I could just work out the name of the Captain’s ship. I’ll give you one guess as to what it is.’
‘The Greek Maiden
?’ replied Johnny. ‘The
Girl from Athens? Face of the Acropolis
?’
‘Good try, very good try.’ Powerscourt grinned. ‘Nearly but not quite. We’ve solved one of Sokratis’s riddles at any rate. The Captain’s ship is called
The Isles of Greece
.’
PART TWO
MORTLAKE TERRACE, SUMMER’S EVENING
Our love of beauty does not lead to extravagance: our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft. We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it. Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but in the affairs of state as well . . . we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say he has no business here at all.
Thucydides, Pericles’ Funeral Speech,
The History of Peloponnesian War
7
They left the Hotel Mazzini at half past one in the morning, tiptoeing down a rickety fire escape in their socks. Powerscourt and Johnny had kept a watch on the square all afternoon and evening. There was nothing obvious to be seen, but a series of idlers and loafers, all keeping a close eye on the hotel, had paraded past their windows at regular intervals. Powerscourt only left the building once. In the late afternoon he took himself to the offices of the local newspaper where he secured the services of the paper’s youngest reporter for a large handful of Italian banknotes. Antonio Paravacini, an eighteen-year-old veteran of Brindisi journalism, was to report any further comings and goings of
The Isles of Greece
and anything else that struck him as relevant to the recent happenings at the harbour. The banknotes should be sufficient to pay for a whole series of telegrams to London.
Powerscourt had paid for their rooms for two days in advance, a precaution he had been following for years in foreign hotels where a quick escape might be the order of the day. Just after three o’clock a slow train bound for Taranto pulled slowly out of the station. There were two passenger compartments and two goods vans, and an engine that Johnny Fitzgerald claimed must have pulled Garibaldi across Italy on one of his interminable marches.
‘When we get to Taranto,’ Powerscourt explained, waving an Italian train timetable liberated from the Brindisi waiting room, ‘we can go home a different way, up the Mediterranean coast through Naples rather than the way we came down the Adriatic coast.’
Johnny stretched himself out across an entire bench and went to sleep. Powerscourt stared out of the window into the Italian night. He remembered another early escape, in a mail train from Perugia nearly twenty years before in his investigation into the death of Prince Eddy, eldest son of the Prince of Wales. He had been escorted to his compartment long before the dawn by Captain Ferrante of the Perugia police and guarded by two of his officers all the way to Calais and the Dover boat. Dawn, he remembered, had come in slivers through the slits of the carriages, black sacks of Italian mail piled up at his feet.
Three-quarters of an hour out of Brindisi the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. Peering back at the goods vans Powerscourt saw a number of milk containers being loaded and a man who might have been a shepherd with a couple of sheep going to market.
The journey from Taranto to Naples took seven and a half hours. Johnny began snoring at Metaponto, continued through a long stop at Potenza Centrale and only stopped on the outskirts of Battipaglia, south of Salerno.
‘I bet your man Leith hasn’t been on this bloody train, Francis. I can’t see Rosebery careering through southern Italy on this line. Even the man who built it would see it’s totally out of date now.’
Powerscourt
‘The Greek Maiden
?’ replied Johnny. ‘The
Girl from Athens? Face of the Acropolis
?’
‘Good try, very good try.’ Powerscourt grinned. ‘Nearly but not quite. We’ve solved one of Sokratis’s riddles at any rate. The Captain’s ship is called
The Isles of Greece
.’
PART TWO
MORTLAKE TERRACE, SUMMER’S EVENING
Our love of beauty does not lead to extravagance: our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft. We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it. Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but in the affairs of state as well . . . we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say he has no business here at all.
Thucydides, Pericles’ Funeral Speech,
The History of Peloponnesian War
7
They left the Hotel Mazzini at half past one in the morning, tiptoeing down a rickety fire escape in their socks. Powerscourt and Johnny had kept a watch on the square all afternoon and evening. There was nothing obvious to be seen, but a series of idlers and loafers, all keeping a close eye on the hotel, had paraded past their windows at regular intervals. Powerscourt only left the building once. In the late afternoon he took himself to the offices of the local newspaper where he secured the services of the paper’s youngest reporter for a large handful of Italian banknotes. Antonio Paravacini, an eighteen-year-old veteran of Brindisi journalism, was to report any further comings and goings of
The Isles of Greece
and anything else that struck him as relevant to the recent happenings at the harbour. The banknotes should be sufficient to pay for a whole series of telegrams to London.
Powerscourt had paid for their rooms for two days in advance, a precaution he had been following for years in foreign hotels where a quick escape might be the order of the day. Just after three o’clock a slow train bound for Taranto pulled slowly out of the station. There were two passenger compartments and two goods vans, and an engine that Johnny Fitzgerald claimed must have pulled Garibaldi across Italy on one of his interminable marches.
‘When we get to Taranto,’ Powerscourt explained, waving an Italian train timetable liberated from the Brindisi waiting room, ‘we can go home a different way, up the Mediterranean coast through Naples rather than the way we came down the Adriatic coast.’
Johnny stretched himself out across an entire bench and went to sleep. Powerscourt stared out of the window into the Italian night. He remembered another early escape, in a mail train from Perugia nearly twenty years before in his investigation into the death of Prince Eddy, eldest son of the Prince of Wales. He had been escorted to his compartment long before the dawn by Captain Ferrante of the Perugia police and guarded by two of his officers all the way to Calais and the Dover boat. Dawn, he remembered, had come in slivers through the slits of the carriages, black sacks of Italian mail piled up at his feet.
Three-quarters of an hour out of Brindisi the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. Peering back at the goods vans Powerscourt saw a number of milk containers being loaded and a man who might have been a shepherd with a couple of sheep going to market.
The journey from Taranto to Naples took seven and a half hours. Johnny began snoring at Metaponto, continued through a long stop at Potenza Centrale and only stopped on the outskirts of Battipaglia, south of Salerno.
‘I bet your man Leith hasn’t been on this bloody train, Francis. I can’t see Rosebery careering through southern Italy on this line. Even the man who built it would see it’s totally out of date now.’
Powerscourt
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