Mayhem in Greece

by Dennis Wheatley

  Reluctantly, he put aside all the letters from women applicants, and went more carefully through those from men. These formed barely a fifth of the pile, and were very disappointing. Nearly all of them admitted either that they could not take shorthand, or were ‘a bit out of practice’. A few could not even type, but asserted that they would make quick learners. Most of them were garage hands. The only applicant whose letter was obviously that of a well-educated man, stated that he would greatly enjoy making such a tour but, owing to his arthritis, could not undertake to drive more than fifty miles a day. Not one came anywhere near fulfilling Robbie’s requirement of a good driver, not too far removed from his own age, who would prove a pleasant companion. And, as he had to be out of the Embassy by the end of the week, he could not delay, even for twenty-four hours, in making his choice.

  Turning back to the letters from women, he went through them again, and found one from a Mrs. Papayannis. She stated that she had been driving for thirty years without one acident, knew the Peloponnesus like the back of her hand from having been hunted all over it during the war while an officer in the Women’s Resistance, could type at 80 and took shorthand at 150. She was out of a job at the moment only because her chief, a distinguished scientist for whom she had worked for the past nine years, had recently died.

  It was clear that she must be in the neighbourhood of fifty, an educated woman, but a real old battle-axe. Robbie felt he would be able to talk to her without humiliating diffidence and be free of all temptation to attempt the sort of thing that might cause him bitter regret. Pushing aside the other letters, he put hers in his pocket and decided to take her on.

  She had given him her telephone number in her letter, adding that she had an engagement for that morning; so, if he were interested, would he phone her in the afternoon?

  After breakfast, he went round to the garage he patronised and got a quotation for hiring a medium-size car by the week. Next he went to his bank, obtained a letter of credit and drew out a considerable sum in cash; then went for a stroll round the old quarter of the city to the west of Constitution Square. Its narrow streets with groups of shops that sold nothing but buttons, or materials, or embroidery always intrigued him, and for the whole way along Eolou Street, at which the section ended, he could look up at his beloved Acropolis dominating the city.

  He returned to the Embassy a little before one o’clock. As he entered the hall, the butler was holding the telephone receiver, and called out to him: ‘There’s a lady on the phone for you, Mr. Robbie. She has already rung up twice this morning, but you were out.’

  ‘Who is she?’ Robbie asked in surprise.

  ‘It’s a Miss Stephanopoulos,’ the butler replied. ‘She says that it’s urgent and she must speak to you personally.’ Then he turned back to the instrument and said into it in Greek: ‘Hold on, Miss. Mr. Grenn has just come in.’

  Having no option, Robbie took the instrument from him and said a shade suspiciously: ‘This is Robert Grenn. What did you wish to speak to me about?’

  ‘About your advertisement in the Kathimerini,’ a soft, slightly breathless voice replied. ‘It’s the very thing I’m looking for, and I’m sure that I could do all you want perfectly.’

  ‘No!’ said Robbie hastily. ‘No! The post is already filled.’

  ‘But it can’t be!’ The voice rose in the suggestion of a pathetic wail. ‘You can’t have had any applications for it until this morning.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he admitted. ‘But I’ve settled on the person to whom I mean to give the job.’

  ‘Then unsettle it. Oh please, please!’ The imploring note sounded to Robbie as if the girl on the other end of the line was actually getting down on her knees. ‘You see, I’ve been counting on this since yesterday, and I’ve burned my boats. I must have it. I simply must!’

  ‘No, really,’ Robbie protested. ‘I’m terribly sorry, but the fact that you have been counting on it is nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Oh, but it is! You’ll be responsible now if the most terrible things happen to me. You can’t really be such a brute. You said in the advert, you were young, and so am I. You ought to be able to see my point of view.’

  ‘Hang it all, I don’t even know what trouble you are in,’ Robbie cried desperately.

