“Too well. It is a dirty town.”
“I have not seen it. I was thinking that if you and Madame were going, we might all go together.” He beamed round expectantly.
José set his teeth and rolled his eyes as if he were being tortured. “I have already said that we are not going.”
“But it is very kind of you to suggest it,” Josette put in graciously.
The Mathis came out of the saloon. “Ah!” he greeted them. “The adventurers! Do not forget that we leave at five. We shall not wait for you.”
The gangway thudded into position and Mr. Kuvetli clambered down it nervously. Graham followed. He was beginning to wish that he had decided to stay on board. At the foot of the gangway he turned and looked up-the inevitable movement of a passenger leaving a ship. Mathis waved his hand.
“He is very amiable, Monsieur Mathis,” said Mr. Kuvetli.
“Very.”
Beyond the Customs shed there was a fly-blown old Fiat landaulet with a notice on it in French, Italian, English and Greek, saying that an hour’s tour of the sights and antiquities of Athens for four persons cost five hundred drachmes.
Graham stopped. He thought of the electric trains and trams he would have to clamber on to, of the hill up to the Acropolis, of the walking he would have to do, of the exhausting boredom of sightseeing on foot. Any way of avoiding the worst of it was, he decided, worth thirty shillingsworth of drachmes.