Mayhem in Greece

MAYHEM IN GREECE

BY DENNIS WHEATLEY

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This story could not be set in any country other than Greece, and that the principal character should be related to the British Ambassador there was essential to it. In consequence, I had to invent Sir Finsterhorn Grenn. I wish it to be clearly understood that this character has no resemblance to any British Ambassador to Greece, past or present, or to any other member of Her Majesty's Foreign Service, and is entirely fictitious. So, too, is Mr. Havelka and all the other characters who, as Czech or Greek officials, play a part in this story.

Portrait of a Hero (?)

Had Robbie Grenn been a normal young man it is reasonable to assume that, instead of sitting in the sunshine outside a restaurant overlooking the blue waters of the Aegean, he would have been doing a job in an office or have become an officer in one of the fighting Services. Moreover, he would not have been able to understand a conversation in Czech he overheard there, which led to pain and grief for a number of people and sudden death for several others.

But Robbie was not quite normal. He was what is termed 'a late developer'; although it was the private opinion of his uncle, Sir Finsterhorn Grenn, the British Ambassador in Athens, with whom he had been living for the past year, that 'poor Robbie's brain will never develop sufficiently for him to be of much use in the world'.

The root of the trouble was that, at the age of six, Robbie and his parents had been victims of an air crash. Both his parents had been killed, and the head injuries he had sustained had at first caused his life to be despaired of. Being a strong, healthy child, he had pulled through, but the set-back had been so serious that he had had to learn to talk, and even walk, again.

His uncle felt very strongly that Robbie might still have caught up had it not been for the two women who took charge of him. They were his elderly, utterly devoted nurse, and his mother's sister, Aunt Emily, who had brought him up at her home in Cheltenham. For several years after the accident, Nanny Fisher had not taken a single day off. She had waited on him hand and foot, refusing to allow him to do the simplest things for himself, from fear that the least strain might prove too much for him. Aunt Emily had, from time to time, urged that Robbie was now well enough to look after himself; but she was a much weaker character than Nanny Fisher, so her protests had been over-ruled.

It had been out of the question to send him to kindergarten, and even when he had entered his teens the two women shrank from sending him to school. He was a most lovable little boy, but mentally far behind his age, and his movements were still ill-coordinated; so they could not bear the thought of him becoming the butt of other children. First governesses and then tutors had been engaged to educate him privately but, apart from teaching him to read, write and do simple sums, they found great difficulty in instilling much knowledge into him. This was not altogether because his brain was slow, but because years of coddling by Nanny Fisher had ingrained in him a chronic laziness. He could not be made to concentrate upon his lessons.

On the other hand, he could concentrate perfectly well when it called for no effort on his own part. He loved being read to, particularly fairy stories and, later, romantic legends such as those about the Knights of the Round Table, the great French champion Bayard, and the mythical heroes of ancient Greece. He loved music also—although only the popular kind, for he had never been introduced to any other—but he would sit for hours playing his gramophone, and needed to hear a tune only once to be able to hum it.

It was from the latter gift that there arose the only accomplishment he possessed. One day, when he was buying records, he included among his purchases, owing to the fascination that chivalry had for him, one in French, because it was a selection from the Lays of the Troubadours. No doubt his ear for music explained the speed with which he picked up the phrases. Two days later, to Aunt Emily's astonishment, she came upon him singing the songs from memory, with an impeccable accent.

That night, on her knees beside her bed, she gave fervent thanks to God for having solved a problem that had long worried her in secret. Robbie was an only child, and had inherited from his father a quite considerable sum which, on being handed over by his trustees when he was twenty-one, would provide him with a very adequate income. But Aunt Emily was one of those spinster ladies for whom the spread of Socialist ideas held a constant nagging menace. As a kindly and charitable soul, she was glad to see poorer people benefit from the Welfare State. But it was she and her kind who were paying for it. The nationalisation of the railways had robbed her of an appreciable part of her own income, and such horrible bogies as Local Government Compulsory Purchase Orders, further Rent Restriction Acts and the possibility of a Capital Levy caused her sleepless nights at times.

Such matters for dread might not be just round the corner, but she felt there was good cause to fear that, sooner or later, another Socialist Government might well bring in measures which would deprive her poor, helpless Robbie of most of his money. However, a man who could speak several languages could always make a living. Next day she bought him a set of English-French phrase records, and persuaded him to start learning French. He took to it like a duck to water.

Robbie was then seventeen and he was delighted with his new achievement. More records were bought and he became so intrigued that he agreed to have language tutors. Within a year he could talk French and German fluently. But Aunt Emily was not content with that. She held the optimistic belief that before many years had passed the West and the East would settle their differences and the Iron Curtain be lifted. Then trade with the countries behind it would increase enormously. Few English people had even a smattering of their languages, so a man who could speak them well would be assured of a highly-paid job.

Being by no means a fool, Robbie willingly accepted his aunt's idea. He still stubbornly refused to study mathematics, grammar, geography and other subjects he found dull, but devoted several hours a day to learning languages, and later reading books in them. By the time he was twenty-one, he had mastered Polish, Czech and Hungarian, and was doing well in Spanish and Italian. Moreover, although his general education remained extremely sketchy, he had subconsciously absorbed, from the books he read, a considerable amount of knowledge about European countries, their literature, music and art.

Soon after he came of age Aunt Emily fell ill and, seven months later, to his terrible distress, died of cancer. His only close remaining relative was his father's brother, Sir Finsterhorn Grenn, who had just been appointed British Ambassador to Athens. For some weeks after his aunt's death Robbie had been completely broken up; so, on the assumption that he was still incapable of looking after himself, Sir Finsterhorn had, a shade reluctantly, mooted the idea that Robbie should accompany him and his wife to Greece.

Lady Grenn had also, at first, been far from enthusiastic about this idea, as she feared that to have a young man who was not quite normal as a permanent guest at the Embassy would prove a constant embarrassment. But Robbie had seized so eagerly on the tentative suggestion that they had felt compelled to make it a definite invitation and, after he had spent a few days in their company, Lady Grenn had found her fears groundless.

He was very shy and a little awkward in his movements, appearing even more so on account of his size; for the underdevelopment of his brain seemed to have been compensated for by physical growth. He was well over six feet tall, strong-limbed and enormously broad-shouldered. From under Aunt Emily's protective wing he had seen so little of the world that at first he found it difficult to talk to strangers, but once drawn out he could be interesting and infectiously enthusiastic about his own subjects. He had, too, one asset that more than compensated for his simple mind: he radiated honesty, kindness and willingness to do anything within his limited powers to help others. In consequence, Lady Grenn soon grew very fond of him, and he of her, although she could never, for him, take the place of his beloved Aunt Emily.

His year in Greece had greatly broadened his horizon, as well as adding yet another language to his repertoire. He had also become capable of going about on his own, buying his own clothes and doing many things that he had never attempted to do while in England. Although he had never been abroad before, on his arrival he had not felt like a stranger. So many of his hours had been spent reading and re-reading the Greek myths and legends that he felt that he had returned to a land that he already knew well. Indeed, with his highly romantic nature, sometimes he almost persuaded himself that he had caught a glimpse of one of Zeus's giant limbs among the clouds, or of a satyr darting behind an ancient olive tree in some woodland glade.

Only one thing marred his complete happiness: Sir Finster-horn's insistence that he should take up some form of work. Anxious to please his uncle, he had allowed himself to be initiated into various simple jobs about the Embassy, but in none of them had he given satisfaction. He had never been trained to follow a routine and found keeping set hours intolerable. Moreover, as he had no interest in these tasks, his mind wandered while doing them, so he proved more bother than he was worth. Since coming to Greece, he had taken to alternating his reading about mythical heroes with luridly-covered paper-backs of the gangster-sex variety. That he should quite often lie on a mattress in the garden reading such trash, or simply dreaming the hours away, intensely irritated the hard-working Ambassador, and caused him every few weeks to return to the charge. But Robbie could be neither coaxed nor bullied into sticking to anything for more than a few days and, as he had ample money of his own, there were no means of forcing him to do so.

Yet his uncle's periodic upbraidings greatly distressed him, and at length he had been inspired by an idea which he hoped would put a stop to them. To the astonishment of everyone present at the time, he had announced his intention of writing a book. It was to be about the gods, goddesses and heroes of ancient Greece. Regarding him as quite incapable of producing such a work, his hearers were, at first, completely nonplussed; but they refrained from saying that the subject had already been done to death. Then, rather than hurt his feelings, they hastily began to encourage him to undertake this project.

So there was Robbie, now twenty-three years of age—a big, burly young man with a slight stoop and a rather round face, the most outstanding feature of which was a pair of big brown eyes that looked as if, at any moment, they might light up with a kindly smile—sitting, on a fine morning in mid-March, at a table near the edge of the yacht harbour at Piraeus, the great port of Athens.

This harbour, known as Toyrcolimano, consisted of a small, nearly landlocked bay protected by tall cliffs. Upon one of them an ancient castle had been replaced by the Royal Greek Yacht Club, and down in the harbour a hundred or more yachts, ranging from eighteen-footers to millionaires' sea-going vessels, lay at anchor. Below the cliffs, in a semi-circle, were ranged half a dozen or more restaurants, and across the road each enjoyed a section of the wharf on which to set out tables shaded by colourful umbrellas.

Unlike the great commercial harbour that lay a mile away on the far side of the city, Toyrcolimano looked out on to the Gulf of Athens. To the south-west, through the forest of yacht masts, rose the misty outline of the island of Aegina, and the most easterly promontory of the Peloponnesus. To the south, the Gulf stretched away, so deep a blue that it recalled Homer's phrase, 'the wine dark sea'. In that direction, it was broken only by the grey bulk of an aircraft carrier and half a dozen warships attendant on her.

It was with the intention of going aboard the carrier that Robbie had that morning come by bus from Athens. The previous evening, as the Fleet was in for a few days, the Ambassador had given a cocktail party for its officers. As such official receptions were a regular feature of life at the Embassy, Robbie was no longer nervous at them. In fact, he had by then been trained by Lady Grenn to look out for guests who were standing alone, introduce himself and help to see that they enjoyed themselves. As no one of any importance ever took much notice of him, he had a fellow-feeling for others who looked ill at ease, and took pleasure in making them* feel at home. On this occasion he had done the honours for a young lieutenant named MacLean and, before they parted, MacLean had invited him to lunch the following day in the wardroom of the carrier.

When he accepted, MacLean had simply said: That's fine. Then if you'll be at the jetty at half past twelve, I'll come off in a launch and pick you up; then I'll take you for a run round the Fleet before we go aboard for lunch.'

Robbie had assumed that MacLean meant the jetty at the Yacht Club end of Toyrcolimano Bay, as on previous visits he had seen naval officers landing there. He arrived there only five minutes late, but there was no sign of MacLean. Glad that he had not kept his new friend waiting, he sat down and dreamily watched the traffic plying back and forth from the warships. A few pinnaces put in at the jetty, and twenty minutes passed, but there was still no sign of MacLean. Seeing that it was now nearly one o'clock, he enquired of a petty officer for the lieutenant, to be told to his dismay that only senior officers were privileged to land at the Yacht Club jetty. Junior officers, ratings, liberty boats and stores were all landed or taken off at the main harbour on the far side of the headland.

To have got there and found the right steps in the huge port would have taken at least half an hour and by then, Robbie felt, MacLean would have decided that something had prevented his keeping the appointment, and have returned to the carrier. Very disappointed at having literally 'missed the boat', he made his way to one of the restaurants and ordered lunch for himself.

As is customary in all but the smarter restaurants in Greece, he went straight to the kitchen to see what was to be had. The restaurants at Toyrcolimano specialize in fish and have little else to offer, apart from cheese and fruit as a second course; but he was shown a fine array of mullet, lobster, octopus and fresh sardines. Having selected a large lobster, he went out to a table on the wharf and, to while away the twenty minutes while his lunch was being cooked, ordered an ouzo.

As it was a day in mid-week, and the tourist season had not yet started, few of the tables were occupied; but the old men who earned a precarious living selling roast peanuts or the favourite Greek sweet, sticky nougat, were, as usual, meandering hopefully from table to table. From one of them he bought a bag of peanuts to munch with his drink, then he began casually to scan the people who were already lunching in his vicinity.

At the table just in front of him there were two men. One was in profile to him; he was dark-haired, tallish, wiry-looking, about thirty-five; had lean, sunken cheeks, a hard jaw and a hair-line moustache. The other, who had his back to Robbie, was older, fatter, broad-shouldered and bald, but for a fringe of brown hair round the sides and back of his head.

That bald head rang a vague bell in Robbie's mind, then he realized that the two men were talking in Czech. At that the penny dropped. Robbie had not actually met him, but the man had been pointed out to him at one of the many Embassy cocktail parties as the First Secretary at the Czechoslovak Legation.

No noise of traffic or street vendors calling their wares penetrated to the secluded bay beneath the cliffs. The silence was broken only by the gentle lapping of water against the sides of the yachts as they lay at their moorings, and the occasional clatter of a knife or fork; so the voices of the two men, although low, came quite clearly to Robbie. Had they been speaking Greek, he would probably have ignored them, and have lapsed into one of his frequent, happy day-dreams. But it was over a year now since he had practised his Czech, so he deliberately listened to their conversation, just to see how well he could follow it.

With considerable pleasure, he soon found that he could understand what they were saying without the least difficulty. They were talking about tobacco and oil. Neither was a subject in which he took any interest so, at the time, when it emerged that the Czech Government had just purchased the Greek tobacco crop and, as part of the deal, acquired rights to prospect for oil in Greece, that meant nothing to him.

In due course his lobster arrived. When he was half-way through it, the two men paid their bill and got up to go. As the elder, bald-headed man turned round, seeing him face to face confirmed Robbie's belief that he was the First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Legation. Neither of them gave him more than a bare glance as they passed his table, and as he went on with his lunch his mind turned to matters more interesting to him.

He began, not for the first time, to speculate on why Aphrodite, the Venus of the Greeks, the loveliest of all the goddesses, should have chosen for a husband the lame, ill-featured, soot-begrimed Hephaestus, the blacksmith of the gods, who spent eternity labouring at a forge.

Since his middle teens, Robbie had suffered the pangs of love for a succession of young lovelies, mostly a little older than himself; but he had never even kissed a girl, let alone had an affaire with one. On the few occasions when the opportunity had offered, he had felt terribly tempted to take the hand of his divinity-of-the-time-being and* blurt out his feelings for her; but he had been too shy to tell her quietly that he loved her, and had feared that if once he touched her the overwhelming desire to seize and devour her with kisses would prove too much for him. Tongue-tied, and blushing furiously at his thoughts, he had let those few chances slip, and had sublimated his passion into endless day-dreams in which, as a knight in shining armour, he had rescued these fair and mysterious creatures from dragons, ogres, witches and an infinite variety of more down-to-earth perils.

As he thought about Aphrodite and her ugly, crippled husband, he recalled reading somewhere that the gods and goddesses of the Greek Pantheon were no more than larger-than-life human beings, conjured up by the imagination of a simple people, and that the. acts with which they were credited portrayed the normal tendencies inherent in men and women. If that were so, it argued that sometimes the loveliest girls could fall in love with men whom other people considered lacking in attraction. Conscious as he was that, although everybody seemed to like him, it was largely due to pity because they really regarded him as a good-natured but awkward, useless fool. Robbie thought that perhaps, after all, one day the gods would make up to him for all he lacked by causing some beautiful girl to prefer him to all her other suitors, however amusing, distinguished and sought-after they might be.

Having nothing to do and all day in which to do it, he decided to spend the afternoon wandering about the Piraeus; so when he had finished his lunch he climbed the steep steps up to the corniche road and caught a bus that took him across the peninsula and down through the city. On its far side lay the two great basins, crowded with ships of all kinds and descriptions. For a while he strolled about the wharves, then went to the market, as the activities there had always fascinated him.

The market consisted of a warren of narrow alleys and broader arcades covering such a big area that it was almost a town in itself. As it was now the siesta hour, there was little going on, although most of the shops were still open, their owners dozing behind stalls but ready enough to do business should a potential customer appear.

The goods on sale presented a curious blend of East and West that was typical of modern Greece. Facing the harbour was a line of a dozen shoe shops, and most prominent among all their displays were ladies' shoes of the latest fashion. Hard by them was a group of sweet-makers, offering Turkish delight, almond paste and nougat of a dozen flavours, exactly similar to the sweetmeats being sold in the bazaars of Cairo and Baghdad. There was a score of wireless shops crammed with television sets, and as many others which dealt in hand-embroidered costumes of the richest hues, made after patterns hundreds of years old. On the slabs of the fish shops, in addition to the more usual type of fish, were great piles of sea-urchins, baby squids and, here and there, a fearsome-looking spiky monster of the deep. Prominent in the butchers' shops hung long lines of legs of baby lamb, for the pasture in Greece is so poor that farmers cannot afford to rear many lambs to sheep, so are compelled to slaughter them while still in their infancy. For the visitor from Western Europe they provide a special delight, since they are as tender as chicken and, when cooked with herbs, much more delicious. Many of the shops sold only plastic gadgets for the most modern kitchens, while others carried on the ancient trade of scent distillers, tempting the women with big glass jars of lemon-verbena, gardenia, stephanotis and attar-of-roses.

While Robbie, his broad shoulders a little stooped, wended his way between the long lines of stalls, he was surrounded by a little group of children, who pestered him continually with shrill cries for largesse. Most people would have found them an annoyance and sought to drive them away, but he was used to being followed by such urchins, and many of them were so pretty that he always thought of them as cherubs. It was typical of his good nature that, in his left trouser pocket, he always carried a store of drachma copper coins, to toss from time to time, with a wide-mouthed grin, to these importunate little devils.

Soon after four o'clock he decided to return to Athens, so caught a local bus that would take him back to the other side of the Piraeus. At the terminal there he took one of the bigger buses that plied between the port and the capital. When it had covered a quarter of a mile along the coast road it passed the great oil refinery that had recently been erected as a part of the N.A.T.O. programme to supply the Fleets of the Western Powers.

The sight of it brought back to him the conversation he had overheard at lunch, and raised several questions in his mind. The oil for it was, he had always assumed, brought from the Middle East by the tankers that were frequently lying off it. He had certainly never heard that there were any oil wells in Greece. Yet if oil deposits were lying under Greece why had they never been tapped and exploited?

The multi-millionaire Aristotle Onassis was a Greek. He controlled the greatest tanker fleet in the world, so he should know more about oil than most people. Moreover, he was a patriot.

Recently, regardless whether he made or lost money, he had financed Greece's Olympic Airways, improving their efficiency and comfort to a degree that would enable them to compete with the best airlines in Europe, and this solely with the object of bringing more visitors to Greece so that more money should be spent in his fascinating but impoverished country. Since he had done that, why should he not have used some of his millions to open up for Greece a great natural source of wealth—the oil that the two Czechs had conveyed the impression that they believed to be there for the getting?

The bus rattled on through the ten kilometres of built-up area that separated Athens from the sea. Long ago it had been a broad corridor, enclosed by two long walls. In the fifth century b.c. Sparta had been the great land power in Greece, and Athens' only hope of survival lay in keeping open her communications with her powerful fleet which still held the seas. The great Athenian Themistocles had decreed the building and garrisoning of these thirteen miles of walls and so, by bringing the Piraeus within the fortification of the capital, saved his city.