  ‘That’s soon remedied.’ The voice dropped back again to a breathless coo. ‘I’m telephoning from Floca’s. I’m much fatter than I’d like to be, but people say I’ve got a pretty face. I’m wearing an absurd bit of blue veiling as a hat. You see, it matches my eyes. And a bunch of stephanotis. You’ll find me at a table just on the right at the bottom of the stairs. Come round so that we can talk this over.’

  ‘No! Really! No!’ exclaimed Robbie. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’

  ‘You must,’ came the quick reply. ‘I’m starving. And I’ve already cut a date, counting on you to give me lunch.’

  Next moment, the line went dead. In vain Robbie kept shouting into the instrument: ‘Hello! Hello! Are you there?’ Then, realising the futility of further efforts, he hung up.

  Frowning, he looked about him. That a girl should try to foist herself on him like that was intolerable. The cheek of it. What were her troubles to do with him, anyway? Give her lunch and listen to some mess she had got herself into! Why should he? Certainly not. She had no claim on him. He didn’t even know her. Let her stew in her own juice.

  At that moment, Euan crossed the hall on his way to the dining room. With a casual glance at Robbie, he said: ‘What are you standing there looking so scared about? Come on in and have some lunch.’

  ‘I’m not scared of anything,’ Robbie muttered. Then something suddenly clicked in his brain and, picking up his hat, he added with apparent casualness, ‘but I’m not lunching in today. I happen to be giving lunch to a very pretty girl at Floca’s.’ Then, after one glance at Euan, he walked towards the front door.

  As he crossed the threshold, he thought: ‘Goodness only knows what I’m letting myself in for. But, by God, the sight of Euan’s face was worth it.’

  11

  Enter the Lady

  Instead of hailing a taxi, Robbie walked to Floca’s. This famous café, the smartest in Athens, is at the Constitution Square end of Venizelou Street; so it was not far, and he needed a little time in which to think. The sudden eruption of a strange young woman into his plans had left him temporarily dazed, but within a few minutes he was feeling as angry as it was ever in his mild nature to be: angry with her for assuming that he had only to come to the meeting she had had the cheek to demand for her to make him do as she wished, and angry with himself for having become committed simply to score a cheap victory over Euan.

  Then it struck him that he had not promised to meet her and, before Euan had spoken to him, he had not intended to meet her; so he still need not. As he had already reached the corner of Constitution Square, he halted in his tracks and pulled out his case to smoke a cigarette while considering this. His case was empty, but no one need look far in Athens for fresh supplies of cigarettes. A hundred or more kiosks are dotted about the broad pavements of the principal streets, and all appear to do a thriving trade in exactly similar stocks—newspapers, magazines, sweets, tobacco, souvenirs and secondhand paper-back books.

  Having replenished his case, he lit up and drew hard on the cigarette. It was certain that, later in the day, Euan would quiz him about having taken a girl out to lunch. If he refused to say anything about it, Euan would jump to the conclusion that he had lied about having a ‘date’. On the other hand, never having done such a thing, would his imagination enable him to talk as if he had? He feared it would not. In either case, the odds were that he would be found out and have laid himself open to Euan’s scathing ridicule. Then, like it or not, he had to go through with it.

  Two minutes later, he arrived outside Floca’s. The de-luxe café had a long frontage with a row of tables outside and two entrances, one into a big sweet shop and another into a lofty room, holding another fifty or so tab
les. In the rear of the latter, a short flight of stairs led up through a balustrade to the restaurant, considered by Robbie, who was fond of good food, to be the best in Athens.

  At this hour, nearly every table in the café was taken, but he had only to glance in the direction of the stairs to identify the girl. She was not looking his way; so he had a moment, as he approached, to study her without causing her embarrassment. Nine out of ten of the women in the café were brunettes, and the blondes were obviously foreigners. He had instinctively assumed that, being a Greek, she, too, would be a brunette, and she might have passed as one; but there were bronze lights in the mass of short curls on which was perched the little arrangement of blue veiling that passed for a hat. Her face was broad, with a strong chin that had a dimple in it. She had a short nose, a wide mouth and well-curved but rather thick eyebrows that were darker than her hair. Her skin was a golden brown, and such make-up as she was wearing was not sufficient to be obvious. Robbie knew little about women’s clothes but, mingling as he did with wealthy women who came as guests to the Embassy, he realised instinctively that hers, though neat, were not expensive. It was only the hat and the big bunch of stephanotis pinned to her well-rounded bust that gave her the appearance of smartness.

