‘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 realised 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 bellpush 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.’
‘I 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. ‘I’ll 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 galvanised 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: ‘I 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 wa
s 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 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 recognise 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 store 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 handing 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, Iobates, 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.”
‘Iobates 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 Iobates 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.
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