"I'm clearing up some matters you'll guess at," he said grimly, "so I
may be a little while getting there. You'll wait?"
He hung up. And then with a rather ghastly humor he took some pins from
a box on the desk and worked absorbedly at bending one around the inside
of the band of the seal ring he wore on his right hand.
* * * * *
But he didn't go to the telephoned address. He went to the Breen
Foundation. And Janice was there. She was the real Janice. He knew it
instantly he saw her. She was panic-stricken when he told her of his own
telephone experience. Her teeth chattered. But she knew--instinctively,
she said--that he was himself. She got into the cab with him.
They reached the airport and found the office Hallen had named. The
lettering on it, in Greek and French, said that it was a reception room
for official visitors only.
"Our status is uncertain," said Coburn drily. "We may be official
guests, or we may be crazy. It's a toss-up which status sticks."
He opened the door and looked carefully inside before he entered. Hallen
was there. There was a lean, hard-bitten colonel of the American liaison
force in Greece. There was a Greek general, pudgy and genial, standing
with his back to a window and his hands clasped behind him. There were
two Greek colonels and a major. They regarded him soberly.
"Howdo, Coburn," said Hallen painfully. "You're heading for Athens, you
know. This is Miss Ames? But these gentlemen have ... ah ... a special
concern with that business up-country. They'd like to hear your story
before you leave."
"I suppose," said Coburn curtly, "it's a sort of preliminary commission
in lunacy."
But he shook hands all around. He kept his left hand in his coat pocket
as he shook hands with his right. His revolver was in his left-hand
pocket now too. The Greek general beamed at him. The American colonel's
eyes were hard and suspicious. One of the two Greek colonels was very
slightly cross-eyed. The Greek major shook hands solemnly.
Coburn took a deep breath. "I know my tale sounds crazy," he said, "but
... I had a telephone call just now. Hallen will bear me out that my
secretary was impersonated by somebody else this afternoon."
"I've told them that," said Hallen unhappily.
"And something was impersonating Dillon up in the hills," finished
Coburn. "I've reason to believe that at this address"--and he handed the
address he'd written down to Hallen--"a ... creature will be found who
will look most convincingly like Miss Ames, here. You might send and
see."
The American colonel snorted: "This whole tale's preposterous! It's an
attempt to cash in on the actual mystery of what happened up-country."
The Greek general protested gently. His English was so heavily accented
as to be hard to understand, but he pointed out that Coburn knew details
of the event in Naousa that only someone who had been there could know.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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