Mayhem in Greece

They enjoyed their dinner, and lingered over it till nearly ten o'clock. Then, after a liqueur in the lounge, they went up to bed. As Robbie undressed, he could not remember ever having had such a happy day.

Next morning, he had just finished his breakfast in bed when the house telephone rang. It was Stephanie and, after briefly wishing him good morning, she said: 'Look. I take it you will be occupied all the morning doing your business with the oil people you've come here to see. I had to pack in such a hurry that I left at home quite a number of things I need, so I want to go out and do some shopping. Would it be all right with you if we meet here about one o'clock for lunch?'

Robbie was completely nonplussed. He had no oil people he had to see, and he had been looking forward to a pleasant morning exploring the town with Stephanie, while other young men turned round to cast envious eyes at him for having such a charming companion. But he realized at once that, unless he played up to the role he had given himself, he could not expect her to continue to believe in it; so he said, a little lamely:

'Yes, I've got a few people I have to see. All right, then. By all means do your shopping. I'll be waiting for you here around one o'clock.'

Having taken his time bathing and dressing, he spent two rather boring hours mooching round the straight, arcaded streets and squares of the city. By half-past twelve, fed up with his aimless wandering, he turned back towards the Cecil. When he was within a hundred yards of it, a tall, thin man came out from the hotel entrance and, with rapid strides, approached him. With a sudden shock, he recognized the man as Vaclav Barak.

So unexpected was the encounter that Robbie instinctively lifted his right hand a few inches, on an impulse to raise his hat. Next moment, he was contemplating an abrupt about-turn as the only means of avoiding coming face to face with Barak. He need not have worried. When they had first come into contact at Toyrcolimano, Barak had not given Robbie even a glance and, when he had seen him again as a stooge at the Travel Agency, he had not bothered to take in his features.

The lean, dark Czech, with the black, hair-line moustache, strode past Robbie without appearing to notice him. But this encounter brought home one thing to Robbie, in no uncertain manner. However delightful he might find this new experience of basking in the smiles of a lovely girl like Stephanie, it was not for that he had come to Patras. He had much more important fish to fry, and it was quite time that he gave serious thought to them.

13

You Have Been Warned

For Robbie, running into Barak had been like receiving a pail of ice-cold water on the back after hours of blissful sunbathing. He had still not fully recovered from the shock by lunch time, and was so distrait that Stephanie asked him if he was feeling ill. He assured her that he was quite well, and took refuge in saying that a business meeting he had had that morning had been rather worrying.

During the past half hour, he had been upbraiding himself for not even having bothered to check up that the Bratislava was arriving at Patras on Monday. Instead of mooning about the streets while Stephanie did her shopping, he could have gone to the port to find out. Barak's presence in Patras suggested that he had come there to meet the ship. Now that Robbie's conscience had been aroused, he felt he ought to pay a visit to the docks to gather any information that he could; so, with considerable reluctance, he told Stephanie that he would have to make another business call after the siesta.

The port has three basins, linked by a broad promenade nearly a mile in length and protected by a long breakwater. Having no experience in making investigations, Robbie wasted some time enquiring of dockhands and numerous ships' officers, coming and going along the wharf, if they could tell him anything about the arrival of the Bratislava. None of them could, but one suggested that he should try the Port Authority, and there he eventually ran to earth a clerk who pointed out to him on a plan the berth that had been reserved for the Czech ship, and told him she was due in some time on Monday afternoon.

By the time he got back to the Cecil, it was well past six. As soon as he joined Stephanie in the lounge, she asked: 'How do you suggest that we spend the evening?'

'I hadn't really thought,' he smiled. 'What would you like to do? How about a cinema?'

She shook the crisp, chestnut curls. 'I'd much rather go dancing.'

'I . . .' he flushed slightly. 'I'm afraid I can't dance. I've never learned.'

Her dark eyebrows arched up into her smooth forehead. 'What an unusual person you are. Have you anything against dancing?'

'No; it's not that. It's just . . . just that I've spent my time doing other things; listening to music; learning languages and, more recently, doing a lot of reading.'

'Then it's quite time you did learn. As a matter of fact, I've made enquiries, and the hall-porter recommended a place called The Pigalle. It is a restaurant as well, of course; so we could have dinner there.'

Bewitched as he had already become by his delightful secretary, Robbie made no demur, although inwardly he felt considerable trepidation about attempting this new venture. An hour or so later, they took a taxi round to The Pigalle.

It had little resemblance to the famous Parisian establishment of that name. Few wealthy travellers visit Patras, or even tourists with holiday money to burn. Its patrons were local business men or ships' officers, the former with their wives or mistresses, and the latter being entertained by a number of not very glamorous dance hostesses. The lights were dim, the floor small and on two sides of the room there were a number of alcoves, to one of which, after a glance at Robbie's well-cut clothes, a head waiter led them.

The meal was passable although, as everywhere in Greece except in the very best hotels, rendered less appetizing by being served on near-cold plates. As against that, Robbie found the bottle of Achaia champagne that he had ordered surprisingly good. While by no means of the standard to which he was used at the Embassy, it was full of body without being sweet. A little fearful of the ordeal ahead, he fortified himself with several glasses, before letting Stephanie persuade him to take the floor.

If Stephanie had hoped to find in him a natural dancer, she was grievously disappointed. Although she danced well herself, and could have controlled a smaller man, Robbie's size and his being so much taller than she was made it very difficult for her to guide him. Moreover, although the quickness of his physical reactions had improved greatly since his boyhood, they were still markedly slower than those of a normal man.

Owing to his inexperience, he was quite unconscious of this, and gave himself up to the pleasure of holding Stephanie's well-made, yielding body against his own, delighting in the scent she had put on for the occasion, and smiling down into her upturned face. When he had seen other young men dancing with pretty girls he had often envied them, although it had never occurred to him to take a course of dancing lessons. Now, for the first time, he realized what a joy it could be and hardly noticed that, from time to time, they collided with other couples. Had it not been for his ear for music, his first attempt must have proved disastrous; but his ability to at least move his body in time to the rhythm enabled Stephanie to get him round the floor a dozen times, before she asked breathlessly to be taken back to their table.

Half an hour later, at his suggestion, they danced again. Afterwards^ he asked her cheerfully: 'Well! How £m I doing?'

She gave him a rueful smile. 'I'm afraid you are not exactly a born dancer, Robbie. Unfortunately, too, you're too tall for me to see over your shoulder to steer you. And you have got awfully large feet.'

As his face fell, she added quickly: 'Never mind. Perhaps you'll turn out to be a marvellous driver when you try your hand with the car.'

'But . . .' he began. 'I don't-'

'. . . don't mean to learn,' she finished for him, with a laugh. 'But you ought to, Robbie. I'm not trying to shirk my job, but every man ought to know how to drive a car, and there should be plenty of opportunities for me to teach you.'

'Well . . . yes ... thanks,' he stammered, again a little shaken at the speed with which this laughing, blue-eyed creature, unknown to him thirty-six hours ago, was opening up for him one new vista after another. 'Of course, you're right. I ought to have learned to drive a car ages ago.'

'That's settled then. I take it we shan't be going across the gulf to see the ruins at Pleuron until Monday; so I could give you your first lesson tomorrow morning.'

Her suggestion jerked his thoughts on to a very different track. On Monday he had to be in Patras to see the Bratislava dock, and find out all he could about the people who came ashore from her. Then the group that was landed might not remain in Patras, hut set off inland. Should they do that, unless he was to fall down on the job he had set himself he must follow them in order to learn where the villa was that they were to occupy while they did their prospecting. After that, events might prevent his returning to Patras, and it would look very queer to Stephanie if, having talked to her so much about his book and stressed his desire to visit the ruins of Pleuron, he should leave Patras without doing so.

After a moment, he said: 'No, I'm afraid tomorrow's no good. You see, I've got to be here to transact some more business on

Monday; so tomorrow may be our only chance of going to Calydon and Pleuron.'

'What time do you with us to start?' she asked.

'That depends on the times the ferry goes; but I should like to leave fairly early, so as not to have to rush things on the other side.'

'In that case,' said Stephanie, seizing on the excuse to escape any more of the arduous dancing she had brought on herself, 'I think we ought to go back to the hotel soon, so that we can get some sleep.'

'Oh not yet!' he protested. 'It's only just on midnight, and I'm enjoying myself so much.'

'I'm glad.' She gave him a little smile, but added firmly: 'You forget, though, that I have to do the driving, and that the roads over there are certain to be awful.'

Immediately contrite, Robbie began to apologize for his thoughtlessness, but with a flutter of her fingers she checked him and went on: 'I think, too, you would be wise to order a picnic lunch. That is, unless you like goat's meat, sour cream and resinated wine, because there is not usually much else to be had in Greece once you get off the beaten track.'

He grinned at her. 'What a splendid secretary you make. I shall have to raise your wages.'

'I haven't had any yet,' she countered, with a laugh. 'But don't worry. I'm rather enjoying my job of looking after you.'

They finished their second bottle of the Achaia champagne, then the waiter got them a taxi. During the short run back to the hotel, Robbie was sorely tempted to take and squeeze the small, firm hand that he had recently held while dancing. But he did not dare. This new relationship was the sort of thing he had dreamed of, but feared to be far beyond his powers ever to establish. Suddenly, almost overnight, he was experiencing unalloyed delights which, every moment he was in Stephanie's company, made him feel in the seventh heaven. To have taken the risk of doing the slightest thing that might lead to this sweet-scented, glamorous being ceasing to smile upon him would have been sheer madness.

At the hotel, the night porter produced the time-table for the ferry service, and they decided to take one leaving at nine-forty-five. Robbie gave orders for a picnic basket and for the car to be brought round at nine o'clock, then they went up to their rooms.

Next morning, they set off in good time and drove the few miles to the little harbour of Rion, at the narrow entrance of the great Corinthian gulf. Opposite it, only two kilometres away, lay another small harbour, Andirrion, to which they were going. As it was a Sunday, instead of the odd, dusty lorry and herds of sheep and goats which would normally have made up the ferry's freight, it was empty except for a battered Ford and two cyclists.

On their way over, Robbie pointed out to Stephanie the roofs of a small township about three miles away. 'You Greeks,' he said, 'call that little town Navpaktos, but in the history books of every language it is known as Lepanto. I was telling you on Friday how, at the battle of Salamis, the West was saved from coming under the heel of Persia. In the bay there, some two thousand years later, another great naval battle was fought that again saved the West from becoming enslaved to Asia. A fleet of two hundred Turkish galleys was destroyed there by the combined forces of Venice, Spain, Genoa and the Knights of Malta, under Don John of Austria. If he hadn't won, it's quite on the cards that, today we would all be Mohammedans.'

'It didn't save the Greeks from having those horrid Turks on their necks for a long time afterwards, though,' Stephanie remarked.

'No,' Robbie agreed. 'You had to put up a terrific fight before you won your independence. On our way to Pleuron, we shall be going through Missolonghi and, as I expect you know, that was one of the stoutest centres of resistance. Rather than surrender to an army of thirty thousand Turks, who had been besieging it for weeks, the Greek leader, Khristos Kapsalis, blew up the magazine and killed three thousand of his own people. Nine or ten thousand others were captured and sold as slaves, but he got away to the hills.'

Stephanie nodded. 'It's much more famous on account of Lord Byron. For a man of that kind to have roughed it serving with the patriot guerilla bands, until he became so weak from fever that he died, fills me with real admiration.'

After landing, they headed west and, near the township of Krioneri, got out to see the ruins of Calydon. In ancient times it must have been a considerable town, as there were acres of stone foundations, fallen pillar drums and big, up-ended blocks, mostly half overgrown with coarse grass and nettles. Excavations had brought to light part of a temple, but there was little else of interest; so they returned to the town and drove across the moor to Missolonghi.

It differed little from hundreds of other small towns in Greece. There were few modern buildings and much evidence of poverty; but the peasants, dressed in their Sunday best, looked clean and healthy, and waved cheerful greetings. Without stopping in the town, they ran on for another five kilometres, which brought them to Pleuron.

The place had far more to show than Calydon. A great part of its walls were still standing, and many of its thirty-odd towers, and, near the east rampart, a terrace, with ruined shrines along it, There were seven great gateways, a small theatre, a vast cistern over a hundred and fifty yards long. It was there that they decided to eat their picnic lunch. Few travellers visited this remote ruined city, and at that hour not a soul was to be seen in any direction; so few spots could have been pleasanter.

Having gnawed the meat from a wing of chicken and eaten a three-cornered pasty stuffed with liver and rice, Stephanie began to peel an enormous orange and said: 'Come along, Robbie. Tell me what happened here.'

He spat out some of the pips from a big mandarine and admitted: 'I'm sorry, I don't really know. I suppose there were the usual processions and dances and sacrifices.'

'What! No stories of maidens having a thin time of it owing to the attention of winged lions, or of a lady being seduced by a gentleman who had disguised himself as a bunch of grapes?'

'No, I'm afraid not. It's a curious thing but, although Olympus is up in northern Greece, nearly all the adventures of the gods and Heroes seem to have taken place either in the Peloponnesus or overseas. That is, except for the neighbourhood of Athens and, of course, Thebes.'

Tell me about Thebes, then.'

T don't want to bore you,' he forced himself, out of politeness, to say. 'After all, I talked to you about the gods and goddesses during nearly the whole of our drive from Athens.'

*I know.' Stephanie was sitting in a moss-covered niche, between two great stones, and now she lay back in it. 'But I'll have to make a start on this book of yours soon, and the more I know about its background the better. If I fall asleep, you can always give me a gentle prod.'

Robbie finished his mandarine, licked his fingers, gave her a rather doubtful glance, and said: 'Very well, then; and it won't really matter if you do drop off. This is another chapter that 1 haven't written yet, so telling it will help to get my ideas in order.' After another drink of the red wine that had been put in the hamper, he started off:

'Cadmus, who was the founder of Thebes, definitely ranks as one of the Heroes, although he differs from the others because so many of his descendants also played big parts in Greek history. Unfortunately, though, they nearly all came to sticky ends.

'He was not a Greek, but the son of Agenor, King of Tyre, and he had a very lovely sister. You'll have heard of her because her name was Europa. One day, she was making sandcastles on the beach with a bevy of attendant maidens. From up aloft, old Zeus happened to spot her and, not wanting to scare her, he came mincing along the sands in the form of a beautiful, white bull.'

'You can skip what happened next.'

'Yes; you're right. The little idiot made him a chaplet of flowers and let him lick her neck; then, when he knelt down she climbed on his back and the next thing she knew was that she was clinging to his horns for dear life, while he ploughed through the sea like a speed boat, carrying her off to Crete. When he had got her safe ashore, he told her who he was, and said that if she were willing to give him a good time without making any trouble, he would see to it that a whole continent was called after her. Much flattered by that, she said: "All right; go ahead," and, in due course, she bore him two sons, Minos and Rhadaman-thus; both of whom were later made judges in Hades.

'Meanwhile, her father had got himself terribly worked up about her disappearance, and sent his three sons, Cadmus, Phoenix and Cilix, off to search for her. Her mama, Telephassa, couldn't sleep at nights for thinking of what might be happening to her ewe lamb, so she decided to go along with the boys.

'Phoenix was the first to get bored, so he pegged out a claim for himself and founded Phoenicia. Cilix threw his hand in next, and started a kingdom called after him, Cilicia. But Cadmus and his mother kept plodding on, until the old girl gave out and died by the wayside, still urging him not to give up.

'He took a ship for Greece, but could hear nothing of Europa, who by then had become quite used to providing bed and breakfast for Zeus in Crete. As a last hope, Cadmus decided to consult the Oracle at Delphi. Apollo, being a decent sort, must have realized that, if he told Cadmus where Europa was, things could only end in Zeus turning him into a praying mantis, or something; so the Oracle gave him no news of his sister. Instead, it told him to follow a cow that was browsing in a nearby field and that, wherever the cow lay down, he should build a city.

'That cow would have won a prize at any cattle show. She crossed a range of mountains, and walked over a hundred kilometres before she decided to have a lie-down. And when you think of the pace of a cow, following her must have driven Cadmus nearly potty.

'They landed up in Boeotia but, unfortunately, the cow had chosen to go to sleep near a grove that was the property of a three-headed dragon. Cadmus sent his servants into the grove to fetch some water from a stream. As they didn't come back he went in after them, and found that they were all as dead as doornails from having been overcome by the dragon's bad breath.

'Being a Hero, Cadmus naturally had to slay the dragon, and, after some pretty lively give and take, he managed to nail one of the dragon's necks to an oak with his sword. As is usual with dragons, this one was belching flames and smoke, but it bled so much that it acted as its own fire extinguisher and put itself out.

'Athene, as the patroness of brave men, then put in an appearance and said to him: "Jolly good show." As all his henchmen had been killed off by the dragon, and it was a bit much to expect him to build a city on his own, she showed him how to get a fully grown labour force in no time at all by sowing some of the dragon's teeth. With their help he built Thebes, which henceforth was the capital of the Kingdom of Boeotia.

'As both Apollo and Athene took a good view of Cadmus, they decided to provide him with a very special wife: in fact a young goddess. She was the daughter of Aphrodite and Ares, and her name was Harmonia. I suppose that is why the marriage was such a success, for they lived in harmony for the rest of their lives.'

'Surely it is more likely that the word "harmony" is derived from her marriage having been so free from quarrels,' Stephanie suggested.

'Perhaps. Anyhow, all the gods came to the wedding, and Aphrodite gave Harmonia a beautiful necklace and a wonderful veil. These were known as "the heirlooms", and later caused a whole packet of trouble; but there was already trouble brewing, because the dragon Cadmus had slain was a pet of Ares. The God of War took its death very badly, and put one of those frightfully unfair Biblical curses on Cadmus. You know, "unto the third and fourth generation".'

'But if Ares had a "down" on Cadmus, why should he have given his consent to his marrying his daughter?'

'He wasn't asked. You see, he wasn't Harmonia's legal father. She was the result of his having had a tumble behind the bushes with Aphrodite while her husband Hephaestus was hard at it in his smithy.'

'Even then, to have cursed the progeny of his own daughter doesn't make sense.'

'He was a big, brutish chap, with very little grey matter. Anyhow, his curse took effect. Cadmus was dethroned by his own grandson, Pentheus, and finally the family ended up in an absolute welter of blood and death.'

'Like the last Act in Hamlet'

'Oh, that is nothing to the goings-on in Thebes. One of Cadmus's sisters, Ino, drowned herself, because her husband had, in a fit of madness, killed her sons. Another, Semele, had an affair with Zeus, and-'

'Did that old rip never stop?'

'Not often, I imagine. Poor Semele came to a very sticky end. Hera was always terribly jealous of her lord's mistresses, so she told Semele what a lucky girl she was, and how she ought to persuade Zeus one night to show himself to her in all his glory. He didn't like to refuse her, and, as Hera had known would be the case, the electricity that radiated from him and the lightning flashing from his head was so powerful that Semele was roasted like a chicken before she could even get out of bed.'

'How absolutely frightful.'

'He managed to save the son she was having by him, though. He plucked it out of her body, and put it in his own thigh till it was ready to be born; then it became the God of Revelry, Dionysus. The parties he thought up for his worshippers must have been quite something. One gathers they always ended with everyone very lit up, and the girls doing a sort of bees' and birds' Paul Jones with Dionysus's Satyrs in the moonlight. Anyway, the ladies of Thebes felt that they had never had it so good, and it was that which put paid to Cadmus's grandson, Pentheus. For those times he must have been a bit strait-laced, because he forbade the women of his household to attend these midnight hops. When they read the notice he had posted up, they held an indignation meeting and became so enraged that, led by his own mother, they ran into his room and tore him to pieces.

