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meant to fight so we decided not to curtail our holiday after all, and to put in a week here as we'd originally planned. At first sight, this place reminds me of the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido at Venice. Is it as good as it looks?'
'It's fine,' Robbie assured him. 'Lovely bathing, good food and the town—the old city—is fascinating.' Swiftly, he stole a look behind him at the desk. The reception clerk had not been there, but was just coming out from the office behind it. Hastily he said to the Jacksons: 'You'll be wanting to register. Julie—Stephanie, I mean—is waiting for me to go out and bathe, so I must run now. I'll be seeing you later.'
As soon as he was clear of the hall, he dashed upstairs. Stephanie had been manicuring her nails in their room, while waiting for him to bring up the morning papers. Breathlessly, he said to her: 'We're sunk! The Jacksons have just come in on the plane! They greeted me as "Mr. Grenn", and asked after you as Miss Stephanopoulos.'
'Oh dear!' she exclaimed, her blue eyes widening. 'What damnable luck. Still, if they did no more than that, they can't know that you are wanted by the police.'
'No; it was obvious that they didn't. It's very unlikely that any mention of our business would get into the English papers until I'm actually charged with murder. But my name would be sure to ring a bell with some of the Greek management here, and there's that damned American who is always shooting questions at us. He speaks Greek and I expect he'll have read about us in the paper. You can bet that he will be hanging on to us all day, as usual, and we can't possibly avoid the Jacksons. Naturally, they will go on calling me "Grenn" and, before the day is out, that is certain to be noticed by a waiter or someone. The management will telephone the police and they'll be coming here to collect me.'
'Then we must leave—leave at once.'
'Yes, but how can we—leave the island, I mean? The daily plane for Athens left over an hour ago.'
'We could move to some place in the town—get lodgings there.'
'That's no good. Rhodes is much too small for us to stand any chance of going to earth. The police would trace us within a matter of hours. And once they are on to me, if they don't pick us up tonight, they'll have men at the airport to stop us getting away tomorrow.'
For a few minutes they stood facing one another in dismayed silence, then Robbie snapped his fingers. 'I've got it! Today is Saturday. It's the one day in the week that there's a flight from here to Crete, and I remember when I looked at the time-table wondering why it didn't leave till afternoon. If only we can get seats on it.'
As Robbie spoke, he stepped over to the bedside telephone, snatched up the receiver and asked to be put through to the office of Olympic Airways. In agonized suspense he waited until the booking clerk replied to his enquiry. Now they had good reason to bless the war scare. It had so thinned out tourist traffic that the aircraft was almost empty. He was told that he could pick up the tickets at the office at two o'clock. The flight left at ten past three.
They started to pack at once, so as to get out of the hotel as soon as possible. Robbie had some anxious moments while paying the bill downstairs, but neither Mahogany Brown nor the Jacksons appeared in the hall. By half-past-twelve they were on their way to the town in a-taxi and, after lunching there in a back-street cafe, caught the airport bus. Soon after three, they were on their way to Crete.
On this flight the only land they saw was the northern tip of Karpathos, and Robbie's mind was much too occupied with his own problems for it to drift to the gods and Heroes. His elation at getting away from Rhodes, too, was marred by one unavoidable circumstance. When telephoning for their air tickets, he had realized that the call would be booked to him as Monsieur Thevanaz and, as the hotel telephone operator could hear what he said, he had not liked to risk arousing unwelcome interest in their abrupt departure from the des Roses by giving a different name. In consequence, the booking had left a clear trail behind them and they had no option but to land in Crete as Monsieur and Madame Thevanaz.
He made up his mind that, somehow, he must get the labels off their suitcases when they arrived at the Crete airport so that, when they registered at an hotel in Heraklion, they could do so under yet another identity; but in this he was defeated by the informal procedure at the little airport. There was no bus there; only two taxis, into one of which the four passengers from the plane were crammed, while all their luggage was loaded into the other. When they arrived at the Town Terminal and Robbie had pointed out their bags, a porter asked him at which hotel they intended to stay. He had thought that they would stand a better chance of escaping any enquiry from Rhodes if they went on to a small place, but he had had no chance to get the name of one.
On his replying that he had not yet booked anywhere, the porter pointed to the des Roses labels which had been stuck on the bags, gave a toothless grin and said: 'Hotel Astir for you. New and very good. Just across the road. You follow me.'
Then he picked up their suitcases, and five minutes later Robbie was at the hotel desk, forced to continue the fiction that he and Stephanie were Monsieur and Madame Thevanaz.
The Astir was not very large, but was bright and pleasant, and they were given a good room on the first floor, with a private bath. However, when they had had a wash and came downstairs, they were greatly surprised to learn that it had no restaurant; neither, as the hall porter told them, had any other hotel in
Heraklion. The custom was for him to give guests a 'chit' on which they could eat out, and the amount they spent was then charged on their hotel bill.
As it was by then nearly eight o'clock and they had had only a light lunch, they decided to go out straight away. The porter recommended a restaurant that rejoiced in the curious name of the Glass House, and gave them the number of a bus that stopped on the corner opposite the hotel. He said the bus would take them to the restaurant in ten minutes.
The bus ride confirmed the impression they had formed when coming into the city from the airport that, unlike Rhodes, Heraklion had neither beauty nor glamour. There were ugly gaps between half-ruined buildings, even the mainstreet was full of potholes and, as the bus turned from it along the water-front, it was still light enough for them to see that for a quarter of a mile the inland side of the road consisted almost entirely of great heaps of rubble. As they soon learned, Heraklion had suffered terribly in the war. First the Germans had bombed it, then, for many months, the British and Americans. Hundreds of buildings, in fact one-third of the city, had been destroyed and, although twenty years had elapsed, the Greeks had been unable, through lack of financial resources, to rebuild more than a small percentage of their properties.
The Glass House proved to be the only building on the seaward side of the road. It occupied a promontory at the end of the water-front and justified its name for, except for that part of the building in which the kitchens were housed, its walls consisted entirely of small, rather dirty panes of glass. It was a big place with perhaps eighty tables in it and a three-man band. Not more than a dozen of the tables were occupied; so they chose one well away from other people and, over a meal of fresh fried mullet, settled down to discuss their situation.
They felt that, had they remained at the des Roses, the discovery that Max Thevanaz was Robbie Grenn would have proved inevitable; but, now that they had left it, there was no great reason to fear that fact would emerge. It was certain that Mahogany Brown would ask at the office what had happened to his friends the Thevanaz, and the Jacksons might enquire there for Mr. Grenn. However, with the large managerial staff at the des Roses, those enquiries might not be made of the same person and, even if they were, might not be linked up. Yet if these enquiries did start anything, the search would be for a married couple who had flown to Crete using the name of Thevanaz. For this reason, Stephanie said she thought they ought both to abandon that name and separate as soon as possible.