A few centuries later the conquering Romans had destroyed those walls, so that only a few vestiges of them now remained, and the strip of territory had gradually become a backyard of the city, dcptted with suburban villas, rows of shops, garages, plots of land for sale and modern churches. Whenever the bus passed a church several of the passengers in it crossed themselves, as great numbers of Greeks are still deeply religious. But Robbie hardly noticed them or the uninspiring buildings that lined both sides of the road. His mind was slowly revolving the question of why Mr. Onassis should have neglected to exploit the oil resources of his own country, and he could find no answer to it.

As Robbie entered the Embassy, Euan Wettering was crossing its spacious hall. He was another permanent guest there, and a nephew of Lady Grenn, so he and Robbie were cousins by marriage. He was a few years older than Robbie, and two young men could hardly have differed more in both physique and character. Euan was small and frail-looking, but he made up for his lack of inches by an aggressive, even bumptious, manner. He was extremely clever, having achieved a double First at Cambridge, and he had taken up archaeology as a profession. On learning of Sir Finsterhorn's appointment, he had promptly wangled a post with the British School of Archaeology in Athens, feeling confident that his aunt would invite him to make his home in the Embassy. Having established himself there, he took every advantage of the prestige it gave him and used it freely to entertain his friends, thereby saving his own money. Secretly he envied Robbie both his fine physique and his fortune, but scarcely bothered to hide the fact that he despised him as a half-wit.

'Euan!' Robbie called, as his cousin made for the stairs. 'Just a moment, please.'

'Well; what is it?' Euan replied impatiently.

'Tell me something. Have you ever found any traces of oil during your archaeological digs?'

'Good lord, no! I only wish we had. We're always kept disgracefully short of funds, and to strike a gusher would be a godsend.'

'Do you think there's any chance of doing so?'

'No. There's not the least likelihood of finding oil anywhere in Greece. But I must rush or I'll be late for the Swanson's cocktail party.' Turning away, Euan ran swiftly up the stairs.

Three hours later they met again at dinner. Lady Grenn had recently left for England to be with her elderly mother who was about to undergo a serious operation, and it so happened that this was one of the comparatively rare nights when Sir Finster-horn was neither entertaining or dining out, so the party consisted only of him and the two young men.

The Ambassador was a tall, thin man with a prominent forehead from which the hair had receded, and a grey moustache that drooped at the ends. He was reputed to be extremely shrewd and had a very courteous manner, but he had no hobbies, few intimates and, as far as Robbie knew, had never been known to unbend. His father had been a famous mountaineer, and had met his mother while she was on holiday in Switzerland. His name was an Anglicized version of Finsteraahorn, and was given him in memory of his father's having proposed on the lower slopes of that mountain.

Dinner ran its normal course, with Euan Wettering and the Ambassador talking of events and their acquaintances, while Robbie made a silent third. That was not because either of the others had any intention of being rude to him, and when there were dinner parties at which the conversation was general, he always made a minor contribution to it; but early in his stay, it had been found that his knowledge of the matters usually discussed when they were dining en famille was so sketchy that it was a waste of time to ask his opinion, so he had become quite used to being ignored.

It was not until the dessert had been put on the table that Euan suddenly addressed him.

'What's this bee you've got in your bonnet, Robbie, about there being oil in Greece?'

Robbie looked up with a start. 'Oh—er—well, it isn't my idea exactly, but the Czechs seem to think there is.'

'The Czechs?' repeated Sir Finsterhorn, with a sharp glance from under his shaggy eyebrows.

With a nod, Robbie proceeded to give an account of the conversation he had overheard that day while lunching at Toyrcolimano.

'Oh; come!' exclaimed Euan when he had done. 'You don't expect us to believe that, do you? I bet you made it up.'

'I'm not given to making up stories,' Robbie protested mildly.

'Yes, you are. Lounging about all day as you do, your head gets full of nonsense. All these stories you are digging up about the gods and heroes for your book are only myths, yet you look on them as though they had really happened in some distant past. And now it seems you've started day-dreaming about oil and the Czechs.'

'No, honestly, Euan, I really did hear those chaps talking, just as I've said.'

'Do you mean to tell me that you understand Czech well enough to have taken in all they said?'

Attacked on his one accomplishment, Robbie bridled at last and retorted: 'You may be cleverer than I am in lots of ways, but even your Greek is lousy and-'

Euan opened his mouth to snap at him, but the Ambassador raised a hand, silencing them both, and said:

'We are all aware of your talents as a linguist, Robbie. On that account I find it all the more regrettable that you don't avail yourself of them to secure some suitable employment, instead of idling about and wasting your time trying to write a book. I don't wish to be unkind but, for all of us who know you, there is no escaping the fact that you are quite incapable of producing a work of literature.'

With a frown, Robbie looked down at his plate and muttered: 'I like doing it, sir; and I don't care what anyone says, I'm going to finish it. Anyway, Euan asked me about this business of the oil and the Czechs and what I have told him is the truth. He can believe it or not, as he likes.'

'Then we'll accept your word for that,' Sir Finsterhorn said more mildly, 'and I'd like you to describe those two men to me again.'

When Robbie had complied, the Ambassador nodded. 'I don't know who the tall, dark man would be, but you are right about the other being the Czech First Secretary. His name is Alois Nejedly. Are you quite sure that he said that his Government had purchased the Greek tobacco crop?'

'Quite certain, sir. He referred to it more than once.'

The Ambassador frowned. 'It's strange that I've heard no rumour about that.'

'If it's true, the Greeks must be cock-a-hoop,' put in Euan.

'Why should they be, about selling it to the Czechs rather than to anyone else?' Robbie enquired.

His uncle gave him a pitying look. 'My dear boy, surely you know that a considerable percentage of the Greek peasantry depends almost entirely on tobacco-growing for its living. If their Government cannot dispose of the crop for these people at a fair Pnce, they would starve. To sell has become more difficult year by year, ever since the First World War, when so many people took to smoking Virginia cigarettes and the so-called "Turkish" went out of fashion.'

Euan nodded. 'But why in the world should the Czechs want to buy Macedonian leaf when all the Iron Curtain countries are supplied by Russia from the tobacco plantations in the Crimea?'

'Surely that's obvious.' Robbie looked across at him brightly. 'It must be because the Greeks included in the deal the right to prospect for oil.'

'But there is no oil in Greece,' the Ambassador and Euan shot at him almost simultaneously.

'Then there must be something else behind it,' said Robbie with simple logic.

Sir Finsterhorn gave him a slightly supercilious look. 'Since that is your opinion, perhaps you can suggest what?'

Robbie returned a blank stare. 'I haven't an idea, sir. How could I have?'

'It was you who overheard this conversation. If you are right in your assumption, during this talk they might have dropped some hint.'

'No, sir, I'm afraid I can't recall anything that might help. You see, at the time I took it for granted that they were discussing a straightforward deal. It was only later that I became a bit puzzled. It struck me as queer that if oil were to be had in Greece Mr. Onassis should not have bothered to develop it. And now you both say there isn't any. That being the case, the whole thing looks pretty fishy to me, but I expect in a few days you will have found out what they're up to.'

'How do you propose that I should set about it?'

'Well—er—isn't that what the Secret Service is for?'

Euan gave a sudden, sharp laugh. 'The Secret Service! D'you think they've nothing better to do than to investigate wildly improbable yarns brought in by nit-wits like you?'

'Oh, Euan! Why are you so beastly?' Robbie protested. 'After all, if there is something sinister behind this business, it ought to be investigated.'

Sir Finsterhorn coughed. 'Of course, Robbie; of course. But Euan is right about our Intelligence people being kept pretty busy with one thing and another; and in this matter I cannot feel that there is sufficient justification for calling them in. You must remember that there is no basis of probability for such a deal having taken place, and no supporting evidence of any kind for your story. It may quite well be that since these men were talking in a foreign language you put a completely wrong interpretation on what they said.'

'I did not, Uncle! I did not!' Robbie insisted. 'I didn't miss a word, and I couldn't be more certain about what they said.' Suddenly a bold, utterly revolutionary idea entered his mind. 'I know,' he went on swiftly. 'If you don't want to call the Secret

Service people in, why shouldn't 1 have a cut at it? You are always badgering me to do a job, and this is one I'd like. I understand Czech and can talk it fairly fluently. Let me try my hand at finding out about this business for you.'

The other two stared at him in astonishment. For a moment there was dead silence at the table. Then Euan said with a grin, 'Well, this should beat any comic strip ever printed. Just think of it! Our Robbie, gun in hand, chasing his tail in circles while imagining himself to be Bulldog Drummond.'

Sir Finsterhorn shook his head. 'Really, Robbie, you should try to keep that romantic .imagination of yours within bounds. The very idea of a young man who, at the age of twenty-three, is still incapable of qualifying for his G.C.E. undertaking such a mission is fantastic. You wouldn't even know how to make a start. Forget it, my dear boy, and stick to that little book you are writing. If it proves reasonably readable I'll have a few hundred copies privately printed for you and we can send them out as presents to the children of our friends next Christmas.'

By his offer to get Robbie's book published the Ambassador had intended to soften his previous low rating of his nephew's intelligence. But from beginning to end his words were like whiplashes on the big, awkward young man sitting beside him.

Thrusting back his chair, Robbie stood up and, without a word, almost ran from the room. Outside in the hall he could no longer hold 'back the tears that had started to his big, brown eyes. Weeping as though his heart would break, he lurched from side to side up the stairs, muttering fiercely:

'They think I'm a moron. But I'm not. I'll show them! I'll show them!'

2

The Budding Author

Lady Grenn had arranged for Robbie a pleasant bed-sitting room on the third floor, where he could read and, if so inclined, work without being disturbed. On reaching it, he flung himself on to his bed and, for some ten minutes, wept bitterly.

In spite of all he had been told about the aircraft crash in which he had so narrowly escaped death, and the effect of the injuries inflicted on himself as a result of it, he had never fully accepted the fact that he differed from other people. All his life, until quite recently, he had been hedged about with love and, even during the past year, everyone he had met, with the one exception of Euan, had appeared to like him and had treated him as a normal person.

Yet his uncle had spurned with contempt his offer to try to find out for him what lay at the bottom of the Czech deal with the Greek Government. Still worse, he had, without even seeing it, stigmatized the book upon which Robbie had been working so laboriously for the past two months as being at best fit only for children.

Gradually, the sobs that shook Robbie's big frame grew more infrequent. When they had ceased altogether he dried his eyes, sat up and went over to his desk. From it he took his manuscript. So far he had filled one thick exercise book and nearly half another with his large, round, childish writing. Feeling now an urgent need to reassure himself about the quality of his work, he switched on the desk light and began to re-read the first chapter, which went as follows;

chapter I

ZEUS AND HIS FAMILY

The beginning of things seems to be a bit confused, but I suppose that's hardly to be wondered at as there could have been no one there to set down exactly what did happen.

Anyhow, the first divinities we have any record of are Uranus, the Sky, and his wife Gaea, the Earth. Between them they had an enormous brood of most horrible children. Among them were the six boy and six girl Titans, the three Cyclopes who each had only one eye in the middle of his forehead, and three Monsters each of whom had one hundred arms and fifty heads.

Uranus was not at all happy about the sort of children his wife had produced. In fact, he disliked them so much that he shut them all up in a huge cave. Naturally their mother, Gaea, was pretty upset about that, and she made up her mind to get even with him. She managed to smuggle her youngest Titan son, Cronos, out of the cave, armed him with a sickle and set him on his father. Cronos must have caught his papa napping, as he inflicted a terrible wound on him, I suppose the worst that can be inflicted on a man. History does not relate if it actually killed him. Perhaps nothing could, as he was a god. If so, it must have been jolly hard on him, because afterwards there was no longer any point in his going to bed with a girl, and the gods were tremendously keen on that sort of thing.

All we know is that Uranus' blood gushed out and formed lots more monsters, which showed that he was just as much to blame for the horrid brood Gaea had produced as she was. Anyhow, we hear no more of him, and Cronos became top god in his place.

Cronos married his sister, Rhea, who afterwards became known as the Mother of the Gods, because it was she who gave birth to

the Royal Family of Olympus. But for quite a time, it didn't look as though she were going to get any pleasure out of her children. Cronos proved an even more unpleasant person than his father. I suppose he was afraid that, when his sons grew up, one of them might spoil his fun for life, just as he had his poor papa's. Anyway, every time Rhea gave birth to a baby, he grabbed and swallowed it.

One after the other, he pushed three girl children, Hestia, Demeter and Hera, down his mighty throat, then two boys, Hades and Poseidon. By that time, Rhea was getting pretty fed up, so when she was about to havd her sixth child she consulted her mother, Gaea, who said: 'You go and have your baby in Crete, ducks, and between us we'll pull a fast one over your old man,* or words to that effect. Rhea went off to Crete and had Zeus in a cave, then Gaea took the infant and had him brought up in secret by two nymphs on Mount Ida. Meanwhile, Rhea had hurried back to her hubby and presented him with a big stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. The great mutt swallowed it, believing it to be her baby. In due course Zeus reached manhood and dethroned his horrible father, then he gave him something very nasty to drink, which caused him to sick up the five children he had swallowed.

Having become top god, Zeus was very touchy about his rights, and he never thought twice before chucking a thunderbolt at 'anyone who upset him. But he was a much pleasanter character than either his father or grandfather, and really rather easy-going. When appealed to by the others, his judgments were usually just, although he didn't like being bothered by such matters, because his mind was already occupied with thinking up the quickest way to seduce either a goddess or some lovely mortal maiden. In fact, he doesn't seem to have taken much interest in anything else.

His first act was one of clemency, and it cost him dear. He released his uncles, the Titans, from their prison, but instead of being grateful they ganged up against him and supported their brother, Cronos, in an attempt to regain the throne. There followed a ten-year war and Rhea's children might have got the worst of it if Zeus had not also released from prison the three Cyclopes and the three Monsters, who took his side. Even then it must have been one hell of a battle. Zeus with his brothers, sisters and friends occupied Mount Olympus, in the north-east of Greece, and the Titans Mount Othrys, a hundred miles further south. For weapons they used great rocks and even small mountains, hurling them through the air at one another. But the Monsters, each with a hundred hands, .must have made awfully useful allies in that sort of war; so in the end Zeus won and drove all the Titans down to Tartarus, the lowest region of the Underworld.

After the defeat of the Titans, another rebellion broke out, and this time Olympus was attacked by a race of half-human half-reptile Giants. They had sprung up from the blood that had dripped from Grandpa Uranus when Cronos had mutilated him, so they were creatures of earth but absolutely enormous. Their leader Typhon had huge serpents wriggling out from every part of his body, and all the gods except Zeus were scared stiff at the sight of him. In fact they ran as far as Egypt. But Hercules came to their help and between them they succeeded in killing off these horrid monsters except for Typhon, and him Zeus imprisoned under the red-hot cauldron of a volcano in Sicily named Mount Etna.

After that there was peace on Mount Olympus and the gods were able to settle down to a jolly life of drinking nectar and making love.

Zeus behaved very decently to his brothers. To Hades, who is much better known by his Roman name of Pluto—and so dear reader I shall call him that—he gave the Kingdom of the Underworld. It was called Hades after him, and although in modern times that word has more or less taken on the same meaning as Hell, only a part of it, Tartarus, was the sort of Hell that until quite recently millions of unfortunate Christians were brought up to be terrified of.

The greater part of Hades was a dark gloomy region to which people were carried by Thanatos, as Pluto's henchmen, Death, was called, when they died. Once inside it their bodies became shades, most of whom wandered about there quite pointlessly and rather miserably for a very long time. All the same, it was regarded as very important to get into Hades, and to do so a dead person had to be ferried across an underground river called the Styx by a boatman named Charon. If the body had not been provided with a piece of money to give him, its ghost had to remain this side of the river in a more miserable state than ever.

The reason people were so anxious to get into Hades was because it did mean that, sooner or later, they would be able to return to earth in another body. There was also a sporting chance that they might be allowed to spend their time of waiting in a special part of the Underworld called the Elysian Fields, which was lit up and a sort of glorified Country Club. But only the ghosts of the best people, and those who had put up a jolly good show during their lives, were allowed to potter about in there.

On the other hand, if the gods took a dim view of you, your body might be pitched down the chute to Tartarus, and there suffer the most appalling tortures, some of which I will tell you about later on.

To his other brother Poseidon, the Neptune of the Romans, Zeus gave dominion over the oceans, seas, lakes and rivers. He was also known as the Earth-shaker and, if the number of earthquakes that occur in Greece and the Aegean are anything to go by, he is still very active.

For himself, Zeus kept Heaven and Earth. That is why he was afterwards alw^Tays known as King of Gods and Men. But to each of his sisters he also gave special powers.

The eldest, Hestia, he made goddess of the family hearth. She was a pleasant woman but very stand-offish. In fact it seems that she had a thing against men. She couldn't even be induced to marry, and turned down both Apollo and Poseidon. It is probably because she was such a prude that we don't hear much about her, but later on she came into her own. The Romans worshipped her as Vesta and made all their most beautiful debs into Vestal Virgins to tend the sacred fires in her temple.

Demeter figured much more prominently in people's minds, because she was given the job of looking after agriculture. In those days nearly everyone was dependent on the crops they could raise so naturally there were a great many temples to her, and on her feast days everyone queued up to pay homage to her.

Hera, Zeus's youngest sister, he took as his wife, or I should say principal wife. He made her Queen of Heaven but he had several other wives, among them Demeter, and, in addition, he tricked any number of young women into providing him with a night or two of fun during his frequent visits to his earthly Kingdom.

His first wife was Metis, the personification of Wisdom, but his Grandma, Gaea, put him wise to it that if he had a son by her he would bump him off. So, improving on his father's idea, as soon as he had put her in the family way he swallowed her, baby and all.

Next he married his aunt, Themis, one of the lady Titans. She was a very good sort and did him proud by producing as his children not only Law, Justice and Peace, but also the Seasons and the Fates. About this time, as a side line, he spent nine nights with her sister, Mnemosyne, who gave birth to the nine Muses.

Why he should have made Hera, instead of Themis, Queen of Heaven, history does not relate. I suppose the answer is that Hera, was darned good-looking and that was her price. Anyhow, although he is supposed to have acquired unlimited wisdom by swallowing Metis, he certainly did not show it by making Hera his Queen. She was the patroness of marriage and conjugal fidelity, and as Zeus was one hundred per cent sold on free love she naturally made his life hell.

As he was always giving her cause for jealousy one can't altogether blame her for behaving like a shrew to him, but she was not content with that. She showed the most extraordinary cunning and vindictiveness in bringing misery to his girl friends, who weren't really to blame; and personally I don't think being virtuous oneself justifies anyone in making lots of other people desperately unhappy.

At one time Hera got so mad with Zeus that she conspired against him with Poseidon, Apollo and Athene, and they managed to tie him up. But the Monster Briareus came to his rescue. Themis evidently bore no grudge against Hera for supplanting her. She even acted as Hera's dresser on State occasions and provided her with beauty-aids and wise counsel. In addition she was Mistress of Ceremonies at the Olympian Court and in the role of 'universal aunt' was beloved by all.