The heir to the throne was a young Princess, named Antiope. She must have been a good-looker, too, as Zeus had already spotted her and given her twins. They were called Amphion and Zethus. But the throne was usurped by a chap called Lycus; so Antiope hurried her boys off* up into the hills, to be brought up as herdsmen. Later, she fell into the hands of Dirce, a nasty, spiteful woman, whom Lycus had made his Queen. She gave orders for Antiope to be tied to the horns of a wild bull, so that she would be gored and dragged to death. But it wasn't Dirce's lucky day. The two chaps to whom she had given the orders happened to be Antiope's sons, and they recognized their old Mum. So they tied Dirce instead to the horns of the bull. Then Amphion led a revolution, killed off Lycus and became King in his place.

'Amphion at least had a pretty good innings before the curse caught up with him. He married Niobe, and she presented him with seven handsome sons and seven beautiful daughters. As they ail grew into youths and maidens, their parents can't have had much less than twenty-five years of domestic bliss. But Niobe about takes the cake for stupidity. One day, at the Women's Institute, or somewhere of that kind, she ran into Leto and started to needle her. Putting out her tongue, she said: "Yah! You're not much good. You've had only two children, and I've had fourteen," or words to that effect.

'Leto could have retorted: "You silly old bag, mine were by Zeus and are among the greatest of the Immortals, so they're worth fourteen thousand of anything you could produce." But she didn't. She just went home, feeling a bit hurt, and next time her children came for the week-end she told them about it.

'Apollo and Artemis were not the types to take an insult to their old Mum lying down; so, like a couple of rockets, they took off for Thebes. Apollo shot dead all Niobe's sons, and Artemis Put one of her deadly arrows into each of the daughters. Amphion was so upset by seeing all his boys killed that he stabbed himself through the heart, and Niobe was so overcome with grief that sorrow turned her into a stone statue that still continued to weep whenever the sun or moon shone on it.'

Stephanie rolled her blue eyes up to the blue heavens. 'Goodness, what a massacre!'

'We've not half done yet,' Robbie cheerfully assured her. 'Amphion's family having been wiped out, the Boeotians sent for another descendant of Cadmus to be their King. His name was Laius, and that of his wife was Jocasta. Laius was warned by an Oracle that, if he had a son, that son would kill him and be the ruin of his Queen. So, when Jocasta gave birth to a boy, there were no free cakes and ale for all and sundry at the Palace.

'Laius gave the infant to a goat-herd and told him to expose it on Mount Cithaeron, so that it died of cold. But the goat-herd felt a bit squeamish when it came to the point, so he passed on the bundle to a pal of his who was going down to Corinth. At that time, a couple called Polybus and Merope were King and Queen of Corinth, and they had not managed to have any children; so, when this goat-herd turned up with a jolly healthy-looking baby boy, they promptly adopted him and gave him the name of Oedipus.

'He was brought up as a Prince, and everyone might have lived happily ever after if it hadn't been for a rude fellow who chanced to be in the secret that Oedipus was not really the son of the King and Queen. He got stinko one night at a banquet, and taunted Oedipus with being the by-blow of some tart who had left him in the gutter.

'Very perturbed about this, Oedipus went to the King and Queen. They said "not to worry", because they loved him as a son, even though it was true that they were not his real parents. Like an ass, instead of socking the drunk for six, and staying put to inherit the kingdom, Oedipus packed a grip and went off to ask the Delphic Oracle who his parents were. Even the Oracle tried to save him from himself, and said: "Forget it, son. If you ever find out, you will land yourself in one hell of a mess." But the pig-headed clot would not be warned and, instead of going home, set off on a hiking tour, in the hope of finding someone who could tell him the truth about his birth.

'Fate decreed that he should head for Boeotia, and soon after he had entered that country the road became a narrow defile. From the opposite direction a chariot, in which an old gent, was being driven, was approaching, and a slave was running in front of it, shouting a bit breathlessly: "Out of the way! Out of the way for my master!"

'Having been brought up as a Prince, Oedipus wasn't standing for that sort of thing. First, he struck down the runner then, when the old man chucked a javelin at him, he gave him, too, a biff over the head, overturned his chariot and left him dead in the ditch. Only the driver of the chariot got away, and when he reached home he excused his own cowardice by saying that his master had been attacked and killed by a band of robbers. When Oedipus arrived in Thebes, he found the city in mourning for its King, and-'

'Then it was his father that Oedipus had killed,' put in Stephanie.

'You've hit it. But, of course, he didn't know that at the time, nor did anyone else. And their King's death wasn't the only thing the Thebans had to worry about just then. The Sphinx had taken up her residence outside their walls. This creature was said to be the sister of Cerberus, the monstrous hound that guarded the entrance to Hades. She had the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle and the head of a woman, and she was playing merry hell with the standing corn.'

'So, of course, Oedipus went out and slew her.'

'No, it wasn't quite like that. She must have been a queer sort of creature. Before gobbling up people, it was her custom to give them a chance to save themselves by guessing a riddle; with the sporting understanding too that, if they guessed right, she would go off and play ring-a-roses with herself in the cornfields of some other city. Every day for weeks, some bold Theban had gone out and had a shot at answering her riddle, but none of them had returned; so the girls in the place were getting very gloomy about the increasing shortage of dancing partners.

'Creon, Jocasta's brother, had taken over the Government when the news of Laius's death had reached the city, and he had sent out his own son to tackle the Sphinx. But this young hopeful hadn't proved up to it, and Creon was getting really desperate. He had posters put up, announcing that anyone who could answer the riddle of the Sphinx, and rid Thebes of this awful creature, should be rewarded by being made King of Boeotia and, into the bargain, be given Jocasta as his wife.

'By then, Oedipus was so down in the mouth that he hardly cared if he lived or died; so he said he didn't mind having a crack at answering the riddle. Naturally, everyone said: "Jolly good show", and hurried him outside the walls, just on the off-chance that he might have a lucky break. Pretty gloomily, he trudged through the bleached bones of his predecessors, until he came to the huge nest that the Sphinx had made for herself.

'She blinked a bit, then asked him quite civilly: "What creature is it that alone changes the number of its feet? In the morning it goes on four feet, at midday on two and in the evening on three." Rather generously, I think, she gave him a clue, by adding: "When it has the fewest feet, it is really at the top of its form."

'Oedipus just shrugged and replied: "That's kindergarten stuff. The answer is Man. As a babe, he goes on all-fours, at the height of his strength he goes on two feet, and when he gets old, he needs a stick on which to lean."

'The Sphinx was very peeved at having her pet riddle guessed but she honoured her bond, and with a loud squawk, flew off to Play "boomps-a-daisy" in somebody else's corn.'

. 'After that, the Thebans hailed Oedipus as the tops. They made him King and, as Jocasta was still a very good-looking piece of goods, he was delighted to have her for his Queen.'

T remember the story now,' murmured Stephanie drowsily. F 157

'It's the famous tragedy about the young man who fell in love with his mother, isn't it?'

'That's right,' Robbie nodded. 'It seems he did fall for her, and she for him, although neither knew who was who at the time. They were frightfully happy together, too. Jocasta had four children by him; twin sons named Eteocles and Polynices, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene. Everything went marvellously until the children grew up, but then an awful plague fell on the land; so Oedipus sent his brother-in-law, Creon, to Delphi to ask the Oracle how to get rid of it.

'For once, the Oracle didn't try to make a monkey out of anyone, but said right away: "The plague is a punishment sent because Laius's murder has never been atoned for." The local Scotland Yard was put on the job, but couldn't discover who had done in the late King; so they sent for a famous blind seer, named Tiresias. He was very loath to do his stuff, but eventually he recalled to Oedipus the old boy in the chariot and the prophecy that Laius would be killed by his own son.

'At this, Jocasta began to give a bit at the knees but she rallied sharply and declared that it could not possibly be Laius's son who had killed him, because his only son had been left as a babe to die of exposure on Mount Cithaeron. But up popped the old goat-herd with an account of how a pal of his had taken the babe to Corinth; and then, of course, the fat was properly in the fire.

'On discovering that she had been living with her son for the past twenty years, Jocasta went upstairs to her bedroom, locked herself in and hanged herself with her girdle. When they had broken down the door, Oedipus said death was too good for him; so, with the prong in the buckle of her girdle, he put out both his eyes.

'The next Act concerns their children. Oedipus's daughter, Antigone, was a very good sort of girl, and refused to desert him while he wandered about the world in this parlous state until he died. Meanwhile her twin brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, decided to take turns in ruling Boeotia year and year about; but after a bit Eteocles threw his brother out. Polynices took refuge in Argos. There he made a number of chums among the local bloods and between them they collected an army, to help him get back his kingdom. It was called the War of the Seven against Thebes, and . . .'

Robbie broke off. He had just caught a gentle snore from Stephanie. Looking down, he saw that her eyes were closed, her dark eyelashes making fans upon her cheeks, and that she was clearly sound asleep.

For a while, he continued to think about Thebes. How, eventually, the twin brothers had agreed to settle their quarrel in a duel to the death, and had killed one another. How Creon, who had taken over again, had refused to allow Polynices to be buried, because he had brought war to his mother city. How

Antigone had performed the last rites for her brother at dead of nigh? How Creon had found out and, because she had defied him had her wailed up in a cave to die of starvation. How the people had revolted and forced him to order her release and how, when her lover Haemon broke down the wall, he found that she had strangled herself; so he had drawn his sword, stabbed himself and fallen dead upon her body.

Even that Romeo-and-Juliet-like scene had not been the last act in the Theban tragedy. The Heirlooms—the magnificent necklace and wonderful veil that Aphrodite had given Harmonia as wedding presents—gave ri^e to endless quarrels. Still thinking vaguely of the welter of blood and death they had caused, Robbie, too, dropped off to sleep.

They woke about an hour later, finished the rest of the wine, spent another hour wandering about the ruins, then started for home. They were back at the Cecil by six o'clock, after a very pleasant day; but it had been a tiring one, so they decided to dine in and go early to bed.

Next morning, they took the car out on the coast road to the east of the city, where the road ran for several miles across fiat, low-lying ground and any approaching vehicle could be seen well away in the distance, There, Stephanie gave Robbie his first driving lesson. He was not very quick at picking up the use of the various controls but she found that, once he had got them fixed in his mind, he handled them firmly and she had no need to fear that he would suddenly do something that might land them in trouble. Whenever they were about to pass anything, she made him slow right down and put her hand on the wheel as a precaution; but he was not in the least troubled by nerves, so kept it perfectly steady. Moreover he proved a good pupil, in that he made no attempt to run before he could walk, and obeyed her every instruction. The willingness with which he accepted the limit of thirty miles an hour, to which she restricted him, showed that he was not of the stuff of which racing drivers are made. However, when Stephanie took over to drive them back to the hotel for lunch, she felt that he had done a good bit better than she had expected.

Over lunch, Robbie told her that he would be out during the afternoon and could not say when he was likely to be back. He added that he might not even be back for dinner. Seeing her look °f surprise he quickly averted his glance, showing that he did ^Qot wish to pursue the subject. But it struck him that, if his enquiries did give him a new lead, it might make it difficult for him to keep up a pretence with her that his business activities ^were no more than normal ones.

She suggested that, if he did not want to be driven anywhere, she should take the opportunity to start reading his manuscript; so, when he went up to his room, he got it for her. Then he changed into his oldest suit, which he had brought with him for just such an occasion, slipped out of the hotel by a side door and made his way along the water-front. He had purposely left the hotel bare-headed and, when he came to the market, he found a cheap clothing store at which he bought a soft cap with a shiny peak that gave him something of the appearance of a seaman. By then it was nearly three o'clock and, when he reached the far basin, he was only just in time to see the Bratislava dock.

As he came nearer, two Customs Officers went aboard her with two other men, the taller of whom he thought was probably Barak; but he could not be certain from that distance. After that* he had to kick his heels for an hour and a half. Several groups of men leaned over the Bratislava's rails, idly looking down on the water-front, occasionally exchanging a remark or spitting over the side; but nothing happened.

At last there was a stir of movement, both on the ship and ashore. The Customs men came off, a crane clanked into action, a gang of dockers came on the scene, the groups of loungers broke up and the Bratislava started to unload a part of her cargo. Some twenty big packing cases were lowered to the wharf and wheeled across it into a Customs shed. About half-way through this proceeding the tall man, whom Robbie now definitely identified as Barak, came down the gang-plank, followed by three others, and walked over to the shed. Evidently, they were going to clear the cargo and it would then be taken off somewhere.

Suddenly, it occurred to Robbie that his only means of finding out where the cargo went and of what it consisted was to follow it. Already three lorries had driven up, and Barak had emerged to speak to the leading driver. There was only one car in sight. It had already been parked near the Customs shed when Robbie arrived, and was a powerful-looking black six-seater; so obviously it was not a taxi. At a hurried walk, Robbie set off in the direction of the Citadel, hoping to pick up a taxi there. A quarter of an hour elapsed before he managed to find one and was driven back in it.

As his taxi approached the wharf at which the Bratislava was lying, he saw the six-seater begin to move. Another minute and it was running swiftly past him. The face of the man who had all along been sitting at the wheel looked vaguely familiar, but Robbie had only a glimpse of it as his glance moved on to the others in the body of the car. They were Barak and three quite well-dressed men; the same, Robbie thought, as those who had accompanied Barak into the Customs shed.

Robbie told his driver to pass the ship, run on for a hundred yards, then turn round. As the taxi came to a halt, a small, private bus appeared and pulled up opposite the gangway. From beside the driver, a big, middle-aged man scrambled down. Owing to his enormously broad shoulders, thick neck, short legs and porkpie hat, Robbie recognized him at once. He was a Sudetenlander, a German-Czech named Stoll, and had been employed by the Czech Travel Agency to take parties of tourists round Athens. He had been to the office only twice while Robbie was there, and they had never even exchanged greetings; so Robbie thought it unlikely that, if they did come face to face, Stoll would recognize him.

Stoll had no sooner boarded the ship than he left it again followed by eight men, most of whom were wearing sweaters, or shirts without ties, under shapeless jackets. The cheap, fibre suitcases or bulging grips they carried also indicated that they were low-grade technicians or labourers. Stoll led them over to the Customs shed, but they were not inside it long. In less than ten minutes, they emerged and piled into the small bus.

By this time, one of the lorries had been loaded and the others were more than half-full. Robbie was faced with the question— should he wait until all the packing cases had been loaded and follow the lorries, or follow the bus? Deciding for the working party, he told his driver to keep fifty yards behind the bus then pass it when it halted.

The bus did not go far. It pulled up outside a small hotel called the Ionia, the major part of the ground floor of which consisted of a narrow cafe with a long bar. When Robbie's taxi had carried him some way beyond it, he asked the driver to pull up and paid him off. He was just in time to see the tail end of Stoll's party disappearing into the Ionia, so had no doubt that it was to be their quarters for the night.

It was now close on seven o'clock, and he made up his mind to pay a visit to the Ionia later that evening. If he returned to the Cecil in his old clothes and Stephanie saw him in them, that would call for an explanation which was going to be difficult to think up and, for his foray later, he would need to put them on again. In consequence, he decided to leave her to dine on her own, and have something himself at some little taverna.

While walking back towards George I Square, it occurred to him that, if he did succeed in getting a look at the contents of the crates when they were unpacked, the odds were that they would consist of machinery which would mean nothing to him. The obvious answer was to try to photograph it, then send the picture to Luke. But he had no camera and had never owned one.

After traversing several arcades, he found a shop that sold cameras. When he went in to buy one, he was amazed to learn how costly the most expensive kinds can be. He had half a mind to leave his purchase till the next day, when he could draw more money from the local branch of the Bank of Greece; but the man who was serving him very honestly told him that, if he had never used a camera before, he would do better to buy a medium-Priced one. So he bought an ordinary Kodak, which the salesman showed him how to operate, and three rolls of film.

At a small restaurant nearby, he dined off keftedes—balls of rice crisply fried outside and with a centre of minced meat— followed by a large slab of cake which seemed mainly to consist of assorted preserved fruits and Turkish delight. As it was still early, he followed it with two brews of thick, Turkish coffee, and fortified himself for his coming venture with three goes of a local liqueur made from tangerines.

At nine o'clock he walked back to the Ionia. He thought it almost certain that, even if the Czech workmen had not been forbidden to leave their hotel, they would not have enough money to go out on the town. And he proved right. All eight of them were sitting at two marble-topped tables, obviously eking out two carafes of cheap wine between them.

Only one table was occupied: at it, two Greeks were sitting with two girls. Two more girls were at the bar but, evidently having already discovered that the Czechs could not afford to pay for their attentions, were carrying on an earnest argument together. When Robbie came in, they broke it off and eyed him hopefully; but he was too unused to that sort of thing to smile at them and shake his head. Quickly he looked away, ordered a drink and remained standing at the bar, straining his ears to overhear what the Czechs were saying to one another.

Those at the table nearest to him were arguing quietly about, as far as he could make out, the football results of their favourite teams during the past winter. But at the other table a young fellow with a mop of ginger curls was declaiming loudly against the 'bosses'. It emerged that he hotly resented having been ordered to come on this expedition, because he had had to leave his girl. Another supported him, but said he would not so much mind having been separated from his wife if they were to have the good time in Greece that they had been led to expect; but here they were, the very first evening, left without money, and no arrangement made to take them round the town.

At that, Robbie pricked up his ears. He had ample money on him and was only too willing to do the honours of Patras for this little party if he could manage to scrape acquaintance with it. Nerving himself for the effort, he picked up his glass and walked with it over to the table at which the red-haired young man was sitting.

As he approached, the Czechs fell silent and looked up at him a shade suspiciously; but he managed a smile, greeted them in Czech and added: 'I could not help hearing the language you were speaking, and one doesn't often meet Czechs in Patras.'

The eldest of the party, a man with a scar on his forehead and grizzled hair, said: 'You are not a Czech, though, are you?'

'No, oh no,' Robbie hastily admitted. 'But my mother was. She taught me Czech and told me a lot about her country, so I always enjoy talking to people who know it.' There followed an awkward pause, then he said hesitantly: 'Will you allow me to stand you another carafe of wine?'

His offer met with an instantaneous response from the grizzled man. 'Why yes, Comrade. That is handsome of you. Come and sit down and tell us all about yourself.'

The football fans at the next table had been listening, so they promptly moved their table round to make it one large party. Robbie ordered two carafes of wine and a chair was produced for him. The barman drew the wine from a cask and brought it over. Glasses were filled and Robbie's health ceremoniously drunk. Like all the cheapest w'ines in Greece, resin had been put into it—the theory being that this prevents the peasants from becoming drunk when, owing to the intense heat, they drink great quantities of it while working in the fields—but although harsh, it was not unpleasant.

For a while, Robbie had to cope with a barrage of questions: 'Did he live in Patras?' 'How did he earn his living?' 'What was life like in Greece?' 'Was it true that the Capitalist Imperialist Industrialists lived in great luxury, while the bulk of the people slaved for them on starvation wages?'

As they had assumed him to be a Greek, Robbie did not have to go further into his nationality. He said that he was only on a visit to Patras, and was a professional writer seeking local colour. As far as the Greek people were concerned, he told his hearers that they had only to walk through the streets to see that the great majority was well clothed and well fed, and the amount of goods in the shops was ample evidence that, at all events in the towns, only a small minority could not afford to buy everything in reason that they needed.

A small, wizened man, with a face like a dried apple, insisted that, even if this were true, the workers v/ere still not receiving their proper share from the resources of the State, otherwise there would not be millionaires like the oil king Onassis.