  When he was within a few feet of her table, she suddenly caught sight of him, said ‘Mr. Grenn’, smiled, stood up and held out her hand. As he smiled back and took her hand, he saw that she was shorter than he had expected. The mop of chestnut hair only just topped his shoulder. He saw too that, though she was sturdily built, all her curves were in the right places. She had turned up to him a pair of clear blue eyes that sparkled with vitality. Temporarily mesmerised by them, he quite forgot to let go her hand, until she gently withdrew it.

  Suddenly embarrassed, and wishing to make amends for this gaffe, he blurted out: ‘You said you were a fat girl, but I don’t think so.’

  She gave him a surprised stare, then burst out laughing. ‘What a funny way to greet a new acquaintance.’

  ‘I … I’m sorry,’ he stammered. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’

  ‘No, I’m sure you didn’t. And it was nice to hear that you think that. All the same, I wish I could drop a kilo or two. I suppose if I gave up eating sweets I could, but I simply adore them.’ After a rather awkward pause, she added: ‘Shall we sit down?’

  ‘Yes, let’s,’ he replied hastily. ‘Er … what would you like to drink?’

  ‘Nothing more for the moment, thanks. I’ve just had an orange squash.’

  Robbie beckoned a passing waiter and ordered himself an ouzo, then he turned back to her. He had arrived determined to say at once that he had already engaged the ‘battle-axe’ but, recalling the desperation in her voice when she had telephoned him, he now dreaded to see tears start to those blue eyes, which were regarding him with such friendliness. Yet, strive as he would, he could think of no other way to open the conversation. Their silence lasted long enough for him to get quite hot under the collar before she broke it by saying:

  ‘I don’t know if you got my name over the telephone. It is Stephanie Stephanopoulos.’

  He would have liked to say: ‘It’s as pretty as you are,’ but didn’t dare. Even so, it gave him a lead, and he asked: ‘Are you related to the Foreign Minister?’

  ‘Only distantly. He is a cousin of my father.’ Her mouth suddenly assumed a hard line, then she went on: ‘It is because of my father that I answered your advertisement. He is an absolute brute. He is treating me abominably.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Robbie exclaimed, then, his chivalrous instincts aroused, his mouth tightened too. ‘You don’t mean … you can’t mean that he actually beats you?’

  She gave a sudden giggle. ‘No, not quite that. Even the peasants here have given up using their belts on daughters of my age.’

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked impulsively, and next moment could have bitten out his tongue. But she only laughed.

  ‘Really, Mr. Grenn! You are a forthright person. Still, if you want to know, I’m just turned twenty-four.’

  ‘I … er, apologise for asking that. But in what way is your father brutal to you?’

  As the waiter set down Robbie’s ouzo on the table, she replied: ‘For the past week, he has kept me locked up in an attic on bread and water.’

  ‘No! Really! The swine! … Sorry! I didn’t mean to be rude about your father, but …’

  ‘Oh! but that’s not the worst.’ The blue eyes widened and looked straight into his. ‘He has threatened that if I won’t do what he wants me to, he will put me out on to the street. And I haven’t got a room of my own. The only sort of job I could get would be as a hostess in a night-club, and you know what that means.’

  Robbie could guess. Swiftly, he detached his glance from the blue eyes and, to hide his embarrassment, swallowed his ouzo in one gulp. He promptly choked.

  Showing quick concern, Miss Stephanopoulos picked up the small glass of water that had been brought with his ouzo as a chaser, and pressed it on him.

  With a nod of thanks, he took it and, when he had recovered, asked: ‘But what is it your father wants you to do?’