Ares, or Mars as the Romans called him, was the only child who owed his birth to both Zeus and Hera, but perhaps that is to be accounted for by the Royal couple's strained relations. As they were always quarrelling, it seems logical that Ares should become the god of War. He was ill-tempered, sullen, brutal, stupid and altogether a most unattractive type. None of his family had any time for him at all and one day his father said to him: 'Of all my children I dislike you most. You take after your Mother and enjoy nothing but bickering. For two pins I'd kick you off the Mount'—or words to that effect. Surprisingly enough, too, he was not even a great champion in combat. He had several cracks at Athene, because she set herself up as a sort of female Minister of Defence for the cities in which she was worshipped; but she always got the better of him, and Hercules and one or two other Heroes gave him quite a beating up.

Two of Zeus's other children who played a very prominent part in the lives of gods and men were the twins, Apollo and Artemis. Their mother, Leto, was the beautiful daughter of a Titan, and when it got around that Zeus had made her preg. Hera became hopping mad. She threatened any country that sheltered Leto with every sort of calamity, so the poor girl traipsed all round the eastern Med. begging to be taken in, until Poseidon took pity on her and provided her with a floating island on which to have her babies. Later he anchored it to the sea-bottom; it was called Delos and became, after Delphi, Apollo's most famous shrine, because he was born there.

Finding the equivalent of a bed in a maternity ward was by no means the end of Leto's troubles. When her time came she could not do her stuff because that bitch Hera had forbidden Ilithyia, the goddess of Childbirth, to leave Olympus. All the other gods and goddesses hurried to Delos with fruit, flowers and sympathy, but their standing around holding hands didn't do any good. For nine days and nights Leto suffered intolerable agony. Then kind auntie Themis came to the rescue and, somehow, got Ilithyia down from Olympus to Delos.

Even then Hera would not let up, and sent Python to destroy Leto and her twins. Fortunately for all concerned Themis had brought some ambrosia and nectar along in her mother's-bag and she fed it to the new-born Apollo. Instantly he leapt from his swaddling clothes a full-grown man and chased the huge serpent to Delphi, where he slew it and set up a temple to himself. It was in connection with this event that the High Priestess who afterwards prophesied there was known as the Pythoness.

Apollo was the best-looking and most popular of all the gods. He was the Lord of Light, and Helios, who drove the chariot of the Sun, was only one of his henchmen. He caused the crops to ripen, protected the flocks and herds, and was the first god to go in for healing. He was the inventor of music and, as patron of the arts, was attended by the nine Muses. In addition he was willing to tell people's fortunes at his Oracles. So you can see what a useful god he was to be on the right side of.

Artemis, known to the Romans as Diana the huntress, was a decidedly hearty type. Like her twin brother she shed light, but Selene, the Moon goddess, acted as stand-in for her. This enabled her to spend most of her time in the woods, where she went about dressed in a kilt and attended by a bevy of hockey-playing types known as the Pleiades. She was a fanatical prude and so strongly disapproved of parlour games that, when the great hunter Orion made a pass at her, she shot him with one of her deadly arrows. An unfortunate chap called Actaeon fared even worse. One hot day when he was out seeing what he could get for the pot, he happened to come upon her just as she had slipped off her kilt to take a dip in a pool. Before he could even take his eyes off her she had turned him into a stag and had him torn to pieces by his own hounds. She had no mercy either on her sport-loving hoydens, if any of them allowed themselves to be picked up and taken behind the bushes. To have bumped them off just because they had had a little fun seems to me very unfair because, however chaste you may be yourself, it's not right to be beastly to other people who feel differently.

Hermes, the Roman Mercury, was the son of Zeus by Maia, the eldest of Artemis's troop of huntresses. I bet the goddess was furious with her papa for having done the dirty on one of her muscular virgins, but evidently she couldn't do anything to prevent it. Zeus made this son the Messenger of the Gods, so he wore winged sandals and wings in his tin hat, just as you often see his picture on postage stamps. As he got around a lot, that naturally led to his becoming the god of Travel. In those days there were no Hellenic cruises on which people went just for pleasure; travel meant going places on business, so Hermes was also the patron of Commerce. That, of course, included cattle, as in ancient times herds largely represented wealth. But he was a bit of a bad hat, and the very day he was born he took to stealing. His first exploit was to drive off fifty heifers from a pedigree herd of which Apollo was in charge, and when accused of the theft he refused to come clean. Luckily for him, while on this raid he had found a tortoise and turned its shell into a lyre. Apollo was so pleased with this new musical instrument that he iorgave his baby brother and even gave him a magic wand to play with. Hermes became a very active glib-tongued young rogue. He was the patron of thieves, athletes and inventors, and himself invented the alphabet. He had a sense of humour, too, and was always playing tricks on his relations. At various times he stole Poseidon's trident, Artemis's arrows and Aphrodite's girdle. But he must have had a lot of charm, for they always forgave him and he became the pet of the family.

Dionysus was Zeus's son by Semele, a daughter of King Cadmus. He was the god of Wine and went about crowned with a wreath of ivy and laurel and with bunches of grapes dangling from his ears. He was frightfully keen on letting people know what a jolly good drink wine is, so he became his own representative and travelled all over the place giving vine roots to anyone he could induce to plant them. He even went as far as India, and brought back with him a team of tigers to draw his chariot. Apart from his sales campaign he didn't do much except preside over revels as a rather cynical host. Like Artemis he had a number of constant companions. The chief of these was Silenus, who had been his tutor. This old fellow followed him round rolling from side to side on the back of a donkey, because he was always tight, but he was incredibly wise and could foretell the future. The rest of Dionysus's set consisted of goat-footed Satyrs and a crowd of lecherous women known as Bacchantes. They all gave the glad hand to anyone who was ready to join in their fun but could turn very nasty to people who refused. Anyone like St Paul would have got very short shrift from them. They danced in a drunken frenzy round spoil-sports like him, then tore them in pieces.

Pallas Athene was another virgin goddess and an extremely powerful one. The gentle reader will recall that Zeus swallowed his first wife Metis when she was already with child. Evidently he could not digest them because one day he got a most frightful headache. Apparently Metis's baby had gestated, or whatever you call it, and gone to his head. To relieve the pain Hephaestus took what seems to me rather a drastic measure; he crowned the old boy with an axe. However, it did the trick. Out of his split skull sprang Pallas Athene fully grown and fully armed. She was very keen on arts and crafts and everything to do with women in the home. But her most important role was as a protectress of cities into which she had introduced order, law and justice, and, having been conceived by Metis, she was much the wisest of the goddesses.

Hera was even more annoyed with Zeus for having a child off his own bat, than by his seducing all sorts of not too unwilling pretty strumpets; so she decided to see what she could do by herself.

Hephaestus was the result of her effort, but she bungled things badly. He was born lame in both legs and such an ugly little bag of bones that in a savage rage she threw the poor mite out of heaven. A Sea Nymph, named Thetis, rescued him and brought him up in her grotto, where he taught himself to make all sorts of lovely and ingenious toys. Then, wishing to get a bit of his own back on his mama, he sent her a beautiful golden throne. Hera was delighted, but is was the original of those Renaissance contraptions on which chaps like the Borgias used to invite their guests to sit before cutting their throats. The moment Hera sat on it the arms flipped across her and there she was, caught like a bird in a snare. All the other Immortals had a go at freeing her but none of them could, so Hephaestus had to be sent for. His price for pressing the secret spring that would let his mama out was that one of the prettiest goddesses should consent to become his wife. That being agreed upon, mother and son decided to let bygones be bygones and he.was made Blacksmith to the gods with the Cyclopes as his assistants and a forge in Mount Etna. It was he who supplied Zeus with thunderbolts and forged arms and armour of all kinds for his family, as well as building palaces for them, will see mod. cons, and lots of gadgets. Very ungratefully, I think, owing to his limp, his ugliness and his begrimed appearance, the others used him as their butt, and whenever he visited Olympus they made dirty cracks at him. Nevertheless, it was Aphrodite, the loveliest goddess of them all, who agreed to become his wife.

Aphrodite was unique among the heavenly brood because she had not even one physical parent—that is unless you can count the bits that Cronos cut off his father Uranus. These were cast into the sea not far from Cyprus, and they acted like a ton of dynamite. A huge water-spout leapt up and for miles around the sea was churned into foam. From this foam Aphrodite sprang to life, already grown up and endowed with breathtaking beauty. She was one of those languorous types, with so much S.A. that no man could resist her, and being the hottest ever of hot-mommas she couldn't keep her hands off the men either. She even took to having parties with that oaf Ares when he winked a bloodshot eye at her, but Hephaestus got to hear of it and played a neat trick on them. One afternoon when he was hard at it in his forge, Ares came lumbering into Aphrodite's boudoir, gave the V sign and said: 'What about it?' She smiled back and replied: 'O.K. by me.' So they both took their clothes off, went over to her couch and lay down on it. But the cunning Hephaestus had fashioned a net so fine that it was invisible, yet so strong that it could not be broken, and fixed it up above his wife's couch. Under the pressure of their combined weight a spring beneath the couch released the net which fell round it, trapping them. After they had had their fun they dozed for a bit, until it was time for Ares to make himself scarce. Then they both nearly threw a fit because they found they were in a cage.

Now it's a funny thing, but the Immortals were really a very modest lot and, except when making love, were ashamed to be seen with their clothes even a little disarranged, let alone wkh no t • vl °^{n at a11,} Hephaestus came home from work, saw that his trick had worked, then brought everyone he could find on Olympus to come and have a look at the guilty couple. At the sight of them both starko and red with shame trapped on the couch, all the other Immortals laughed themselves nearly sick, and afterwards Aphrodite and Ares could hardly hold up their heads for months. Still it didn't cure Aphrodite from being unfaithful, because she was made that way. But for the future she took handsome mortals as her lovers, and any number of lucky chaps spent nights with her that must have left them wondering in the morning what had hit them.

With Zeus in the Chair, the gods and goddesses I have described, except for those who did not dwell on Olympus, were the Twelve who formed the Great Council of the Gods. But there were many other Immortals, and I will mention a few of the better-known ones before closing this chapter.

Prometheus was a cousin of Zeus. It was he who made Man, by modelling a piece of clay into a body, copied from those of the gods, but of course very much smaller, then giving it life. He was so pleased with his toy that to help it support itself on earth he stole for it from Olympus the invaluable gift of Fire. As Fire was considered sacred, when Zeus heard of this sacrilege he blew his top. He had the wretched Prometheus chained to a rock in the Caucasus and sentenced him to have his liver picked out by an eagle every day for thirty thousand years. For the old man to be so vindictive he must have been terribly put out, but perhaps this happened on a day when he had been chasing a pretty nymph and she had changed herself into a hedgehog, or something, just as he got to her. Anyhow, he was so peeved about the whole affair that, to cancel out Prometheus's gift, he had Hephaestus make Woman, and sent her down to bring every sort of trouble to Man.

Pandora was the name given to her, and Zeus's children, feeling that their papa had been an awful meanie, rallied round to soften up her impact. Aphrodite gave her beauty, Apollo taught her how to sing, Hermes instructed her in artfulness and so on. But Zeus still had a card up his sleeve. He gave her a beautiful box and told her not to open it. Of course, the cunning old so-and-so knew jolly well that she would not be able to resist the temptation to look inside, and sure enough she did. Out flew plague, jealousy, deceit and all the vices and ills that afflict mankind.

Atlas was another of Zeus's cousins. He sided with Cronos in the war against Olympus, and as a punishment Zeus condemned him to hold earth and sky apart for ever with his mighty shoulders.

Asclepius was a son of Apollo. To him his father delegated the power of healing. This Doctor god got so good at it that he went too far and began to restore the dead to life. Zeus took that as a frightful piece of cheek, so consigned him to oblivion, but not before he had had time to pass on his knowledge to his daughter

Hygeia, and the many temples to him scattered all over Greece show how jolly grateful everybody was for what he'd done for them.

Orpheus was another of Apollo's sons, and was trained by his father to become a great musician. He had most rotten luck in a love affair, but I'll tell you about that later.

Cupid was Aphrodite's son. He usually took the form of a laughing cherub, and it was his job to make people fall in love. Anyone wounded by one of his arrows did so with the next person he or she set eyes on. He must have had a very busy time of it, but he had a lot of fun arfcusing passions that often led to most comical situations.

Pan was the son of Hermes who, for some strange reason, in order to enjoy Pan's mother, turned himself into a goat. This resulted in Pan being born with the legs of a goat and little horns sticking out of his curly head. Although this was obviously Hermes's fault, he was so ashamed of his son that the boy was never allowed to join in the jollifications up on Olympus, but was left to fend for himself in the woods. Compared to most of the other members of the Royal Family, Pan was at first very small fry, but later he made a name for himself that was to continue to ring a bell many centuries after those of most of his relations had come to mean nothing to the majority of people. As half-goat, half-man, he could give even his old grandfather points in chasing likely lasses round the bushes, and as he attached himself to Dionysus there was nothing anyone could tell him about drunken orgies. It was no doubt because of that, and the fact that he became a great Master of Magic, which accounts for the Christians later regarding him as the embodiment of Evil, or even the Devil in person.

Of course there were minor gods and goddesses of all sorts, and other Immortals like the Furies and the Fates who at times made things very uncomfortable for people. We shall come across most of them when I tell you about the extraordinary adventures of the Heroes, as I hope to do later on. Anyhow, gentle reader, what I have written so far should give you a good background to the Royal Family that between them ran ancient Greece.

* * * *

As Robbie laid his exercise book down, his brown eyes shone, no longer with tears but with happiness. Reading that first chapter had restored his belief in himself. As there were not many long words in it, he thought it was probably not very high-class English; but he felt that he had made up for that quite a bit by using some very impressive Americanisms picked up from the gangster paper-backs he had been reading in recent months. In any case, the pictures of the characters he wished to describe B 29 were perfectly clear to him. and, being so fascinated by them himself, he felt confident that other people would find what he had written interesting. Therefore, it was going to be a good book; and as neither his uncle nor Euan had yet read any of it, they had no right to say otherwise.

But it would be many weeks, at least, before he could finish it and enjoy the triumph of showing it to them. In the meantime he must continue to &nart under their disparagement of his capabilities, unless—yes, unless he could prove them wrong.

Already, as he had run sobbing upstairs, his distress had engendered in him a desperately wild idea. But now it did not seem so very wild. If he was capable of writing a readable book, why should he not also become a successful secret agent? If he could find out what lay behind the Czechs' deal with the Greeks, what a triumph that would be. His time was his own, he had ample money and he could talk both languages. What investigator could ask for more—except the brains to use them? That was the crux, and if he succeeded he would have proved himself once and for all. It was a challenge, like those he had so often read about. He made up his mind to accept it.

3

Unorthodox Behaviour

When Robbie awoke next morning, the resolution he had made the previous night came swiftly into his mind. Having pondered it for a while, he began to realize that it was one thing to decide to ferret out the secrets of a foreign Power and quite another for anyone like himself to think of a way to set about it. Yet, uncultivated as his brain was in many respects, its very simplicity led to its working logically.

He would have been prepared to bet a pound to a penny that he had interpreted correctly the conversation between the two Czechs, but there was always the outside chance that he had misunderstood a part of it. Therefore, the first thing he must do was to confirm that the Czechs had actually bought the Greek tobacco crop. If they had, arrangements for its delivery must soon cause the news to become public, so it could not be regarded by the Greek Government as a very closely kept secret. Obviously then, to start off with, he could put the question to somebody who was in a position to know.

While he breakfasted downstairs, almost in silence, with Sir Finsterhorn and Euan Wettering, he got quite a lot of amusement from imagining the expressions their faces would take on if he announced how he intended to occupy himself that morning; but he knew from experience that neither of them would ask him his plans for the day and, if either of them did, he could, for once reply evasively.

Breakfast over, he went to the office of his uncle's secretary and looked up the name of the Greek Minister for Commerce. It was Mr. D. Nassopoulos. Noting the address of the Ministry, Robbie collected his hat and sallied forth on the first stage of his secret mission.

At the Ministry he asked to, see the Minister. As he had no appointment, he would have been turned away but for a gentle persistence that was part of his character. That got him as far as the Minister's secretary, a severe-looking woman with crisp, iron-grey hair. With her, the name of Grenn rang a bell, and she asked if he was related to the British Ambassador. He told her that he was Sir Finsterhorn's nephew, but refused to give her any indication of the business upon which he had come. She said that her Chief had a very busy morning; but another of Robbie's long suits was patience, and he replied that he was quite willing to wait there until the afternoon. The result of his evident determination to remain until he obtained an interview with the Minister was that, twenty minutes later, he was shown in to him.

Mr. Nassopoulos proved to be a middle-aged man with slightly wavy black hair parted in the centre, a broad forehead and a narrow jaw. He was wearing glasses with thick, tortoise-shell rims, a black jacket and pin-striped trousers that could be seen through the kneehole of his big desk As Robbie entered the room, the Minister politely stood up, flashed two rows of white teeth at him, extended his hand, and said:

'Mr. Grenn, a pleasure to see you. 1 hope His Excellency, your uncle, is well. Please to sit down and tell me to what I am owing the pleasure of this visit.'

Robbie took the proffered hand, sat down, made his acknowledgement in Greek, and continued in that language. T came, sir, to enquire into the possibility of buying the Greek tobacco crop.'

A momentary flicker in the Minister's eyes showed his surprise. After a very brief silence to collect his thoughts, he replied in Greek, 'This is the first I have heard that the British Government might be interested. I wish very much that we had been informed of this before, because my Government would have been very happy to enter into negotiations with yours on this fatter. But, unfortunately, it is too late. This year's crop has already been sold to another country.'

Robbie gave him an amiable nod, 'Yes, I thought it had; but I Wanted to make certain, I gather that most years you have some difficulty in getting a decent price for it, so please accept my congratulations on having unloaded it on the Czechs. As they ^can get plenty of tobacco from Russia quite cheaply, they must have been very keen to get this concession you have granted them to prospect here for oil.'

Nassopoulos's eyes opened wide and his voice held a distinct trace of annoyance, as he said: 'Mr. Grenn. We are all aware that, in diplomatic circles, transactions have a way of leaking out; but so far no official announcement has been made about this deal. Therefore, you surely must be aware that it is against protocol for you to pay me an official visit for the purpose of discussing it.'

'I suppose it is, sir,' Robbie replied, not quite knowing what the Minister meant by 'protocol'. Then he went on innocently: 'This isn't exactly an official visit. I came to see you because I understand that there is no oil in Greece, and I want to find out what is behind the deal.'

The Minister drew in a sharp breath and his dark eyebrows came down in a heavy frown. He was both angry and puzzled. Could it be that this big, round-faced young man was making fun of him? Surely not. Even if this were an unofficial visit, the British Ambassador would come down like a ton of bricks on his nephew if he were informed that he had made a mockery of a member of the Greek Government. Yet this bland enquiry into a negotiation still officially secret was a flagrant impertinence. All the same, perhaps it would be wiser not to regard it openly in that light. The British were still a power to be reckoned with. At times, they could be extremely arrogant, and it did not pay to cross them when they were in that mood. If he gave the young man a piece of his mind and threw him out his uncle might call him over the coals in private, but make an issue of the matter and demand an apology. That could do him, Nassopoulos, no good whether they got their apology or not. Better then to pretend that the young man's question was not a matter for justifiable resentment. After a moment he smiled and said:

'Mr. Grenn, please let me assure you, and kindly assure His Excellency your uncle, that there is no ulterior motive behind this transaction. We wish to sell our tobacco crop at a fair price and the Czechs are prepared to pay it. Not because they particularly want our tobacco, but because the Iron Curtain countries now wish to develop better relations with Greece. That is the simple truth. As for our concession granting them rights to prospect for oil that, I imagine, is to serve as one of those myths with which many governments find it necessary to entertain their peoples in these days. We are convinced that there is no oil here, but the Czechs appear to believe there is; and, no doubt, the concession will be announced in their House of Representatives to justify their having paid a somewhat higher price for our tobacco than they would have had to pay for tobacco from the Crimea.'

