“Where does the town go at night?” “What did you say?” Gregeris turned, but some sort of vagrant stood there, grinning at him out of a dirty, flapping overcoat. Gregeris supposed he wanted money. Otherwise the broad square was deserted in the pale grey afternoon, its clean lines undisturbed by the occasional wind-breath from the sea, which hardly even moved the clipped oleanders behind their prison-railings, or the ball-shaped evergreens on long bare stems, (like lollipops), which flanked most of the municipal buildings. “Perhaps this will help?” Gregeris handed the man, the supposed beggar, a bank note. It was a cheerful, highly-coloured currency, and the man took it, but his smile lessened at once. “I can’t show you. You’ll have to see for yourself.” “Oh, that will be all right. Don’t trouble.” Gregeris turned to walk on. He had only come to the square to kill a little time, to look at the clock-tower, a sturdy thing from the seventeen hundreds. But it was smaller and much less interesting than the guide-book promised.