Robbie was about to reply that Mr. Onassis made his money not out of producing oil, but by transporting it in his great fleet of tankers from place to place. Before he had a chance to do so, the young, red-headed man gave a guffaw and declared:

'He does not know what is coming to him. Within a few months we will have many more oil-wells than he has in Greece. We will Hood the market, undersell him and put him on the rocks.'

To this statement, Robbie made no reply. Putting aside the men's obvious ignorance of Mr. Onassis's principal activities, it Presented a new conundrum. Had the Czechs really discovered, by some new scientific device, that there were great oil resources in Greece, and were about to exploit them? Or was that only the belief of these technicians—a cover plan that they had been sold by their bosses, only a small inner ring of whom were as yet aware of their Government's true intentions?

Robbie was still pondering this when two of his companions suddenly looked towards the street entrance. Three men were standing there. Barak, Stoll and a third man—the man who had been at the wheel of the big six-seater that afternoon. With a horrid, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Robbie recognized him. It was Cepicka.

All three men were staring at him. Cepicka said something in a low voice to Barak. The tall, lean Czech drew a finger along one side of his black, toothbrush moustache. Then, followed by the others, he suddenly strode towards the table.

Robbie's companions had fallen silent. With a sense of rising panic, he half came to his feet. By then, Barak was within three feet of him. The barman, the Greek sailors and the girls had also fallen silent. The movement and voices of the crowd out on the water-front came only as a murmur. In the cafe one could have heard the plop of a lump of sugar dropped into a glass of ouzo.

When Barak spoke, it was neither in Czech nor Greek, but in English. His black eyes boring down into Robbie's, he said:

'Englishman, we know why you are here. You are a spy. You haf before poke your nose in our business. You poke your nose again, ha! If there is next time I gif you no warning.' He swept a hand round to include the ten Czechs now grouped round Robbie. 'These men obey me, no question asked. They beat you so you spend three months in hospital, perhaps more. You get out now. Yes, you also get out of Patras tomorrow first thing. Or I order beating for you that leave no bone unbroken in your body.'

14

Of Hades and a Double Bed

Robbie took a pace back. Coming to his full height he gave a swift glance round. The eyes of every one of the eighteen people in the narrow caf£ were fixed on him. As Barak had spoken in English, it seemed unlikely that any of them, with the possible exception of Stoll and Cepicka, had understood what he had said. Even if they had, there was no reason to suppose, should a fight develop, that the Greek sailors or the barman would come to the assistance of a man who had just been denounced as a spy.

To deny Barak's accusation would have been futile, because Cepicka must obviously have told him about the theft of the briefcase in Athens ten days before. As Cepicka stood there, with his little pig-eyes, pink cheeks and thick lips screwed up into a leer, he looked more than ever like an ex-Gestapo man.

The enormously broad-shouldered, barrel-chested Stoll was also grinning at Robbie's evident discomfiture. In addition to these two hefty thugs, Barak had only to say a word in Czech to the eight men from the Bratislava and, Robbie had no doubt at all, he would be playing the part of a ball in a football scrum. It was a terribly disappointing end to a situation that had seemed full of promise, but it had to be accepted.

With a shrug, he muttered: 'I don't know what you're talking about,' and moved towards the door.

'Hi!' called out one of the Czechs he had been treating. 'What about paying for the wine?' *

'So he was standing you drinks, eh?' said Cepicka. 'In that case, as we know him to be an English capitalist-imperialist he may as well provide you with enough wine to last you the evening.'

The barman came over. He had already sized up the situation, and demanded double the proper price for another half-dozen bottles of retsina. As the only alternative to trouble, Robbie had to pay up and, when he walked out, the mocking laughter of the Czechs followed him on to the waterfront.

The humiliation he felt at having had to submit to this blackmail, on top of having been found out, was so great that he could think of nothing else while making his way back to the Cecil. He even forgot about the clothes he was wearing; so, instead of slipping into the side entrance of the hotel, he strode into the front hail.

To one side of it, the wide glass doors of the lounge stood open. Just inside them, Stephanie was sitting at a low table, reading his manuscript. Catching sight of him as he walked towards the lift, she called his name.

Startled, he shuffled to a halt, then turned and reluctantly went in to her. He was still holding his cheap, floppy cap with the shiny peak. Her glance fell on it, then ran disapprovingly over his worn tweed jacket and grey sweater.

'Where have you been?' she demanded. 'And why are you wearing those awful old clothes?'

Their relationship had already reached a point at which he could not possibly have brought himself to reply: 'I do not have to account to my secretary for my actions', or 'what I have been up to is no business of yours'. He went red in the face and, after a moment, blurted out: 'As a matter of fact, I've been down at the docks, er . . . slumming.'

^Wherever you've been, you look as if you need a drink.'

'Good idea,' he agreed, sinking into a chair beside her. Then, beckoning the lounge waiter who was standing just outside in the hall, he ordered himself a double Metexas and ginger ale.

Stephanie gave him time to recover from his evident embarrassment at having been caught unawares, then she asked: 'Does 'showing the flag", as you put it, for this oil company you

represent entail "slumming", or was this a private venture?'

By then he had decided that, unless he was to be constantly straining his imagination for plausible lies with which to fob her off, he must disclose at least the fact that some of his activities were likely to be unorthodox; so he replied:

This was business, but not quite the ordinary kind. There is a new foreign company that is trying to muscle in on my company's territory. Exactly what their plans are we don't yet know, but I've been given the job of finding out as much as I can.'

Stephanie's blue eyes widened. 'Does that mean you are really a sort of secret agent?'

'No! Oh no!' He took a quick drink of the brandy and ginger ale that the waiter had just brought him. 'This is commercial rivalry, that's all.'

'Yet you have to dress up for it, and go snooping down at the docks.'

'I had to find out about a ship that arrived here today, and I thought I'd be more likely to get the wharf hands talking if I went down in these old things than in a smart suit.'

'And did you get the information you were after?'

'Well, yes.' He paused for a moment. Then, realizing that he had yet to break it to her that they would be leaving first thing in the morning, he decided to go on. 'But afterwards I had rather a nasty break.

'I thought you looked rather queer when you came in. What happened?'

'I was standing drinks in a cafe to a group of Czechs who had landed off the ship, when their boss came in. With him there was a thug that they employ-'

'A thug?'

'Yes; they aren't a very nice lot. I'd had some trouble with this chap in Athens. He recognized me, of course, and denounced me to them as a snooper from U.K.P. There were nearly a dozen of them there altogether, and the long and short of it was that they threatened to beat me up unless I left Patras tomorrow morning.'

'Do you mean to go or stay?' Stephanie enquired bluntly.

'Well.' Robbie gave an uncomfortable wriggle. 'There are a lot of them, and only one of me. I'll be safe enough as long as I stick around the hotel, no doubt, and in the centre of the city; but I wouldn't care to risk going into the dock area again, so there's not much point in my staying here any longer.'

'I see. Does that mean you won't be doing any more of this snooping business?'

'I don't quite know,' Robbie replied non-committally. 'Perhaps I will later.'

'If you do, and you'd like to tell me about it, I might be able to help you.'

'That's awfully sporting of you'—he gave her a grateful smile —¹'but I couldn't let you get mixed up in this. If any harm came to you, I'd never forgive myself.'

'They say two heads are better than one, so we might talk things over, anyway. That is, unless you are one of those people who think women's minds are not up to weighing the pros and cons on serious matters.'

'Oh no!' he protested. 'As a matter of fact, I should think your brain is a good bit quicker than mine. You may have noticed that at times I'm a bit slow in the uptake. It's not that I'm a fool —at least I hope not. When. I was six, I was in an air crash. Both my parents were killed and I got a knock on the head that set me back all through my childhood.'

'Really! How awful for you.' Stephanie's voice was warm with sympathy, so he told her about his never having been to school, and of his unusual upbringing.

When he had done, she said that she would never have guessed that he had not had a proper education, although she found him quite different from any of the other young men she knew and liked him the better for it. As he finished his drink, she asked:

'What time do you want to leave tomorrow?'

'I'd like to get off about nine, if that's all right with you?'

She nodded. 'And where shall we be going?'

'I haven't had time to think yet. Let's settle that in the morning,' he replied; and shortly afterwards they went up to their rooms.

As Robbie undressed, he was still feeling very sore at the humiliation he had suffered in the caf6 and, although he had temporized with Stephanie, he had never had any intention of abandoning his mission. On the contrary, Barak's threats and Cepicka's sneers had only stimulated in him the determination to find out what they were up to. In them, too, he now felt that he had two tangible enemies, which would make his further endeavours much more exciting than setting such wits as he had against a nebulous organization.

For the next move he felt he had the advantage, for they would probably think they had scared him off altogether. In any case, he knew all the places at which groups were to be stationed, and they could not possibly guess which group he might decide to spy on. Corinth and Pirgos were the two nearest places. For the former, it was a safe bet that a second group would be landed at Patras, and sent with their machinery either by road or by motor-caique up the gulf. The Bratislava would then move down to Pirgos and land a third group there before proceeding to drop others at Kalamai and the islands. The machinery for the Corinth party would be cleared at Patras, but that for Pirgos Would have to go through the Customs there. From this Robbie reasoned that Barak, who appeared to be in charge of the whole operation, and probably Cepicka, would go down to Pirgos; so he would stand less risk of running into them again if he went to Corinth.

As he dropped off to sleep, his last thoughts were of Stephanie. He still had no intention of telling her the whole truth about his mission, but she had been sweetly sympathetic about the handicap from which he had suffered during his unusual childhood, and it was great comfort to think that he could now talk to her freely about his unorthodox activities.

By half past nine next morning, they were well clear of Patras and once more running along the road that followed the shore of the broad gulf. Across its blue waters, the mountains rose in a magnificent procession to the heights of Parnassus towering above Delphi. Even at such a distance their main features stood out distinctly, owing to the extraordinary clearness of the atmosphere which is peculiar to Greece.

Stephanie had so far made no comment upon Robbie's manuscript and, after they had covered ten miles, he could restrain himself no longer from asking her what she thought of it, as far as she had read.

'I like it, Robbie,' she replied; then, after a slight hesitation, she added: 'But it's rather an unusual book, isn't it?'

'In what way?' he asked guardedly.

'It's difficult to explain. It's crammed full of slang expressions that you rarely use except when you are talking about the Immortals. That makes it unlike both the person you seem to be, and an ordinary book, so rather queer to read. Surely, too, in these days authors don't refer to their "gentle reader".'

'I don't see why they shouldn't. I like to think of my readers as though they could be my friends.'

'I'm sure you do, Robbie. That's just the sort of thing which is so nice about you. What puzzled me most, though, is your attitude towards the Olympians. Things you have said to me have given me the impression that you almost think of the gods as divinities still to be venerated; yet you give them awful characters.'

'They had different standards from ours, so one can't blame them for always hopping into bed with one another. Admittedly, they could turn pretty nasty if they felt they had been insulted, but most of the time their decrees were just, and they spent much more time protecting people than harming them. Anyhow, it wouldn't have been right not to tell the truth about the way they behaved.'

'Yes, I agree about that; but they don't seem exactly the sort of people one would choose to worship.'

'Most races have chosen worse. Look at the Babylonians, who worshipped Moloch, and the Aztecs with their frightful gods who were always demanding human sacrifices. Come to that, how about the Christians? They took over Jehovah from the Jews, a harsh, jealous old brute who hated to see people enjoy themselves

and had to be constantly pacified by the smell of burnt offerings.'

Stephanie laughed. T suppose you are right. But how about your treatment of the Heroes? You always seem to be poking fun at them, and as far as I have read they all appear to have been dead from the neck up.'

'A lot of them were. Odysseus was an exception. He was as cunning as a cartload of monkeys. And Hercules had some pretty bright ideas. But, generally speaking, it's not fair to judge them by their brains. The great thing about them was their chivalry and courage. Most of them were Princes, who could have lived very pleasant lives if they had chosen to stay at home. But instead, they were always game to risk their lives to protect their peasantry from terrible monsters, or to suffer years of discomfort fighting not for themselves but to right a wrong done to one of their friends. The one thing they cared about was their honour, and never giving in before they had done what they set out to do. By that, they set a wonderful example to the whole people of Greece; and if it had not been for that spirit, Greece would never have survived the Persian hordes.'

For a while they were silent, then Stephanie said: 'In your first chapter about the Royal Family of Olympus, you say lots about Zeus and Poseidon and the innumerable affaires they had, but practically nothing about the third brother, Pluto. Didn't he care for the girls?'

'The chronicles don't give much information about him. They record only two cases of his being unfaithful to Persephone.'

'In view of the family temperament and the fact that she lived with him for only one-third of each year, that seems somewhat odd.'

'It does,' Robbie agreed thoughtfully, 'but perhaps he was really no better than the others. You see, he possessed a helmet that made him invisible whenever he visited the Upper World; so there is no saying what games he may have got up to without anyone being able to pin them on him.'

'That's certainly a thought. And his own kingdom sounds so gloomy that I should think he liked to get away from it as often as he could.'

'Oh, it couldn't have been so bad if you were the boss of it; at least, not as described by a chap named Er.'

'Who was he?'

'Er was a brave warrior who had a most extraordinary experience. He was killed in battle; so his chums did the usual, and put his body on a nice big bonfire. But it wouldn't burn, and after being cooked for twelve days he suddenly sat up and got off the red-hot ashes as fit as a fiddle. He said he had spent the twelve days in Hades, and had been sent back to tell everyone what it was like down there.

'According to him, it had a great vestibule called the Garden of Persephone, where black poplars and willows grew. Then inside, the Judgment Hall and Throne Room would have made the Palace of Versailles look like a pig-sty by comparison. Their walls, floors and ceilings were covered with wonderful designs in every kind of precious metal and the whole place glittered with precious stones.

'After crossing the Styx, the shades of the dead were brought before the three judges, Aeacus, Minos and Rhadamanthus, and given their deserts. The lucky ones got chits for the Elysian Fields and the bad hats were sent to do time in Tartarus, but the great majority were drafted into great gloomy caverns that were sort of concentration camps in which they stood around for years and years with nothing to do.

'However, Er was able to cheer up his pals by telling them that none of the shades was stuck in these places for ever. While the incoming queue was disposed of, another queue was being passed out up a passage where Heaven and Earth met in the rainbow. A character known as Necessity sat on a throne there with her three daughters, the Fates, who were named Lachesis, Clotho and Atropos.

'Necessity told the outgoing shades that they were about to be born into new bodies. Then she offered them in turn the choice from a big collection of lots, the outsides of which were marked "tinker", "tailor", "soldier", "sailor", and so on. But it was an awful pig-in-a-poke, because all sorts of other things were written inside. Some of the men who had an early choice naturally picked King, or rich merchant, only to find that they would be born blind or have their all taken off them by pirates, and some of the girls who snatched at beauty or S.A. found that their fathers would sell them to brothel keepers to pay the rent. They could change their sex if they liked and, of course, they weren't all unlucky. But really the whole thing was a bit of a hoax, because they all had to work off debts of one kind or another that they had incurred in their past lives, and the Fates had already fixed things so that, in their next lives, they would get, good or bad, what was due to them.

'Finally, Er saw all those people pass on to the treeless plain of Lethe, where there was a broad river beside which they had to doss down for the night. It was so hot there that they all got throats like ash-cans, and had to quench their thirsts at the river. Most of them drank so much of the Lethe water that it caused them to forget they had ever lived before; but there were a few who didn't drink quite so much, and that is why some people are born still retaining vague memories of their past lives. A little before dawn, they were all turned into shooting stars and scattered over the world, to descend invisibly into the bodies of the mothers who had been chosen for them.'

'Then the ancient Greeks believed in Reincarnation,' Stephanie remarked. 'Do you?'

Robbie nodded. 'Certainly I do. I've read books about all sorts of religions, and it is the only belief that makes sense. In nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand, to grant eternal bliss or condemn to unending torment according to what a person has done in a single life would be a travesty of justice. It is impossible to believe in a god who would want any creature of his to roast in hell-fire for ever. But to have to work one's passage through many lives, each based on what has gone before, and gradually learning to control all the brutal, primitive instincts, is very different. Then, when at last a person becomes incapable of a mean or unkind action, he really has earned the right to be promoted to some happier state of being than we know-on earth.'

I've never thought about it much, but it certainly sounds logical that one should be given a chance to make good the evil one has done and learn to become a better person.'

For a while they fell silent, then Stephanie asked: 'Was Er the only mortal who is said to have gone down to Hades and brought back an account of it, or were there others? That is, apart from Hercules when he had to go there to collect that ghastly dog?'

'Yes; Orpheus did, although he wasn't there long. He was the all-time-high pop-singer of those days. When he got back from going with Jason to pinch the Golden Fleece, he fell for a sweetie called Eurydice and made an honest woman of her. But while she was jiving at their wedding feast, she was bitten by a snake and died that night. As you can imagine, Orpheus was absolutely shattered, and when Death carried her away he followed him down to Hades. Charon, of course, refused to ferry him across the Styx, but Orpheus was simply wizard with his lute. First he played to the old boy, then to Cerberus. The ferryman rowed him over the river and the Hell-hound let him through the gate. Having got in, he performed his very best number in front of the King and Queen. Persephone, being a nice girl, begged her lord and master to let Orpheus have his brand-new better-half back. Pluto was a bit reluctant, but he agreed, provided that Orpheus didn't look behind him while Eurydice followed him out. Just before they reached the gates of Hades, Orpheus couldn't resist the temptation to make sure that his poppet was really behind him. She was there all right, but the instant their eyes met, he'd had it. Eurydice's rosy flesh suddenly became transparent, the gates clanged to, and he found himself outside them, having lost her for good.'

'What a terribly sad story.'

T can tell you a similar one, that had a happier ending. That was about Hercules again. He really was a terrific guy, and didn't give a hoot for either god or man. This affair arose from Apollo having tried to put a fast one over his old pop. Zeus was no Victorian parent, but all the same he was not the kind to stand for any nonsense, and he sentenced Apollo to serve for nine years on earth as a mortal.

'One of Apollo's main interests being cattle, he got himself a job as herdsman to Admetus, King of Thessaly. The King treated him so well that, when his nine years were up, he decided to show his gratitude in a very unusual way. After a little haggling with the Fates, he persuaded them to agree that, when Admetus's time came to die, he should be allowed to live on if he could find anyone who loved him well enough to go to Hades in his place.

'In due course, Death sent a messenger to tip the King off that very shortly he would be coming his way. Admetus fairly rushed round, trying to find somebody willing to stand-in for him, but no one would play. He was just about to go down for the count when his young wife, Alcestis, stepped into the breach. She said she'd rather die herself than live on without her old tickley-whiskers, provided only that he would promise not to marry again, because she couldn't bear the thought of a step-mother who might be unkind to her children.

'Admetus must have been a pretty poor fish. He wept a lot but, nevertheless, accepted her offer and made the promise. Alcestis took a bath, put on her latest Dior creation and fell into a swoon. The funeral rites were duly performed and Death carried her off.

'Shortly afterwards, Hercules turned up. Seeing that the house was in mourning, he said he wouldn't stay and, of course, if he had known that it was Admetus's wife who had just died, he would have flatly refused to inflict himself on the bereaved husband. Knowing that, and being a great stickler for offering hospitality to strangers, Admetus said not to worry, the dead woman was only a friend of the family. Then he did the usual drill of putting a wreath of flowers round Hercules's neck, producing some good bottles and having his dancing girls do their stuff.

'Hercules liked his liquor, so he got a bit lit up and started singing bawdy songs at the top of his voice. An old retainer then tapped him on the shoulder and said: "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, behaving like this when the poor Queen's body has only just been taken out of the house."

