make sure none was left.

He picked up the box, examined it. It hadn't been a matter of spiders invading the chocolate box. Someone had planted them.

'Shannon?' he said aloud. Would he go to all the trouble for a joke that he wouldn't even see carried out? Maybe, but this was no joke.

He looked at the card again. Maybe it w as his father? No, couldn't be. He wouldn't. Besides, it was addressed to Indy Jones, and his father never called him that. But Shannon knew that. If he was playing a joke, why wouldn't he have addressed it to Henry Jones, Jr. as his father's letters had always read when they were college roommates back in Chicago.

He heard a tap on the door. 'Yes?'

The conductor opened it. 'Is everything all right?' A frown creased his forehead. 'I thought I heard a noise.'

'You mind if I switch compartments for the rest of the trip? This one has spiders.'

'Spiders?' The conductor's eyes shifted about the com partment. He twitched his shoulders as if the thought of spiders made him uneasy. Indy understood perfectly. Spi ders usually didn't bother him as much as some things, but almost swallowing one is definitely an exception. He pointed to one.

The conductor backed out of the compartment. 'Right this way, sir.'

Indy gathered up his books, and the conductor carried his luggage. At the last moment, he grabbed the empty box and wrapper, hoping they'd hold some clue to the souce of the so-called gift. When he was settled in his new seat, he asked the conductor how he might find out where the package he'd received had come from.

'That's easy. Just look at the number in the corner of the wrapper.'

Indy flattened it out. 'Twelve.'

'That's it. They always put a number on the packages so the sender can be notified by the telegraph office that the package was delivered if they request the service.'

'So where's 'twelve'?'

The conductor smiled. 'That's easy. It was sent from London.'

Indy glanced over his shoulder as he passed through the stone gate of the university and caught sight of a tall, dark haired man moving behind him. The guy had been follow ing him for the last two mornings. At least, maybe it was just someone who was walking the same route.

He glanced back again, but the man had vanished into a crowd of students. Just his imagination, he told himself. Even though six weeks had passed since his first day of classes, he hadn't been able to put the incident with the spiders behind him. He wanted to think it was all a mistake, that the candy box hadn't been intended for him. But he knew it had. He just didn't know why. He'd been expecting something to happen, some indication of what the box had meant, but there'd been nothing.

Despite his efforts, he'd had no luck tracing the source of the package. Shannon had sworn that he knew nothing about it, and Indy believed him. Whoever had sent it had been careful not to leave a trail.

But he was too busy to spend much time thinking about it. He arrived on campus each day by eight, read over his notes in his office, and taught a two-hour class at nine, and another at one. Although his classes were over at three, his work had just begun. He would go back to his office or to the library, where he would take out his class syllabus, open his books, and begin preparations for the next class.

He yawned as he entered Petrie Hall. Much of the material he was teaching was new to him so he was a student as well as a teacher. At best, he was a week ahead of his students. Some days he was thankful for the sylla bus, which provided him with a general outline of topics to be discussed for the week. But other times, he felt restricted by it. If he taught it again he could already see ways of improving the class. There was no guarantee of that: He wouldn't know for another couple of weeks, when the summer session ended, whether or not he still had a job.

Landing the job so soon after graduating had been a surprise. In fact, he would have been content to remain in Paris, and look for a position at one of the city's universi ties while he continued his part-time job in the archaeology lab at the Sorbonne. But Marcus Brody, an old family friend and a curator of an archaeology museum, had given him the lead for the job. The native Londoner had wired him that one of his contacts at the University of London had informed him about an opening for a summer teaching job in archaeology that could become full-time in the fall.

He hadn't thought he had much of a chance, but he'd applied, mainly to show Brody he appreciated the help. While the position was for an introductory course, its emphasis was on Britain's megalithic monuments, a topic which he'd examined only superficially in his studies. A week later he was asked to come to London for an interview, and a few days later he received a letter telling him that he'd been hired.

Although the interview had gone well, he was convinced that Brody must have more influence in professional circles than he'd imagined.

As he entered the classroom, his eyes fell on the good-looking redhead who sat in the center of the front row. He soon discovered she was an engaging, intelligent woman a few years younger than him, but she also made him uneasy and aware of his limited knowledge of British archaeology. She spoke up often, too often, interrupting him with a question or comment, or answering questions he posed to the class as if she were the only one present. But that wasn't the only reason he was wary of her. Her name was Deirdre Campbell, and she was the daughter of Joanna Campbell, the head of the department and his boss.

'Archaeology is one profession where you can take pleasant walks in the countryside, and still be working,'

Indy began as he stepped up to the podium. 'In fact, we have a name for it. It's called fieldwalking.'

He looked over the rows of bowed heads taking notes. Deirdre, however, sat back in her chair watching him. He explained that fieldwalking involved looking for deviations in the landscape. Slight undulations could indicate the remains of an ancient ditch or the site of a medieval village. Changes in the color of the soil or the density of the vegetation is another indicator. If the boundary of a field shifted for no apparent reason or the shoreline of a body of water followed a peculiarly straight line, it might mean the presence of an ancient wall.

Indy looked up to see a hand raised in front of him. It didn't take her long to get started. 'Yes, Deirdre?'

'What about Stonehenge?'

She spoke with a Scottish lilt, pronouncing it 'Stoon heenge.' Indy looked blankly at her. 'What about