The light of day

2

I was in the bedroom and he came through from the sitting room. All the same he must have opened the outer door very quietly indeed, or I would certainly have heard the latch. I think he expected to find me there. In that case, the whole thing was just a cunningly planned trap.

I was standing at the foot of one of the beds, so I couldn’t move away from him. For a moment he just stood there grinning at me, as if he were enjoying himself.

“Well now, Arthur,” he said, “you ought to have waited for me, oughtn’t you?”

“I was going back.” It was a stupid thing to say, I suppose; but almost anything I had said would have sounded stupid at that point.

And then, suddenly, he hit me across the face with the back of his hand.

It was like being kicked. My glasses fell off and I lurched back against the bed. As I raised my arms to protect myself he hit me again with the other hand. When I started to fall to my knees, he dragged me up and kept on hitting me. He was like a savage.

I fell down again and this time he let me be. My ears were singing, my head felt like bursting, and I could not see properly. My nose began to bleed. I got my handkerchief out to stop the blood from getting all over my clothes, and felt about among the checks lying on the carpet for my glasses. I found them eventually. They were bent a bit but not broken. When I put them on, I saw the soles of his shoes about a yard from my face.

He was sitting in the armchair, leaning back, watching me.

“Get up,” he said, “and watch that blood. Keep it off the rug.”

As I got to my feet, he stood up quickly himself. I thought he was going to start hitting me again. Instead, he caught hold of one lapel of my jacket.

“Do you have a gun?”

I shook my head.

He slapped my pockets, to make sure, I suppose, then shoved me away.

“There are some tissues in the bathroom,” he said. “Go clean your face. But leave the door open.”

I did as I was told. There was a window in the bathroom; but even if it had been possible to escape that way without breaking my neck, I don’t suppose I would have tried it. He would have heard me. Besides, where could I have escaped to? All he would have had to do was call down to the night concierge, and the police would have been there in five minutes. The fact that he had not called down already was at least something. Perhaps, as a foreigner, he did not want to get involved as a witness in a court case. After all, he had not actually lost anything; and if I were to eat enough humble pie, perhaps even cry a bit, he might decide to forget the whole thing; especially after the brutal way in which he had attacked me. That was my reasoning. I should have known better. You cannot expect common decency from a man like Harper.

When I came out of the bathroom, I saw that he had picked up the check folder and was putting it back in the suitcase. The checks I had torn out, however, were lying on the bed. He gathered them up and motioned me towards the sitting room.

“In there.”

As I went in, he moved past me to the door and bolted it.

There was a marble-topped commode against the side wall. On the commode was a tray with an ice bucket, a bottle of brandy, and some glasses. He picked up a glass, then looked at me.

“Sit down right there,” he said.

The chair he motioned to was by a writing table under the window. I obeyed orders; there did not seem to be anything else to do. My nose was still bleeding, and I had a headache.

He slopped some brandy into the glass and put it on the table beside me. For a moment or two I felt encouraged. If you are going to have a man arrested you don’t sit him down first and give him a drink. Perhaps it was just going to be a man-to-man chat in which I told him a hard-luck story and said how sorry I was, while he got dewy-eyed over his own magnanimity and decided to give me another chance.

That one did not last long.

He poured himself a drink and then glanced across at me as he put ice in the glass.

“First time you’ve been caught at it, Arthur?”

I blew my nose a little to keep the blood running before I answered. “It’s the first time I’ve ever been tempted, sir. I don’t know what came over me. Perhaps it was the brandy I had with you. I’m not really used to it.”

He turned and stared at me. All at once his face was neither old-young nor young-old. It was white and pinched and his mouth worked in an odd way. I have seen faces go like that before and I braced myself. There was a metal lamp on the writing table beside me. I wondered if I could possibly hit him with it before he got to me.

But he did not move. His eyes flickered towards the bedroom and then back to me.

“You’d better get something straight, Arthur,” he said slowly. “That was just a little roughing up you had in there. If I really start giving you a going over, you’ll leave here on a stretcher. Nobody’s going to mind about that except you. I came back and caught you stealing. You tried to strong-arm your way out of it and I had to defend myself. That’s how it’ll be. So cut out the bull, and the lies. Right?”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Empty your pockets. On this table here.”

I did as I was told.

He looked at everything, my driving license, my permis de sejour, and he touched everything. Finally, of course, he found the pass key in the change purse. I had sawn off the shank of it and cut a slot in the end so that I could use a small coin to turn it, but it was still over two inches long, and heavy. The weight gave it away. He looked at it curiously.