'That sobered up our Hero and, seeing how generously his host had treated him, he felt he ought to do something about it. So, instead of going to bed, he made enquiries about which way Death had gone, and hurried off after him. In the morning he came back with a young woman smothered from head to foot in veils and said to Admetus: "Look, old chap. I was terribly sorry to hear that you'd lost your wife; so I've been out and got you a girl to cheer you up. And, believe me, she's a stunner," or words to that effect.

'But Admetus put up a good show then. He replied: "That's awfully decent of you, but no can do. I shall never love anyone but Alcestis, and I've made up my mind never to have a woman in my house again."

'Hercules did his utmost to persuade him to change his mind, but he wouldn't budge. You can guess the rest. The Hero unveiled the lady and, of course, she was Alcestis, whom he had torn from the very arms of Death.'

'Did they live happily ever after?' Stephanie enquired.

'As far as I know.'

'What a pleasant change. So many of your characters seem to come to a sticky end.'

'Or worse,' Robbie commented with a rueful smile. 'Some were condemned to eternal torment. Even the sufferings of the damned in Dante's Hell can have been no worse than some of the punishments the gods thought up for people they sent to Tartarus.

'There was Tantalus, who had been King of Phrygia. Why, I haven't an idea, but the Immortals did him the extraordinary honour of inviting him to dine on Olympus, and he stole some of their nectar and ambrosia. Not content with that, he asked them back, and just to see if they were clever enough to know what they were eating, he killed his own son, Pelops, cut him up, cooked the bits and served them to his guests for dinner. Of course they'rumbled him, and before he knew what had hit him he was down in Tartarus. They put him waist deep in the middle of a lake that had trees all round it bearing the must luscious fruit, but every time he tried to drink the water evaporated, and every time he stretched out a hand to grab a fruit a gust of wind bobbed it out of his reach. There they left him to suffer the torments of hunger and thirst for ever.

'Another bad egg who got it in the neck was the tyrant Ardiaeus. He killed lots of people just for the fun of it, among them his father and his brother; so the gods decreed that he should spend the rest of Time being dragged backwards and forwards through a hedge of enormous thorns. Then there were the Danaides, about as nasty a bunch of girls to go to bed with as any you could imagine.'

'Why, Robbie? Don't spare my blushes. Tell all.'

'Oh, it wasn't anything of that kind. They were the daughters of a chap named Danaus. There were fifty of them, and-'

'Fifty! My hat! He must have kept their mother busy.'

'It's hardly likely that they were all by one wife. Anyhow, he had a brother named Aegyptus, who had fifty sons. The whole family lived in Egypt, but the brothers quarrelled, so Danaus took his girls off to Greece, where he did in the King of Argos and seized his throne. After a while, Aegyptus's boys began to miss their pretty cousins, so they crossed the Med. to Argos and suggested putting an end to the family quarrel by marrying them. Danaus agreed, but he was still mad with Aegyptus; so he gave each of his girls a dagger, and told her to stick it good and hard into her husband on their wedding night. All except one of these sweetie-pies did as they were told, and turned their bridal couches into a blood bath.'

'How absolutely barbarous!'

'That's what the big boys on Olympus thought. Aphrodite and most of the other big girls were of that opinion, too. They all agreed that, if that sort of thing were allowed to go on, it would discourage chaps from getting into bed with girls, and lead to a lot of young people becoming psychopathic cases through frustration; so an example must be mada The forty-nine Danaides were packed off to Tartarus and condemned to try to catch water in sieves for ever and ever, amen.'

'What punishment did the father receive?'

'I'm sorry to say I don't know. He certainly deserved anything he got. So did a chap called Ixion, who murdered his father-in-law by throwing him into a burning ditch. The ancients were frightfully hot on paying proper respects to one's in-law's; so he would have been for the high jump if Zeus had not granted him sanctuary on Olympus. But while up there, he was ass enough to make a pass at Hera; or rather, at a piece of cloud that Zeus, having tumbled to the way Ixion's mind was working, had made to look like Hera. He let Ixion have his fun with the cloud, too; but afterwards he told him that, for his cheek, he should learn how his father-in-law felt while burning in the ditch. Then he had Ixion tied to a wheel that never stops turning in Tartarus while he roasts over a slow fire.'

Across the water to their left, they could now see a headland that protruded from the Isthmus of Corinth, almost enclosing the waters on the south side of the gulf in the great bay that forms a fine, natural harbour for the city. To their right, vineyard-covered slopes rose gradually to steeper heights crowned by a flattened dome many acres in extent and several hundred feet above sea level. Near its crest and straggling down its sides, several sections of great ruined walls could be seen. Pointing at them, Robbie said:

'Those walls are about all that remains of the original Corinth. Owing to its position up there, overlooking the Isthmus and both gulfs, it was known in very ancient days as "The Watch Tower". Later it rivalled Athens in its splendour, and many of the most flourishing Greek colonies in Sicily and Southern Italy were founded by its merchant princes. I expect you've heard that silly saying: "All good Americans go to Paris when they die". That's how the ancients all over the Eastern Mediterranean felt about Corinth. The temple of Aphrodite up there was served by a thousand glamour-pusses—black, white and brown—brought from all over the known world, and it was their job to see to it that business executives on holiday had proper relaxation.'

Stephanie raised her eyebrows: 'Really, you men! It seems that, apart from making money, few of you ever think of anything else.'

'Oh, I wouldn't say that. Of course, a good supply of willing popsies has always been a major tourist attraction. When Paris began to get a bit strait-laced, Vienna and Budapest took its place, and coming right up-to-date, there is Las Vegas. But lots of the ancient Greeks came here for quite a different reason. It was one of the four places at which the great athletic contests were held. Those at Olympia were the most important, but every Hellenic State sent its champions to take part in the Isthmian Games, as those held here, in honour of Poseidon, were called. Tomorrow morning, we might go and have a look at the Stadium, then walk up to the site of the old city and picnic there.'

'What! Climb that mountain?' Stephanie's mouth took a firm line. 'No thank you, Robbie. I don't mind taking on the extra-secretarial duty of helping you to outwit your oil rivals, but I draw the line at trudging for miles up a slope of one in three.'

'I'm sorry,' he said, with swift contrition. 'I should have realized that it would be too tiring for you. Anyhow, there can't be much to see up there, except the magnificent view. We'll picnic in the new city instead.'

'But . . .' she shot him a puzzled glance, 'surely you can't mean that we should eat our lunch in the streets?'

Robbie roared with laughter. 'No; no. Of course not. There are three Corinths. You are thinking of the modern town where we are going to stay. The one up on the hill is called Acrocorinth. It was sacked and destroyed by the Romans somewhere about one hundred and fifty b.c. Then Julius Caesar came along about a hundred years later and built what is called the new city. You can't see it from here, because its ruins are hidden by villas and vineyards, but it's on the lower slopes and only about ten minutes' drive from the town.'

There are no large hotels in Corinth and, when they drove up to the one they had selected from the guide-book, they found no one in its small entrance hall. But there was a bell-push on the desk and, after Robbie had pressed it three times, a middle-aged woman, who said she was the manageress, appeared from the back premises. Robbie told her they might be staying several nights, and asked for the best rooms available. She summoned a waiter to carry their bags and led the way upstairs to the first floor.

Evidently Robbie's Greek had let him down on this occasion, for the manageress ushered them both into a pleasant room with a fine view over the bay, but only one large double bed in it.

Robbie turned scarlet, and for a long moment was entirely bereft of words. Turning, he saw that Stephanie had put a hand up that only half concealed a smile of amusement at his embarrassment. Hastily, he stammered to the manageress that she had misunderstood him; they were not married and wanted separate rooms. Leaving Stephanie there, he swiftly retreated to the corridor and was duly taken to a smaller chamber on the upper floor.

Ten minutes later, they were refreshing themselves under a vine-covered pergola with large tumblers of iced orange juice. After a short stroll along the waterfront, they returned there for lunch and, just as they were finishing the meal, Robbie said:

'Presently, I shall be going out on the job again; but I don't expect to be away long.'

Stephanie raised her eyebrows. 'You might have told me that you meant to go looking for more trouble here.'

T hope I won't get into any,' he smiled. 'But this happens to be one of a dozen places at which the Czech firm is going to try to muscle in on us; so I ought not to miss the opportunity of making a few enquiries.'

'All right then,' she smiled back. Til resign myself to spending a lonely afternoon on that lovely double bed. I'll be thinking of you.'

When she had left him, Robbie sat staring into his empty coffee cup. Could she possibly have meant . . . ? But no, she was not that kind of girl. He positively must not allow himself to imagine such things.

15

The Villa Dione

At a little before four o'clock Robbie hunted out the manageress and asked her about the estate agents in the town. She said there were three or four, but that one of them handled nearly all the most important business, and gave him the firm's address. He then walked round to their office, presented one of the cards of the United Kingdom Petroleum Company, and asked to see the senior partner.

He was shown in at once to their Mr. Vassilios, a dapper little man who bowed him to a chair, offered him a cigarette and smilingly asked his business.

Now accustomed to 'telling lies in the service of his country', Robbie said that his firm was contemplating setting up an oil installation in the neighbourhood of Corinth, and that he would like to have particulars of any suitable properties that were available.

Scenting big business, Mr. Vassilios was instantly galvanized into enthusiastic activity. He produced a list of building sites and estates that were for sale, and offered there and then to take Robbie in his car to see any that appealed to him.

Having looked through them, Robbie remarked that only two of the properties had access to the shore, and that was essential in order that a wharf could be built off which the Company's tankers could lie. He then added casually: 1 take it that if my Company decided to buy either of these the mineral rights would go with them?'

Mr. Vassilios's dark eyes gave a sudden flicker. 'You spoke, Mr. Grenn, of an installation. I naturally assumed you had in mind a refinery with storage tanks. Do you mean that your Company intends to bore for oil?'

'We might,' Robbie admitted guardedly.

'Then it is true!' exclaimed Vassilios excitedly. 'I thought another client of ours quite mad some weeks ago when he bought a property here to prospect for oil. But if your Company also believes that there is oil in the neighbourhood of Corinth, it must be so. This is most wonderful news, both for all of us in this city and for Greece.'

Robbie smiled a little dubiously. 'I wouldn't count on that, Mr. Vassilios; not until those other people or my firm have struck a gusher.'

The little man sighed. 'Alas, Mr. Grenn, I regret to disappoint you. It will not be your firm. These first-comers—they are a Czech company—have already spiked your guns. They have secured a concession from the Greek Government for the sole right to prospect for oil. If you acquire one of these properties you could build anything you wish on it, but you would not be permitted to drill.'

Making an appropriately glum face, Robbie said: 'Then I fear I have had my journey from Athens for nothing, and I'll have a very unwelcome report to take back. Without prospecting rights, my Company would not buy; so I am afraid there is no point in my going with you to see either of these properties.'

'I am indeed sorry.' Mr. Vassilios sighed again at this abrupt end to his prospects of handling a very profitable deal.

As Robbie stood up to go, he said: 'If you've no objection, I'd like to know the site these other people have chosen for their operations.'

'None at all.' A large map hung on the wall behind Mr. Vassilios' desk. He pointed to a tiny black square near the shore, just to the west of the town. 'That is it; the Villa Dione. It is a property of about four hectares, mostly orchard and vineyards.'

Having thanked him, Robbie was politely bowed out, very pleased with himself at having hit first go on the agent who had acted for the Czechs, and secured the information he required.

As Corinth is quite a small town and the villa was only just outside it, he decided to walk there right away. Twenty minutes later he halted on the coast road to have a good look at it. The building was large, square and looked to be about a hundred years old. Evidently it had long remained unoccupied, for the short drive, seen through rusty iron gates, was overgrown with Weeds, and the yellow paint was peeling from the outside walls,

The house and about an acre of ground behind it were enclosed by six-foot walls. Along that nearest to Robbie ran a cart-track, so he walked a little way up it to get a look at the back of the house. When he had gone about sixty yards he came upon a postern gate in the wall and, on his trying it, he found that it opened.

Slipping inside, he took a quick look round. The garden, which was mainly an orchard of orange, lemon and apricot trees, and the back of the house appeared to be deserted. As he turned to close the door behind him, he noticed that there was a key in the lock. On trying it, he found that it worked easily, which implied that it was locked at night. Taking out the key, he slipped it into his pocket.

He had hardly done so when an unshaven man, dressed like a peasant, emerged from a nearby outbuilding, stared at him for a moment, touched his cap and said:

'Good evening, sir. I suppose you are one of these Czech gentlemen who have taken the villa. But I wasn't expecting any of you till tomorrow.'

Obviously the man was the caretaker, and for a moment Robbie was at a loss for a reply. Then an excuse came to him and he said with a smile: 'I didn't know the villa had been let. I am looking for a place to rent for the summer months. Seeing the house was empty, I just looked in. Sorry to have bothered you.'

That's all right, sir,' the man replied amiably. 'Have a look round if you like.'

Robbie thanked him, accepted his offer and spent the next twenty minutes making a tour of the house. It was furnished, but only very sparsely. There were damp stains on the walls and, no attempt having yet been made to clean it up, a layer of dust over everything. From his inspection he learned nothing of the Czechs' intentions but, in the circumstances, he had not expected that he would.

Afterwards, knowing how sensitive Greek peasants are about accepting money, and wanting to give the caretaker a tip, he asked if he might buy a few of the big, ripe oranges. To that the man readily consented, and found him a paper bag in which to carry the fruit back to the hotel.

At one of the dozen tables outside it, Stephanie was sitting. As he approached, she gave him a bright smile; then, as he took a chair opposite her, she said that she had been so anxious about him that she had even forgotten to order herself a drink. He promptly rectified her omission and, still glowing with his success at having so quickly located the site at which the Czechs intended to start work, told her how he had spent the past two hours, concealing from her now only his belief that the Czechs were using the cover of oil prospecting for some nefarious activity, and that his story to her that he was the representative of an oil company was untrue.

When he had done she congratulated him on his astuteness with the estate agent, but expressed her misgivings about the future. Then she asked what he meant to do with the key he had stolen.

'Having taken it will prevent them from locking the door,' he laughed. 'Tomorrow night, or maybe one night later on when they've had a chance to settle down, I'll go in and have a good look round. With luck I'll even get a peep at the type of machinery they are bringing With them.'

'But, Robbie,' she protested, 'there will be a lot of them and only one of you. If they catch you they may do you a serious injury.'

'This will be a different party from the bunch who threatened me in Patras; so if I get caught the odds are all against their knowing who I am. I hadn't thought of it at the time, but as an excuse for being in the garden I could say that I'd come to buy some more oranges from the caretaker. Still, as I don't intend to go in till after dark, I think it very unlikely that I'll get caught.'

Stephanie shook her chestnut curls. 'I don't like it. There is always the chance that there will be someone there from Patras who will recognize you. Business men aren't normally expected to take these sort of risks for their firms, so why should you? Please be sensible. Telephone your firm tomorrow morning. Tell them that these Czechs have threatened to give you a beating up; then, if your people have any decency at all, they will tell you that you are not to pursue your enquiries any further.'

'No, I can't do that.' Robbie paused for a moment, seeking a reason, then he added: 'You see, I want to pull this off, because it would lead to my promotion.'

'I don't believe you,' she retorted angrily. 'It's simply that you have a bee in your bonnet about the Heroes of antiquity. You admit that they were a stupid lot, yet you want to be like them. That's why you refuse to throw in your hand.'

That evening they dined in the little hotel and, as there was nowhere to go afterwards, went early to bed. During the night it rained, but by nine o'clock next morning the pavements were drying up and it promised to be another lovely sunny day; so they had a picnic basket made up. On a flat stretch of road to the west of the town Stephanie gave Robbie his second driving lesson, then she drove them up to the 'new' city.

The Greco-Roman ruins covered a huge area and, in addition, there was a quite large museum, containing many fine sculptures that had been excavated at various periods. Unlike Pleuron, there were several coach-loads of tourists being conducted by guides, who addressed them loudly in different languages; but the site was so extensive that it was possible to keep a fair distance from them most of the time.

For the better part of two hours Robbie and Stephanie wandered through the maze of streets, now and then turning off to explore Apollo's temple, rows of roofless shops, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the theatre and the beautiful sunken baths with the famous fountain of Glauce.

By half-past-one the tourists had re-entered their coaches, and had been carried off to lunch; so the two picnickers collected their basket from the car and, selecting a shady spot, opened it up.

When they had eaten their fill Stephanie remarked: 'I haven't come across anything about Corinth yet in your book. Did none of the Heroes perform his deeds of derring-do in these parts?'

Robbie shook his head. 'I've yet to do Corinth, and there's not much to tell; only about Sisyphus and Bellerophon.'

'What did they get up to?'

'It was Sisyphus who founded Corinth. He was a very nasty piece of work, and about as cunning as they make 'em. He split to Asopus, the River God, that it was Zeus who had carried off his daughter Aegina. Zeus felt pretty sore about that, so he sent Death to him; but Sisyphus was such a slippery customer that he tripped Death and tied him up. Ares had to be sent to free him, so Death got Sisyphus after all; but not for long. Before he passed out, he told his wife to bury him without any of the usual funeral honours. Then, when he got down to Hades, he complained most bitterly to Pluto about the scurvy way she had treated his corpse. The ancients set a great score by that sort of thing, so Pluto was very shocked and allowed him to go back to earth to administer chastisement to his better half. When Zeus heard how Sisyphus had made a monkey out of him, he became properly steamed up. While Sisyphus was still telling himself what a clever fellow he was, something seized him by the seat of his pants and pitched him straight down to Tartarus. By Zeus's decree, he was set to rolling a huge boulder up a hill then, every time he got it to the top, it slipped out of his grip and rolled down to the bottom; so that he had to go down and start rolling it up again.'

'And what about Bellerophon?'

'He was Sisyphus's grandson, and his story is rather on the lines of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. He killed a chap here by accident but, all the same, he had to flee the country, and he took refuge with Proetus, King of Argos. Proetus had a lovely wife named Antea. She took a fancy to Bellerophon and, being pretty hot stuff, invited him to come and play tiddley-winks with her in her bedroom. As Proetus had treated him very handsomely, Bellerophon did the decent thing and refused to play.

'You know the old one about "a woman scorned". That was Antea's angle on this set-up, and she behaved like a lousy little bitch. She told her husband that Bellerophon had been showing her filthy postcards, or something of that kind, and making naughty suggestions to her. Proetus was very upset, because he had thought Bellerophon a good scout; yet his own honour demanded that he agree to his wife's request that her would-be seducer should be taken for a ride.

'After a little thought, Proetus so much disliked the idea of handling Bellerophon over to a firing squad himself that he decided to get someone else to do the job. He sent Bellerophon on a visit to his son-in-law, lobates, King of Lycia, with a sealed packet with a note inside which said: "This fellow is a bad egg. Please oblige me by doing him in."

'lobates put out the red carpet for his handsome young guest, and for nine nights had his'Court make whoopee for his entertainment. At the end of them, everyone agreed that Bellerophon was a great charmer, and the King had come to regard him as quite a special pal. In consequence, on the tenth day, when lobates opened the packet and read the message from his pa-in-law, he was terribly put out.

'He didn't like the idea, any more than Proetus had, of personally giving the order for Bellerophon to be written off. So he, too, did a big think; and, as he was in honour bound to do something, he hit on the idea of getting him killed by a monster. A fire-breathing beast called the Chimaera was then behaving very unpleasantly in those parts, and that night he told Bellerophon about it.

'Bellerophon, being a Hero, naturally sprang to his feet and cried: "Lead me to it" So they buckled his armour on to him, gave him a packet of sandwiches and, a bit tearfully, wished him luck.

'Before he had gone far, he came upon a winged horse called Pegasus, and it occurred to him that this single-seater aircraft would enable him to zoom down on the Chimaera and give it the works without much risk to himself. But, try as he would, he couldn't persuade this splendid beast to let him mount it; so, tired out, he lay down and went to sleep.

