The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [6]
But I am never one to mope. If that happened, I decided, then good riddance to bad rubbish. I poured myself another glass of wine, smoked a cigarette, and worked out a tactful way of finding out what sort of business Harper was in. I think I must have sensed that there was something not quite right about him.
At five to nine I found a parking place on Venizelos Avenue just round the corner from the Grande-Bretagne, and went to let Harper know that I was waiting.
He came down after ten minutes and I took him round the corner to the car. I explained that it was difficult for private cars to park in front of the hotel.
He said, rather disagreeably I thought: “Who cares?”
I wondered if he had been drinking. Quite a lot of tourists who, in their own countries, are used to dining early in the evening, start drinking ouzo to pass the time. By ten o’clock, when most Athenians begin to think about dinner, the tourists are sometimes too tight to care what they say or do. Harper, however, was all too sober. I soon found that out.
When we reached the car I opened the rear door for him to get in. Ignoring me, he opened the other door and got into the front passenger seat. Very democratic. Only I happen to prefer my passengers in the back seat where I can keep my eye on them through the mirror.
I went round and got into the driver’s seat.
“Well, Arthur,” he asked, “where are you taking me?”
“Dinner first, sir?”
“How about some sea food?”
“I’ll take you to the best, sir.”
I drove him out to the yacht harbor at Tourcolimano. One of the restaurants there gives me a good commission. The waterfront is really very picturesque, and he nodded approvingly as he looked around. Then, I took him into the restaurant and introduced him to the cook. When he had chosen his food and a bottle of dry Patras wine he looked at me.
“You eaten yet, Arthur?”
“Oh, I will have something in the kitchen, sir.” That way my dinner would go on his bill without his knowing it, as well as my commission.
“You come and eat with me.”
“It is not necessary, sir.”
“Who said it was? I asked you to eat with me.”
“Thank you, sir. I would like to.”
More democracy. We sat at a table on the terrace by the water’s edge and he began to ask me about the yachts anchored in the harbor. Which were privately owned, which were for charter? What were charter rates like?
I happened to know about one of the charter yachts, an eighteen-meter ketch with twin diesels, and told him the rate-one hundred and forty dollars U.S. per day, including a crew of two, fuel for eight hours’ steaming a day, and everything except charterer’s and passengers’ food. The real rate was a hundred and thirty, but I thought that, if by any chance he was serious, I could get the difference as commission from the broker. I also wanted to see how he felt about that kind of money; whether he would laugh as an ordinary salaried man would, or begin asking about the number of persons it would sleep. He just nodded, and then asked about fast, sea-going motorboats without crew.
In the light of what happened I think that point is specially significant.
I said that I would find out. He asked me about the yacht brokers. I gave him the name of the one I knew personally, and told him the rest were no good. I also said that I did not think that the owners of the bigger boats liked chartering them without their own crewmen on board. He did not comment on that. Later, he asked me if I knew whether yacht charter parties out of Tourcolimano or the Piraeus covered Greek waters only, or whether you could “go foreign,” say across the Adriatic to Italy. Significant again. I told him I did not know, which was true.
When the bill came, he asked if he could change an American Express traveler’s check for fifty dollars. That was more to the point. I told him that he could, and he tore the fifty-dollar