“You make this?”

“Not the key part. I just cut it down.” There seemed no point in trying to lie about that.

He nodded. “That’s better. Okay, we’ll start over. We know you’re a two-bit ponce and we know you heist traveler’s checks from hotel rooms when you get the chance. Do you write the counter-signature yourself?”

“Yes.”

“So that’s forgery. Now, I’m asking again. Have you ever been caught before?”

“No, sir.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any sort of police record?”

“Here in Athens?”

“We’ll start with Athens.”

I hesitated. “Well, not exactly a police record. Do you mean traffic offenses?”

“You know what I mean. Quit stalling.”

I sneezed, quite unintentionally, and my nose began bleeding again. He sighed impatiently and threw me a bunch of paper napkins from the drink tray.

“I had you pretty well figured out at the airport,” he went on; “but I didn’t think you’d be quite so stupid. Why did you have to tell that Kira dame that you’d had no dinner?”

I shrugged helplessly. “So that I could come here.”

“Why didn’t you tell her you’d gone to gas up the car? I just might have bought that one.”

“It didn’t seem important. Why should you suspect me?”

He laughed. “Oh brother! I know what that car you have sells for here, and I know that gasoline costs sixty cents a gallon. At the rates you charge you couldn’t break even. Okay, you get your payoffs-the restaurant, the clip joint, the cat house-but they can’t amount to much, so there must be something else. Kira doesn’t know what it is, but she knows there’s something because you’ve cashed quite a few traveler’s checks through her.”

“She told you that?” This really upset me; the least one can expect from a brothel keeper is discretion.

“Why shouldn’t she tell me? You didn’t tell her they were stolen, did you?” He drank his brandy down. “I don’t happen to like paying for sex, but I wanted to find out a bit more about you. I did. When they realized that I wasn’t going to leave without paying, they were both real friendly. Called me a cab and everything. Now, supposing you start talking.”

I took a sip of brandy. “Very well. I have had three convictions.”

“What for?”

“The charge in each case was representing myself as an official guide. In fact, all I did was to try to save one or two clients from those boring archaeological set speeches. The official guides have to learn them by heart before they can pass the examination. Tourists like to know what they are looking at, but they do not want to be bored.”

“What happened? Did you go to jail?”

“Of course not. I was fined.”

He nodded approvingly. “That was what Irma thought. Now you just keep on playing it straight like that and maybe we can keep the police out of this. Have you ever been jailed anywhere, to serve time, I mean?”

“I do not see why I should…”

“Okay, skip it,” he broke in. “What about Turkey?”

“Turkey? Why do you ask?”

“Have you been there?”

“Yes.”

“Any police record there?”

“I was fined in Istanbul for showing some people round a museum.”

“Which museum?”

“The Topkapi.”

“Were you posing as an official guide that time?”

“Guides must be licensed there. I did not have a license.”

“Have you ever driven from here to Istanbul?”

“Is that a criminal offense?”

“Just answer. Have you?”

“Occasionally. Some tourists like to travel by road. Why?”

He did not answer. Instead, he took an envelope from the writing desk and began to scribble something in pencil. I desperately needed a cigarette, but was afraid to light one in case it might look as if I were no longer worried. I was worried, and confused, too; but I wanted to be sure I looked that way. I drank the brandy instead.

He finished his scribbling at last and looked up. “All right, Arthur. There’s a pad of plain paper there and a pen. I’m going to dictate. You start writing. No, don’t give me any arguments. Just do as I tell you.”

I was hopelessly bewildered now. I picked up the pen.

“Ready?”

“Yes.”

“Head it: To the Chief of Police, Athens. Got that? Now go on. I, Arthur A. Simpson, of- put in your address- do hereby confess that on June fifteenth, using an illegal pass key, I entered the suite of Mr. Walter K. Harper in the Hotel Grande-Bretagne and stole American Express traveler’s checks to the value of three hundred dollars. The numbers of the checks were…”

As he felt in his pocket for the loose checks, I started to protest.

“Mr. Harper, I can’t possibly write this. It would convict me. I couldn’t defend myself.”

“Would you sooner defend yourself right now? If so, I can call the police, and you can explain about that pass key.” He paused and then went on more patiently. “Look, dad, maybe you and I will be the only ones who will ever read it. Maybe in a week’s time it won’t even exist. I’m just giving you a chance to get off the hook. Why don’t you take it and be thankful?”