'It was, of course, the gods who, feeling that he was being done dirt, had put Pegasus in his way. While he slept, Athene appeared to him in a dream and laid beside him a golden bridle. When he awoke, sure enough there it was. Pegasus submitted like a lamb to the bit being slipped between his teeth, and the rest was easy. Bellerophon settled the Chimaera's business with half a dozen arrows, then made a perfect landing, cut off the beast's head and tail, and flew back in triumph with them to lobates.

'The King was delighted at these proofs that the Chimaera's goose was cooked, but more put out than ever about how to deal with his guest. Still feeling that he ought not to let down Proetus, ue sent Bellerophon on two more missions: first to perform a ' High Noon" act as the lone sheriff against a small army of cattle rustlers, then against the Amazons. But, looping the loop °n Pegasus, Bellerophon played merry hell with both these menaces to the gracious life.

'After that, Iobates took the view that his pa-in-law must have been one over the odds when he wrote the letter, because no one could have done what Bellerophon had done unless he was beloved by the gods; so he called it a day and gave him his daughter in marriage.

'Unfortunately, that is not quite the end of the story. Bellerophon became so Johnny-head-in-air about his exploits that he forgot that the Chimaera would probably have made Toast Melba out of him with its breath, if it hadn't been for Athene's lending him Pegasus. He decided that he was entitled to the entree into Olympus and he attempted to gatecrash without having been put up for the Club. As the oldest member present, Zeus called a committee meeting and they sent a gadfly to sting Pegasus on his plump behind. Naturally he bucked like billy-oh, Bellerophon was tossed off and hit the ground with a thump that left him lame for the rest of his life.'

'I suppose,' Stephanie smiled, 'that's where we get our expression "Pride comes before a fall".'

As they walked back towards the car along the stone-paved streets, Stephanie remarked on one of them being buckled into a hump that rose several feet above the normal level, and asked what could have caused it.

'An earthquake,' Robbie replied at once. 'The crust of the earth must be very thin right along the Gulf of Corinth, and in several other parts of Greece. As you must know, Greece has suffered a lot from earthquakes all through her history, and hardly a year goes by without some village or other being destroyed by one.'

As they drove back through the vineyards of tall-staked vines that produce the currants which have made Corinth famous, he said: 'I think after dinner I'll walk down to the Villa Dione. It will be too early for me to find out what type of machinery the Czechs intend to use, but I'd like to take just a peep through that postern gate I told you about and make certain that they have arrived.'

At the hotel they had a belated siesta, so they did not meet again until shortly before dinner. Over the meal Stephanie endeavoured to persuade him to give up his intention; but he was so keyed up at the prospect of it that he would not listen to her.

About half-past-nine, after they had whiled away an hour with coffee and liqueurs, he smiled good-bye to her and set off on the fifteen-minute walk to the seashore to the west of the town.

As he approached the villa, he saw that there were lights in several of the windows, and, by the light of the moon, which was just rising, that a large caique lay at anchor off the villa's private beach.

Having secured ample evidence that the Czechs were in occupation, he was in half a mind to turn back; but the temptation to sneak into the garden and find out, if he could, where the Czechs had stored their machinery proved too much for him.

Walking swiftly to the door in the wall, he pushed it open and stepped inside.

He had taken no more than a couple of paces when, with a loud shout, a figure leapt at him from out of the darkness. A blow on the side of his face sent him reeling. Next moment there came a chorus of excited cries and a little crowd of shadowy figures came tumbling out through a pair of french windows at the back of the villa.

Recovering his balance, he struck out at his assailant. It was a lucky blow. With a gasp, th,e man went over backward into the thick undergrowth. Spinning round, Robbie sprang back through the still open doorway and took to his heels. But the pack was after him in full cry.

Sprinting for all he was worth, he kept his lead until he was among the buildings on the outskirts of the town. Praying that he might be seen by a policeman, who would come to his rescue, he raced on. But there is no night-life in Corinth, and the side streets were deserted.

His breath was coming painfully, and with every bound he took he was conscious that his pursuers were gaining on him. They were silent now, but the rhythm of their swift footfalls on the pavement held for him a terrible menace. He knew that if they caught him he would be in for a most brutal handling.

Suddenly an outstretched hand fell on his shoulder. Swerving, he jerked it off. But he realized now that at any moment, unless he turned to fight, he might be slugged on the head. He had reached a gap between two houses of the kind often seen in Greek towns. Above a low balustrade there ran an iron railing. Beyond it was a wide pit shrouded in darkness. Down it there would be a few pillars and big slabs of stone half submerged in weeds and tall grass—the remains of some temple or small theatre that was of little importance and not worth excavating further, but was a protected site on which, by an Act of the Greek Government, it was forbidden to build.

Backing up against the parapet, he hit out at the nearest figure to him. Again it was a lucky blow. With a curse, the man went down. But there were half a dozen others and they closed in, raining blows on him. He was taller than any of them and managed to protect his face, but he was struck a dozen times about his arms and body.

Vaguely, by the moonlight, he saw another figure come panting up behind the rest, and heard a shout: 'Leave him to me, boys. I'll soon settle him.' As the others drew back, he found himself face to face with the enormously broad-shouldered figure of Stoll. With a grunt, the barrel-chested Sudentenlander hurled himself at Robbie. Before he had a chance to hit out, Stoll had flung his long arms round him and seized him in a gorilla-like embrace. Pesperately, Robbie strove to break free. His breath was coming in gasps. He felt himself being crushed in that terrible grip. His utmost efforts to break Stoll's hold were of no avail. For a minute or more, they staggered backward and forward, then Stoil forced Robbie back against the parapet. Its brickwork hit him behind the knees and the iron railing bit into his back.

Suddenly, the rusty railing gave. Robbie went backward, carrying Stoli with him. As they plunged the eight feet into the thick grass below, still clasping one another in a fierce embrace, they turned threequarters of a somersault. The Sudetenlander landed on his back with Robbie on top of him. He gave a long, agonized groan and his arms fell away from Robbie. For a moment, Robbie lay panting on his gross body, then he lurched to his feet.

Stoll's companions now lined the parapet, exclaiming excitedly together. But there was no way down into the little ruin and none of them was brave enough to face the drop. Robbie staggered away in the opposite direction. Twice he collided with large blocks of stone half hidden in the grass, and once fell with hands outstretched into a patch of stinging nettles. Oblivious of the pain, he blundered on until he reached the far side of the ruin. Beyond it, there was another street that bordered it on a lower level. Still a prey to terror that he would be caught, he somehow managed to scale the five-foot wall and climb over the parapet. Fear lending him new strength, he began to run again, and broke into a walk only when he was within a hundred yards of his hotel.

It had a small courtyard with stables which had been converted into garages. Still panting, he came to a halt midway across the entrance to the yard, arrested by the lights of a car that was just being driven out. His head was above the level of the car lamps, so he could see clearly the couple in it. As it pulled up to avoid running him down, he saw that it was the Ford, and that Stephanie was at the wheel. A second later, he recognized the man beside her. It was Vaclav Barak.

16

The Biter Bit

Robbie stood rooted to the spot. The sight of Barak sitting beside Stephanie in the car left him utterly confounded. How did they come to be together? Could that be accounted for by some strange coincidence, or were they old acquaintances? And where could they have been going? But perhaps she was not driving him of her own free will. Perhaps he had come to the hotel and threatened her in some way.

Next moment there came confirmation of this last idea. The door of the car was flung open and Barak jumped out. To Robbie the inference was clear. Whatever his enemy's plan might have been, his own unexpected arrival on the scene had nipped it in the bud.

For the first time in his life Robbie saw red. Barak had threatened him with a beating up. Stoll and those other thugs at the Villa Dione were under his orders. It must have been he who arranged for them to lie in wait there. No doubt he had counted on their victim being by now half-dead in a ditch. But that was far from being his worst offence. Somehow he had got hold of Stephanie and had theatened or lied to her. He had been caught in the very act of forcing her to drive off with him. Why, remained a mystery. But it could only be that he had some evil design in mind. The thought that he had meant to harm her drove Robbie berserk. As Barak slammed the door of the car, Robbie leapt at him.

Sudden fear showed in Barak's eyes. Spinning round, he dashed back towards the yard. Robbie raced after him, thinking he meant to head for the side-door of the hotel in the hope of securing protection from some of the staff who might be in the kitchen quarters. But the Czech was swift in wit as well as action. As he came level with the rear of the Ford, he dodged behind it and put out his foot. Robbie tripped over it, flung out his arms and measured his length on the ground.

His arms were badly scraped on the cobbles and the breath half driven from his body. With a gasp, he pulled himself to his knees, then to his feet. By the time he was up, Barak had darted round the far side of the car and was out in the street. Sobbing now, not with pain but with rage, Robbie gave chase.

Barak had gained a fifty-yard start and was running hard along the waterfront. There were few people about for, although it was not late, the April night was chilly; so the patrons of the few small caf£s were drinking inside them. Only a young couple, arm in arm, and a solitary fisherman turned to stare as Robbie pounded past them in full pursuit of his enemy.

After covering a hundred and fifty yards, Barak swerved round a corner up a street that led into the centre of the town. But it was a side-street and deserted, except for one old woman. The Czech's legs were long, but Robbie's were longer. When he turned the corner, he had decreased his enemy's lead by half. As the crash of Robbie's flying footsteps grew louder in Barak's ears, he cast a swift glance over his shoulder, ran on another twenty paces, then dived into an alley. Fearing that, if the alley led into several others, he might lose his enemy in the darkness, Robbie forced himself into an extra spurt. Next moment, he was in the entrance to the alley. The narrow passage was shrouded in gloom. The starlight was sufficient for him to see that it was about sixty feet in length and ended in a high wall. But it was empty.

No lights showed in the buildings on either side. Unless a door had been open, Barak could hardly have had time to gain admittance to one of the houses, or to a yard. That meant there must be a turning at the end of the alley. Drawing his breath in gasps, Robbie raced on. When he had covered another thirty feet, the shadows ahead dissolved. He was right. The alley took a right-angle turn to the left, back towards the waterfront. Brushing the wall at the corner with his shoulder, he swerved round it. His heart gave a bound. The turning was a cul-de-sac, only twenty feet long, and Barak stood there, trapped in it.

Without pausing to draw breath, Robbie sprang at him and struck out at his face. Barak dodged the blow and clinched with him. Seizing Barak by the arms, he broke his grip, then flung him with all his force against the wall. For a moment, the tall Czech stood spread-eagled against it, half-dazed by the shock. Robbie hit out at his head again, but again he dodged the blow. Lurching forward, he tried to kick Robbie in the groin. Swerving sideways, Robbie took the kick on his thigh, then he stepped back and, with a murderous grin, took a swift survey of his enemy.

This was his second fight. He had learned by now that windmill blows were rarely effective, and that much better results could be achieved by thinking first at what part of one's opponent to strike. He realized, too, that this time it was not he who was trying to escape; so time was on his side and, as he was much more powerful than Barak, he had him at his mercy.

Suddenly Barak dived sideways, but he was so close-pressed against the wall that with one swift step Robbie had crowded him back again. Robbie then went in to the attack. Feinting with his left at Barak's stomach, he drove his right into his face. The blow took him full in the eye. With a wail, he threw up his open hands to fend off further blows and cried:

'Have mercy! Not my face! Please, not my face.'

'Mercy, you rat!' Robbie snarled. 'You'll be lucky if I don't kill you! And you're vain of your face, eh? Then I'll do to it what you threatened to do to my body.'

For three good minutes he let his fury have full play. Cornered and confronted with Robbie's superior strength and furious rage, Barak had already gone to pieces. Fear robbed him of the power to make more than a feeble attempt to protect himself and, when he started to shout for help, Robbie silenced him by a blow in the mouth that loosened several of his teeth. Three times he slid moaning to the ground. Three times Robbie hauled him upright again by his collar for further punishment. When Robbie at last let him drop, he was still conscious; but his face was covered with blood, both eyes were blacked, his mouth was badly cut and his nose broken.

Staring down at him, Robbie muttered: 'That will teach you to set your thugs on me. And if I ever catch you trying anything on Miss Stephanopoulos again, I'll kill you.'

Turning away, he set off back to the hotel. It was only about five minutes' walk and, as he had done the outward journey at & headlong pace, when he got there he had been away from it not much more than ten. Even so, he was surprised to see the Ford standing outside it, and Stephanie still sitting at the wheel.

When he was within a few paces of the car she caught sight of him, leaned over and threw open the door. The car was not immediately in front of the lit porch of the hotel, so the light inside it was too dim for him to see her face distinctly. But her voice held a mixture of relief and anxiety as she exclaimed:

'Oh, Robbie! Thank Gfcd you're safe. Whatever has been happening? I've been terribly worried. I still am.'

'You've no need to be now,' he replied. 'But why are you still out here, sitting in the car?'

'I was waiting to , . . I thought you might want to get away in a hurry.'

'Then it was sporting of you to stand by. But I don't; so run back into the garage and we'll go into the hotel.'

'No.' She shook her head. 'I want to hear what has been going on. There are some people sitting in the lounge, and it's such a small one that we can't possibly talk there. Out here we can't be overheard.'

'All right.' He scrambled in beside her, and shut the door. Then he said: 'There's not much to tell. I was ambushed down at the villa and had to run for it. They caught up with me and there was a fight, but I had the luck to get away. What about you, though? How did you come to be in the car with that swine Barak?'

'Is that his name?'

'Yes. Didn't you know?'

'How could I? He didn't introduce himself, and I hadn't been talking to him for more than a few minutes before you came on

the scene.'

'Well, that is his name, and he is my enemy No. 1. He is a Czech, and the top man in this rival oil set-up.'

'Good gracious! I thought he was simply a friendly Greek.'

'Friendly!' Robbie turned to stare at her. 'You can't . . . you can't mean that he had just scraped acquaintance with you and asked you to drive him somewhere?'

'Of course not.' Stephanie's tone was indignant. 'Even if this were my car, is it likely that I would take a strange man for a drive in it at this time of night?'

'I know, I know. But you say he was friendly. Then he hadn't threatened you; he wasn't forcing you to go off with him against your will. If that is so, what the devil was he doing in the car with you?'

'He was going to show me the way to the hospital.'

'What in the world for?' After a moment's pause, Robbie added with quick concern: 'You're not feeling ill or anything, are you?'

'Not unless you count frayed nerves. No; he was taking me to the hospital to see you.'

'Me! But I wasn't there. I don't even know where it is.'

'Neither did I. That's why I asked him to show me the way to it.'

Robbie groaned. 'I don't understand. Please start from the beginning.'

'Very well. About twenty minutes ago, I was sitting in that stuffy little lounge reading. Then this Mr. Barrat came in-'

'Barak; Vaclav Barak.'

'All right, Mr. Barak. He came over to me and said in a low voice: "Please come outside for a moment, I have a message for you from your husband." Assuming he could only mean you, I went out with him to the hall. Then he said: "I'm afraid it's not a message, but bad news. Your husband has been knocked down by a car and badly hurt. I was among those who picked him up. I chanced to see you lunching together here today and-" '

'But we didn't lunch here,' Robbie interrupted. 'We picnicked among the ruins of the new city.'

'Yes, of course we did. Being so worried about you has driven out of my mind exactly what he said. Perhaps it was yesterday he saw us lunching at one of the tables outside, or having drinks there earlier this evening. What does it matter? Anyhow, he recognized you at once when they were picking you up, because you are such a big man. Then, as he was passing here on his way home, it occurred to him that, as you were unconscious, you might be at the hospital all night, while I worried myself silly wondering where you had got to; so it would be a kindness to come in and let me know what had happened.'

Robbie considered this for a moment, then he said: 'By the time he did his friendly act with you, he obviously counted on his thugs having done their stuff on me. But what I don't understand is why he should have gone out of his way to bring you to my bedside.'

'Surely that was part of a plan to cover up the attack on you?' Stephanie suggested. 'Evidently it was intended that, after knocking you out, the thugs should dump you at the hospital and say that they had seen you run over by a hit-and-run driver. When you recovered consciousness, you would have said that you had been beaten up; but the fact that I had been brought to your bedside by someone who had witnessed the accident would have led the authorities to believe that you were imagining things— that your brain had been slightly affected—then the police would probably not have bothered to start an investigation that might have led to Barak's people.'

'That certainly sounds plausible,' Robbie agreed. 'Anyway, I'm fortunate not to be lying in the hospital now with a broken head and ribs.' He went on to give Stephanie a full account of his visit to the Villa Dione, and how a lucky break had enabled him to escape from his attackers. Then he said:

T'm puzzled, though, about how they got on to me. Of course, it may have been pure chance that one of them happened to be standing just inside the postern gate; but the fact that all the others were in a downstairs room at the back of the house, ready to dash out at a moment's notice, seems to make that unlikely. I'm pretty sure they were lying in wait for me.'

'It could have been the gardener,' Stephanie suggested. 'He must have missed the key thaf you made off with and, in mentioning that to the tenants, he probably told them about your visit to the villa yesterday evening. You say that this Sudeten-lander, Stoll, already knew you; so he could have recognized you from the gardener's description. Stoll would have jumped to it then that it was you who had stolen the key, and that you meant to pay the villa another visit.'

'By jove, you're right!' Robbie gave her a glance of admiration. 'That never occurred to me, but it's odds-on that it explains the ambush I ran into.'

There was a moment's silence, then Stephanie said in a low voice: 'You haven't told me yet what happened when you ran off after Barak. Did he get away?'

'No,' Robbie replied grimly. 'I caught up with him in a cul-de-sac and he won't worry us again.'

She stiffened suddenly and gave a cry of apprehension. 'Good God! You didn't kill him, did you?'

'Good Lord, no! I'm much too fond of my own life to risk being charged with murder. I just gave him a darn' good pasting and left him to crawl home.'

Again they fell silent for a minute or more, until Stephanie gave a slight shiver and said: 'Well, now we know where we are. But it's getting awfully cold; let's go in.'

'Let's,' Robbie agreed. 'I could do with a drink.'

She backed the car round into the garage and they walked back to the front entrance of the hotel. As they were about to go in, her glance fell on his right hand. It was dark red with congealed blood. Her eyes distended, she grasped his arm, pulled him to a halt and cried:

'Look at your hand. What have you done? I believe you did kill him.'

'I didn't,' he assured her. 'Most of that is from the broken skin of my knuckles. I admit, though, that I lammed into him quite a bit. Something came over me, a sort of vicious feeling. I've never felt like that about anyone before, but I couldn't stop myself. I kept on hitting him until I'd made a horrid mess of his face.'

'You . . . you. Oh well, I suppose he deserved it. But Robbie,' she drew a sharp breath before going on, 'he was a very good-looking man and . . . and I should think rather vain. If you

o 189 have permanently spoiled his face he'll never forgive you. And he has all those thugs under his orders. It's certain hell do his utmost to be revenged on you. We mustn't stay here. If we do you'll be in real danger. I'm sure of it. Please let's get away from Corinth.'

Robbie nodded. 'I think you're right again. In any case, I wouldn't risk another visit to the Villa Dione; so there is not much point in staying on here. But Barak won't be up to planning any further mischief tonight. It will be time enough if we leave in the morning.'

Stuffing his bloody hands into his trouser pockets, Robbie followed Stephanie into the hotel. She ordered drinks for them and went into the lounge, while he went up to his room and cleaned himself up. When he came down and joined her he found that the couple she said had been reading there had gone up to bed, so they had the room to themselves.

