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 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 recognize 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 score 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 handling 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, lobates, 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."
'lobates 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 lobates 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.
'Before he had gone far, he came upon a winged horse called Pegasus, and it occurred to him that this single-seater aircraft would enable him to zoom down on the Chimaera and give it the works without much risk to himself. But, try as he would, he couldn't persuade this splendid beast to let him mount it; so, tired out, he lay down and went to sleep.