“What do I have to do for it?”

“We’ll get to that later. Just you keep writing. The numbers of the checks were P89.664.572 through P89.664.577, all in fifty-dollar units. I intended to forge Mr. Harper’s signature on them so that I could cash them illegally. I have stolen, forged, and cashed other checks in that way. Shut up and keep writing! But now I find I cannot go through with it. Because of Mr. Harper’s great kindness to me during his visit to Athens, and his Christian charity, I feel that I cannot rob him. I am, therefore, sending the checks I stole from him back with this letter. By taking this decision, I feel that I have come out of the darkness into the light of day. I know now that, as a sinner of the worst type, my only chance is to make restitution, to confess everything, and to pay the penalties the law demands. Only in this way can I hope for salvation in the world to come. Now sign it.”

I signed it.

“Now date it a week from today. No, better make it the twenty-third.”

I dated it.

“Give it to me.”

I gave it to him and he read it through twice. Then he looked at me and grinned.

“Not talking any more, Arthur?”

“I wrote down what you dictated.”

“Sure. And now you’re trying to figure out what would happen if I sent it to the police.”

I shrugged.

“All right, I’ll tell you what would happen. First they’d think you were a nut. They’d probably think that I was some kind of a nut, too, but they wouldn’t be interested in me. I wouldn’t be around anyway. On the other hand, they couldn’t ignore the whole thing, because of the checks. Three hundred dollars! They’d have to take that seriously. So they’d start by getting on to the American Express and finding out about all the check forgeries that have been traced back to accounts in Athens banks. Then they’d pull you in and grill you. What would you do, Arthur? Tell them about me and what really happened? You’d be silly to do that, wouldn’t you? They’d throw the book at you. No, you’re too smart for that. You’d go along with the reformation jazz. That way, you’d have a real defense-voluntary confession, restitution, sincere repentance. I’ll bet you’d get away with just a nominal sentence, maybe no more than a year.”

“Thank you.”

He grinned again. “Don’t you worry, Arthur. You’re not going to do any time at all.” He waved the paper I had written and the checks. “This is just a little insurance.” He picked up the brandy bottle and refilled my glass. “You see, a friend of mine is going to trust you with something valuable.”

“What?”

“A car. You’re going to drive it to Istanbul. You’ll be paid a hundred bucks and expenses. That’s all there is to it.”

I managed to smile. “If that’s all there is to it, I don’t see why you have to blackmail me. I would gladly do the job every week for that money.”

He looked pained. “Who said anything about blackmail? I said insurance. This is a seven-thousand-dollar Lincoln, Arthur. Do you know what it’s worth now in Turkey?”

“Fourteen thousand.”

“Well then, isn’t it obvious? Supposing you drove it into the first garage you came to and sold it.”

“It wouldn’t be so easy.”

“Arthur, you took a hell of a risk tonight for just three hundred dollars. For fourteen thousand you’d do pretty well anything, now wouldn’t you? Be your age! As it is, I don’t have to worry, and my friend doesn’t have to worry. As soon as I know the car’s delivered, this little confession’ll be torn up and the checks’ll go back in my pocket.”

I was silent. I didn’t believe a word he was saying and he knew it. He didn’t care. He was watching me, enjoying himself. “All right,” I said finally; “but there are just one or two questions I’d like to ask.”

He nodded. “Sure there are. Only that’s the one condition there is on the job, Arthur-no questions.”

I would have been surprised if he said anything else. “Very well. When do I start?”

“Tomorrow. How long does it take to drive to Salonika?”

“About six or seven hours.”

“Let’s see. Tomorrow’s Tuesday. If you start about noon you can spend the night there. Then Wednesday night in Edirne. You should make Istanbul Thursday afternoon. That’ll be okay.” He thought for a moment. “I’ll tell you what you do. In the morning, you pack an overnight bag and come here by cab or streetcar. Be downstairs at ten.”

“Where do I pick up the car?”

“I’ll show you in the morning.”

“Whatever you say.”

He unbolted the door. “Good deal. Now take your junk and beat it. I have to get some sleep.”

I put my belongings back in my pockets and went to the door.

“Hey!”

As I turned, something hit me in the chest and then fell at my feet.

“You’ve forgotten your pass key,” he said.

I picked it up and left. I didn’t say good night or anything. He didn’t notice. He was finishing his drink.