She asked him where he intended that they should go on leaving Corinth, and he replied: M haven't had time to think yet. I reckon that I've rendered Barak hors de combat for the best part of a week, and after his fall Stoll must be in pretty bad shape, too. Of their three top chaps, that leaves only Cepicka, and all the odds are that he is either at Pirgos or has gone down to Kalamai to superintend the arrangements for other groups of Czechs who are to land at those ports. If so, that would leave me a free field at Patras, and by this time the group there must be getting busy; so we might go back there and I could try to find out what they are up to.'

'No, Robbie; no.' Stephanie gave a quick shake of her chestnut curls. 'You seem to have forgotten that you stood drinks to the whole party there and that you were denounced as a spy in front of them. One or more of them would be certain to recognize you.'

'That's true, but I had forgotten it. Although I got the best of things, I've been through a rather rough time this evening, and I'm afraid all the excitement has put my mind a bit out of gear for making new plans. But I'll be all right in the morning. Let's leave it till then.'

Leaning forward, she laid a hand gently on his knee. 'Robbie, let's face it. You've got lots of splendid qualities, but you weren't cut out to be either a spy or a planner. Why your firm should ever have picked you for this job, I can't think. Won't you please telephone them tomorrow; tell them that tonight you narrowly escaped having to spend three months in hospital, and that a man you have beaten up may try to revenge himself on you at any time? Then ask them to release you from this dangerous work. They can't possibly refuse.'

He shook his head. 'No I don't want to do that.'

'Why not? If you have to take me back to Athens, I'll manage somehow. But you've earned a holiday for the risks you have already taken. Why not claim it? Then we could go on in the car to other interesting places. You would be able to concentrate entirely on your book, and in between driving from place to place, I would type it for you.'

Robbie smiled. That would be lovely. I can't think of anything I'd like more. Perhaps after I have found out what these chaps are up to, we might do that; but not until I have.'

'But you do know what they are up to,' she said with a puzzled frown. They are establishing a chain of depots in opposition to your firm. At least, that's what you gave me to understand.'

'Well, yes. That, more or less, describes what I believe them to be doing. But I want to find'out details: particularly about the type of machinery they mean to employ. And until I've done that, I can't do as you wish. Really I can't.'

Finishing her drink, she stood up. 'All right, then, since you insist on being pig-headed. But you'll have only yourself to blame if that man Barak sticks a knife into you, or something frightful. I'm going up to bed.'

Overnight, Robbie's mind had been so full of his adventure that he had given little thought to its physical consequences, but in the morning they were brought home to him in no uncertain manner. His fall, although broken by Stoll's body, and the many blows he had received on his own, resulted in his waking stiff and aching. As he turned from side to side in bed, the pain from his bruises caused him to take fresh stock of the situation. Those pains, he reflected, might easily have been instead the real agony of broken bones and torn ligaments. There was much to be said for Stephanie's gloomy forebodings that, if he courted the further attentions of the Czechs, they might be luckier next time and give him real cause to regret it. Moreover, her view that Barak would seek revenge for his smashed-in face could not be lightly disregarded.

Barak might be out of the game temporarily, but it was certain that he would regard his English bugbear as still in it; so it seemed highly probable that he would send a detailed description of Robbie to all his groups, with orders to watch out for him. That meant that a certain degree of risk would now be entailed by snooping in the vicinity of any of them.

The very fact that the Czechs had reacted so forcibly to Robbie's initial snooping could be taken as definite confirmation that they were not, against all probability, prospecting for oil, but had some nefarious design to hide. Realizing that, nothing could now have dissuaded Robbie from continuing his investigations. But the more he thought of the matter, the more convinced he became that his future activities ought to be conducted with extreme caution.

It occurred to him then that he might fox the enemy by giving them the impression that he had come out of last night's encounters far worse than he had; and by going to earth for a While lead them to suppose that he had thrown in his hand.

This idea greatly tickled his sense of humour and, again temporarily forgetting his bruises, he spent the time until the chambermaid brought his breakfast planning this new move. When the woman arrived with his tray, he told her that the previous night he had had a bit too much to drink and had become involved in a quarrel in which he had got the worst of it. He then asked her to send out for some healing ointment, bandages, a packet of large safety pins and a stout walking stick, and to take a note from him down to Miss Stephanopoulos. In the note he had written in English the single line: Don't show surprise at my appearance.

Three-quarters of an hour later the chambermaid came to collect his tray, and brought him the things for which he had asked. Getting up, he went along the corridor and had a bath, but he did not shave; and in the mirror he was pleased to see that the blow which he had received on the cheek had coloured up into a fine red bruise with a purple edge near the outer corner of his left eye. Returning to his room, he treated his bruises with the ointment then, with some difficulty, bandaged his head, but left the bruise on his cheek exposed. After packing his suitcase, he made another bandage into a sling for his left arm and, taking the stout stick, hobbled downstairs.

Stephanie, with her suitcase beside her, was waiting for him in the narrow hall. At the sight of his unshaven face and bandaged head, her dark eyebrows lifted and her mouth opened slightly. But she swiftly controlled her features, stood up and asked him how he was feeling.

'Not too good,' he replied. 'I behaved very stupidly last night, and I've had enough of it.' Then he hobbled over to the desk behind which the manageress was sitting, paid the bill and said: 'If any letters should come for me, please direct them care of the British Embassy, Athens.' Five minutes later their bags had been carried out to the car and Stephanie was driving it out of the garage yard.

'What is all this?' she asked with sharp displeasure. 'If you meant to play some trick why couldn't you have told me? And what road am I to take? Do you really mean that we should go back to Athens?'

He gave a low chuckle. 'This is an idea I had this morning for fooling the enemy. Turn into the main road, King Constantine Avenue, and keep going over the level crossings. It's pretty certain that Barak will send his pals to enquire at the hotel about us. I'm hoping that he'll assume from what the manageress tells them that I've thrown in my hand and have gone back to Athens. But you were right last night that they will be on the look-out for me, so I've decided that our best plan will be to lie doggo for a while. If I don't show up for a week or so they'll probably think that they have got rid of me for good. Then, when their suspicions have been lulled, I intend to have another crack at them. In the meantime, I think it would be a good idea for us to go down to Navplion. We'll be hundreds of miles from any of the places where they are putting groups to work, and within easy reach of the ruins of Mycenae and Tiryns which are probably the most interesting anywhere in Greece.'

Thank goodness you've shown some sense,' she replied. 'But get out the map and tell me which way to go.'

After studying the map for a few moments, he said: 'It's not far: only about sixty kilometres. Most of it is through the mountains, but even so, it shouldn't be much more than an hour and a half's run. About half-way we'll pass through the village of Nemea. It was round about there that Hercules performed his first labour of slaying the terrible Nemean Lion. Mycenae lies on the foothills at the far side of the pass, then we'll come down into the plain of Argos.'

As soon as they were outside the town, he got rid of his arm sling and removed the bandage from round his head, then settled down to enjoy the drive. For some miles they climbed steadily along the twisting way between the two-thousand-foot-high crests of the Onia and Palukoraki mountains, then round bend after bend along a road cut out of the steep hillsides, until at about eleven o'clock they emerged, still several hundred feet above sea level, to see a marvellous prospect below them. It was the fertile plain of Argos, and beyond it the forty-mile-long gulf surrounded for all but a tenth of its circumference, by mountains.

Robbie leaned forward eagerly and exclaimed: 'Look, look! For years I've longed to set eyes on this. In all history there is no more romantic spot. It was from the bay below us that the Argonauts set sail to seize the Golden Fleece.' Pointing to their left front, he went on: 'And down there on that hillock is Mycenae. It was there, a few years later, after Helen had run away with Paris, that Agamemnon vowed he would get her back and organized a muster of the thousand ships that carried the Greeks to the siege of Troy.'

With an indulgent smile, Stephanie remarked: 'I suppose it is the world's greatest romance. There certainly is no other story in which a whole country went to war for ten years to get back a runaway wife. But, after all, we've only Homer's account of it, so I don't suppose it really happened.'

'How can you think that?' Robbie stared at her in amazement. 'Of course, all the bits Homer put in about the gods and goddesses having taken sides and helped or hindered the Heroes is poetic licence. But the siege of Troy is an historic fact. Schliemann Proved that beyond question.'

'Schliemann?' she repeated doubtfully.

'Yes; surely you've heard of him?'

'Was he the German archaeologist who discovered Mycenae?'

'That's right. He was a most extraordinary chap, and his own story was the all-time-high of poor boy making good. From his earliest childhood, he was fascinated by stories of the ancient Greeks; but for years he had to work on a pittance as a grocer's errand boy, a cabin boy and a junior clerk. At night, though, by candle-light in an attic, he taught himself half a dozen languages. At last, he got a job with the great banking firm of Schroder and they recognized his abilities. They sent him to St. Petersburg as their representative, and while there he managed to save enough to set up in business on his own as an indigo merchant. From then on, everything he touched turned to gold. As a contractor, he made a fortune out of the Crimean War; then he went to America, got in on the Californian gold rush and made another fortune. After travelling the world for a while, he came to Greece and in the seventies settled down to his life-long ambition of becoming an archaeologist. He had been disappointed in his early love, so he had never married. However, by then he was getting on for fifty, and he decided he would like to marry; so he wrote to his friend the Archbishop of Athens and asked him to find him a suitable wife.'

'What an extraordinary thing to do.'

'Yes. Still, it turned out all right. She was only eighteen and a lovely girl, but she became devoted to him and was an enormous help in all his undertakings. His first great success was the rediscovery of Troy. As you must know, it is on the other side of the Aegean, in Turkey, not far from the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles; but he disagreed with the professional archaeologists about the actual site. He received a concession from the Turks to dig and put scores of men to work for months, driving a great trench right through a lofty hill. They found the remains of nine cities buried one on top of another, and it turned out that Homer's Troy was the third one down. It was later definitely identified by the remains of great gates and palaces that Homer had described. But Schliemann couldn't find any treasure and everyone was still saying that he was wasting his time, so he decided to throw in his hand. Then, on the very last day, his luck turned. Near what was called the Scaean Gate, he came upon a gold pin; so he sent all his v/orkmen away and that night he and his wife went back there. They unearthed a marvellous treasure—diadems, bracelets, necklaces and over eight thousand rings, all of solid gold.'

'Eight thousand!'

'Yes. But he was in a spot, because to get his concession to dig he had agreed to hand over to the Turkish Government the bulk of any treasure he found. The stuff he had found was absolutely priceless; and it wasn't that he needed the money, but he felt sure that the Turks would melt it down just for its value in gold. As luck would have it, in those days women wore enormous skirts; so his wife was able to smuggle the whole lot out of Turkey and back to Greece under her petticoats.'

'When the Turks heard about that they must have been furious.'

They were. They brought a case against him, and imposed a heavy fine. But he sent them five times the amount of the fine, in order to win back their goodwill; so they allowed him to return to Troy the next year and continue his digging. In the meantime, though, while the law-suit was going on, he had started to excavate Mycenae.'

Stephanie glanced towards their left where, about two miles away, a lofty foothill rose, commanding the entrance to the valley from which they had just emerged. Upon its crest, some ruins could be seen and further down the slope below it several tourist coaches were parked. 'And that,' she murmured, 'is Mycenae.'

That's it,' he agreed, 'and I'm longing to see it. But the horde of tourists now being conducted round it would spoil it for us. We'll be staying in Navplion for several days, anyway; so we'll drive out early one morning, then well have the place to ourselves.' After a moment, he added: 'Still, we might stop for a bit to take in this wonderful view. Let's drive up to the Tourist Pavilion and have a drink there.'

Stephanie turned left into a side road, and a few minutes later they were enjoying big tumblers of iced fresh orange juice on the Pavilion's stoop. For a while they sat in silence, looking out at the blue, sunlit gulf embraced by its long chains of green and brown mountains etched against the pale azure sky; then she said:

'I think Schliemann's story is fascinating. What did he do with his treasure after he had saved it from the Turks?'

Robbie raised his eyebrows. 'Why, he gave it to the museum in Athens. Surely you must have seen it there?'

'Yes, I suppose I have. But there are such cases and cases of gold ornaments and, knowing nothing about archaeology, I'm afraid I didn't take in which came from where. I remember those lovely gold drinking cups, though, and ail those flat gold masks with such curious features. Did they come from Troy?'

⁴No, they came from here. Excavating Mycenae was Schlie-rnann's greatest triumph. He hit on the Royal burial ground and opened up five or six shaft graves. They contained sixteen corpses and he claimed that one of them was actually that of Agamemnon. Of course, there was nothing to prove it, and it is now believed that they were of people who had lived about three hundred years before the siege of Troy. But out of the graves he got an immense treasure of gold, silver, ivory and precious stones; in fact, by far the greatest treasure that has ever been discovered anywhere in the world. And the ornamentation on these things showed that, in some ways, the artists of the Mycenaean age were superior to those of Athens.'

'A change of fashion could account for that,' Stephanie suggested. 'People always tend to despise the sort of furniture and art their grandparents admired.'

For the third time that morning Robbie stared at her in amazement, then he said: 'But the two civilizations were entirely different. There was a gap of at least four hundred years between the end of one and the beginning of the other. Surely you knew that?'

She frowned and gave a little shrug. 'No. Why should I? When I took on the job of being your secretary, I made no claim to being an authority on ancient history.'

'Of course not. But you are a Greek and every Greek I've met so far is incredibly proud of the achievements of his ancestors, so he-'

'And so am I,' she broke in swiftly. 'But somehow, Robbie, I don't think you have known many Greek girls. And girls of any nationality are much more interested in living people than what happened in the past.'

'Then . . . then,' his face showed sudden distress, 'I must have been boring you terribly.'

'No, no; I didn't mean that. You are a living person and I'm interested in you. Besides, anyone who talks about a subject that fills him with enthusiasm makes it interesting. Only it's silly to be surprised that I don't remember everything I learnt at school. Who does? Naturally, when you tell me these stories, lots of them come back to me; but it's years since I've given a thought to the gods and Heroes and what went on thousands of years ago.'

'I see. Yes. I ought to have realized that.'

'I don't see why you should. Lots of Greek girls probably know nearly as much about these things as you do. It just happens that I have been interested in other subjects. But that doesn't prevent my enjoying hearing from you now about the ancients.'

'Do you really mean that?'

'Of course I do. Counting out the dragons and fire-breathing serpents, you make the Immortals sound wonderfully like real people; and I do want to help you with your book. Tell me now why the civilization here at Mycenae was so different from that of Athens.'

'Well, that means going back to Crete. Before Schliemann's discoveries and those of Sir Arthur Evans, it was thought that no civilization at all had arisen in this part of the Mediterranean until the Athenians started theirs about seven or eight hundred b.c. But actually, round about three thousand b.c. the Minoans in Crete were as far advanced as Egypt and Assyria. After some hundreds of years a series of great earthquakes set them back for a long time, but about two thousand b.c. the Minoans got their second wind. They became a great naval power, with an empire extending all over the north-eastern Med. from which they drew tribute.

'Mycenae must have been one of their principal colonies, as from sixteen hundred b.c. a great civilization began to flourish here, too, with very similar art and culture. Some two hundred years later, another series of earthquakes seems to have knocked out the Minoans altogether, and the Mycenaeans took over. Anyhow, round about twelve hundred b.c. this was the capital of an empire that is believed to have extended all over Greece, Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus, and traded as far west as Sicily. That is why Agamemnon was able to get together such a great Armada and a hundred thousand troops for the siege of Troy.

'But shortly after the Trojan War, a terrible calamity overtook all the cities in the eastern Med. It was one of the great movements of barbarians from the east, like that of Atilla's Huns and Genghis Khan's hordes hundreds of years later. A race called the Dorians came down from the north and looted, burned and murdered wherever they went. The Mycenaean civilization was entirely wiped out; so was that of the Hittites in Cappadocia, and Greece and Asia Minor were plunged right back into a Dark Age.

'This Dark Age went on for four hundred years, then the Hellenes gradually began to evolve a new civilization right from the beginning. It blossomed in the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. into the great age of Pericles and the philosophers, but it owed nothing to what had gone before. The extraordinary thing is that the Athenians did not even know about the Empires of the Mycenaeans and the Minoans that had preceded them, and looked on the ruins they had left behind as the buildings of a prehistoric race of giants. In fact, nobody knew about these ancient Empires until less than one hundred years ago, when Schliemann rediscovered Troy, Mycenae and Tiryns; and it wasn't until the beginning of this century that Sir Arthur Evans revealed to the world that Crete had been a powerful and cultural nation as long before Athens flourished as we are now from the birth of Christ.

'So you see, until comparatively recently, everyone believed that the works of Homer were only fairy tales, and that Hero-ditus's history was mainly imagination. But every year, now, with the deciphering of tablets that are being dug up, they are coming more and more into their own as the chroniclers of real events. The accounts of the gods and heroes were passed on from generation to generation by word of mouth, of course, so the hards embellished them with every sort of exaggeration and fantasy; but there can no longer be any doubt that long ago these characters were living chieftains and champions.

'As sure as we are sitting here, about three thousand two hundred years ago one of the most beautiful women the world has ever known did elope with her handsome, unscrupulous lover, and it was from down in the bay there that Agamemnon sailed to take command of the hundred thousand men, the majority of whom died before the walls of Troy in the ten years' war that was waged simply to bring her back to Greece.'

Stephanie smiled at him. 'How could you think, Robbie, that I don't enjoy listening to you when you find your tongue like that and make things sound so glamorous?'

A few minutes later they were on their way again, down into the plain. The road now ran between orchards of orange and lemon trees, and fields of ancient olive trees, or planted with ripening corn. Passing through the dusty, ramshackle town of Argos, they saw no signs of its ancient glory; but a few miles further on the road ran within a few hundred yards of the great fortress palace of Tiryns, perched on a hill from which rose its cyclopean walls. By twelve o'clock they were entering the pleasant little town of Navplion. Driving right through it, they pulled up at the Hotel Amphitryon.

The hotel had been built only a few years before, and was very different from that in which they had stayed in Corinth. It was constructed so that all its rooms faced the sea, and in its central block it had an eighty-foot-long lounge, the whole of the outer wall of which was of glass, giving a splendid panoramic view over the bay. All the first-floor bedrooms opened on to a wide terrace, furnished with garden furniture, so that visitors could have their breakfast out in the sunshine in dressing gowns or bathing things before going down to the swimming pool that lay across the road between the hotel and the beach.

After lunch they rested for a while, then Stephanie took Robbie out for another driving lesson on the flat stretch of road that curved round the segment of the bay between Navplion and Tiryns. There was little traffic but, when a lorry or a coach did pass them, it churned up clouds of dust, so they were glad of a bath before dinner. They had been given adjacent rooms, and when Stephanie had had her bath she called to Robbie to come out on the terrace to see the sunset. Each room enjoyed a strip of terrace divided from its neighbour by a low, wire fence. Separated only by this, they walked side by side to the far rail.

From Navplion, which is situated on the inner side of a cape, the narrow outlet of the gulf to the sea cannot be seen; so from where they stood, facing west, it looked like a great, placid lake ringed by mountains. The air was so clear that, although the range beyond the opposite shore lay many miles away, it gave the illusion that it was almost within pistol shot. Immediately in front of them, and about three-quarters of a mile distant, there rose from the waters of the gulf a small island. The whole of it was occupied by a little castle, with sheer walls rising from the rocks and a central tower. It added a touch of romance to the scene.

Stephanie had come out in a dressing gown and mules. As she stood now beside Robbie without her high heels, the top of her curls only just came up to his shoulder, and she seemed to him more desirable than ever. For ten minutes, they watched the salmon-and-gold glory of the sunset outlining the long range of peaks as though beyond them the whole country was on fire. Slipping her arm through his, she said:

'Oh, Robbie, if only you would give up this dangerous business of yours, and if this were not just an interlude, how happy we could be here.'

