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coffee at a table in the shade of a parasol, Merriman leaned to Montacute and asked: “Now, before we start chewing the fat, tell me straight: Were you following me?”
    Caught off balance, Percy hesitated for a second. Had he been so obvious? They’d warned him that Merriman was nobody’s fool. He was pleased with his reply. It had just the right degree of offended incredulity. “Certainly not! But, professionally, sir, your question troubles me. Do you suspect you’re being followed? If so, as a copper, I may be just your man—unless it’s a more serious matter and a psychoanalyst might be what’s called for?”
    Merriman grinned. “Still got all my marbles, I’m glad to say. And sincerely glad to hear
you’re
not on my trail! Slight case of the jitters these last few days, though, I have to confess. Survival instinct. You know … you look up and out of the corner of your eye you see a face, a figure you’re sure you saw a minute or two ago hovering some yards away … With me, the phantom usually takes the form of a taxi driver!”
    Percy laughed. “Lucky man! It takes the rest of us half an hour with a megaphone to attract one in this city! No, if I’d been following you for any clandestine motive, you wouldn’t have noticed me. I’m rather good at that. But I prefer to announce myself to my friends. I’ve been meaning to drop my card in at … Kolonaki Square, isn’t it? I’ve been somewhat engaged since I stepped off the boat …”
    “Ah, yes! I’ve been following your exploits on the front page of the
Athens News!
Exterminating bandits in a spectacular way. More heads for your mantelpiece, I understand? You’ve lost none of your Celtic dash, Captain!”
    “I’m Detective Chief Inspector now, sir. With the C.I.D., Scotland Yard. Seconded to Athens. My recent history, in a nutshell. And you, Colonel?”
    “Now Professor—Sir Andrew, if you can believe it! Digger, classicist, and writer. Writer …” The professor looked thoughtfully at the smiling younger man and walked straight into a trap Montacute had been planning to set before him at their next meeting. “I’m working on something that might interest you. An enthusiasm we have in common … Still travelling with your
Iliad
under your pillow?… Agamemnon! I’m hacking out a translation of Aeschylus’s play with a view to staging it. No shortage of willing actors in this city. It’s stuffed with classicists of all nationalities. A lively young chap like you needs to extend his social life … take an interest in something other than his work. Shall we have another of these? Delicious stuff, Greek coffee … a thimbleful’s never enough.”
    Merriman ordered more coffee and settled in for a deeper conversation. “You must come and meet my wife, Maud. She’ll propel you into Athenian society! Maud knows everyone! Look, are you free to come to dinner on Saturday? Maud’s cousin is arriving from England to spend the summer with us, so you won’t be the only new bug there. And we’ll see if we can’t rustle up some pretty girls to sit opposite. There are some particularly fetching American nurses in town. Am I tempting you?”
    “Delighted!” said Percy. And he was. It had been so easy. But he was remembering also, and with pleasure, the all-too-rare boozy evenings in the Mess when Colonel Merriman had breezed through, raising the spirits of men like him. In the doldrums militarily, enfeebled by dysentery and malaria,sweltering in heat or shivering in cold, the young officers felt the better for the colonel’s optimism, the connections he made for them with the world outside the fortifications, and, not least, his risqué stories. They’d laughed themselves sick at a play he’d sketched out on the back of an ordnance list and produced within sight of the enemy who, they could be reasonably certain, were watching. Soccer and theatre always caught their attention and no hostile shots were ever fired for the duration of the