The worst thing at school was being caned. There was a ritual about it. The master who had lost his temper with you would stop ranting, or, if it was one of the quiet ones, stop clenching his teeth, and say: “Take a note to the Headmaster.” That meant you were for it. The note was always the same, Request permission to punish, followed by his initials; but he would always fold it twice before he gave it to you. You were not supposed to read it. I don’t know why; perhaps because they didn’t like having to ask for permission.

Well, then you had to go and find The Bristle. Sometimes, of course, he would be in his study; but more often he would be taking the sixth form in trigonometry or Latin. That meant you had to go in and stand there until he decided to notice you. You would have to wait five or ten minutes sometimes; it depended on the mood he was in. He was a tall, thick man with a lot of black hair on the backs of his hands, and a purple face. He spoke very fast while he was teaching, and after a while little flecks of white stuff would gather at the corners of his mouth. When he was in a good mood, he would break off almost as soon as you came in and start making jokes. “Ah, the good Simpson, or perhaps we should say the insufficiently good Simpson, what can we do for you?” Whatever he said, the sixth form always rocked with laughter, because the more they laughed, the longer he would go on wasting time. “And how have you transgressed, Simpson, how have you transgressed? Please tell us.” You always had to say what you’d done or not done-bad homework, lying, flicking ink pellets-and you had to be truthful, in case he asked the master later. When he had made some more jokes, he initialed the note and you went. Before that Enchantment business I think he rather liked me, because I pretended not to be able to help laughing at his jokes even though I was going to be caned. When he was in a bad mood he used to call you “sir,” which I always thought a bit stupid. “Well, sir, what is this for? Cribbing under the desk? A pauper spirit, sir, a pauper spirit! Work, for the night cometh! Now get out and stop wasting my time.”

When you returned to the form room you gave the master the initialed note. Then, he took his gown off, so that his arms were free, and got the cane out of his desk. The canes were all the same, about thirty inches long and quite thick. Some masters would take you outside into the coat lobby to do it, but others would do it in front of the form. You had to bend down and touch your toes and then he would hit you as hard as he could, as if he were trying to break the cane. It felt like a hot iron across your backside, and if he happened to hit twice in exactly the same place, like a heavy club with spikes on it. The great thing was not to cry or make a fuss. I remember a boy once who wet himself after it and had to be sent home; and there was another one who came back into the room and threw up, so that the master had to send for the school porter to clean up the mess. (They always sent for the porter when a boy threw up, and he always said the same thing when he came in with his bucket and mop-“Is this all?”-as if he were disappointed it wasn’t blood.) Most boys, though, when they were caned, just got very red in the face and tried to walk back to their places as if nothing had happened. It wasn’t pride; it was the only way to get any sympathy. When a boy cried you didn’t feel sorry for him, merely embarrassed because he was so sorry for himself, and resentful because the master would feel that he had done something effective. One of the most valuable things I learned at Coram’s was how to hate; and it was the cane that taught me. I never forgot and never began to forgive a caning until I had somehow evened the score with the master who had given it to me. If he were married, I would write an anonymous letter to his wife saying that he was a sodomite and that he had been trying to interfere with young boys. If he were a bachelor, I would send it as a warning to one of the other boys’ parents. Mostly I never heard what happened, of course; but on at least two occasions I heard that the parents had questioned their boys and then forwarded my letters to The Bristle. I never told anyone, because I did not want the others copying my idea; and as I was very good at disguising my writing, the masters never knew for certain who had done it. Just as long as they had a suspicion they could not prove, I was satisfied. It meant that they knew I could hit back, that I was a good friend but a bad enemy.

My attitude to Harper was the same. He had given me a “caning”; but instead of wallowing in self-pity, as any other man in my position might have done, I began to think of ways in which I could hit back.

Obviously, there was nothing much I could do while he had that “confession”; but I knew one thing-he was a crook. I didn’t know yet what kind of a crook-although I had some ideas-but I would find out for certain sooner or later. Then, when it was safe to do so, I would expose him to the police.

Nicki was in bed when I got back to the flat. I had hoped that she would be asleep, because one side of my face was very red where he had hit me and I didn’t want to have to do any explaining; but she had the light on and was reading some French fashion magazine.

“Hullo, papa,” she said.

I said hullo back and went to the bathroom to get rid of the handkerchief with all the blood on it. Then I went in and began to get undressed.

“You didn’t stay long at the Club,” she said.