For a moment he was almost tempted to say that he would. But the shadows were falling, and somewhere up in the cliff that rose steeply behind the hotel an owl hooted. The owl was Athene's bird, and sacred to her. Its cry was both a warning and a reminder of his pledge.

The past week that he had spent with Stephanie had made him into a different man from the lonely young fellow so lacking in self-confidence who had given that pledge. Now, he would have given a great deal never to have stood on the Acropolis asking Athene's guidance. But he had, and he knew that he would never again have a quiet mind unless he obeyed her injunction to go through with his self-imposed mission.

17

Of 1 roy and a Submarine

Although the hoot of Athene's owl had prevented Robbie from wavering in his resolution, he did his utmost during the next few days to put from him all thoughts of the Czechs and the mystery of their tobacco-oil deal. On their first morning in Navplion, he and Stephanie took things easy. First they explored the little town and, although it was early in the year for bathing, bought swim-suits. Then they walked back beyond the hotel and along the narrow track that ran round the promontory. On its far side they came upon a path that separated the headland from a far higher cliff on the top of which was perched the ancient Acropolis and, by scrambling along it, got back to the town.

Late that afternoon, they drove the few kilometres to Tiryns. The usual coachloads of tourists had gone, so they had it almost to themselves and spent an hour rambling about its ruins. In ancient days the sea had come up to the walls and it had been the port of Mycenae, but now the shore lay nearly two miles distant. The most impressive thing about it was the enormous size of the stones with which the walls were built. There were thousands of them, and many weighed eight to ten tons; so the labour entailed in dragging them up the hill, then lifting them, without mechanical aid, to fit neatly in layer after layer on one another, must have been immense. It was no wonder that the Greeks of the classic age, knowing nothing of the Mycenaean civilization, called such walls 'cyclopean' and believed that they had been built by a race of giants.

Next morning, as the swimming pool had not yet been filled, they braved the sea. Swimming was one of the few things that Nanny Fisher had taught Robbie. She had rightly believed that it would improve the reactions of his muscles, so she had taken him regularly to the baths in Cheltenham, and now that he was fully grown he was a powerful swimmer. The water was on the chilly side, but there was no wind and, as they had left their dip until eleven o'clock, the sun was strong enough to warm them up within a few minutes of leaving the water. During the previous summer, Robbie had been too shy to speak to anyone when bathing on his own from one of the beaches near Athens, and only on three occasions had he been asked to go in a party; so to have a lovely girl for his sole companion was a new delight to him.

On the previous day, they had learned that the little castle on the rock out in the gulf was called Burzi and that, owing to the Greeks' hatred of state executioners, it had once been used as a retreat for those who had retired; but it was now an hotel. A motor-boat was always available to take visitors out there, so they decided to lunch at it. They found it an intriguing place, as the dome-roofed, white-walled bedrooms on the lower floor had, in the old days, been cells; but each had a window looking out on the sea, which gave them a resemblance to comfortable cabins in a stationary ship. The proprietor was his own chef, and cooked them an excellent meal of freshly caught red mullet.

That afternoon, Robbie decided to go up the great headland that rises in an almost perpendicular cliff behind Navplion to see the remains of the fort that, in ancient times and in later times when the Venetians held that part of Greece, guarded the entrance to the gulf. It was seven hundred feet high, and could be reached only by a flight of eight hundred and fifty-seven steps and several tunnels cut in the face of the rock; so Stephanie smilingly declined to accompany him. As they were going to Mycenae the following day she said that, while he was puffing and blowing his way to the summit, he could think of her sitting in a comfortable chair in the lounge reading his chapter on the Trojan War. Half an hour later she started it, and it read as follows:

THE SIEGE OF TROY

People blame Helen for the Trojan War but that isn't fair, because it was really Zeus who started the whole trouble by

refusing to give a judgment and foisting his job off on to a mortal.

Among the Heroes who sailed to get the Golden Fleece there was a chap named Peleus. Owing to a slight misunderstanding about who had been to bed with whom, his first wife had hanged herself and he was looking for another. His eye fell on a Naiad named Thetis; and she must have been quite a girl, as both Zeus and Poseidon had wanted to marry her. But both had hauled off pretty quickly, because Aunty Themis gave them the lowdown that she would produce a son far more powerful than her husband. In view of thi^, Zeus decided to put a stiff handicap on her by palming her off on to a mortal; so when Peleus came along, the Father of the Gods said: 'O.K., boy. You can have her.'

Thetis was far from pleased, as she considered herself much too good for a mere King of Thessaly, and she tried all sorts of dodges to get out of this mesalliance. But, as Zeus was backing Peleus, they didn't work. King Peleus was asked up to Olympus and the couple were given a splendid wedding.

However, the social secretary up there blotted it pretty badly by forgetting to send an invitation to the goddess Eris. She was a very unpleasant type and, as her special province was presiding over Strife, she soon thought up a plan for teaching the other Immortals not to ignore her. Arriving unannounced at the party, she threw a golden apple into the midst of those present with a tag on it that read: 'Here's a prize for the best-looking goddess among you.'

The stately Queen of Heaven smiled and said: 'How kind of Eris to make me such a lovely gift.' Athene of the classic features snapped: 'Be your age, Hera, she obviously meant it for me.' Aphrodite simply gave a little wriggle of her hips and said: 'Don't be silly, girls. Ask any of the chaps here and he'll tell you who that golden apple is for.'

By then the gentle reader may bet that Zeus was tiptoeing away towards the bar. But they called him back and demanded that he judge between them. He shook his head and said: 'Nothing doing. I've trouble enough without setting two of you by the ears. Only last week I had to tie a couple of anvils to Hera's feet to prevent her following me when I was just popping down to earth to see how an old friend's wife was getting along; so she doesn't deserve such a pretty toy. And if I awarded it to either of you others, she would make my life hell for the next six months.'

'All right, then,' they said. 'You must appoint someone to judge for you.'

It was this that triggered off the whole awful business. Zeus probably had a date with one of Thetis's bridesmaids behind the nearest peak. Anyhow, he wanted to be done with the matter quickly; so, without much thought, he said: 'On Mount Ida you will find a handsome young herdsman named Paris. He is just the age to have no doubts about "what it takes" most among women. Go and ask him.'

At that, the three goddesses took off like Sabre Jets for Mount Ida. But now I must tell you something about this chap Paris.

The Trojan race sprang from Dardanus and the daughter of a shepherd King named Teucer. Their great-grandson was llus, and he built the city of Ilion, which was another name for Troy and of the 'topless towers' of which my gentle reader must have heard. His son, Laomedon, was a heel. After Poseidon and Apollo had helped Hera to try to put Zeus in the bin and they had bungled the job, both of them had been condemned to put in a spell of servitude on earth. Poseidon got himself taken on by Laomedon as a builder, and it was he who built the impregnable walls of Troy. But when he had done, Laomedon refused him his promised reward.

Poseidon never forgave the Trojans and soon inflicted pain and grief on them. The upshot of this was that Laomedon's daughter, Hesione, had to be put on the slab and offered up as an appeasing sacrifice. She was rescued in the nick of time by Hercules; but Laomedon did him down, too, so a few years later Hercules returned, did in the King and gave Hesione as a birthday present to one of his pals. However, she managed to wheedle Hercules into sparing her favourite brother, Priam, and letting him succeed his father as King of Troy.

Priam and his Queen, Hecuba, had lots of children, the noblest among them being Hector and the handsomest Paris. But before she had Paris, Hecuba dreamed that she would give birth to a fire-brand. The soothsayer who was called in said that meant the child she was about to have would put paid to Troy; so the usual drill was followed. A slave was sent off with the newborn babe to leave it to die up on the mountain. But, of course, it didn't. These Kings never did swipe the kitty when playing games of one-upmanship against the Fates.

In the case of Paris, it was a lady bear who came along and suckled him, until he was found by some herdsmen and brought up by them. He made quite a name for himself, pinning back the ears of cattle thieves, and got hitched up to Oenone, the highly desirable nymph of the mountain; so he might have continued to live a quiet and very happy life, if only the Immortals had left him alone.

But no. One fine day, Hermes came zooming down out of the bright blue sky with the three goddesses in tow. Handing the golden apple to the flabbergasted Paris, he said: 'Look, feller, the Big Chief sent me to give you this, and tell you to pass it on to whichever of these—er—ladies that you think would make the best selling picture on the cover of a glossy magazine,' or words to that effect.

Of course, all three of the claimants simpered at him like mad. Then they introduced themselves and each of them tried to bribe him. Hera said: T am the Queen of Heaven. Give me the apple and I'll make you a great King with lots and lots of lolly.' Athene said: 'Fame brings more happiness than money. Give the apple to me, and you shall be acclaimed the wisest guy on earth.' Aphrodite said nothing. She just took off her clothes.

Paris shut his eyes, swallowed hard, then looked again. Handing Aphrodite the apple, he said: 'The fruit's yours, ma'am.'

She dished him out one of her sweetest smiles and said: 'You're a nice lad and if these other—er—ladies weren't present I'd have found it a pleasure to—er—help you with your education. But not to worry. I'lf fix things so that the most beautiful girl in the world will fall in love with you, and you can have her for keeps.' Then the four Immortals all winged it back to Olympus.

As the reader will, I am sure, agree, such an experience would prove somewhat unsettling for any young man. For some days Oenone must have wondered what had got into her handsome husband. Then he put on his best goatskin coat and, for the first time in his life, went down to the city.

It happened that his papa was about to hold some public games. Naturally he went in for them and, naturally, he won all the prizes. This created quite a stir, and one of his sisters, named Cassandra, went up and had a word with him. This wench had the gift of second sight, and at once declared him to be the infant sent out to die on Mount Ida. King Priam and his Queen were so delighted to find that they had such a splendid son that they seem to have forgotten all about the prophecy that he would prove the ruin of Troy. Paris was naturally as pleased as Punch to learn that he was really a royal Prince, and took to the life like a duck to water.

The thoughtful reader will not have forgotten that, when Hercules had given King Laomedon the works, he had more or less white-slaved Priam's sister Hesione. Somewhat belatedly, Priam appears to have remembered her. As Paris had, in no time, made the grade as a general in the Trojan Army, his papa mustered a great fleet and sent him off to Greece to rescue his aunt.

Unfortunately for all concerned, instead of getting on with the job he had been given Paris turned aside to say 'hello' to Menelaus, the King of Sparta. Helen was the King's wife and, as Aphrodite thought her the most beautiful girl in the world, the moment her husband introduced Paris to her the fat was in the fire.

That Helen really was a sort of mortal edition of Aphrodite there can't be much doubt. Of course, she had very exceptional parents. As most people know, Zeus thought Leda so beautiful that to have a few minutes' conversation with her he turned himself into a swan. That night she had the same sort of conversation with her husband, King Tyndareus, and all this chat resulted in her giving birth to two babies and two eggs. The babies were Castor and Clytemnestra, and out of the eggs came Pollux and Helen.

But quite apart from Helen being out of the very top drawer, she was already such a poppet when only ten years old that the hero Theseus could not resist the temptation to abduct her from her parents. Her brothers, Castor and Pollux, hurried after him and got her back, but naturally this titbit of gossip went all round Greece. The result was that chaps from all over the place came to Tyndareus's palace out of curiosity, just to take a look at this budding Venus. The moment they set eyes on her, they all agreed that they could think of far better ways for her to spend her time than studying to pass her Eleven-Pius.

In fact, so many princes went absolutely potty over her that her step-father, old Tyndareus, saw that, unless he did something about it, she was going to be the cause of a whole packet of trouble. He did his best to solve the problem by getting all these young Lotharios together and saying to them:

'Listen, boys. I want my little Helen to have a happy marriage and enjoy her life; but she won't stand an earthly as long as you are set on cutting one another's throats to get her. Whoever I give her to will find a ticket for Hades under his pillow before the honeymoon is over, and before he is a fortnight older the chap who carries her off will be done in by another of you. To be hauled willy-nilly into a whole succession of beds is no life for a girl. What is more, the papas of those of you who get bumped off are certain to take it badly; so, before we know where we are, there will be half a dozen wars ravaging Greece to avenge the "goners".

'Now, to prevent such a slaughter, what I suggest is that when I have decided to which of you I will give Helen, the rest of you should take a solemn oath not only to refrain from any attempt to take her away from the lucky guy but also, should anyone do so, to combine in a war against him until you have got her back for her husband.'

The Princes saw the sense in this; so when Menelaus was chosen as the lucky lad, they all swore to get together and come down like a ton of bricks on any Dirty Dick who tried to take Helen from him. That is why, when she ran away with Paris, pretty well every warrior in Greece started yelling for his field-boots and feathered hat and went chasing after them.

But I've got a bit ahead of my story. When Paris stopped off at Sparta, Menelaus put out the red carpet for him and for a week or two a good time was had by all. Then, as Paris showed no sign of packing his grip and Menelaus had a job to do up-country, he rashly left his wife to entertain their guest. By this time they were batty about one another, so Paris found no reason at all to complain to the management. Since Aphrodite had decreed that Helen should fall for Paris, I don't feel that she was to blame; but he behaved like a most frightful cad. When Menelaus got home, he found that not only had his guest run away with his wife but that he and his Trojans had looted the palace and made off with the whole vast treasure of Sparta.

Menelaus's elder brother was Agamemnon, King of Argos, and he had married Helen's half-sister, Clytemnestra. Moreover, Agamemnon was then top King in Greece and all the others owed allegiance to him. So Menelaus jumped into his fastest chariot and drove hell for leather to Mycenae where he told his tale of woe to Big Brother.

Agamemnon promptly called on all the chaps who had wanted to marry Helen to fulfil their oath, and in addition on all his vassals to bring ships and men to show Paris where he got off. The majority of them—including the giant Ajax, wise old Nestor and brave Diomede—came fairly spoiling for the fray, but two of the best bets in a free-for-all tried to wriggle out.

Odysseus, King of the island of Ithaca, was a most cunning man. Feeling a preference for remaining with his wife, Penelope, and his infant son, Telemachus, rather than join in a war that he thought might prove a long one, he pretended to be mad. However, his bluff was called by a chap named Palamedes, who had been sent to fetch him; so he had to go along.

Once Odysseus had joined the outfit, he proved invaluable. It was he who roped in the other shirker, Achilles. The gentle reader will recall the prophecy that stalled off Zeus and Poseidon from marrying the goddess Thetis—that she would bear a son greater than his father. She did, to the mortal Peleus; and it was Achilles she had by him. Knowing that the Trojan War would be a bloody business, she concealed her son in girl's clothes among the daughters of the King of Scyros. But Odysseus paid them a visit and showed them a really natty line in swords and javelins. Achilles, being a born fighter, seized on them with enthusiasm, so gave his sex away. But his goddess-mama had taken the precaution to dip him in the Styx, which made him invulnerable to any wound, except in the one heel by which she had had to hang on to him.

It was from Mycenae that all these heralds went galloping off, and it was there that the plans were made for a great Armada to sail to Troy; but Agamemnon still hoped that they might get back Helen without a war; so he sent a diplomatic mission, consisting of Odysseus, Palamedes and Menelaus, to say to King Priam: 'Look, your son Paris has put up a shocking black, but we don't want trouble, so if he'll cough up the loot and return the lovely, we won't ask any compensation for his having borrowed her,' or words to that effect.

But their account of Paris's goings-on left his old pop speechless, because Paris hadn't even sent him a postcard. He and Helen were still having a high time on a year-long honeymoon round the eastern Med., renting the biggest villas wherever they stopped off and entertaining the locals to champagne and caviare on the cash that they'd pinched from the Sparta treasury. Knowing nothing of this, Priam told the Ambassadors that he must wait till his boy got home to hear his side of the story; so they returned to Greece empty-handed.

When Paris did get back, there was no end of a rumpus. Lots of the Trojan big-wigs said he could go and boil his head if he thought they were going to war just so that he could keep his girl friend. But Helen had brought along a hand-picked beauty chorus to brush her hair and help her into her two-way stretch. This bunch of cuties got busy playing cat's cradle with the top brass of the Trojan Army, and Paris, still being lousy with Menelaus's money, paid off the mortgages on their houses for them and that sort of thing; so, what with the cash and the cuties, these chaps were all for Helen staying put.

Cassandra came into the picture with one of her doleful prophecies that, if Helen were not put on the doorstep, Troy would be destroyed. However, Apollo had a 'thing' against Cassandra, so he had ordained that nothing she predicted would ever be believed. Finally, Paris's mum, Hecuba, had a heart-to-heart with Helen and asked her had Paris taken her by force? She said: 'No, I was batty about him and I still am.' So, as Paris was Hecuba's favourite son, she persuaded Priam to defy the Greeks.

The war being on, Agamemnon sailed from the Gulf of Argos and ordered all the other ships to rendezvous with him at Aulis, the most handy port in western Greece for an assault on Asia Minor. Getting them together took months and months, so he killed time by going ashore and doing a bit of hunting. Unfortunately, just before D-Day, he killed a hind sacred to Artemis. She was so put out that she decreed a calm that prevented the Armada from sailing. After the calm had lasted for some weeks, everyone got very fed up, so they consulted a seer named Calchas. He said there would be no wind until Agamemnon had pacified the angry goddess by sacrificing his eldest daughter, Iphigenia, to her.

Agamemnon was naturally against this idea, but all the others said he must not let a little thing like the life of one girl stand in the way of their great enterprise, etc., so eventually they nagged him into writing to his wife, Clytemnestra, to bring Iphigenia down from Mycenae to Aulis. But, in his letter, he gave as his reason that he'd fixed up for her to marry Achilles.

Delighted at the thought of this fine match for her girl, Clytemnestra duly arrived and got busy on the trousseau. When she learned the truth, there was hell to pay. Then Achilles found out that he had been used as a lure for this horrid business and he, too, blew his top. What is more, the moment he set eyes on Iphigenia he fell for her in a big way, and threatened to let the daylight into anyone who laid a hand on her.

But Iphigenia turned out to be the whitest girl they ever knew. She said she was quite willing to die for the honour of Greece; so they tied Achilles up, put her on the slab and prepared to cut her throat. Seeing that she had put up such a jolly good show, Artemis's heart was touched. She whisked the girl off up into the clouds and dumped a faun on the altar to be sacrificed instead. That stopped everyone wailing except Clytemnestra, who was livid at having her daughter taken from her. But a fine wind sprang up, so she was left screaming curses while ail the chaps ran to their ships, shouting to the girls: 'We'll be back by Christmas,' and off they sailed for Troy.

The landing was made between the rivers Simois and Scaman-der. There the Greeks hauled all their thousand ships up the beach and used them to form streets, squares and wooden walls, enclosing a vast camp for their hundred thousand men. But, of course, the Trojans had had loads of time to prepare a hot reception for them. Paris's brother, Hector, had been made C.-in-C., and as his Second in Command he had his brother-in-law, Aeneas, the Prince of the Dardanians. This Aeneas was no mean ally, as he was the result of one of Aphrodite's nights out down on earth, and when Priam asked for his help he brought a large army to the support of Troy.

The Heroes on both sides could hardly wait to get at one another, so out came the chariots, the archers, the javelin throwers and the rest, and before long the whole place was littered with corpses. But neither side could get the better of the other; so the battle was renewed week after week, month after month, with truces now and again only for them to lick their wounds and make a bonfire of the dead.

One would have thought that after a while they would have got bored with this senseless slaughter. But not a bit of it. For years on end, they shouted rude things about their enemies' mothers, got blipped on the head for their pains or stuck the other fellow in the gizzard. The Greeks had a much bigger army, but the Trojans had the advantage of the impregnable walls that Poseidon had built round their city. When they felt like a battle they could sally out, and whenever things got too hot for them they could scamper back inside and cock a snook at the Greeks from their battlements.

