was erected and beside it stood a piano. The flags of the Allies,
wrongly drawn, and a portrait of Venizelos looking like a Presbyterian
minister in shell-rim glasses, were the only decorations of the dirty
walls. A number of men in uniform were lounging about, drinking beer and
smoking cigarettes. The elderly lieutenant led the way to a table near
the piano. Immediately a waiter, who looked like a New York gun-man,
signalled to two women who were seated in different parts of the room,
and went forward to take the order. This was for beer, and while they
drank, one of the women, a fat middle-aged person without neck or
ankles, after the manner of middle-aged Greek women, clambered on to the
stage. The other, a girl with black spiral curls on each side of her
face, curls like the springs on screen doors, and with a short skirt
that showed quite abnormally thin legs, sat down at the piano and drove
with an incredible lack of skill through the accompaniment of a song. It
seemed to be a race between the two of them. The fat woman was already
stepping down from the stage as she gabbled the final bars of her
supposedly risky French song. An intoxicated ambulance driver hammered
on the table with his glass and then roared with laughter. The two women
came swiftly to the table and sat down by the lieutenant and Mr.
Spokesly.

"This is my little friend," said the lieutenant, chucking the fat
middle-aged creature under a number of chins. The sinister waiter
appeared, swept away the beer-glasses, and stood poised for instant
flight. The fat woman muttered something in reply to the lieutenant's
request to name her poison and the waiter almost instantly produced two
bottles of Greek champagne, a notable blend of bad cider and worse
ginger-ale.

"Let me pay," suggested Mr. Spokesly, but his friend put up his hand,
smiling.

"I always treat my little friend," he said, and patted her short,
pointed fingers.

"Feefty francs," said the waiter, and his eyes glared into the
lieutenant's wallet with almost insane ferocity.

Mr. Spokesly was glad he had not been permitted to pay for the two
bottles with their shoddy tinfoil and lying labels. The eyes of the
women never left the polished pigskin note-case while it was in sight.
It was almost provocative of physical pain, the dreadful look on their
faces in the presence of money. Their features were contorted to a set,
silent snarl and their eyes had the black globular lustre of a rat's.