“He wanted to go on to Irma’s.”

She did not like that, of course. “Did you find out any more about him?”

“He is a businessman-accounting machines, I think. He has a friend who owns a Lincoln. He wants me to drive it to Istanbul for him. I start tomorrow. He’s paying quite well-a hundred dollars American.”

She sat up at that. “That’s very good, isn’t it?” And then, inevitably, she saw my face. “What have you done to yourself?”

“I had a bit of an accident. Some fool in a Simca. I had to stop suddenly.”

“Did the police come?”

She had a tiresome habit of assuming that, just because I was once accused (falsely) of causing an accident through driving while drunk, every little traffic accident in which I am involved is going to result in my being prosecuted by the police.

“It wasn’t important,” I said. I turned away to hang up my suit.

“Will you be long away?” She sounded as if she had accepted the accident.

“Two or three days. I shall come back suddenly by air and surprise you with a lover.”

I thought that would amuse her, but she did not even smile. I got into bed beside her and she put the light out. After a few moments she said: “Why does a man like Mr. Harper want to go to a house?”

“Probably because he is impotent anywhere else.”

She was silent for a time. Then she put up a hand and touched my face.

“What really happened, papa?”

I considered telling her; but that would have meant admitting openly that I had lied about the accident, so I did not answer. After a while, she turned away from me and went to sleep.

She was still asleep, or pretending to be, when I left in the morning.

Harper kept me waiting ten minutes; just long enough for me to remember that I had forgotten to disconnect the battery on my car. It did not hold its charge very well anyway, and the electric clock would have run it down by the time I returned. I was wondering if I would have time to telephone Nicki and tell her to ask the concierge to disconnect the battery, when Harper came down.

“All set?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“We’ll get a cab.”

He told the driver to go to Stele Street out in the Piraeus.

As soon as we were on the way, he opened the briefcase and took out a large envelope. It had not been there the night before; of that I am certain. He gave it to me.

“There’s everything you’ll need there,” he said; “ carnet de tourisme for the car, insurance Green Card, a thousand Greek drachma, a hundred Turkish lira, and fifty American dollars for emergencies. The carnet has been countersigned authorizing you to take it through customs, but you’d better check everything out yourself.”

I did so. The carnet showed that the car was registered in Zurich, and that the owner, or at any rate the person in legal charge of it, was a Fraulein Elizabeth Lipp. Her address was Hotel Excelsior, Laufen, Zurich.

“Is Miss Lipp your friend?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“Are we going to meet her now?”

“No, but maybe you’ll meet her in Istanbul. If the customs should ask, tell them she doesn’t like eight-hundred-and-fifty-mile drives, and preferred to go to Istanbul by boat.”

“Is she a tourist?”

“What else? She’s the daughter of a business associate of mine. I’m just doing him a favor. And by the way, if she wants you to drive her around in Turkey you’ll be able to pick up some extra dough. Maybe she’ll want you to drive the car back here later. I don’t know yet what her future plans are.”

“I see.” For someone who had told me that I wasn’t to ask questions, he was being curiously outgoing. “Where do I deliver the car in Istanbul?”

“You don’t. You go to the Park Hotel. There’ll be a room reservation for you there. Just check in on Thursday and wait for instructions.”

“Very well. When do I get that letter I signed?”

“When you’re paid off at the end of the job.”

Stele Street was down at the docks. By an odd coincidence there happened to be a ship of the Denizyollari Line berthed right opposite; and it was taking on a car through one of the side entry ports. I could not help glancing at Harper to see if he had noticed; but if he had he gave no sign of the fact. I made no comment. If he were simply ignorant, I was not going to enlighten him. If he still really thought that I was foolish enough to believe his version of Fraulein Lipp’s travel needs and arrangements, so much the better. I could look after myself. Or so I thought.

There was a garage halfway along the street, with an old Michelin tire sign above it. He told the cab driver to stop there and wait. We got out and went towards the office. There was a man inside, and when he saw Harper through the window he came out. He was thin and dark and wore a greasy blue suit. I did not hear Harper address him by any name, but they appeared to know one another quite well. Unfortunately, they spoke together in German, which is a language I have never learned.

After a moment or two, the man led the way through a small repair shop and across a scrap yard to a row of lock-up garages. He opened one of them and there was the Lincoln. It was a gray four-door Continental, and looked to me about a year old. The man handed Harper the keys. He got in, started up, and drove it out of the garage into the yard. The car seemed a mile long. Harper got out.