As both armies had to be fed, the war spread for miles over the countryside between parties sent out to get supplies, and one of the raids made by the Greeks led to the father of all upsets. With the plunder they brought in some girls. One very pretty one, named Chryseis, was the daughter of a priest of Apollo. Agamemnon liked the look of her, so he sent her to his tent and said: 'See you later, ducks.' Another nice little number, named Briseis, he gave to Achilles. Then up came Chryseis's papa and offered to ransom her. Agamemnon said nothing doing; so the priest called on Apollo for help, and the god sent a plague from which the Greeks started to die off like flies. After nine days they were in a fine dither and they consulted old Calchas, their seer. He told them: 'The plague won't let up until the Big Shot returns Chryseis to her clergyman father.'

Evidently this young woman had a lot of what it takes, for Agamemnon was very loath to give her up. As all the others were anxious to die by sword thrusts and not by germs, they eventually badgered him into agreeing; but he was mean enough to stipulate that Achilles must give up Briseis to him to fill Chryseis's place.

Now Achilles had found Briseis the absolute tops at darning his socks—or something—so he became positively berserk with rage. He was just about to yank out his sword and nail the King to his own tent pole when Athene appeared and lugged him back by the hair, although it seems that the others present didn't see her. I should explain here that the Greeks had taken an oath not to cut their hair until they got Helen back, so he had plenty of hair for her to hang on to. She whispered to him: 'Steady, lad. Hand Briseis over and I'll see you right in some other way'; so he did. But he said he would take no further part in the war. Then, with his very special pal Patroclus and his Myrmidons, as his host of followers were called, he went off to sulk in his tent.

However, that night he was so maddened by the thought that Briseis was now darning Agamemnon's socks—or doing whatever she had done when with him—that he appealed to his goddess-mama to persuade Zeus to show the Greeks how much they had lost by letting their scurvy King drive their best champion from their ranks.

Thetis said Zeus had just gone off on a hoi. to preside at a twelve-day feast down in Ethiopia, but when he got back she would do her best. She did, by clasping him round the legs, and, being partial to cuddlesome females, he agreed to oblige. Afterwards he was a bit sorry, because Hera was so strongly pro-Greek that he felt sure she would make trouble for him if he openly helped the Trojans. Hoping to fox her he lay doggo, but sent Agamemnon a false dream to the effect that if he had another crack at Troy he would, at last, take the city.

Agamemnon then made a complete fool of himself. To test the will to victory of his men before sending them to attack, he assembled them and said: 'Look, chaps. We've had nine years of this, and I reckon that's enough. How about throwing in the sponge and going home?' To his consternation, they all cried: 'Bully for you, Ag!' then cheered him to the echo and ran hell for leather to launch their rotting ships.

That would have been the end of the war had Hera not happened to be looking on. She had never forgiven Paris for giving the golden apple to Aphrodite and was determined that Troy should fall. Summoning Athene, she sent her down to undo the result of Agamemnon's idiotic blunder. With the help of

Odysseus, the goddess changed the minds of the Greeks and soon afterwards they were all drawn up outside the city in battle array.

However, there was no battle that day because Paris came out and challenged any Greek to meet him in single combat. Menelaus fairly jumped at the chance, so a truce was called and it was agreed the war should be settled by this duel between Helen's two husbands. When actually faced with Menelaus's long-bottled-up fury, Paris got cold feet and backed away towards his pals, but they shouted nasty things like: 'Don't drop your lipstick' and 'You ought to be washing the baby's nappies,' and Hector gave him a kick in the pants; so he had to pluck up the courage to fight.

He bungled the first throw with his javelin, whereas Menelaus got home with his, splitting his enemy's breastplate. He then set about him with his sword, but it snapped off short. Undismayed, Menelaus ran in, seized him by the crest of his helmet and started to drag him off to the Greek end of the pitch. But Paris was saved by the gong, the gong in this case being Aphrodite. After all, he had given her the apple, so she caused his chinstrap to snap. The helmet came away in Menelaus's hand and he sat down with a bump on his backside. He was up again in a flash and chucked another javelin at Paris, but Aphrodite felt that it was not her champion's day; so she descended in a cloud, picked him up and dumped him on his bed in the palace.

Helen, of course, had been watching all this from the walls, and Paris having put up such a poor show made her feel that perhaps her legal husband was the better man after all. Still, she went along and bound up Paris's wounds, although one suspects that she may have put a drop more iodine on them than was strictly necessary.

The Greeks naturally went off to celebrate their victory and knocked off all the best bottles they had put by for such an occasion, while Menelaus told them again and again just what he would have done to Paris had not Aphrodite interfered. But while he was gradually becoming incoherent, a big pow-wow was taking place up on Olympus.

Zeus had called a Council of the Gods. He wanted to stop the war and said the time had now come when they should do it by making the Trojans hand over Helen to the Greeks. Most of the others agreed with him, but Hera dug in her toes. She was determined that Troy should fall; so she arranged that Pandarus, one of the Trojans' crack snipers, should put an arrow into Menelaus. It only wounded him but, of course, it broke the truce; so the war was on again.

A terrific battle then took place, with many of the Immortals lending a hand to those they favoured. Hera, Poseidon, Athene, Hermes and Hephaestus were for the Greeks; Apollo, Aphrodite, Ares and Artemis for the Trojans; while Zeus watched the conflict most unhappily and would have brought it to an end had he not feared the trouble Hera would make for him if he robbed her of her vengeance on Paris.

Athene healed Diomede of a mortal wound, so that he could hurl a stone twice his own weight that would have done in Aeneas; but Aphrodite screened the Trojan with her veil. Diomede was so peeved by this that he told the lovely goddess to her face that she was a whore, and threw a dart at her. Wounded by it, Aphrodite took off for Olympus and sobbed on Zeus's shoulder that she had never been so ill-treated in all her life. He patted her on the head and said: 'Sweetie, you were never meant to go to war. Just you forget it and find some strong-limbed young fellow to hop into bed with.'

Hera was too shrewd to get hurt herself. She took the form of Stentor, the Greek who could shout louder than any other, and stood in the background yelling: 'Go on, chaps! Give 'em hell. No quarter. Hit 'em for six and jump on their faces!' The brutal, stupid Ares did not come out of it at all well. Athene, wearing her helmet of invisibility, acted as Diomede's charioteer, and the Hero wounded the God of War so severely that he made off howling to Olympus.

On going back into the city to collect reinforcements, Hector felt pretty sick at finding Paris with his feet up nattering away to Helen. He gave his brother a piece of his mind and Heien backed him up; so Paris reluctantly put on his tin hat again and returned to the fray. Hector came out with him and challenged any of the Greeks to single combat. They drew lots and it fell to the giant Ajax to meet him. While everyone else looked on, they went for one another hammer and tongs, but darkness came down before either of them was seriously injured; so the duel was declared a draw.

Next day it became clear that the Trojans were on the up and up, so the Greek General Staff got to work on the C.-in-C. They told him that the only thing for it was for him to eat humble pie and persuade Achilles to lead the troops again. Finding himself right up against it, Agamemnon agreed, and one must give it to him that he did the generous thing. He sent three of his staff to offer Achilles not only Briseis back but also seven cuties to serve as side-lines, one of his own daughters in marriage when they got back to Greece and about his own weight in gold and ornaments. Achilles stood his visitors a jolly good blow-out but refused to budge.

When the news was received at G.H.Q. everyone was very down in the mouth, and next day the Greeks again got the worst of it in battle. They might have been scuppered for good had not the Immortals once more taken a hand. Hera pinched Aphrodite's girdle, knowing that no male could resist anyone who wore it. Then she sidled up to her husband. Somewhat later, Zeus felt so tired that he fell asleep and, as Hera had intended, missed what was happening down below. Poseidon meanwhile, had taken the form of Calchas and had put new heart into the Greeks. The terrible Hector was temporarily knocked out, the Trojans took to their heels, and Poseidon, yelling: 'Up, Guards, and at 'em,' led the Greeks in pursuit. But Zeus woke up just in time, realized that Hera had made a monkey out of him, gave her. a smack in the puss, ordered Poseidon back into the sea, then sent Apollo to revive Hector and restore the situation.

With Apollo's aid, the Trojans drove the Greeks right back to their ships and began to set fire to them. Achilles and his pal Patroclus were looking on from a distance, and at last Patroclus could bear the sight no longer. Achilles still refused to lift a finger, but he reluctantly a'greed that Patroclus should lead out the Myrmidons, if only to prevent the ships, without which the Greeks could not get home, being burnt to cinders. Being much attached to Patroclus, Achilles lent him his own custom-made suit of armour and his Mark IX chariot to do the job in. In consequence, when Patroclus came charging out with the Myrmidons behind him, everyone thought he was Achilles.

At the sight of him the Trojans panicked and the Greeks chivvied them right up to the walls of the city. They might even have got in if Apollo hadn't given Patroclus a biff that half stunned him. Hector, being on hand, took advantage of this to slay the Greek and strip him of his armour. It was only after a desperate fight that the Greeks managed to rescue his body and carry it back to Achilles.

At the sight of his dead friend, Achilles nearly burst himself with grief and rage. He wept all night and even Briseis, whom Agamemnon had sent back to him, could not stop him crying. But his mama turned up and cheered him a trifle by telling him that she had got Hephaestus to make a new suit of absolutely super armour for him in which to avenge his buddy.

In the morning he put it on, went along to G.H.Q., buried the hatchet with Agamemnon and demanded instant battle. Led by him again the Greeks attacked and hour after hour made mincemeat of the Trojans. There were so many dead that the river Scamander was choked with their corpses and overflowed with blood. Achilles gave scores of them the works. Aeneas and Hector were only saved from his fury by Poseidon's temporarily changing sides and sending a mist to hide them. Athene heaved a rock the size of a house that sent Ares sprawling over an acre of ground, then as Aphrodite tried to help him up Athene gave her a black eye. Hera pulled Artemis's hair until she screamed. The Trojans knew they had had it and ran like rabbits for the shelter of their walls. Apollo held the gate for them and only Hector, still game to fight, remained outside.

But he wasn't all that game. As Achilles leapt at him he took to his heels. Three times the Greek chased him right round the city. Tough as those boys were, one imagines that after that they must have been a bit breathless. Pulling up, Hector tried to make a last-minute pact that whichever of them survived should see the other decently buried; but Achilles swore he'd feed Hector's carcase to the dogs, then he killed and stripped him. Not content with that he bored holes through his feet, tied them with leather thongs to the boot of his chariot and dragged the naked body bouncing up and down full-tilt round the walls of Troy, while Hector's parents looked on, yelling: 'Have a heart you cad!' and lugged their hair out by the handful.

Even Hector's death did not end the war. Old Priam sent out an S O S for help to everyone he knew. The Amazon Queen, Penthesilea, responded by bringing an army of her tough babies down from the north. Achilles jabbed his spear right through her; but afterwards, when he wrenched off her helmet and saw what a good-looker she was, he was sorry for what he had done. Priam's nephew, Memnon, then arrived on the scene with a useful contingent from Egypt, but Achilles also cut short this young Pharaoh's career.

At last it became Achilles's turn. The Trojans had apparently got hold of a few of the arrows left by Hercules that had been dipped in the Hydra's poisonous blood. Paris fitted one of them to his bow and, with Apollo guiding his aim, managed to land it in Achilles's vulnerable heel, so he died ingloriously and had a very uncomfortable death. Unfortunately, too, by one of those silly wills, he had left his armour to 'the bravest' of his pals. Naturally half a dozen champs said at once: 'Of course, poor old Achie meant it for me.' To prevent bloodshed, Agamemnon called in the Trojan prisoners and asked their opinion. They voted Odysseus Champ No. 1, upon which Ajax became so jealous that in a fit of apoplectic rage he committed hara-kiri.

The loss of two of their best fire-eating types was such a bad set-back for the Greeks that most of them declared that they had reached the limit and meant to beat it for home, but Odysseus persuaded them to stick around for just a bit longer to try out a brainwave he had had. This was the famous hollow horse on wheels about which every schoolboy knows. It was made of wood and large enough to hold twelve men in its belly. When it was finished, Odysseus, Diomede, Pyrrhus and nine others shut themselves up inside and some of the troops dragged it up to within a stone's throw of the city gates. Then the Greeks got their ships afloat and sailed away bag and baggage.

Naturally the Trojans were all terrifically cock-a-hoop. They came streaming out, the poorer types to scrounge round the site of the Greek camp for any tins of bully beef that might have been left behind and the better-off to crowd round the Wooden Horse, airing their views about it. If Odysseus and his buddies could hear the suggestions made they must have been jolly sorry that they had ever put on this Commando act. Some of the Trojans wanted to burn the Horse, and others to push it over a high cliff. They were just about to break it open when a cry went up that

a Greek who'd missed his boat had been found hiding in

the bushes.

This was a young fellow named Sinon. He said that, while Agamemnon had been packing for home, the seer, Calchas, had told him that, if he wanted a favourable voyage, just as Iphigenia had been sacrificed before the outward trip so someone else must be sacrificed before the homeward one, and they had picked on him, Sinon; but he had managed to do a bunk. Now, of course, he was equally in a dither that, having been caught by the Trojans, he would be done in by them.

But the Trojans were in such good heart that they said not to worry, gave him a snorter to steady him up a bit and asked him about the Wooden Horse. He said that was another of old Calchas's ideas. The seer had had them make the Horse in honour of Athene, because she had told him that if it were left outside the walls of Troy she would fight on their side when they returned to have another crack at the city next year. He added that the reason it had been made too large to go through the gate was so that the Trojans could not take it inside to her temple, which would have caused her to give her favour to them.

Taking all this for gospel, the idiot Trojans started to knock part of their wall down so that they could draw the Horse into the city; but an old buffer named Laocoon, who was a priest of Apollo, ran out crying: 'Hi! Stop that. Even the gifts of the Greeks are poison.'

They put out their tongues at him and told him he was talking through his hat; so he ran back, collected his two sons and got busy doing a bit of protective magic. I suppose in his excitement he recited the wrong spell, or something, because two great serpents emerged from the sea, came streaking across the plain and made a beeline through the city to his temple. In a trice they had coiled round him and his boys and crushed them to death.

After that, one can hardly blame the Trojans for saying that he hadn't known what he was talking about and dragging the Wooden Horse through the breach they had made in their wall. It is understandable, too, that when night fell they should get down to celebrating the departure of the Greeks. By midnight most of them were as tight as ticks, each telling the others that for years he had made a habit of going out and killing a Greek every morning as soon as he had finished his cornflakes.

Young Sinon, meanwhile, was doing a job that Bulldog Drummond, the Saint and Lemmy Caution would have hesitated to tackle between them. He climbed the topmost tower and stood there waving a flaring torch. The Greek Fleet had gone only as far as the island of Tenedos and was lying in hiding behind it. At his signal that he had got the Trojans where he wanted them, it sailed back. By the time the Greeks were landing on the beach he had run down the stairs three at a time, got into the temple to which the Wooden Horse had been dragged and let Odysseus and

Co. out of their stuffy prison. It was then, apparently, just a piece of cake to open the gates and give the 'Big Hello!' to x^gamem-non and his boys as they came pouring in.

The Greeks didn't have it all their own way. Aeneas and some of the Trojan bloods fought like tigers, but they hadn't an earthly. For hours on end it was blue murder, with the Greeks butchering men, women and children, then looting and burning the houses. Pyrrhus broke into the palace, slaughtered Priam's youngest son before the King's eyes, then slew the old boy on his own altar. Helen was sitting in a corner of the same room feeling a bit off-colour at the thought of what they might do to her, and with some reason. Pyrrhus spotted her and aimed a swipe at her with his sword that should have cut her lovely head off, but just in time Aphrodite gave a flick of her nightdress and turned the blade aside.

By morning everyone was decidedly part-worn, so the Greeks let up with the killing and roped in the surviving Trojans to be shared out as slaves. One is glad to be able to record that brave Aeneas managed to get away and later married a lady named Lavinia, the daughter of an Italian King, with whose help he founded another Troy on the banks of the Tiber. Paris, too, escaped to Mount Ida, and there had the undeserved good luck to be taken back by his wife the Nymph Oenone.

Even after Helen had spent ten years in Troy she was probably still under thirty, so all the odds are that the sight of her would still have made plenty of chaps trip over their own feet in anxiety to make way for her on the pavement. Anyhow, Menelaus took one look at her and said: 'How about forgetting all this nonsense and coming home with me?'

Paris hadn't put up anything like such a good show during the siege as Menelaus had, and I think that sort of thing counts quite a lot with women. They like to be proud of their men. Helen, no doubt, just fluttered those long curved eyelashes of hers and replied: 'You know, Mene dear, I can't think what came over me.

I always loved you best.' And that was that.

* * * *

When Stephanie had finished reading she sat for a while wondering whether Robbie's book would ever be published. His interpolations had given her a few laughs and, in a strange way, the characters of some of the Immortals and Heroes came through; but it was utterly unlike any other book, fiction or non-fiction, that she had ever read, and it was hopelessly amateurish.

Her own English was far from perfect but, even so, she felt that she might be able to improve the punctuation a little and, if he would let her, cut out a lot of the slang expressions with which he peppered his writing. Yet, if he agreed to that, what would be left? A dull and colourless repetition of stories that had been told a hundred times before.

It occurred to her then that she was wasting her time concerning herself about it—at all events, for the present. Unless she could persuade Robbie to abandon his investigation, all the odds were that he would run into serious trouble long before he could finish his book or she have the opportunity of typing more than the first few chapters.

Another hour went by before Robbie joined her. He was bent almost double and, as he collapsed into a chair, he declared that, after climbing and descending the eight hundred-odd steps to the Acropolis, the last twenty stairs from the hall of the hotel up to the lounge had almost finished him. But he insisted that the view from the stronghold had been out of this world, and well worth it.

As the tourist season was now getting under way the hotel was already half full, and among the guests there was a number of Americans. After dinner that evening, Robbie secured a table in the lounge while Stephanie went to her room to get a book. An elderly American with horn-rimmed spectacles paused beside his table and, giving him a friendly but rather worried smile, said in a rich, Southern voice:

'Bad business this about our submarine, isn't it?'

Robbie smiled back, but shook his head. 'I haven't seen a paper for some days, so Im afraid I don't know anything about it.'

'Don't you now!' The American raised a pair of bushy eyebrows in surprise. 'Well, one of our latest atomic subs has got herself cornered under the ice in a bay up on the Arctic coast of Russia, somewhere near Murmansk.'

'Really; what bad luck,' Robbie commented.

'It certainly is. The Russians are accusing us of sending her up there on a spying mission. They've named their price for letting her out—that we should surrender her and her crew.'

'What, with all your latest nuclear stuff in her?'

That's it,' the American nodded glumly. 'And I don't see the President agreeing to that. This looks pretty bad to me. Maybe it's just one more threat to peace that will come to nothing; but if things do blow up I don't want to be caught here. If the news isn't better tomorrow morning, I think I'll telephone Athens to fix me a seat on the next plane home.'

18

The Amateur Photographer

John Foster Dulles's ostrich-like mentality had forced the West into playing the dangerous game of Brinkmanship instead

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of attempting to bring about world disarmament in the days when the United States's superiority in nuclear weapons might well have induced the Russians to listen to reason. This had resulted, ever since Robbie's early teens, in periodic crises that had threatened to usher in a Third World War. Therefore, Robbie took no serious notice of the elderly American's fears that this new cause for friction between the Soviet Union and the United States might develop into the blotting-out of all the major cities of Europe. In fact, on the following morning, while he was dressing to set off with Stephanie for an early visit to Mycenae, he never gave it a thought.