Robbie's broad smile lit up his round face. 'I see, sir. Yes, that explains everything. Well, thanks a lot for having seen me and told me this.' He slowly came to his feet and added: 'I know you're busy, so I won't bother you further.'

Nassopoulos also stood up. His white teeth flashed and he extended his hand. 'It is a pleasure to have met you, Mr. Grenn. Please convey my compliments to His Excellency.'

Five minutes later Robbie was wending his way between the stalls of the flower sellers, as he crossed Klafthmonos Square, the centre of Athens' best shopping district. It was too early in the year for the great heat that affects the Greek capital during the summer months, but was a pleasant sunny day, warm enough for few people to be wearing overcoats. Being in no hurry, as he entered the upper part of Stadium Street, he paused to look in the windows of Athens' Fortnum and Mason. Among the de-luxe groceries displayed there reposed a large, toy pig as an advertisement for a brand of bacon. It was sitting up on its haunches and a mechanical device made its head turn slowly from side to side while its blue, china eyes rolled in their sockets, giving it an expression of gluttonous delight. Robbie adored it and often stood exchanging happy grins with it for several minutes.

Tearing himself away, he crossed the road and entered a big patisserie. The cake and sweet shops of Athens are perhaps rivalled only by those in Paris. Their windows are filled with every form of confection, from elaborate iced creations to an amazing variety of pastries and boxes of chocolates of all shapes and sizes. There are, too, at least six such shops to the square mile for every one in the West End of London. Chocolates made of every kind of nut and toffee, or filled with liqueurs, nougat and sugared almonds are their speciality, but they have much less choice to offer in soft chocolates and sweets made with cream, because of the permanent shortage of butter and fats in Greece.

Robbie was, therefore, surprised to see that a special display had been made of some boxes of large, vari-coloured fondants. He bought half a kilo and remarked on their being a new line, upon which the girl behind the counter told him that they had only just come in and were from Czechoslovakia.

That sent his mind back to his recent interview. With a gullibility that was a natural corollary to his own transparent honesty, he had accepted Mr. Nassopoulos* statement at its face value. By the time he had descended in the lift from the Minister's office, he had been laughing at himself for ever having imagined that there was something sinister behind the tobacco crop deal, j*ud his own absurd idea that he might bring off a great coup if he took on the role of a secret agent. Now, his chance discovery that the Greeks were importing sweets from Czechoslovakia made it look as if the two countries had entered into a much Wider bargain; in fact, it must be so, because Greece was much ^to.° Poor a country to import anything without a quid pro quo, With the exception of essentials for her industries.

On the face of it, such a pact held no sinister meaning for the Western Powers, which made it seem odd to Robbie that Nassopoulos had not told him frankly about it. Of course, when making their offer for the tobacco crop, the Czechs, knowing there was no oil to be had in Greece, might quite well have insisted on the Greeks agreeing, in addition to that concession, to take some of their exports in part payment for the crop. Yet, if they were getting fair value in this way, why should they also have wanted the concession to prospect for oil?

Nassopoulos had given as their reason a wish to have something to show that would justify their paying a bigger price than was necessary for several million pounds' worth of tobacco. The Greeks had probably thought that strange, but they would have been the last people to raise any question about it, because it cost them nothing to give the concession, and their one anxiety must have been to dispose of their crop on satisfactory terms. Yet it was strange.

The Governments of democracies like Britain had to mind their ps and qs. If they used their people's money to buy in a bad market without some adequate justification, the papers created a stink about it, and several real bungles of that kind might lead to the Party in power being thrown out at the next election. But in the Iron Curtain countries matters were very different. The only thing their Governments had to watch out for was to retain the approval of 'Big Brother' in Moscow. The people had no say-whatever in Communist-run countries. The Party bosses ran the show as they saw fit, and did not have to provide excuses for anything they chose to do with their nation's money.

All the way back, up the broad Vasilissis Sofias to Loukianou Street, on the corner of which stood the British Embassy, Robbie pondered this problem, but could find no answer to it.

At lunch there were half a dozen people, so he had to make polite conversation and postpone further thought about his problem until the guests had gone. Afterwards he went up to his room and tried to work at his book, but the right words would not come. That had happened on previous occasions and he had a sovereign remedy for it—an hour spent up on the Acropolis among the ancient temples never failed to bring him fresh inspiration.

He had no car of his own, neither had he ever attempted to drive one, for he had been told in his late teens that, owing to his slow responses, he would prove a danger to himself and others. Having walked down the broad boulevard, he picked up a taxi opposite the Royal Palace and, within ten minutes, was approaching the scene of Greece's greatest glory.

Like a big, oval island, the Acropolis stood out above the roofs of the city. Except for the steep slope at its south-west point that gave access to the almost level plateau on which stood its temples, its five-hundred-foot-high cliffs rose sheer on all sides. On national holidays and during the tourist season, it was floodlit at night by dozens of batteries, each consisting of a score of searchlights that played not only on its temples but also on its cliffs. Seen like that, the natural grandeur of its site crowned by the highest art of man, made it appear a city of palaces high up in the night sky, and a worthy dwelling for the gods. But even by day, seen from any angle, it was tremendously impressive.

Robbie's taxi took him along below its southern face, into which, daring Greco-Roman times, had been built the Theatre of Dionysus, the long portico of Eumenes and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. Turning north, it carried him half-way up the slope that had been made into a delightful park. For the remainder of the steep ascent he had to walk, but soon he had reached the Sacred Way and was climbing the broken stones that formed the staircase to the mighty Propylaea.

At the top of the giant staircase he paused to look back. On his left he now had the Temple of Victory, on his right the Column of Agrippa, above which had once towered the hundred-foot-high statue of Pallas Athene. Before him was spread the panorama of what had been the heart of the early city-state— the Areopagus, or Hill of Mars. There the Great Council had sat, to try such famous men as Socrates. Beyond it lay the stony hillside, with its gaping cells, in one of which Socrates had been imprisoned, and the Pnyx, a long slab of rock from which world-renowned orators had declaimed to assemblies of the people before they voted on the laws that were to govern the first democracy.

These nearer objects caught the eye against the backdrop of a splendid panorama. To the north-west the summits of the Aigaleos range were outlined against an azure sky, to the west lay Piraeus and the Isle of Salamis, to the south-west there sparkled the blue waters of the Gulf of Athens, and to the west rose the mountain of Hymettus, famous for its honey.

Turning, Robbie made his way toward the centre of the plateau. To his right front now lay the Parthenon. For over two thousand one hundred years it had retained, except for its looted interior, its pristine glory; but in 1687, when the vandal Turks were besieged on the Acropolis, they had used it as a powder magazine. A shell had blown up the magazine, shattering the greater part of the wonderful reliefs depicting the procession of the Panathenaea festival; but even so defaced, its rows of marble columns and perfect proportions made it a thing to marvel at.

Robbie knew every metope and corner of it, but he was not going there today. Instead, he inclined half left towards the trechtheum, the second largest temple on the Acropolis, that had supporting its west portico the row of tall marble female figures called Caryatides. Instead of advancing so far, he stopped short front of the south face of the temple. Some yards in front of ^ a solitary olive tree, the only tree of any kind on the Acropolis, was growing out of a square, stone trough.

It is related that, on the founding of Athens, Poseidon and Athene both wished to become the patron of the city. A Council of the gods was called, and Zeus decreed that the honour should go to whichever of the rivals produced a gift which would prove the more useful to men. The Sea King struck the earth with his trident and out sprang a horse. Athene produced an olive tree, and this symbol of peace and plenty was adjudged the more valuable gift; so she became the protectress of Athens.

As olive trees live for many hundreds of years, it is just possible that the quite slender tree now growing on the Acropolis may be an offshoot from the root of the first tree planted there in Athene's honour. However unlikely that may be, Robbie had never speculated on the question. It was enough for him that the tree was the symbol of the great goddess.

Although it was still early in the season, quite a number of tourists were rambling among the fallen monoliths scattered over the great plateau, and three conducted tours, including one of school-children, were making the round of the temples. For some minutes, Robbie had to wait until no one was near enough to notice what he was doing. Then he quickly pulled a small medicine bottle from his trouser pocket. Before leaving the Embassy, he had paid a visit to the dining room and filled it with his uncle's port. Now he quickly poured the contents of the bottle, as a libation to the goddess, at the root of her tree.

Shutting his eyes, he remained standing there, waiting for counsel. But not, as had been the case on previous occasions, for inspiration as to how to proceed with his book. It was with that intent that he had started out, but he had since decided that he would not be able to go on with his book until he had freed his mind from the thoughts that had been agitating it for the past twenty-four hours.

Silently now, he prayed to the goddess either to assure him that he would be wasting his time in pursuing further the matter of the Greco-Czech agreement, or that it would be worth his while to do so.

A gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the olive tree, but to Robbie, through these rustlings, a quiet voice spoke.

'Strange mortal, who in these times has been granted the wisdom to understand that the gods can never die, and still have power to aid those who call upon them at their shrines. For the sake of my country and for yours, you must take up this quest, and whate'er befall, pursue it to the bitter end.'

4

'When First we Practice to Deceive'

The gentle rustling of the leaves was suddenly drowned by a strident voice. Robbie felt sure that the goddess had been going on to whisper counsel to him, but he caught no further word. A conducted tour composed of Germans was approaching, and their fat guide was reeling off facts and figures for them in a monotonous bellow, as they advanced from round the south-east side of the Erechtheum.

Robbie was furious at the interruption, but there was nothing he could do about it; so, to get away from the crop-headed Herren and well-upholstered Frauen, who were now surrounding him like an incoming tide, he broke through the group and clambered up the steep steps in front of the main entrance to the temple.

Standing between the twenty-foot-high Ionic columns of the portico, he could look down over the nearby north wall of the Acropolis. Far below him lay the principal ruins of the ancient city: the great open area of the Agora where, in the narrow streets between a dozen temples, the Athenians had held their markets; the Theseum; the Library of Hadrian and the Tower of the Winds. But he looked down on them with unseeing eyes. For the moment, he could think of only one thing: he was now irrevocably committed.

As soon as the group of Germans moved on, he hastened back to the Sacred Olive Tree. Again he stood before it, with closed eyes, and prayed for guidance. Again the leaves rustled in the gentle breeze, but this time their rustling formed no pattern of whispered words. In vain he strained his ears, and reluctantly accepted that the goddess could no longer be there only when he heard footsteps close behind him and a voice with an American accent saying:

'Could you tell us, please, what this little tree would be doing here?'

It was a tall young man with three cameras slung about him, and a very pretty girl leaning on his arm. Robbie had little doubt that they were honeymooners, and he gladly told them about Athene's tree. He knew the Acropolis as well as any professional guide, and could talk much more interestingly about its ruins. At other time, he would have offered to take them round, but he was still too overcome by the thought that one of the greatest of the Immortals had actually spoken to him to give his mind to anything else. Politely excusing himself, he hurried towards the north-east extremity of the plateau.

There, on the highest point of its slope, a large circular platform had been constructed, with a waist-high wall round it, from which the cliff dropped sheer. Above it, from a flagstaff, floated the flag of Greece, and this spot was known as the Belvedere for it gave the finest view of all from the Acropolis. To the north, the countless houses of the modern city stretched into the misty distance in the valley between Mount Poilikon and Mount Pendelikon. Nearer, one could pick out the principal buildings of the fashionable quarter; the Royal Palace facing on to Constitution Square; Venizelou Street with its fine university buildings; and the main boulevard, Stadium Street, running parallel to it. Beyond them, nearly two miles away, but still within the city, Mount Lycabettus, shaped like a sugar-loaf and nearly twice the height of the Acropolis, towered up, the sun glinting on the roofs of the monastery that crowned its summit. To the west lay the National Park, and across the river the modern Stadium, both, in the extraordinarily clear atmosphere that is peculiar to Greece, looking so close that one could have thrown stones into them.

The Belvedere was a favourite haunt of Robbie's to laze and dream, but now he was thinking hard of a way in which to set about the mission that the goddess had imposed upon him. He decided that it was most unlikely that he would get any more out of Nassopoulos, even if the Minister were aware, which seemed doubtful, of the Czech's secret intentions. That left only the Czechs themselves as a source of information.

To pay a visit to the Czech Legation and ask someone there would obviously be a waste of time. That being so, the only course that remained seemed to be to think of some way to worm himself into their confidence.

It struck him then that perhaps, after all, the Czechs might have real grounds for believing that they could strike oil in Greece. Science, the world over, had advanced by leaps and bounds during the past ten years. Russia often used her satellites as cover for her own activities, and no one could deny that the Russian scientists, as far as anyone in the world, had recently penetrated the secrets of Nature. Perhaps some of them had devised an entirely new method of detecting various types of geological formation and, all unsuspected by the Greeks, oil did lie below their rugged mountains.

Spurred to sudden activity by this idea, Robbie left the Belvedere, walked as swiftly as he could across the uneven, pitted stones that formed the surface of the Acropolis, hurried down the slope and took one of the taxis that were always waiting in the car park for a fare. Jumping in, he told the driver to take him back into the city and stop at the nearest telephone kiosk.

From the kiosk he rang up the office of the United Kingdom

Petroleum Company, and asked for Mr. Luke Beecham, the Company's chief representative in Greece. Beecham's work often entailed meetings with the Commercial Attache, and he frequently paid visits to the Embassy, both on business and as a guest. He was a bachelor in his early forties, so was much older than Robbie, but he was a charming and kindly man and had often gone out of his way to be pleasant to the Ambassador's shy and somewhat ungainly nephew, to whom most people of any standing were inclined to speak only politely, then ignore. He had, too, several times asked Robbie to small parties at his fiat, and had taken pains to draw*him out.

In consequence, Robbie felt that Luke Beecham was a man whom he could trust, and that in the present matter it was a lucky break for him that the only man he really looked on as a friend should happen to be an expert on oil. In fact, he thought it might even be an indication that Athene meant to help him in his quest.

Beecham was still in his office and, when he came on the line, Robbie asked if he was free that evening. The reply was what he had feared, as Luke was an extremely popular person; he was going for cocktails to the Greek Chief of Staff and afterward giving dinner to an American couple at the Ath£n£e Palace. However, his dinner date was not till nine o'clock and, at Robbie's pressing, he agreed to leave the cocktail party early so as to get to the hotel at half past eight.

Well before the time of his appointment, Robbie turned out of Stadium Street and walked through the big, glass swing-doors of Athens' most modern de-luxe hotel. Crossing the lofty hall, he went into the bar, sat down at a table and ordered himself a fresh orange juice with soda and laced with brandy. Ten minutes later, Luke, tall, fair, slim and unmistakably English in a Savile Row suit, joined him there.

When he had told the waiter to bring Luke a double dry Martini, Robbie said in a low voice: The matter I want to talk to you about is frightfully confidential, but 1 know I can trust you, and-'

'One minute,' Luke interrupted, giving a quick look round the bar. It was narrow and not very long, and there were only four other people in it; so if any of them had a mind to listen, they could easily have overheard what was being said at Robbie's table.

Luke beckoned the waiter and told him to take their drinks up to the balcony, then he said: 'We'll go upstairs. There will be fewer people there.'

On the broad balcony that overlooked the hall, two middle-aged ladies were consuming Turkish coffee and a large dish of cream cakes. No other table was occupied, and when the waiter bad set their drinks down on one, Luke turned to Robbie with a smile and said:

'Now, young man, go ahead. Let's hear what the trouble is that you've got yourself into.'

Robbie gave him a surprised glance. 'Oh, I'm in no trouble. I wanted to talk to you about oil. There isn't any in Greece, is there?'

'No; at least, not in quantities that it would pay to exploit commercially. For the sake of our poor old hard-up Greek friends I only wish there were.'

'That's what everyone says. But how about it being there all the time, only up to now no one's hit on the right way of discovering it?'

Luke frowned. 'I don't get you, Robbie. It simply is not there

to discover.'

'You, and most other people, think so. I quite understand that. But you might be wrong. I mean, the Russian boffins are a pretty brainy lot. Look at the way they've photographed the back of the moon, and sent people up in rockets. Perhaps with radar, or something of that sort, they've found a way to look right down deep into the earth and get to know through different coloured rays about what sort of things are miles below its surface.'

'Well, anything is possible these days,' Luke admitted, 'and perhaps in a few years' time something of the kind may be invented. But I'd bet my last hundred drachmas that no country has anything like that yet. You see, new scientific processes hardly ever become working propositions within a short time of their first being thought up. Years of research and experiment have to go into them before they become operational. And in all the most advanced countries there are back-room boys working on more or less parallel lines, so one way and another all of them have a pretty shrewd irea about the things their rivals are trying to achieve. It follows that, if the Russians had perfected a device for doing as you suggested, it's as good as certain that I should have heard something about it. Even if they had, there are any number of places in which they could try it out with better prospects of making a strike than in Greece. No, Robbie, it's not on. But tell me, what's put this extraordinary idea into your head?'

'A conversation I overheard yesterday, while I was lunching out at Toyrcolimano,' Robbie replied; then he told Luke the whole story up to his interview with Mr. Nassopoulos that morning.

Luke gave him a surprised grin. 'By jove, you have got a nerve. Talk about rushing in where angels fear to tread. I wonder he didn't have you thrown downstairs.'

'Why should he?' Robbie asked defensively. 'I only went to his office and asked him a civil question. Anyhow, he didn't.'

'No, and the reason why he didn't is because you are the nephew of the British Ambassador. You had better not let your uncle know what you've been up to, though. He would be hopping mad if he heard how you had taken the bull by the horns like this, or indeed if he knew you had taken any action at all in what is a strictly diplomatic affair.'

'Do you really think so? I've told you how he turned down my suggestion that I should try to find out what lies behind this business, but I took it that that was because he didn't consider me up to the job.'

On that Luke tactfully refrained from comment. Catching the eye of a waiter who was coming down the broad stairs from the big lounge on the first floor, he told the man to bring them another round of drinks. Then, after a moment's thought, he said:

'Anyway, I believe you're right that there is something fishy about this deal. From the Greeks' point of view, if the Czechs are mugs enough to ask for something that has no apparent value, they would be mugs themselves not to throw it into the package and accept the Czechs' explanation for wanting it, without enquiring further into the matter. But the Czechs' explanation does not hold water. None of these Communist Governments gives a damn for what the masses think of their administration. Most of the time, they don't even tell their people what they are up to. And if they did it wouldn't influence the elections, because they are a farce anyway.'

Robbie nodded eagerly, 'That's just how I see it. And whatever game the Czechs are playing we can be certain that it is not with the object of doing the Western Powers any good; so I mean to try and find out what it is.'

'I see.' Luke took a pull at his second dry Martini which the waiter had just set down in front of him, then shot a swift, sideways glance at his young companion, and asked: 'Are you going to tell Sir Finsterhorn about this project of yours?'

'No! Oh no!' Robbie exclaimed. 'This is my show, and until I've pulled it off I don't want him to know anything about it. You won't tell on me, Luke, will you?'