“Okay,” he said. “She’s all gassed up and everything. You can start rolling.”

“Very well.” I put my bag on the back seat. “I would just like to make a phone call first.”

He was instantly wary. “Who to?”

“The concierge at my apartment. I want to let him know that I may be away longer than I said, and ask him to disconnect the battery on my car.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. You can do it from the office.” He said something to the man in the blue suit and we all went back inside.

Nicki answered the telephone and I told her about the battery. When she started to complain that I had not wakened her to say good-by, I hung up. I had spoken in Greek, but Harper had been listening.

“That was a woman’s voice,” he said.

“The concierge’s wife. Is there anything wrong?”

He said something to the man in the blue suit of which I understood one word, Adressat. I guessed that he had wanted to know if I had given the address of the garage. The man shook his head.

Harper looked at me. “No, nothing wrong. But just remember you’re working for me now.”

“Will I see you in Istanbul or back here?”

“You’ll find out. Now get going.”

I spent a minute or two making sure that I knew where all the controls were, while Harper and the other man stood watching. Then I drove off and headed back towards Athens and the Thebes-Larissa-Salonika road.

After about half a mile I noticed that the taxi we had used on the drive out there was behind me. I was driving slowly, getting used to the feel of the car, and the taxi would normally have passed me; but it stayed behind. Harper was seeing me on my way.

About five miles beyond Athens I saw the taxi pull off the road and start to turn around. I was on my own. I drove on for another forty minutes or so, until I reached the first of the cotton fields, then turned off down a side road and stopped in the shade of some acacias.

I spent a good half hour searching that car. First I looked in the obvious places: in the back of the spare-wheel compartment, under the seat cushions, up behind the dashboard. Then I took off all the hub caps. It’s surprising how big the cavities are behind some of them, especially on American cars. I knew of a man who had regularly smuggled nearly two kilos of heroin a time that way. These had nothing in them, however. So I tried the tank, poking about with a long twig to see if any sort of a compartment had been built into or onto it; that has been done, too. Again I drew a blank. I would have liked to crawl underneath to see if any new welding had been done, but there was not enough clearance. I decided to put the car into a garage greasing bay in Salonika and examine the underside from below. Meanwhile, there was an air-conditioner in the car, so I unscrewed the cover and had a look inside that. Another blank.

The trouble was that I did not have the slightest idea what I was looking for-jewelry, drugs, gold, or currency. I just felt that there must be something. After a bit, I gave up searching and sat and smoked a cigarette while I tried to work out what would be worth smuggling into Turkey from Greece. I could not think of anything. I got the carnet out and checked the car’s route. It had come from Switzerland, via Italy and the Brindisi ferry, to Patras. The counterfoils showed that Fraulein Lipp had been with the car herself then. She, at least, did know about ferrying cars by sea. However, that only made the whole thing more mysterious.

And then I remembered something. Harper had spoken of the possibility of a return journey, of my being wanted to drive the car back from Istanbul to Athens. Supposing that was the real point of the whole thing. I drive from Greece into Turkey. Everything is perfectly open and aboveboard. Both Greek and Turkish customs would see and remember car and chauffeur. Some days later, the same car and chauffeur return. “How was Istanbul, friend? Is your stomach still with you? Anything to declare? No fat-tailed sheep hidden in the back? Pass, friend, pass.” And then the car goes back to the garage in the Piraeus, for the man in the blue suit to recover the packages of heroin concealed along the inner recesses of the chassis members, under the wheel arches of the body, and inside the cowling beside the automatic transmission. Unless, that is, there is a Macedonian son of a bitch on the Greek side who’s out to win himself a medal. In that event, what you get is the strange case of the respectable Swiss lady’s disreputable chauffeur who gets caught smuggling heroin; and Yours Truly is up the creek.

All I could do was play it by ear.

I got the Lincoln back on the road again and drove on. I reached Salonika soon after six that evening. Just to be on the safe side, I pulled into a big garage and gave the boy a couple of drachmas to put the car up on the hydraulic lift. I said I was looking for a rattle. There were no signs of new welding. I was not surprised. By then I had pretty well made up my mind that it would be the return journey that mattered.

I found a small comfortable hotel, treated myself to a good dinner and a bottle of wine at Harper’s expense, and went to bed early. I made an early start the following morning, too. It is an eight-hour run from Salonika across Thrace to the Turkish frontier near Edirne (Adrianople, as it used to be called), and if you arrive late, you sometimes find that the road-traffic customs post has closed for the night.