  ‘To marry a man I loathe the sight of. He’s a cement manufacturer and as rich as Croesus. But he’s twice my age, and positively repulsive—like a great, fat, greasy slug.’

  Robbie knew that, although the emancipation of women in the Balkans had made enormous strides since the Second World War, they were still far from having gained the complete freedom that women enjoyed in the Western world and that, among the upper classes, many marriages were still arranged between parents, with scant reference to their daughters. With a shake of his head, he said: ‘That’s too bad. If he’s as awful as you say, I can quite understand your digging in your toes.’

  ‘I knew you would.’ Her face lit up with a radiant smile. ‘And now, I’m terribly hungry, so please give me some lunch.’

  ‘Of course.’ He came quickly to his feet. ‘If you have been on bread and water for a week, you must be starving.’

  Her skirt was fairly short and, as he followed her up the little flight of stairs to the restaurant, he found himself staring at her legs. She would not have stood a hope of being taken on in a dancing chorus. They were much too short and sturdy. But, all the same, they were perfectly proportioned, with neat ankles and medium-small feet.

  When the head waiter brought the menu, she chose Scampi Newberg, to be followed by a woodcock. As Robbie liked scampi and knew that in Greece at that season woodcock was excellent eating, he followed suit. But his prolonged glance at Miss Stephanopoulos’s nylon-clad lower limbs had acted on him like a red light. He knew that he must not let this go any further; so, as they broke their caraway-seed-sprinkled rolls, he said:

  ‘You say that if your father throws you out, you would have to become a night-club hostess. But, since you are qualified for a secretarial post, why shouldn’t you get a job in an office?’

  She made a little grimace. ‘I trained at a secretarial college, but that is quite a while ago. And I’ve never had a job, so my shorthand would be too slow now for me to get a decently paid one. But I could soon work it up if you wanted me to, and my typing is quite good. I can see, too, that you are the sort of man who needs a lot of taking care of, and I should be very good at that.’

  Robbie responded only with a slightly nervous smile as she went on: ‘There’s another thing. My father is certain to ask the help of the police to get me back, and it would be fairly easy for them to trace me if I were working in an office here. About the only hope of my keeping my freedom would be to go underground and take a job in a night spot down at the Piraeus. But, of course, for me to disappear into the wilds of the Peloponnesus with you would be the perfect thing. That’s why—’

  ‘D’you think your father has already put the police on to you?’ Robbie interrupted to ask, a little anxiously.

  ‘Oh no. He will be away on business until Monday, and he can’t know yet that I’ve left home.’

 
‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘Mother gave way to my pleading. She’s a darling, and although she hated letting me go off on my own, she realised that it was the only way to save me from terrible unhappiness. Unfortunately, she’s too weak to stand up to father, but her parents were English, and she doesn’t at all approve of girls being forced into marriage, like this, just because one of their father’s beastly old friends has a lot of money or influence.’

  From the first, they had been talking in Greek, and Robbie’s Greek was nowhere near as perfect as most of his other languages because, instead of learning it from records and tutors, he had picked it up by conversing with people of all classes. It had, however, struck him that the accent of his charming companion was somewhat unusual, and he said:

  ‘You are half English, then. Have you ever been to England?’

  ‘Not since I was a small girl, so I don’t remember much about it. But English was my first language, and I still speak it with mother when we are alone. My father and mother met some years before the war, when he was the representative in London of a Greek shipping line. It wasn’t till it looked as though England was about to be invaded that he brought us back here to live; and, of course, he couldn’t then foresee that Greece would be over-run a year later.’

  At this, it crossed Robbie’s mind that, as his Greek was by no means perfect, it would be a decided advantage to have a secretary who could speak English, as he could then explain to her the more unusual words in his manuscript. Battle-axe Papayannis might not, whereas this girl definitely … Sternly he put the thought from him, but only for it to be followed by another. He had entirely overlooked the fact that, if he had a secretary who did not understand English, she would find it next to impossible to type his manuscript at all.