'Of course not, Robbie. I wouldn't dream of it. But you're taking on a pretty tough proposition. How do you intend to set about it?'

'Well; as I see it, the Czechs themselves are the only people who hold the answer to the riddle. I thought that somehow I might get into the Czech Legation.'

'What!' Luke sat up with a jerk. 'Play at being Gregory Sallust and burgle the place? God forbid! Any papers referring to this thing are certain to be in a safe, and you are no cracksman. Besides, if you were caught you would land yourself in most frightful trouble. No, Robbie; no.'

Robbie smiled. 'No, I'm afraid Fm not up to that sort of thing. What I thought was that I might get a job there.'

'A job! My dear chap, you wouldn't stand an earthly. Why in the world should they take you on?'

T don't see why they shouldn't. Embassies and Legations often employ staff who are not their own nationals.'

That's true,' Luke admitted after a moment; 'and I remember your telling me that you speak several Central European languages fluently. Well, perhaps they might, although I think it very unlikely. Anyway, I wish you luck.'

It was close on nine o'clock, so Robbie stood up. 'I had better be going now. Thanks for your good wishes and for letting me talk to you. You won't tell a soul about what I'm going to try to do, will you?'

Luke came to his feet and gave him a kindly pat on the shoulder. 'Certainly not, Robbie. I'm as close as an oyster about any secret that is entrusted to me. Let me know how you get on and, if there is any help that I can give you, don't hesitate to ask for it.'

Next morning at ten o'clock Robbie presented himself at the Czech Legation in Sekeri Street and adopted the same tactics as he had at the Greek Ministry of Commerce. He gave his name, asked to see the Minister, Mr. Havelka, and stated that, having no appointment, he was perfectly willing to await the Minister's convenience by sitting in the reception hall all day if need be.

On his name being sent upstairs, it rang a bell, as before, with the Minister's secretary. An enquiry came down if he were, in fact, a relative of the British Ambassador, and on his saying that he was Sir Finsterhorn's nephew he was told that the Minister would see him shortly. A quarter of an hour later he was taken up to the Minister's room.

Mr. Havelka proved to be a small, dark, bearded man, with piercing black eyes. He waved Robbie to a chair and, in halting English, asked the purpose of his visit.

Robbie replied in Czech that he was looking for a job, and it had occurred to him that there might be one going in the Czech Legation.

To attain his present position, Mr. Havelka had had to cultivate a poker face, but even he blinked at the idea of a nephew of the British Ambassador calmly asking to be taken on to his staff.

Instinctively, his head went down a little and his shoulders up, lest this strange animal should suddenly spring at him. Swiftly but cautiously his eyes ran over Robbie. Concluding that his visitor was neither mad nor dangerous, he stalled for time by asking: 'What qualifications have you?'

Robbie reeled off the languages he spoke. Havelka's brain was working like a dynamo. It was used to that. There had been times when, had it failed to do so, he would have found himself being marched off with the barrel of a pistol pressed hard into his back. He suspected a trap, but for once he was in a situation to which he had not got a clue. To gain further time in which to think, he pulled open a drawer in his desk, shuffled through some papers in it, and produced a document printed in Polish. Handing it to Robbie, he said: 'Please translate that into Czech.'

The document was about the exchange between the two countries of university students for vacation courses. The subject held no interest for Robbie, but he found that he was able to render quite a passable translation of it. While he slowly uttered the sentences, Havelka's quick, bird-like eyes continued to flicker over him.

The Czech was thinking: 'He must be an agent. No, he can't be. Even the British would not have the impudence to send one of their spies here openly to ask for a post. Perhaps he thinks himself a Communist. But if he is the Ambassador's nephew, that is hardly likely. Yet he might be. It has been reported that our propaganda is having excellent results among young people in England. The poor fools march now in their thousands to demand the banning of the bomb. If he is one of those, we could make good use of him. But how am I to know? Whatever I do, that swine Janos will say that I did wrong. If I send the fellow about his business, I shall be told that I missed a chance; if I take him on, Janos will rail at me for having endangered our security. How I wish that I could consult with Janos on occasions such as this. But no; he refuses all responsibility, maintains his role as butler all day and hands round the slivovitz with a sly smirk, then comes up here at night to pick holes in my day's work.'

When Robbie had finished the translation, the Minister said: 'Mr. Grenn, you are a nephew of the British Ambassador, so obviously of the capitalist class and, presumably, not a friend of Communism. What reason can you possibly have for seeking a position with us, which could carry only a very modest salary?'

This was the big fence, and Robbie knew it. For his years, he was remarkable in that he had never told a lie, or at least not more than a minor prevarication. Brought up and cared for solely by two adoring women, he had never had any cause to. Not until quite recently had he felt any urge to break away from his well-ordered life. He had never been forbidden to do anything except over-exert himself, he had never given way to any unbridled desire, he had never known the dread of being found out, or had any special secrets to keep. But after he had left Luke Beecham the previous evening, he had realized that he would never get anywhere with the Czechs unless he was prepared to lie to them.

It was more the strangeness of having to do so, rather than any definite moral scruple, that made him reluctant to abandon bis habit of replying frankly to any question put to him. Yet he realized that he must and, recalling a story that Sir Finsterhorn was fond of telling about Sir Winston Churchill fortified him in his determination.

The story was to the effect that, during the war, the Prime Minister was asked to approve a scheme which, by deceiving our enemies, would bring pain and grief to them. Naturally, he expressed himself in favour of it and, as it required co-ordination at the highest levels, he enthusiastically took charge of it himself.

The plan required that certain false information should be disseminated on the Continent, by means of broadcasts. Of these there were two kinds: those issued in numerous foreign languages by certain Intelligence departments, and those in English which were the normal News Bulletins of the B.B.C. The first had a basis of truth, but at times included lies deliberately calculated to mystify and mislead the enemy; on the other hand, it had definitely been laid down in a directive to the B.B.C. that its News Bulletins, on which the captive peoples of Europe had come to rely so greatly, should tell the truth, and nothing but the truth.

A high executive of the Broadcasting Services was ordered to attend a midnight War Cabinet meeting. With graphic gestures, the great Prime Minister outlined the plan, and told the visitor what was required of him.

Perhaps someone on the P.M.'s staff had blundered and had produced the wrong man. At all events, as the visitor listened to the forceful phrases directed at him, he grew paler and paler. At length he burst out:

'But, sir! To do as you suggest would be entirely contrary to our established policy. You cannot possibly ask me to tell lies like this.'

For a moment the Prime Minister stared in amazement at the poor wretch. Then he turned to those about him and cried in ringing tones: 'What is this? Am I confronted with a man who refuses to lie in the service of his country? Take him away! Take him away! Never let me see his face again.'

Sir Finsterhorn always concluded this story by saying that it was, no doubt, apocryphal, but Robbie had a passionate admiration for Sir Winston and liked to think that it was true. In any case, it had registered deeply in his slow mind a conviction that to lie on behalf of one's country was a matter for praise rather than blame. In consequence, he now set about doing so in no uncertain manner.

Having thought out carefully beforehand what he should say, he told Mr. Havelka that he had quarrelled with his uncle on political grounds and that, on learning of his leanings towards Communism, Sir Finsterhorn had thrown him out of the house. He added that he had a little money, but not much; so must quickly find a job to support himself. As his only asset was a thorough knowledge of Central European languages, he was hoping to find employment and congenial companionship in the Legation of one of the Communist countries.

By this time, the Minister had convinced himself that there was little to be feared from Robbie. Honesty radiated from him, and he was obviously a simple type of not very high intelligence. But he could speak Czech fluently, so should be capable of performing some not very exacting job of work. It struck Havelka, too, that it might even be counted as a feather in his cap to have, as he would put it to his superiors, suborned the nephew of the British Ambassador and be making use of him.

Pulling thoughtfully at his little beard, he said: T sympathize with your situation, Mr. Grenn. To be deprived of a comfortable home on account of your political opinions is certainly hard. Yes, I would like to help you. Return here at ten o'clock on Monday morning. By then I think I will have found some employment for you.'

Two minutes later Mr. Havelka was striving not to wince as his hand was pressed in an iron grip by a beaming Robbie. Lightheartedly, Robbie ran downstairs and went out into the street.

It was another pleasant day; so he crossed the road, and went into the park. Even in spring the flowers there were indifferent, and during summer it was an arid waste; but as it was only a few hundred yards from the British Embassy Robbie often went for a stroll there in the morning.

He had just reached the big pavilion near the centre of the park when a sudden thought struck him. When telling the lies he had concocted to Havelka he had said that his uncle had thrown him out of the house. What if the Czechs discovered that was not true? They would then certainly believe him to be a spy, and his very successful morning's work would have been entirely wasted. Still worse, in future, as far as the Czechs were concerned, he would, be a marked man; so what hope would he then have of succeeding in the task he had set himself?

As swiftly as the deflating of a pricked balloon, the elation he was feeling drained away from him. With his hands in his trouser pockets, with downcast head, he strolled on until he reached the southern end of the park. Crossing the road, he entered the grass enclosure that contains the remains of the vast Olympieion. Sitting down on a fragment of one of the mighty fallen pillars of the Temple, he strove to think things out.

After half an hour he decided that there was only one thing for it. He must leave the Embassy and go to live in an hotel.

That day Sir Finsterhorn was giving a lunch party, and it was after three o'clock before the last of his guests had departed. The moment he had courteously bowed them away he made for his sanctum. Robbie followed him, paused in the doorway, and said:

'I'd like to speak to you for a moment, Uncle. May I come m?'

The Ambassador had just sat down at his desk, and he looked ^UP with a slight frown. That morning he had received a despatch from the Foreign Secretary concerning some rather delicate negotiations, and he was anxious to get to work on it without delay; but he said with his habitual politeness:

This isn't a good time, Robbie. But if it will take only a moment go ahead.'

T wanted to let you know, Uncle, that I've got a job.'

'Really!' Sir Finsterhorn's long face lit up with one of his rather rare but charming smiles. 'Well, I'm delighted, Robbie. Yes, delighted. What sort of a job is it?'

Translating documents. At least, I expect that's what, they'll want me to do.' Robbie took a deep breath then blurted out: 'Anyway, it's at the Czech Legation.'

The Ambassador suddenly became completely still. 'What's that you say?' he demanded, after a moment. 'The Czech Legation. If this is a joke, Robbie, I regard it as in the worst of taste. You cannot be speaking seriously.'

Robbie swallowed hard. 'Yes, sir, I am. I saw Mr. Havelka this morning; and he's promised to give me a job, starting on Monday.'

Sir Finsterhorn came slowly to his feet. 'Havelka took you on personally? I can't believe it. What possible reason could you have given to induce him to do so?'

'Well—er—it was my knowing the Central European languages. Making use of them is about the only way I could earn money. And . . . and, after all, Uncle, for months past you have been urging me to get a job.'

'I have indeed. You were utterly spoiled by your aunt and that old nurse of yours. Years ago, you should have been sent to a place where you could have been trained in some work suited to your limited abilities. That you are now twenty-three and still idling your life away is perfectly scandalous. But that you should be employed by the Czech Legation is unthinkable. You surely must know that, as long as the Cold War continues, those people must be regarded as our enemies. In fact, I am completely at a loss to understand Havelka's taking you on. That is, if you gave him your right name.'

'Oh, yes. I told him who I was and—and, to tell the truth, sir, I had to spin him a yarn that I had quarrelled with you over politics. I led him to believe that I was pro-Communist. It's really that I wanted to tell you. You see, to make the story stick I'll have to leave the Embassy and go to live in an hotel.'

The Ambassador's blue eyes sparkled angrily. 'And so you shall, my boy,' he snapped after a moment. 'I see the whole thing now. Havelka jumped at the chance of making a fool of me. For the British Ambassador's nephew to take service with the Czechs will make me the laughing-stock of Athens. When your aunt died you were incapable of looking after yourself. My wife and I gave you a home and this is how you have repaid us. But in this past year you have learnt enough to stand on your own feet. Very well, then. Pack your bags and don't let me see you here again.'

Hero Number One

Ten minutes later Robbie, near to tears, ssat hunched up in the armchair in his bed-sitting room. For a whilde he was so completely shattered that he could nojt co-ordinate Ihis thoughts. He had been prepared for his uncle to show markced disapproval when he admitted that he was posing as a pro-«-Communist, but had hoped that the fact that he had at last actusally got himself a job would placate him. It had not occurred to him for one moment that, because he was to be employed by thee Czechs, Sir Finster-horn would be sufficiently enraged to castt him off and forbid him the Embassy. To attempt to spy o:>n the Czechs while retaining his sheet anchor was one thing; to be thrust out into the world and on his own for the first time was a very different matter.

For a while he contemplated abandoming his plans and returning to England. Aunt Emily had left hiim her pleasant house at Cheltenham, together with its contents. Sir Finsterhorn had wanted him to sell it; but it was the only Ihome he had known, and he did not need the money. Moreoveir, old Nanny Fisher, now nearly seventy, was still alive, and hee could not bear the thought of her being put out at her age to rxnake a new home for herself. Therefore he had dug in his toes against even letting the house, and had arranged for her to receive a sufficient sum to maintain it for him and to keep on their cooik.

But Athene's words to him, conveyed thirough the rustling of the leaves on her sacred tree, were still frcesh in his mind. She had charged him to go through with his qmest to the bitter end, whatever might befall, and a command froim the goddess was not to be ignored lightly.

He considered the possibility that he had conly imagined hearing her voice. Had he heard it in a dream, he; could have accepted that, but he had been wide-awake, and hatd deliberately sought her counsel Further thought convinced hiim, too, that the harsh treatment meted out to him by his uncle wvas typical of the unexpected misfortunes which heroes of ancitent times always met with on their quests.

The inhabitants of Olympus had beem a jealous lot, and Perpetually quarrelling with one another. For one of them to take a mortal under his or her protection \was quite enough for °fte of the others to set about inflicting pairn and grief upon him and hamper him at every turn. It might be that or, perhaps, Robbie thought, he might unwittingly have offended some member of the Olympian family.

They were all incurable busybodies. Apart from intriguing among themselves and making love, their principal sport had been to come down to earth and mingle with mortals; but not in their beautiful trimmings. They assumed disguises as crippled beggars or wrinkled old women clad in filthy rags. One of their favourite games was to ask for a night's lodging or a free ride on a ferry, and woe betide the unfortunate person who refused their request; he was lucky if he was not blinded there and then or turned into a lizard. It could be argued that these judgments on the spot were a far more effective way of inducing the ancient Greeks to be charitable to the poor and humble than the threats of hell and damnation in some uncertain future which were thundered forth centuries later by Christian fanatics. All the same, Robbie felt, these totally unexpected actions by the gods must have been extremely worrying for their worshippers.

Reluctantly, he concluded that, by appealing to Athene, he had laid himself open to becoming a plaything of the Immortals; so he must henceforth take the rough with the smooth, and rely on her to see him through.

As he had brought out from England nearly all his personal possessions he felt that he could hardly be expected to remove all of them that afternoon. He put his immediate requirements into a big suitcase, leaving the rest to be sent after him by arrangement when he had found permanent quarters for himself. Carrying the suitcase downstairs, he went out of the back of the house and crossed the garden.

The Embassy and its precincts occupied the whole block, the large garage at the far end of the garden opening on to Ploutarchou Street, on the opposite side of which was a big block of modern flats. In one of them lived Luke Beecham; so Robbie entered the block and asked for him.

It was a Friday, and to Robbie's dismay the porter told him that Mr. Beecham had just left in his car to spend the week-end with friends who had a seaside villa at Lavrion. This was a sad blow as, although Robbie had made many acquaintances in Athens, there were few that he could call friends, and no one other than Luke to whom he could confide his present trouble.

Still carrying his heavy bag, which, owing to his great strength, caused him little effort, he turned into the main boulevard and walked along it, debating what next to do. To get a room at an hotel was the obvious answer. Had he had the least experience in leading a double life he would have looked for some modest place suited to the role he was playing, but that never occurred to him. Most of the visitors who were invited to lunch or to dine at the Embassy stayed at the Grande Bretagne; so, without further thought, he went to it.

Unlike most more modern hotels, the Grande Bretagne had no shops facing the street occupying a large part of its ground floor level; instead, there were spacious lounges, two restaurants, a ballroom and cocktail bar large enough to have held one hundred people. Yet an air of quiet dignity prevailed and rarely more than a handful of visitors was to be seen sitting about, because so many of its patrons were rich enough to afford private suites.

The money left to Robbie by his parents had been well invested during his minority, so for the past two years he had been in receipt of a very handsome income. Up to the present, even with keeping open the house at Cheltenham, he had found no use for more than a third of it, so he had no hesitation in taking a small suite, as a sitting room of his own would enable him to work undisturbed on his book in the evenings. He would have preferred one that looked out on to the trees and fountains in Constitution Square, which always reminded him of Trafalgar Square in London. Constitution Square was also on a slope and, at its upper end, it was dominated by the Royal Palace, a building somewhat resembling the National Gallery. However, he felt that would be too much of an extravagance, so contented himself with a suite at the back, facing the backs of other buildings.

Having unpacked, he decided to take his mind off his worries by going to a film, and at the Orpheus Cinema saw Alec Guinness and Noel Coward in Our Man in Havana. He had chosen the film solely on the names of its stars, so it struck him as something more than a coincidence that it should turn out to be about the Secret Service. During the show its clever satire caused him to laugh uproariously, but the fact that its bewildered hero came out all right in the end gave him the more sober thought that perhaps Athene had deliberately sent him to see the film in order to cheer him up.

That idea braced him up for the remainder of the evening, but Saturday and Sunday dragged terribly, and during them he suffered from bouts of acute depression. Two visits to the Acropolis failed to bring him even a ray of comfort, and he found it impossible to concentrate sufficiently to work on his book. By Sunday evening, he was doubting his ability even to hold for long his job with the Czechs, let alone succeed in finding out their secret intentions. After dinner, up in his sitting room, he sat miserably, twisting his big fingers together, again sorely tempted to throw in his hand and either return to England or go back to the Embassy and grovel before his uncle. To distract his mind from such unhappy thoughts, he decided to make another attempt to write a few paragraphs of his book. As he took the manuscript from a drawer and laid it on the desk, it fell open of its own accord at Chapter IV. Instinctively he began to read what he had written:

THE HEROES

(no. 1 hercules)

Hercules did so many heroic deeds that I think he is entitled to first place among the Heroes, but he had a sad life and was a very unlucky man. When I say he had bad luck, I really mean that he was constantly pursued by the vindictiveness of that old bitch Hera.

He was a son of Zeus by Alcmene, the wife of Amphitryon, King of Tiryns, which in ancient times was the port of Mycenae. As usual, the Father of the Gods did not let on who he was when he slept with this lady. He simply took the form of her husband and got into bed with her. I suppose he was much better at that sort of thing than King Amphitryon. Anyway, she rumbled him and he was so cock-a-hoop from the good time she had given him that, when he got back to Olympus, he decreed that the next male to be born in Amphitryon's family should be lord over all Greece.

At that, of course, Hera guessed what he had been up to, and flew into a frightful rage. As a first move, she caused poor Alcmene's labour to be prolonged until Hercules's cousin, Eurystheus, was born before him. As Zeus could not go back on his word, Eurystheus became top chap and Hercules his vassal.