I arrived at about four-thirty and went through the Greek control without difficulty. At Karaagac, on the Turkish side, I had to wait while they cleared some farm trucks ahead of me. After about twenty minutes, however, I was able to drive up to the barrier. When I went into the customs post with the carnet and my other papers, the place was practically empty.

Naturally, I was more concerned about the car than with myself, so I simply left my passport and currency declaration with the security man, and went straight over to the customs desk to hand in the carnet .

Everything seemed to be going all right. A customs inspector went out to the car with me, looked in my bag, and merely glanced in the car. He was bored and looking forward to his supper.

“Tourisme?” he asked.

“Yes.”

We went back inside and he proceeded to stamp and validate the carnet for the car’s entry, and tear out his part of the counterfoil. He was just folding the carnet and handing it back when I felt a sharp tap on my shoulder.

It was the security man. He had my passport in his hand. I went to take it, but he shook his head and began waving it under my nose and saying something in Turkish.

I speak Egyptian Arabic and there are many Arabic words in Turkish; but the Turks pronounce them in a funny way and use a lot of Persian and old Turkish words mixed up with them. I shrugged helplessly. Then he said it in French and I understood.

My passport was three months out of date.

I knew at once how it had happened. Earlier in the year I had had some differences with the Egyptian consular people (or “United Arab Republic,” as they preferred to call themselves) and had allowed the whole question of my passport to slide. In fact, I had made up my mind to tell the Egyptians what they could do with their passport, and approach the British with a view to reclaiming my United Kingdom citizenship, to which, I want to make it clear, I am perfectly entitled. The thing was that, being so busy, I had just not bothered to fill in all the necessary forms. My Greek permis de sejour was in order, and that was all I normally needed in the way of papers. Frankly, I find all this paper regimentation we have to go through nowadays extremely boring. Naturally, with all the anxiety I had had over Harper, I had not thought to look at the date on my passport. If I had known that it was out of date, obviously I would have taken more trouble with the security man, kept him in conversation while he was doing the stamping or something like that. I have never had any bother like that before.

As it was, the whole thing became utterly disastrous; certainly through no fault of mine. The security man refused to stamp the passport. He said that I had to drive back to Salonika and have the passport renewed by the Egyptian vice-consul there before I could be admitted.

That would have been impossible as it happened; but I did not even have to try to explain why. The customs inspector chimed in at that point, waving the carnet and shouting that the car had been admitted and was now legally in Turkey. As I had not been admitted and was not, therefore, legally in Turkey, how was I, legally, to take the car out again? What did it matter if the passport was out of date? It was only a matter of three months. Why did he not just stamp the passport, admit me, and forget about it?

At least that was what I think he said. They had lapsed into Turkish now and were bawling at one another as if I did not exist. If I could have got the security man alone, I would have tried to bribe him; but with the other one there it was too dangerous. Finally, they both went off to see some superior officer and left me standing there, without carnet or passport, but with, I admit it frankly, a bad case of the jitters. Really, my only hope at that point was that they would do what the customs inspector wanted and overlook the date on the passport.

With any luck, that might have happened. I say “with any luck,” although things would still have been awkward even if they had let me through. I would have had somehow to buy an Egyptian consular stamp in Istanbul and forge the renewal in the passport-not easy. Or I would have had to have gone to the British Consulate-General, reported a lost British passport, and tried to winkle a temporary travel document out of them before they had had time to check up-not easy either. But at least those would have been the sort of difficulties a man in my anomalous position would understand and could cope with. The difficulties that, in fact, I did have to face were quite outside anything I had ever before experienced.

I stood there in the customs shed for about ten minutes, watched by an armed guard on the door who looked as if he would have liked nothing better than an excuse for shooting me. I pretended not to notice him; but his presence did not improve matters. In fact, I was beginning to get an attack of my indigestion.

After a while, the security man came back and beckoned to me. I went with him, along a passage with a small barrack room off it, to a door at the end.

“What now?” I asked in French.

“You must see the Commandant of the post.”

He knocked at the door and ushered me in.

Inside was a small bare office with some hard chairs and a green baize trestle table in the center. The customs inspector stood beside the table. Seated at it was a man of about my own age with a lined, sallow face. He wore some sort of officer’s uniform. I think he belonged to the military security police. He had the carnet and my passport on the table in front of him.