Now that the cat was out of the bag, Alcmene did not dare to nurse her own child, so tried to fox Hera by putting her baby out into a field, hoping that his Immortal papa would see to it that someone took care of him. It so happened that Hera and Athene were taking a stroll that way and, seeing the infant, Hera picked it up. At times, apparently, the Immortals were shockingly dense, as Hera had no idea whose the baby was, and put it to her breast. Hercules was already a lusty chap, and he pulled so violently at her that she plucked him off and, in a pet, threw him back on to the ground. Athene, being much more decent, took charge of him and gave him to his own mother to bring up as a foundling.

Hera pretty soon tumbled to the true state of things and, angrier than ever at being had for a mug, sent two snakes to kill Hercules in his cradle. His mother was asleep, and his nurse too petrified by fright to do anything about this; but Hercules woke up, roared with laughter and strangled both the snakes before they could do him any harm.

Woken by the din he made, Alcmene came running in and, amazed at her infant's extraordinary performance, fetched her husband to have a look at the dead snakes. King Amphitryon was so impressed that he sent for Tiresias, a famous blind seer, to tell the babe's fortune. Old Tiresias predicted that Hercules would become no end of a big shot, so Amphitryon had him educated by the very best teachers of all kinds and descriptions.

When he had grown up, the gods put him through a test. They caused him to meet two very attractive girls. One was named Pleasure and the other Duty. Pleasure was a most luscious blonde and offered to sleep with him right away. She also promised him a long life of ease and plenty with lots more blondes thrown in. Duty was a much more modest type and, like Sir Winston Churchill, offered him only blood, toil, tears and sweat. For some reason I can't possibly explain, he chose Duty, and he got exactly what she had promised him.

However, by choosing to follow Duty, he soon became the most famous champion in all Greece. Most of the gods felt that he had done the right thing, so they decided to help him all they could. Athene lent him a suit of armour from her temple. Hermes gave him a magic sword that could cut through anything. Hephaestus made him a special shield, and Apollo gave him some of his arrows. Equipped with these aids, he fairly racketed round Greece, slaying all sorts of monsters. Anyone who had a hydra-headed Griffon ravaging his garden had only to call in Hercules, and he put paid to the beast in no time at all.

Thebes was a city that he took special interest in, because Amphitryon, who had behaved to him as a father, had had to give up his kingdom and had settled there. On hearing that Thebes was being attacked, Hercules sped to its assistance. Amphitryon was killed in the fray, but Hercules led the defenders to victory, and Creon, the King of Thebes, gave him his daughter Megara in marriage as a reward.

It looked as if he would now be able to settle down, and enjoy family life; but Hera had not forgotten about him, and this time she played him a most scurvy trick. She inflicted him with madness, so that he threw his own children on the fire and drove his horrified wife out of the house. When the poor chap came to himself and realized what he had done he was absolutely shattered. For a time he wandered round quite distraught while endeavouring to secure pardon from the gods.

They granted it to him. But I think the gentle reader will agree that, considering he didn't know what he was doing at the time, they treated him pretty scurvily. They had the Oracle at Delphi declare that as a penance he must do any ten jobs that his cousin, Eurystheus, ordered him to.

Nearly all these jobs entailed his having to slay some ferocious beast that was terrifying people for miles around, or stealing for Eurystheus something of value that was guarded by some other horrifying monster. His 'labours', as they were called, were as follows:

No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 No. 5 No. 6 No. 7 No. 8

To slay the Nemean lion.

To slay the nine-headed snake, Hydra.

To capture the golden-antlered stag, Cerynitis.

To slay the Erymanthian boar.

To clean the stables of King Augeias in a single day.

To slay a flock of birds of prey called Stymphalides.

To slay a mad Minoan bull.

To capture the savage horses of Diomedes.

No. 9 To secure the girdle of Hippolyte, Queen of the Amazons.

No. 10 To steal a herd of red cattle from the giant Geryon.

These labours took him all over Greece, to Crete, to Asia and to Africa, and kept him hard at it for several years. Most of the monsters he had to tackle could not be harmed by ordinary weapons, so he had to rely mainly on cunning or his enormous strength.

In the case of the Nemean lion, he tore up a tree which he used as a club to strike it down, then strangled it with his bare hands. Afterwards he skinned it and used its skin as a cloak. This is why he is often pictured dressed that way and holding a club.

With the Amazon Queen he was lucky. The Amazons were an Asiatic race of warrior women and not at all the sort of girls one would care to run into when taking a walk through the woods. They burned away their right breasts so as not to be hindered by their natural shape when bending a bow, and killed all their male children as soon as they were born. As they had been doing that for generations it is a bit of a mystery how they ever got in the family way. But perhaps they made the men captives they took from other races oblige before killing them off. Anyhow, Queen Hippolyte took such a good view of Hercules that she willingly gave him her girdle. Unfortunately Hera got to hear about this. She took the form of an Amazon herself and stirred all the other tough babies up against their visitor, so Hercules had to fight his way out of their country after all.

Diomedes, whose mares Hercules was sent to steal, must have been a horrible fellow. He fed these savage beasts on human flesh. But Hercules settled his hash. Quite literally in fact. He killed him, cut him up and gave him to his own mares to eat before driving them off.

Even given Hercules's strength and courage anyone might have despaired at the job of cleaning out King Augeias's stables in a single day. The King kept three thousand cattle and had not had a spadeful of their droppings taken away for thirty years, so you can imagine what mountains of dung there must have been. But our clever Hero succeeded in his task by diverting the course of two rivers, the torrents of which washed the stables clean.

Having pulled off this remarkable feat made it all the harder when his mean cousin Eurystheus insisted that this labour could not count as one of the ten, because King Augeias had offered Hercules a reward if he could do it. Even the fact that the King went back on his promise afterwards made no difference. In addition, Eurystheus ruled that the slaying of the Hydra should not count either, because Hercules had the help of his nephew who, as Hercules cut off the monster's heads, seared the bleeding necks with a flaming torch so that new heads could not grow out of them. In consequence the unfortunate Hercules had to take on two more labours.

No. 11 was to fetch three golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides. This was the most difficult task yet, as no one even knew where the garden was. For ages Hercules wandered around trying to find out, until some nymphs tipped him off to go and ask the Old Man of the Sea. He caught this slippery customer and kept him bound in his own seaweed till he disclosed that the Garden was on an island in th» Western Ocean, and that Prometheus would tell our Hero how to get there. Prometheus was still chained to a rock in the Caucasus, having his liver pecked out every day by an eagle. Hercules shot the eagle and rescued him. Natually, Prometheus was jolly grateful and he suggested that, as Atlas was the father of the four Hesperides maidens, Hercules might persuade him to go and get the apples for him.

Hercules thanked him for the idea and crossed the Med. to Egypt. The Pharaoh there was accustomed once a year to sacrifice a stranger to his gods, and on seeing Hercules he thought he looked just the goods for the job. But it proved the Pharaoh's unlucky day. Hercules kept mum, allowed himself to be bound and led into the temple; then he snapped his bonds, gave a big horse-laugh and sacrificed the Pharaoh on his own altar.

After killing the odd giant in Libya, Hercules went on to Morocco where by this time Atlas had become frightfully tired of holding the world up on the back of his neck. Actually I've never quite understood how he did this; unless he was upside down. But I can only tell you what the chronicles say he was doing. Anyhow, when Hercules offered to hold up the world for him if he would go and get the apples, he jumped at the chance of handing over his burden. Fie then went off to get the apples; but he must have been a bit soft in the head to bother about that as, when he came back with them, he said that he had no intention of taking the world on his shoulders again. That put Hercules in a very nasty spot, as he looked like being stuck with the world for good. However, he said to Atlas: 'All right, old chap, but just hold it for a moment, will you, so that I can bind some cords round my head to ease the pressure,' or words to that effect. Being a stupid great oaf, Atlas fell into the trap. As soon as he'd taken the world back Hercules roared with laughter and went off with the golden apples.

No. 12 was the most terrible labour of all. That beastly man Eurystheus ordered Hercules to go down into Hades and bring back its guardian, Cerberus, the three-headed hound of hell with fangs that dripped poison. Hercules had himself purified at Eleusis, then Hermes took him to Cape Tainarom, the southernmost point of Greece, where there was a cave leading down into the Underworld.

Most people would have been scared stiff at the thought of entering Hades, but he does not seem to have minded a bit and barged in as if he owned the place. Coming upon an old friend chained to a rock he released him, then he killed one of King Pluto's bulls so that by lapping up its blood some of the poor ghosts down there could get a taste of life. When the herdsman tried to interfere, Hercules seized him and would have crushed his ribs in if Queen Persephone had not come oil the scene in time and begged him to let the poor chap go.

Soon afterwards he found himself face to face with Pluto, the dread lord of this grim domain; but far from getting cold feet he fitted an arrow to his bow and shot the King of Hades in the shoulder. God though Pluto was, he roared with rage and pain; yet so impressed was he with the courage of Hercules that he told him that he could take Cerberus aw⁷ay provided he used no weapon. Our hero then seized the terrible mastiff by the -throat, threw it over his shoulder and carried it off in triumph.

When he cast the monster at Eurystheus's feet, his horrid cousin was so terrified that he freed him from all further obligation on condition that he returned Cerberus to his kennel.

Anyone would have thought that after completing his twelve labours Hercules would have been only too happy to settle down to a quiet life. But not a bit of it; he continued to roam the world doing mighty deeds as the champion of mankind against every sort of horror. He sailed with the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, and had many other adventures too numerous to recount. During them the good Athene always sought to aid and protect him, but Hera's malice continued unabated.

Fie fell in love with a young woman named Iole, the daughter of King Eurytus, and by triumphing over the King in an archery contest won the right to marry her. But her papa got the wind up that Hercules would treat her as he had his first wife, so as a get-out accused him of having stolen some cattle. lole's brother, Iphitus, had become frightfully pally with Hercules and set out with him to try to run the real thief to earth. Hoping to spot the stolen herd, they climbed a high tower and while they were up there that hateful Hera caused Hercules to go mad again. Not knowing what he did, he picked up his friend and threw him from the tower-top to die smashed to pieces a hundred feet below.

When Hercules got his wits back he was most terribly upset, and for months on end hiked from one temple to another, seeking pardon for his act; but no high-priest would give it, and the Pythoness at Delphi refused even to listen to him. By then he was so fed up that he snatched from under her the sacred tripod on which she sat to prophesy and made off with it.

When Apollo heard about this he became absolutely livid with rage. Hurtling down from Olympus, he demanded his property back. Hercules refused to give the tripod up unless he was pardoned for Iphitus's death, upon which the beautiful god and the stalwart hero came to blows. Zeus had to be fetched—no doubt from demonstrating the facts of life to some pretty popsie.

Having separated the combatants he decreed that Hercules should be cleansed if he sold himself into slavery for three years and gave the money he got for this to Iphitus's children.

Hermes then led Hercules into Asia, where he let himself be sold for three talents to Omphale, Queen of Lydia. The sight of his mighty limbs soon gave this lady ideas, and she decided that she could find a much better use for him than chasing monsters and cattle thieves. Perhaps, too, Hercules had at last become a bit bored by that sort of thing. Anyhow, he let Omphale take his lion skin and club away from him and dress him up in silks and satins as though he were a court Eunuch, which he certainly was not. To please the Queen he even took up knitting socks and jumpers for himself; so his three years as a slave were passed in ease and luxury, and he might have fared far worse. But at the end of them he suddenly felt a revulsion for that sort of life and rather ungratefully walked out on Omphale without so much as a 'thank you', to seek fresh deeds of daring-do.

While in Hades, he had been given a message by the shade of Meleager for his beautiful sister Deianira, the daughter of King Oineus. Now, somewhat belatedly, our Hero went to Calydon and, having delivered the message to Deianira, fell in love with her. As the gentle reader may guess, he did not win her without a struggle; but he triumphed over his rival, a river god named Achelous, and carried Deianira off as his wife.

He then spent some time going round to even up the score with the numerous kings who from time to time during his long career had done him dirt. Among them was King Eurytus, the father of his former love lole; and having killed the king, he made her into a slave girl.

Knowing what chaps usually did with slave girls, when Deianira heard about this she naturally refused to believe that lole's job was simply to mix Hercules's drinks or wash his undies, and her jealousy led her to take a step that ended in the most ghastly tragedy.

Soon after she and Hercules were married they had had to cross a river that was in flood. The Centaur Nessus was standing on the bank offering to carry wayfarers across on his broad back. Hercules scorned his offer and swam the river, but he let Nessus carry Deianira over. The Centaur gave her one look and decided that she was just his dish, so on reaching the far bank he attempted to take her by force.

Hercules heard her shout: 'Help, Hercie, help! This big bum's trying to do you-know-what to me,' or words to that effect; and being a marvellous marksman Hercules shot the lecherous Centaur from a distance with an arrow that he had dipped in the poisoned blood of the Hydra. Nessus, writhing in his death agony, determined to get his own back on his slayer, so he gasped out to Deianira: 'Dip a shirt in my blood, sweetie. If ever you get a hunch that your old man's going off the rails persuade him to wear it. It'll act as a charm. He'll take a run-out powder on the other dame and come back with a present for you.'

Now that Deianira was having kittens about Hercules being up to no good with his old flame Iole, she sent it to him with a message that it was the very latest thing in gents' shirting and she thought he would look fine in it. All unsuspecting, Hercules put it on when about to do his 'thank you' sacrifice to the gods for having helped him put paid to King Eurytus. But the blood of Nessus had been envenomed from the poisoned arrow, and as soon as the shirt became warmed through by the sacrificial fire before which Hercules was standing it began to burn him. Next moment agonizing pains shot through all his limbs. In vain he tried to tear the terrible garment off. It stuck to his skin and became a white-hot shroud that caused his blood to boil.

Realizing that there could be no escape from death, he tore down the nearest trees and stacked them up into a funeral pyre. Then he flung himself upon it and persuaded his armour-bearer, Philoctetes, to light it beneath him. His last words were: 'Hera, thou art avenged. Give me a stepmother's gift of death.'

So perished the greatest of the Heroes. There came a terrible storm of thunder and lightning, during which Pallas Athene descended in her chariot and bore the immortal part of Hercules up to Olympus. By then even Hera's hatred of him had burnt itself out. She welcomed him among the gods and gave him for

wife her daughter Hebe, the spirit of Eternal Youth.

* * * *

When Robbie finished reading, his large brown eyes were glistening, and he was almost in tears. 'Poor, poor Hercules!' he thought. 'What a terrible time he had. His life had been one long series of combats with powerful beasts and hideous reptiles. All his love affairs had gone wrong, the Kings he had performed great deeds for had cheated him out of his rewards and he had spent the best years of his life doing penance for crimes committed while he was not responsible for his actions. Then, to cap it all, he had died in agony. Still, after all, he had come out all right in the end. Athene had seen to it that he should be given a place for all eternity on Olympus, and no man could have asked more than to have for his own the lovely Hebe who would remain for ever young and gay.'

This last thought put a different complexion on the matter and cheered Robbie considerably. He needed no telling that he had neither the strength, the courage nor the quick wits of Hercules; but as against that, he did not expect to have to fight any fire-breathing dragons, and he did have one thing in common with the Hero—namely, the same patron. Whatever trials and tribulations might beset his path, he felt confident that Athene would arrange matters so that he, too, came out all right in the end.

Next morning, hardly able to contain his excitement, he was at the Czech Legation well before ten o'clock. Confidently announcing that he had an appointment with Mr. Havelka, he sent his name up. When a reply came down that the Minister would not be able to see him for some time, that did not in the least damp his spirits. It did not even occur to him that Havelka had not actually promised him a job and might not have found one for him. He sat down opposite a large portrait of the President of the CzechoslOvakian Republic, and just let his thoughts drift.

Three-quarters of an hour later, a middle-aged man with hair cut en brosse, a blue jowl and a small paunch, who looked as though he ought to be wearing a Gestapo uniform and carrying a gun, entered the hall, halted in front of Robbie, gave a jerky bow and said: 'Cepicka.'

'Oh—er—yes.' Robbie quickly stood up. 'My name is Grenn. How d'you do?'

'Mistair Grenn,' nodded the other, then went on in Czech: 'Pan Havelka tells me you speak our language. He regrets not to receive you, but he has a great deal of work. He asks that you place yourself in my hands. Come with me, please.'

'By all means,' smiled Robbie, turning instinctively toward the stairs. It was only as Mr. Cepicka turned in the opposite direction, towards the door to the street, that Robbie noticed that he was carrying a hat. When he reached the door, he put on the hat, with the remark: 'It is not far, so we will walk.'

Much puzzled, Robbie caught him up and strode along beside him. Sekeri Street debouched on to the broad Leoforos Vasilissis Sofias Boulevard, on which the British Embassy lay, but was nearer the centre of the city. Twice Robbie attempted to start a conversation with his companion, but the gorilla-like Mr. Cepicka replied only in monosyllables. Having covered a few hundred yards, they reached Constitution Square. Maintaining a stolid silence, Cepicka walked purposefully across it and entered a turning just off Karageorgi Street. A little way along it, he turned into an alley that broadened out into a small courtyard. In the centre grew a gnarled olive tree; at the sides there were two small private houses, a shop that sold bales of coarse silk, and a travel agency. Cepicka marched into the latter and said abruptly to a tall, thin young man behind the counter: 'Comrade Krajcir. He is expecting me.'

'Yes, Commrade Cepicka,' replied the young man quickly, with a nervous smile. 'Please come this way.'

He ushered them into an inner office. There, behind a desk, a plump man of about forty was sitting. He had very black hair that grew low on his forehead, dark eyes under bushy brows, a rather round face and a dimpled chin. He stood up and shook hands solemnly with Cepicka, who said: 'I bring you the young man about whom the Comrade Minister spoke to you on the telephone.' Then he turned to Robbie and added:

'This is Comrade Marak Krajcir. He is in charge here and will provide for you the employment that you asked Pan Havelka to find for you.'

Comrade Krajcir smiled, displaying a gold tooth at the left side of his upper jaw, and held out his hand to Robbie. Taking it in a firm grip, Robbie bowed over it, murmured his own name, and said how happy he was to know Mr. Krajcir.

The blue-jowled, unsmiling Comrade Cepicka announced that, having executed the orders he had been given, he would leave them and, with a curt nod, made his exit.

The more amiable Krajcir invited Robbie to sit down, asked him if he was willing to start work right away and, on receiving a reply in the affirmative, informed him of the office hours he would be expected to keep. He then proposed a wage that was little more than a pittance, but added that a handsome commission would be given on all business brought to the agency.

It was barely ten minutes since Robbie had left the Czech Legation, and all this had happened so quickly that his slow mind had not yet taken in its full significance; so, ever eager to please, he agreed enthusiastically.

Only after having been introduced to the other members of the staff, and finding himself rubber-stamping a thick pile of travel folders, did it fully come home to him that he had been had for a mug.

Mr. Havelka happened at about that time to give a thought to Robbie, and he smiled in his little black beard. He felt that in this matter he had good reason to congratulate himself on having eaten his cake and kept it, too. He could take kudos from his superiors for having caused the British Ambassador to lose face by taking his nephew into his employment, yet he had placed Robbie as a stooge in the Czech Travel Agency, where he could not possibly find out any secrets.

That was what Mr. Havelka thought and, had he had only Robbie to deal with, he would have been right. Understandably, he had not taken Pallas Athene into his calculations and, as she was on Robbie's side, before Mr. Havelka was very much older he found, to his fury and alarm, that he had been entirely wrong.

6

The Amateur Cracksman

That night Robbie again seriously contemplated throwing in his hand. He had thought himself such a clever fellow to have talked

Havelka into promising to find him a job, and it had never for a moment occurred to him that the job would not be in the Legation. But he now saw that, even if Havelka had believed his assertion that he had Communist sympathies, the Minister would never have been fool enough to give the nephew of the British Ambassador any employment which might enable him to secure knowledge of secret transactions.

In vain he racked his brains for some other line of approach by which he might ferret out the truth about the Czecho-Greek oil-tobacco deal. He could think of none. Yet, having had such high hopes of achieving, for the first time in his life, something worth while by his own initiative, to admit defeat after less than a week of endeavour would mean a humiliation almost beyond bearing.

After much cogitation, he decided that he could at least put off swallowing that final bitter pill as long as he continued to work at the Travel Agency, and that, while there, it was just possible that a new way of trying to achieve his object might occur to him; so next morning at eight o'clock, he duly reported for duty.

Comrade Krajcir's staff consisted of a Mrs. Sebesta, a grey-haired woman of uncertain age, with a determined chin and an ugly wart on her left cheek, who acted both as Krajcir's No. 2 and his secretary; a tall, young man with thin, receding fair hair, named Rudolph Pucik; and Ludmilla Duris, a brunette in her early twenties with a good figure, who would have been decidedly pretty had not her brown eyes been small and close-set. The last two took turns in answering enquiries at the counter and, when not so engaged, in sorting folders and addressing envelopes.

The plump, black-haired Krajcir made few demands on Robbie. He was easy-going by nature, and handled all the important business of the agency himself, so his appearance in the outer office were infrequent. The previous day he had handed Robbie over to Pani Sebesta and it was she who played the part of task-mistress to the juniors. She was eagle-eyed and revoltingly efficient, never for a moment failing to find jobs for her underlings. It was obvious that the lanky Rudolph and the attractively curved Ludmilla both cordially disliked her. To Robbie they gave an eager welcome, being quick to realize that, since he knew nothing whatever about the travel business, he would be given all the most dreary jobs that they had had to do previously. And that was what happened.

. That no attempt was made to initiate him into the mysteries of time-tables, ship-sailings and conducted tours was rather a relief than otherwise, as he knew that he would have had considerable difficulty in mastering such things; but he found being made into a ^kdog's-body' far from pleasant, and he soon became terribly bored with sorting endless stacks of folders into sets, stamping Pues of envelopes and standing at the duplicating machine running off lists of hotels and their tariffs.

While employed on these jobs, he covertly kept an eye on all the customers who came to the agency, and listened to their conversation with his colleagues. Very few of them were people of substance seeking accommodation in good hotels or expensive travel outside Greece. Once or twice a day men, some of whom looked rather seedy, came in, asked for Krajcir and, evidently being known at the office, were shown straight in to him. But the great majority were men and women on holiday from Czechoslovakia. They were all good Communists who, as a reward for showing an enthusiastic Party spirit, had been nominated by their bosses for a fortnight's cruise in the eastern Mediterranean, and were in Athens only for a couple of nights. Far from being customers wanting to hire cars or private guides, they had barely enough money to buy themselves a drink, and came in only to collect folders, with pictures of the places to which they had been, to take home with them.

After working in the agency for a few days, Robbie began to wonder how, with such a clientele, it could possibly pay its way. The answer, he decided, was that it didn't and must be run as part of a propaganda programme. But, listen as he did with commendable patience, not one word did he hear exchanged between the members of the staff, or between them and anyone who came to the agency, that had any connexion with oil or tobacco.

Unaccustomed as he was to being ordered about, and loathing as he did routine tasks, by the end of the week Robbie was thoroughly fed up and felt that he could not stick it a day longer. On the Friday, when Krajcir doled out to him his meagre pay, he actually had it on the tip of his tongue to give notice, but at that moment a telephone call came through for the manager; so Robbie had to leave his room and, on second thoughts, he decided to put off taking the irrevocable step till after the weekend.

His reason for postponing the issue was his suddenly remembering that Luke Beecham would be back in Athens next day. On the previous Monday evening, after his first day at the agency, Robbie had called at Luke's flat to tell him about his job, only to learn that, after spending the week-end in the villa that belonged to friends and looked out on Lavrion's sunny beach, Luke had left for one of his periodic spells at his Company's office in Salonika and would not be returning till Saturday. Although Robbie was now convinced that he was wasting his time at the agency, he still felt considerable qualms about abandoning his quest altogether and possibly incurring the anger of Pallas Athene. During the week, no other idea for continuing it in a new direction had come to him, but there was just a chance that Luke might produce one; so, when eight o'clock came, he said good night to his colleagues as usual, and walked round the corner to the Grande Bretagne.

The long siesta break, from midday until four in the afternoon, observed in most offices in Athens, had to be made up by a four-hour working session morning and evening. Robbie, being unaccustomed to such lengthy days of activity, had found in the past week that, after dining, he had been too tired to go to the last house at any of the cinemas. But after going early to bed on the first two nights his mind, having nothing new to think about, had once more become largely occupied with his,book. In consequence, on Wednesday and Thursday evenings, instead of going straight to bed, he had got into a dressing gown and had worked for an hour or two on a new, chapter. It was the story of another of the Heroes, and by eleven o'clock on this Friday night, he finished it. Laying down his pen with a sigh of satisfaction, he sat back and read over what he had written:

THE HEROES (no. 2 perseus)

Once upon a time, there was a King of Argos named Acrisius. Like most of the ancient Greeks he was terribly keen about having his fortune told, so he consulted an Oracle. Afterwards he wished he hadn't, because he was told that he would die by the hand of his grandson. This worried him a lot; but he had only one child, an unmarried daughter named Danae, and he thought he might manage to cheat Fate by locking her up so that no man could get at her, because then he wouldn't have any grandchildren.

So determined was he to keep Danae a virgin that he was not content to put her in an ordinary prison, in case some stalwart youth came along with a pick-axe and hacked a way to her through the wall. For the job, he built a tower of brass and shut the poor girl up in that. But the one thing he could not do was to turn Danae from a most lovely girl into an unattractive frump, and it was that which led to his going to all this trouble for nothing.

Zeus happened to come coasting along on a cloud with nothing much to do, and looking down he saw Danae. The gentle reader will guess what happened then. In the twinkling of an eye the old rip had turned himself into a shower of gold and streaked down through the top of the brass tower. From her attitude to life later it seems that Danae thoroughly enjoyed what happened after that. Anyhow, the next time her father visited her he found to his dismay that she was in the family way, and too far gone for him to do anything about it.

The child to whom she gave birth was Perseus. When King Acrisius learned that she had had a boy he was so scared for himself that he thought of killing the child, but he just could not get up enough courage to have such blood-guilt on his hands.

c 61

As the next best bet for yet avoiding the Fate decreed for him, he had the mother and her infant put in a wooden chest and the chest thrown into the sea, hoping that they would both drown or be dashed to pieces on a rocky shore.

Whatever one may think of Zeus's morals, he always did his best to look after girls who had given him a good time; so he got in touch with his brother Poseidon and asked him to do the necessary. The Sea King obliged by stilling the wind and waves and gently pushed the chest ashore on the island of Seriphos in the Aegean.

There Danae and her infant were found by a fisherman named Dictys. He was a good man and took them to his house, where he brought Perseus up as his own child. As Perseus grew up he so greatly outshone in strength, agility and beauty all the other youngsters on the island that it became pretty clear to everyone that he must be the son of a god, and they willingly made him their leader.

But trouble was brewing. Dictys had a brother named Polydectes, who was chief of the island, and after a while he began to make passes at the beautiful Danae. She proved very smell-face about this, and said that having had Zeus for a lover she was not prepared to play those sort of games with any mere mortal. Perseus was very devoted to his mother and by then old enough to defend her. He said in no uncertain manner that if Polydectes laid a finger on her he'd sock him for six.

Feeling that he would stand a better chance with Danae if he could get this tiresome young man out of the way, Polydectes ordered Perseus to go and slay a terrible monster called Medusa. Why Perseus, having defied Polydectes over the question of his mother, should have felt compelled to obey this order is by no means clear. But apparently Athene had been sending him dreams in which he saw himself as the equivalent in those days of a film star. Convinced that he could count on the backing of the goddess, he would have been a pretty poor fish if he hadn't been tempted to go off and do something spectacular, so as to be feted and admired by all. Anyhow, he seems to have persuaded himself that his mother was quite capable of taking care of herself during his absence, and declared himself willing to go and put paid to Medusa.

When the news of this reached Olympus the gods became a bit worried, as they feared he might be biting off more than he could chew. Medusa was one of the three Gorgon sisters and the only one who was mortal, but she packed a weapon not much less deadly than an atom bomb. When young she had been rude to Athene, so the goddess had turned her hair into vipers and made her face so horrible that whoever she looked at was instantly turned to stone.

Athene, now scared that one of her prot£g6s might be done in by her own handiwork, came hurrying down to Perseus to warn nim to be jolly careful how he tackled this terrible foe. She told him that he would be as dead as a fried haddock if he even met Medusa's glance, and lent him her own shield which was so brightly polished that it could be used as a mirror and he would be able to see his enemy in it while his back was turned to her. Then some of the other gods rallied round. Hermes gave him his crooked sword that could cut through the thickest armour, and tied on his feet his own winged sandals that would enable him to fly over land and sea. Pluto sent him from the Underworld a magic helmet that made its wearer invisible' and, finally, Athene provided him witl\ a goat-skin bag in which to put Medusa's head when he had cut it off, because even in death it could instantly strike dead anyone who saw it.

It's a funny thing, but after providing Perseus with all this lease-lend help his immortal friends could not tell him where to find Medusa. They could only suggest that he should go and wring the information out of the Graeae, three half-sisters of the Gorgons who lived in the far-distant frozen north.

Having asked Athene to keep a protecting eye on his Mama, Perseus set off without further delay. Hermes' sandals enabled him to fly like a jet-bomber to his destination and Pluto's helmet made him invisible. He came down in a region of eternal snows and icy mountains on the shores of the Hyperborean Sea.

There, crouching in a huddle, which is hardly to be wondered at seeing how cold it must have been, he found the three Grey Sisters. Their long white hair was frozen stiff with icicles and they were so old that they must have been pretty well past everything. I mean, when three people are reduced, as they were, to sharing one eye and one tooth between them, they can't be fit for much, can they?

Wearing the helmet that made him invisible, Perseus came creeping up on those poor old girls, while they were bickering over who should have the eye to see the person whose footsteps they could hear crackling the icy ground, he snatched it from them.

At that, one gathers, their language became unprintable, but Perseus just danced around them making rude noises and told them that unless they told him were the Gorgons lived he'd take their tooth as well, then they wouldn't be able to munch whatever it was they did munch to keep the life in their skinny old bodies. Seeing that it was all up they came clean and gave him the address he wanted.

Having given them back their eye, he was off like a thermonuclear rocket out of the icy mists, heading south into the brilliant sunshine.

The gentle reader will appreciate that it is not exactly easy to figure out where places mentioned by the ancients are on the maps in use today, so I must be forgiven for not being able to tell you where the island was in which the Gorgons lived. But it was definitely in the tropics and as far as I can make out off the coast of Africa.

When Perseus arrived above it the three sisters were lying asleep in the middle of what must have looked like a cemetery, for all over the place there were statues of people and animals; though really, of course, they had once been alive and Medusa's glance had turned them to stone.

Medusa was lying between the other two and in one quick look Perseus saw that she was a most repulsive creature. Her great body was covered in horny scales, her hair was a mass of writhing serpents, she had wings of brass and her hands and feet were terrible claws. Anxious to get the job done before she should wake up he wasted no time but held Athene's mirror-shield above his head and focused her face in it. Whether he had practised such a tricky stroke before, history does not relate, but he struck backward over his shoulder with Hermes' crooked sword and in one mighty slash severed her head from her body. Then, fumbling behind him, he pushed the head into the goatskin bag that Athene had given him for this purpose. Cock-a-hoop at having pulled this fast one on her so easily he leapt skyward with a shout of triumph.

That was a silly thing to do, because it woke her horrible sisters. When they saw Medusa's headless corpse they nearly burst themselves with rage. Clashing their brass wings and screaming with fury they came hurtling after our hero. His goose would have been cooked in no time if he hadn't been able to clap on the helmet that Pluto had sent him, which made him invisible. That enabled him to give them the slip and turning north he sped over a vast desert that was probably the Sahara.

While he flew on, drops of Medusa's blood trickled out of the goatskin bag. As they fell on the sand below they turned into snakes and scorpions. That is why there are so many of these poisonous reptiles in Africa. However, he seems to have got a bit off his course, for instead of landing back in Greece he came down in Morocco.

By then he was pretty tired, and one can't wonder. Seeing old Atlas kneeling there supporting the world on his shoulders, and knowing that he owned the Garden of the Hesperides, Perseus asked if he might rest there for a while. But Atlas got the idea that he intended to pinch some of his golden apples, and refused him permission.

As the Greeks were very hot on observing the laws of hospitality towards strangers, Perseus decided to teach the giant a lesson. He uncovered Medusa's head, which still had the power to turn to stone anyone who looked at it, and showed it to Atlas. Before you could say 'Jack Robinson' the mighty giant had become a mountain. Personally I think that was a bit overdoing it, but that is what happened, and if you go to Morocco today you can see him with snow on his head and forests sprouting out of his chest and shoulders.

By then Perseus was either lost or thought he would like to fly round for a while before returning to his home on Seriphos. Anyway he shot off eastwards, crossed the Nile and sped down the Red Sea. The south-western coast was then part of Nubia, as the ancients called Abyssinia, and, glancing down, Perseus chanced to see a great black rock sticking up some way from the shore with a girl chained to it. Naturally he went down to investigate and he found her to be an eyeful. Seeing the country they were in one would h&ve expected her to be a coal-black negress, but not a bit of it. She was a lovely golden brown, and an absolute smasher, but tears were running from her lovely eyes and she was obviously needing to be rescued.

When he asked her how she came to be there she didn't answer, but shut her eyes and blushed crimson. The poor girl's trouble was that she had no clothes on and she felt too embarrassed to talk to a strange young man while naked. Being a well-brought-up chap, Perseus realized what was biting her and put his hat on, then asked his question again.

Now that he was invisible, the girl perked up. She said her name was Andromeda and that she was the only daughter of Cepheus, the King of those parts. Apparently her mother, Cas-siope, had been silly enough to boast that she, Andromeda, was more beautiful than Poseidon's daughters, the Nereids. They had been very peeved when they heard this and persuaded their father to send a terrible sea monster to ravage King Cepheus's coast and gobble up all his fisher folk.

Much upset by this, the King had gone off to Libya and consulted the Oracle of Ammon there as to how he could protect his people. The Oracle had told him that the monster could be got rid of only by sacrificing his daughter to it. One need hardly add that the King and Queen did not like this idea one little bit; but after a while their people had forced them to take this terrible course, so poor Andromeda had been chained to the rock and was waiting for the monster to come and eat her.

She had only just finished telling Perseus this when she let out a terrible shriek, for that very moment she had spotted the monster as it bobbed up from the depths some way behind him.

'Fear naught!' cried Perseus, or words to that effect, and in a trice he had freed Andromeda by cutting through her chains with Hermes' sword. Turning, he then sprang into the air and rushed upon the monster.

No doubt the gentle reader here expects me to describe a terrible combat, but if the truth be told it was a walkover. For all its foaming jaws and huge swishing tail the giant whale, or whatever it was, did not stand an earthly. Like a tennis ball endowed with perpetual motion, Perseus simply bounced up and down driving his sword into the poor brute's back every time he descended, till the sea was red with its blood and it turned stomach up showing that it was a goner.

When he had done his stuff a mighty cheer broke out. Andromeda's parents and half the population of the countryside had assembled near the shore to see the end of her. The scream she had given on spotting the monster had brought them running to the edge of the cliff, and now they came swarming down it to acclaim our Hero.

As soon as Andromeda had been got ashore and wrapped up in a blanket Perseus told her parents that he wanted to marry her. Just in case they should be against her taking a husband who was not out of the top drawer he added quickly that they would find him in their version of Debrett as a son of Zeus. On hearing this, the King was so delighted that he said Perseus could have the girl and the whole kingdom too if he liked; so everything seemed set fair for the two young people getting to know one another better.

However, it soon transpired that there was a fly in the ointment. Apparently King Cepheus had temporarily forgotten that Andromeda was already engaged to a chap called Phineus. When Phineus heard what was on he became very shirty, and he completely spoilt the wedding feast by turning up at it and demanding his promised bride.

They couldn't very well hustle him out, because they were dressed in their Sunday best whereas he had arrived armed to the teeth and backed by a crowd of armed retainers. What is more, as he was the equivalent of a member of the local Hunt, a lot of the wedding guests took his side against Perseus, who was a stranger.

Perseus, being the sort of chap he was, naturally defied Phineus and refused to give up his girl. For an answer Phineus chucked his spear at him. That started a free-for-all, and for a few minutes it looked as if Perseus and the King's friends, who stuck by him, were going to get the worst of it. But Perseus had taken Medusa's head along with him to his wedding. It must have been a bit high by that time, but I suppose he didn't want to let it out of his sight. Anyhow, with a shout of 'All of you who are on my side shut your eyes,' he pulled the head out of its bag and showed it to the company.

That was that as far as Phineus and his pals were concerned. But it must have been rather a gloomy wedding afterwards, with a crowd of gentry who had just been turned to stone looking on.

Now that Perseus was married he wanted to go home; but Andromeda could not fly, so he had to build a ship to take her. When they reached Seriphos he learned that Polydectes had never let up from chasing his mother—not his own mother, of course, but Danae—round the gooseberry bushes. In fact his behaviour had been so caddish that poor Danae had found it necessary to take sanctuary in Athene's temple.

Straight away Perseus strode up to the castle to give this old wolf-whistler a piece of his mind. But Polydectes got in first. He was very rude to Perseus about his mother not having been married to his father, then he taunted him with coming home with his tail between his legs and no Medusa's head.

That's what you think,' said Perseus, and promptly pulled the head out of the bag. This put paid to Polydectes and no doubt he was removed to decorate the local park. Perseus then made the good Dictys chief of the island and went off to tell his mother, I mean his own mother not Dictys', that she need no longer be afraid to leave the temple.

Apparently she had never let on to him that he was the grandson of the King of Argos, but she told him now; so he decided to go and pay his respects to his grandfather. But before setting out he returned to the gods the wonderful things with which they had equipped him, and he made a present of Medusa's head to Athene. She set the head in the middle of her shield, and you can see it there in most of the statues of her.

Someone tipped King Acrisius off that his grandson was on the way to see him and, recalling the prophecy, the old chap properly got the wind up. Rather than remain in Argos and face Perseus, he fled north to Larissa in Thessaly. When Perseus heard about this he followed him with the intention of assuring him that he bore him no ill-will about his treatment of his mother—oh, bother, I don't mean his own mother but Perseus' mother—and only wanted to say 'Hello!'