He looked up at me disagreeably. “This is your passport?” He spoke good French.

“Yes, sir. And I can only say that I regret extremely that I did not notice that it was not renewed.”

“You have caused a lot of trouble.”

“I realize that, sir. I must explain, however, that it was only on Monday evening that I was asked to make this journey. I left early yesterday morning. I was in a hurry. I did not think to check my papers.”

He looked down at the passport. “It says here that your occupation is that of journalist. You told the customs inspector that you were a chauffeur.”

So he had an inquiring mind; my heart sank.

“I am acting as a chauffeur, sir. I was, I am a journalist, but one must live and things are not always easy in that profession.”

“So now you are a chauffeur, and the passport is incorrect in yet another particular, eh?” It was a very unfair way of putting it, but I thought it as well to let him have his moment.

“One’s fortunes change, sir. In Athens I have my own car, which I drive for hire.”

He peered, frowning, at the carnet. “This car here is the property of Elizabeth Lipp. Is she your employer?”

“Temporarily, sir.”

“Where is she?”

“In Istanbul, I believe, sir.”

“You do not know?”

“Her agent engaged me, sir-to drive her car to Istanbul, where she is going as a tourist. She prefers to make the journey to Istanbul by sea.”

There was an unpleasant pause. He looked through the carnet again and then up at me abruptly.

“What nationality is this woman?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“What age? What sort of woman?”

“I have never seen her, sir. Her agent arranged everything.”

“And she is going from Athens to Istanbul by sea, which takes twenty-four hours, but she sends her car fourteen hundred kilometers and three days by road. If she wants the car in Istanbul, why didn’t she take the car on the boat with her? It is simple enough and costs practically nothing.”

I was only too well aware of it. I shrugged. “I was paid to drive, sir, and well paid. It was not for me to question the lady’s plans.”

He considered me for a moment, then drew a sheet of paper towards him and scribbled a few words. He handed the result to the customs inspector, who read, nodded, and went out quickly.

The Commandant seemed to relax. “You say you know nothing about the woman who owns the car,” he said. “Tell me about her agent. Is it a travel bureau?”

“No, sir, a man, an American, a friend of Fraulein Lipp’s father he said.”

“What’s his name? Where is he?”

I told him everything I knew about Harper, and the nature of my relationship with him. I did not mention the disagreement over the traveler’s checks. That could have been of no interest to him.

He listened in silence, nodding occasionally. By the time I had finished, his manner had changed considerably. His expression had become almost amiable.

“Have you driven this way before?” he asked.

“Several times, sir.”

“With tourists?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ever without tourists?”

“No, sir. They like to visit Olympus, Salonika, and Alexandropolis on their way to Istanbul.”

“Then did you not think this proposal of Mr. Harper’s strange?”

I permitted myself to smile. “ Monsieur le Commandant,” I said, “I thought it so strange that there could be only two possible reasons for it. The first was that Mr. Harper was so much concerned to impress the daughter of a valuable business associate with his savoir-faire that he neglected to ask anyone’s advice before he made his arrangements.”

“And the second?”

“That he knew that uncrated cars carried in Denizyollari ships to Istanbul must be accompanied by the owner as a passenger, and that he did not wish to be present when the car was inspected by customs for fear that something might be discovered in the car that should not be there.”

“I see.” He smiled slightly. “But you had no such fear.”

We were getting cozier by the minute. “ Monsieur le Commandant,” I said, “I may be a trifle careless about having my passport renewed, but I am not a fool. The moment I left Athens yesterday, I stopped and searched the car thoroughly, underneath as well as on top, the wheels, everywhere.”

There was a knock on the door and the customs inspector came back. He put a sheet of paper down in front of the Commandant. The Commandant read it and his face suddenly tightened. He looked up again at me.

“You say you searched everywhere in the car?”

“Yes, sir. Everywhere.”

“Did you search inside the doors?”

“Well, no, sir. They are sealed. I would have damaged…”

He said something quickly in Turkish. Suddenly the security man locked an arm round my neck and ran his free hand over my pockets. Then he shoved me down violently onto a chair.

I stared at the Commandant dumbly.

“Inside the doors there are”-he referred to the paper in his hand-“twelve tear-gas grenades, twelve concussion grenades, twelve smoke grenades, six gas respirators, six Parabellum pistols, and one hundred and twenty rounds of nine-millimeter pistol ammunition.” He put the paper down and stood up. “You are under arrest.”