When Perseus arrived in Larissa, the King of that place was holding one of those sessions of Public Games which with the Greeks took the place of our Test matches and Cup Finals. As anyone could join in and our Hero rather fancied himself as an athlete he entered his name for all the events. My gentle reader will not be surprised to learn that he took all the prizes one after the other, but when it came to throwing the quoit Fate took ja hand. Not only did his quoit go further than those of any of the other competitors, but a gust of wind gave it a sudden lift, carrying it right into the Royal Box. As a V.I.P. guest his grand-pop had naturally been given a seat there. It hit the wicked old man slap on the head, killing him outright, and thus the Prophecy was fulfilled.

Perseus was very upset about this and, even when he had had himself purified, he still didn't feel happy about taking over the kingdom of Argos, owing to his having come into it by killing bis grandfather. In consequence he swapped it with a neighbour of his for the kingdom of Tiryns. There he built the great city of Mycenae, of which I shall have a lot to tell you later.

By his beautiful Andromeda he had lots of children and they hved happily ever after. The gods were so pleased about this that when they died they were granted immortality, and as bright stars given a place side by side in the heavens.

* * * *

Having finished reading his chapter and put the manuscript away, Robbie went to bed in a more cheerful frame of mind than he had enjoyed for some time. He was pleased with his work and now looking forward to an end to the drudgery he had to endure at the Travel Agency. With his usual optimism and faith in people cleverer than himself, he was by now convinced that Luke would think of some new line of investigation which he could pursue, so that, without suffering the humiliation of having abandoned his quest, he could give Krajcir notice on Monday.

The Greeks being a hardworking people, comparatively few of the shops in Athens close for a half-day, and those that do shut on Wednesdays; so that, although next day was a Saturday, the agency was open for its usual hours. In the morning business was slack, but it became brisker when the office re-opened at four o'clock, as another Czechoslovakian cruise ship had docked that day at the Piraeus.

At about half past five a small group of these tourist-on-a-shoestring were collecting folders and enquiring how, with their very limited funds, they could see something of the night-life of Athens—a diversion not included in their Government-subsidized itinerary. Pani Sebesta had gone out to see a printer about some new stationery that was required, Rudolph and Ludmilla were fully occupied at the counter answering enquiries and Robbie was seated at a small table in the background, engaged in a chore that he had been given of cleaning Pani Sebesta's typewriter.

The bell on the door jangled again, and Robbie glanced up to see a tall, tanned, well-dressed man come in. With an impatient frown at the backs of the little crowd of tourists, the newcomer thrust his way through them and, seeing that both Rudolph and Ludmilla were engaged, called across to Robbie:

'Hi, you! Is Comrade Krajcir in?'

As the man spoke, Robbie's mouth fell open. He had at that moment recognized the lean, sunken cheeks, hard jaw, and black hair-line moustache of this impatient customer. It was he who had been discussing the tobacco-oil deal over lunch with the Czech First Secretary at Toyrcolimano ten days previously, and so a prime cause for the upheaval in Robbie's life that had since occurred.

'What . . . what name shall I give, sir?' he stammered.

'Barak,' replied the other. 'Comrade Vaclav Barak. He knows me; so if he's disengaged, I'll go straight in.'

'I'll just see, sir,' countered Robbie diplomatically, although he knew that Krajcir had no one with him. Stepping over to the door of the manager's office, he opened it a few inches and announced the visitor. Krajcir gave a quick nod, so he walked back to the counter, opened a low gate in it, and showed Mr. Barak in.

Breathless with excitement, Robbie sat down again at his table. Here was the break for which he had been praying. Barak must know all about the secret negotiations. But how could his visit be used to get hold of that knowledge?

Laboriously, Robbie's mind revolved the question. Perhaps he could follow Barak when he left, and find out where he lived? That would be a good start. How could he do that, though? Krajcir always saw his visitors out personally. To push past him and calmly walk off after the man to whom he had just said good-bye would be hardly possible. Krajcir would call him back and demand to know where he was going, Barak would hear them, look round and, having seen Robbie leave the agency in spite of Krajcir's protests, would soon realize that he was being followed. He would then turn upon Robbie and demand an explanation.

How about leaving the office now and lying in wait for Barak out in the street? That would mean questions from Ludmilla and Rudolph, but he could ignore them. However, a snag to that quickly presented itself. At about three o'clock, it had come on to rain so he had returned to the office in a macintosh. The agency's premises were modest and, having been constructed out of a part of the old courtyard, were also awkward. The only place available for the staff to keep their hats and coats was a small closet, to reach which they had to pass through Krajcir's office. In the circumstances, although it was still raining, and quite hard too, that would not have deterred most men from going out without a macintosh. But all his life Robbie had been trained for his own protection to follow habits. Being unused to thinking for himself, it never occurred to him that he would take little harm from going out unprotected into the rain, and what possible excuse could he make to Krajcir for going through his office, then emerging from the closet wearing or carrying his mac?

Agitated and frustrated, he sat on, staring at Mrs. Sebesta's typewriter. Here was a real chance thrown in his way, a perfect lead to solving the riddle which had become a nagging obsession with him; yet it seemed there was no way in which he could take advantage of it. He would have given even half a year's income to hear what Krajcir and Barak were saying to one another in the private office. The door to it was at his elbow and so ill-nttmg that there was a gap of nearly an inch between the bottom and the floor, but the harsh voices of the tourists chattering on the far side of the counter created a background of noise sufficient to drown the murmur of the two voices that Robbie was straining his ears to hear.

It was then that Pallas Athene intervened to undo Mr. Havelka. at least Robbie interpreted the little thing that happened as

evidence of her divine guidance. Through the open window fluttered a single leaf. For a moment, it hovered uncertainly on the floor, then the outer door opened to admit two more tourists. The sudden draught drove the leaf through the narrow gap below Krajcir's door into his office. Had it not been a special leaf it would have conveyed no message to Robbie, but it was a special leaf. Only one tree grew in the courtyard: the old gnarled olive, Athene's sacred tree. Indisputably, he thought, the leaf was her messenger, and had given him the lead to how to act.

He must follow it. Go in to Krajcir. But how could he? What possible excuse could he give for butting in when his boss was conferring with a visitor? Next moment, he had it.

Standing up, he gave one quick tap on Krajcir's door and, without waiting for permission to go in, pushed it open. At that moment, Barak was speaking and Robbie clearly heard the last words of his sentence. \ . . Rhodes and the other islands there is no special urgency, but for the groups at Patras and Corinth you must fix up accommodation right away.'

Krajcir looked up at Robbie with a frown. Hastily Robbie muttered: 'I'm sorry, sir. I left some letters in my mac that I want to take to the post. D'you mind if I get them?'

'No; but be quick about it,' replied Krajcir sharply.

As Robbie went into the closet, pulling the door partly shut behind him, he heard Krajcir say. 'The Bratislava is not due to dock till the 31st, that's Monday week; so we've plenty of time. By Wednesday, I should be able to let you have full particulars of the arrangements I have made for the first three or four groups, and I'll have dealt with the others by the end of the week.'

Inside the closet Robbie was hastily fishing about in his pockets. From them, he unearthed a sheet of paper on which he had made some notes for his book, the last letter he had received from old Nanny Fisher and the bill for his week's stay at the Grande Bretagne, which he had received that morning. Not daring to linger there longer, he folded these together with the letter on top and, clutching them in the hand which would be farther from Krajcir as he passed his desk, quickly recrossed the private office, closing its door to the outer office softly behind him.

A few minutes later, the two Czechs emerged from it and, without either of them giving a glance at Robbie, Krajcir saw Barak out into the courtyard.

To all appearances, Robbie had resumed his cleaning of Mrs. Sebesta's typewriter. Actually he was doing no more than dab at it automatically with the worn toothbrush he had been given for the job, while he endeavoured to assess the fruits of his first successful piece of espionage.

The Bratislava was obviously a Czechoslovakian ship, and due to make her first call at a Greek port on Monday the 31st. It seemed reasonable to assume that she was carrying as passengers a considerable number of Czechs who were to be distributed in groups about Greece and the islands. Anyhow, it appeared fairly certain that her first call was to be Patras, and that the intention was for two groups to be landed there, one of which would go on to Corinth. Although Robbie had no evidence on which to base his assumption, he felt no doubt at all that, as it was Barak who was initiating these arrangements, the groups were composed of technicians, and that they were being sent to Greece for some nefarious purpose, on the pretext of prospecting for oil.

Ludmilla happened to glance in Robbie's direction at that moment, and saw that he was smiling to himself. He had good reason to do so. Now that he had this definite lead to follow, he need have no further hesitation about giving in his notice to Krajcir. He was no longer even dependent on Luke's providing an idea which would enable him to continue his quest in some new direction. If he liked he could, without a qualm, walk out of the agency there and then, and simply not come back. But he decided that that would be an unnecessary rudeness to people who had treated him, if not with kindness, at least with politeness; and that, anyway, it would be foolish to sever his connection with Krajcir and the others so churlishly when there was nothing to be gained by so doing.

Some ten minutes later, Mrs. Sebesta returned from the printers; so now that Robbie was once more under her slave-driver's eye, he had to put considerably more energy into his attentions to her typewriter, but his mind continued to speculate excitedly on what he had learned owing to Barak's visit. After a while, it occurred to him that, as Krajcir had been instructed to find accommodation for these groups of Czechs, he must now have in his office a complete list of the numbers in each group and the places at which they intended to prospect for oil—or whatever it was they meant to set about under that cover. To leave the agency without securing that, or at least getting a sight of it, would surely be wanton neglect in exploiting to the full the chance he had been given. But how could he set about it?

Every evening at about half past six, it was Krajcir's custom to go out for about twenty minutes. He always remarked casually on leaving that he was going round the corner to 'consult with his associates'; but they all knew that he was simply slipping out to drink an ouzo at a nearby cafe, where he could be found if urgently needed.

His absence would offer a chance to get a look at the papers on his desk but, even as Robbie thought of it, he discarded the idea. It was most unlikely that Pani Sebesta would leave the agency again before closing time, and what possible excuse could be give for going into Krajcir's office? Certainly none that would justify his remaining there long enough to go through the Manager's papers, and any attempt to do so without such an excuse would almost certainly result in the Sebesta woman coming in to see what he was up to, and catching him red-handed.

For another half-hour he wrestled with his problem, then a daring thought came to him. Why should he not return after the office was closed, and break into it? The courtyard formed a cul-de-sac, so he would run no risk of being seen by passers-by, and after dark no one except the handful of people who lived there came in or out of it; so during the five or ten minutes it would take him to force an entry, the odds were all against anyone coming on the scene.

The idea filled him with renewed excitement, but when he began to consider the practical details, his ardour became a little damped. The outer door of the office not only had a mortice lock, but was further secured by a padlock. During his year in Greece, apart from picking up that language he had given no time to adding others to his repertoire and, having had endless free hours to fill, he had got through a considerable number of books. So many of these having been gangster thrillers, he needed no telling that professional burglars always went to work with jemmies, blow-torches, electric drills or sticks of gelignite. To obtain any of these aids to crime at such short notice was obviously out of the question, and that ruled out any hope of his forcing the door.

That left only the windows; but again he would have no means of forcing one, and to break a pane might easily attract the attention of someone in the houses on the opposite side of the courtyard. Perhaps, though, before leaving, he could manage to fix one of them so that it was not properly locked. The fact that his colleagues would remain at work in the outer office until closing time, when he himself would have to leave, ruled out any possibility of tampering with any of the three windows there; so it would have to be the one in Krajcir's private sanctum.

By this time he had finished cleaning the typewriter, and his taskmistress had put him on to stamping a pile of circulars. When he was half-way through them, Krajcir came out and, with his usual announcement about 'having a word with his associates', went off for his aperitif. After stamping the remainder of the pile, Robbie gave a loud sniff, and muttered to old Pani Sebesta: 'Left my handkerchief in my mac; just going to get it.'

As he stepped into Krajcir's office, she gave him only a glance. Shutting the door behind him, he stepped quickly across to the open window. It was not a large one, so the catch that secured it could be reached from outside by stretching an arm through any of its panes, had one of them been missing. On the inner sill, partly hiding the lowest row of panes, stood a line of thick reference books.

Having already thought out what he meant to do, Robbie wasted no time but swiftly removed two of the reference books from the left end of the row. He then picked up a paper-weight from Krajcir's desk and gave the left corner pane a sharp tap with it. Nothing happened. His hand was trembling and beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead, but he nerved himself to give the pane another, harder, tap. That did it. The pane cracked but, to his relief, did not fall out. It was starred into four large and two small irregular triangles. Letting out his breath with a little gasp, he hastily put back the paper-weight and replaced the reference books. They hid all but two of the cracks in the upper part of the pane, and he felt that he would be very unlucky if, in the hour before closing time, Krajcir noticed them. He had been away barely two minutes'when he returned to the outer office, violently blowing his nose.

For the last hour he remained on tenterhooks, but nothing out of the ordinary happened. At eight o'clock, the usual goodnights were said and the agency was locked up till Monday. A quarter of an hour later, hardly conscious of what he ate, he was having his dinner at the Grande Bretagne. During it, his mind was busily speculating on the best time at which to make his attempt. The classic choice seemed to be in the small hours of the morning, but against that was the fact that the streets would be almost empty; so it was much more likely that, if a policeman happened to spot anyone slipping into a cul-de-sac, he would come along to investigate. On the other hand, the majority of Athenians were very averse to going to bed early. At any time up till one o'clock, someone living in the cul-de-sac might come home from a party, the last house at one of the cinemas, or even from sitting talking with friends in a cafe.

While pondering this dilemma, it suddenly struck Robbie that the present was the perfect hour. There would still be plenty of people in the streets, but the inhabitants of the courtyard would either have already gone out or be occupied at home, eating their dinners. Pushing aside his compote of mandarines, he hurried from the restaurant.

The rain had stopped and it was a warm evening so, without bothering to get a hat or coat, he walked quickly round to the agency. The courtyard was deserted. There were lights in the ground-floor windows of one of the houses and in several of the upper windows round the well, but all of them had their curtains drawn. After a quick look round, he went to the window of Krajcir's office. It lay at right angles to the agency's other three windows, as it was round a corner; so while getting in through it, he could not be seen by anyone approaching from the street. For an illegal entry, things could not have been more propitious. Then, just as he was about to stretch out his hand to the broken Pane, he was brought up short by a shattering thought. In his hurry, he had forgotten to collect his torch.

To switch on the light when he got into Krajcir's office would be asking for trouble. Any of the neighbours, seeing a light there at that unusual hour, would be certain to become suspicious, see him through the window and, if they noticed that the door was still padlocked, send for the police. Yet without a light, how was-he to read the papers he hoped to find in Krajcir's desk?

He had on him a pocket lighter. As long as he held it on, it-would serve for him to read by; but he was hoping to copy down any particulars, so that he would not have to trust to memory,, and he could not very well do that with only one hand. For a moment he stood there, a prey to awful indecision. Then he decided that, without a torch, it would take him three times as long to do the job, and that even then he might bungle it. Turning, he left the courtyard, at something between a walk and a run.

Once out in the street, he did run most of the way to the Grande Bretagne and back. To go up in the lift there and get his torch took him only three minutes, so he was away altogether for not much more than ten. The church clocks had not yet chimed nine and, to his immense relief, the situation in the courtyard had not changed. It was still deserted, and the curtains remained drawn across the lighted windows.

Panting, and trembling a little, he again stepped up to the window of Krajcir's office. With his forefinger he prodded the smallest triangle of glass in the cracked pane. It fell inward, making only a tiny tinkle. Now that he could use a thumb and finger, it was easy to wriggle the other pieces until they became free, and one by one he laid them silently on the ground. As he pushed his arm through the now empty space, three of the big reference books on the shelf inside fell to the floor with a muffled thump. A moment later, his upthrust fingers found the catch and pressed it back. Withdrawing his arm, he tried to lever up the lower section of the window. To his dismay, it would not budge. He had overlooked the fact that it was only the upper section that was opened every day; the lower one had probably not been opened for years. It was stuck fast.

Almost crying with frustration, he stepped back and stared at it. To have to abandon his venture now would be the most bitter pill. But perhaps he could get in through the top half of the window. He was quite tall enough to get a good grip on it when it was lowered, but it had one row of panes less than the lower section, so that, even when opened to its fullest extent, it would be a tight squeeze to get his big chest and shoulders through. In any case, thre was no alternative to going in head first, so how, without risking a nasty injury, could he get down to the floor? Then, say he got stuck? The thought that he might be found there hours later, with his head and arms inside and his feet still kicking outside, was an appalling one. It would mean, too, that when he was rescued, he would be ignominiously marched off to the police station. He dared not risk it.

With a little sob of despair, he turned away and stumbled round the corner. A sudden gust of wind came down the passage from the street, and he heard a light rustle. Looking up, he found himself facing the gnarled olive tree. Instantly and without question, he accepted the sound as Athene rebuking him for his cowardice.

Turning, he strode back to the window, thrust his arm in, pulled down the upper part and took a firm grip of it with both hands. One spring and his head and shoulders were through the gap. With an awkward push, he wriggled his chest over the sash. Next moment, his arms were flailing helplessly and his hands clutching empty air. There was nothing for it now but to go on wriggling until the bulk of his body was through. The weight of it brought up his feet with a sudden jerk. With difficulty he suppressed a cry of fear, and came down with a hideous crash on the floor.

By twisting as he fell, he managed to save his head, but from the sudden pain that shot through his left thumb and shoulder, he feared he had broken the one and dislocated the other. With a groan, he picked himself up. Although his thumb and shoulder continued to hurt considerably, he found that he could still move both freely; so he concluded that neither had sustained serious damage.

As soon as he had got his breath back, he shut the window and replaced the fallen reference books on the sill. Taking out his torch, he pressed the switch, praying that the bulb had not been broken by his fall. It had not, and a bright beam from it clove the almost total darkness. As chance would have it, the beam was aimed directly on Krajcir's safe. Robbie groaned again. What a fool he had been. He had forgotten all about the safe and, naturally, Krajcir would have locked up in it such important documents as those referring to the secret project in which the Czechs were engaged. As he could not possibly open the safe, he had taken this big risk and had hurt himself badly all for nothing.

Half-heartedly, he turned the torch on to Krajcir's desk. It offered no consolation, as there was not even a pad with scribbled notes on it. He pulled open the centre drawer. Inside, there was a blue folder containing only a few sheets of paper. One glance at the top one, and Robbie's full mouth suddenly broke into a rapturous smile. Here, after all, was the very thing he was after. Evidently, Krajcir could not be in the full confidence of his Legation. He could not have realized the importance of keeping secret the reservations Barak had instructed him to make, otherwise he would have locked up the folder.

Sitting down in Krajcir's swivel chair, Robbie laid his torch on the desk, and masked its light so that no more than a glow from it could be seen through the window. Taking a piece of letter paper from the rack and one of the pencils from a nearby holder, he began to copy, in his laborious hand, the particulars listed on the papers in the folder.

At a glance, he saw that in every case a house was to be rented that would accommodate eleven people; but sometimes accommodation in hotels was also required, although for two nights only, and in each of these places on different dates, beginning at Patras on March 31st and ending at Lesbos on April 12th. The bookings at hotels suggested that in some places the houses were not easily accessible from the ports. Where hotel accommodation was required, it was to be, in every case, first class for three and third class for eight. All arrangements and accounts were to be settled by the agency. The places at which either houses or bookings were required were Patras, Corinth, Pirgos, Kalamai, Kithira, Heraklion in Crete, Rhodes, Kos, Samnos, Chios and Lesbos.