Part 2 — IX

THE next morning at about midday Lewis walked up Fleet Street towards Old Jewry where the Apostolatos Bank had its London branch.

Fleet Street bows down and sags beneath the weight of the railway bridge and of bundles of newspapers and then, as though shot up by a spring board, leaps up Ludgate Hill towards St. Paul's Cathedral, scales it and rises to the copper pink sky. On the hoardings are views of Wales with blue skies as deceptive as the Celts themselves; on another poster a gentleman in a quilted dressing gown is smoking by his fireside surrounded by children playing amongst his legs like lion cubs, pictures which appear to excite the natural laziness of the natives.

Lewis skirted St. Paul's to where the unfrosted windows of the wholesale merchants begin, and came at last to the old Jewry and the Apostolatos Bank, an Adam house, ivory white outside and painted inside in sea green and dark brown in Dickensian shades, with the legend on the door in black letters:—

APOSTOLATOS BANK FOREIGN BANKERS, FOUNDED IN 1846. FREIGHTAGE, ADVANCES ON MERCHANDISE. BRANCHES AT ATHENS, SALONICA, ARGOS, KALAMATA, CORFU, NAUPLIA, LARISSA, VOLO, CANEA, MYTILENE. Special shipments to the Piraus.

These Greek names, torn from coasts so tormented that Reclus compares them to the convolutions of the human brain, exiled to the north like the metopes of the Parthenon, sparkled here with such Oriental fire that Lewis blinked. They recalled to him warmth, sweet lemons and the Mediterranean so full of salt that it makes marks like fruit stains on one's clothes.

The ground floor contained wooden counters and ledgers like antiphonals as tall as the book-keeper himself, bound in whole ox skins and studded with brass nails. This entrance was like the window of Lock's hat shop, and bore witness to the venerable age of a firm which, though foreign, claimed respect as a right by virtue of its good old English methods and neatly a century of commercial probity.

In the upper stories everything had been altered; polished brass plates replaced the black painted letters, and the old folios had been dethroned by American filing devices. Worked by a one-armed sergeant plastered with medals, modern lifts sucked the customers upwards to the roof. On the third floor Lewis passed through the general office, where an army of youths with heads shining like patent leather boots worked behind polished bars, and was introduced into the private offices of the Bank: a thick pile carpet, frosted windows and enamelled spittoons with the encouraging inscription: "Make sure of your aim"; in the anteroom those outward signs of English commercial standing: silk hats and umbrellas.

The drum of the revolving door beat the salute and the three directors of the Apostolatos Bank, supported by their general manager, Mr. Rota, rose to their feet. They were waiting for Lewis in the middle of the huge office lined with strong boxes let into the wall, with portraits of the Chairman of the Bank in 1846, 1852, 1867 and 1876 (all of them, even though Greeks to the core, become either from vanity or necessity English knights, Turkish pashas, Austrian barons, etc.; in each case there was a change in the cut of the frock coat and the shape of the top hat).

They examined one another. Lewis saw that beneath their ultra British exteriors, their lounge coats, buttonholes and fancy trousers of City men, he was dealing with Orientals, jealous, passionate, untutored, sons of men who had specialized in exactly the same kind of business for a century, negotiating it with tradition, patience and greed; in fact the exact opposite to himself. Their skin, in contrast to that of their English subordinate staff, was yellow.

Some Samos wine was brought and they got to work. They worked quickly, these Greeks having sacrificed to Anglo-Saxon methods their natural taste for verbiage and quibbling.

The conditions were as follows:—

The Apostolatos Bank were prepared to take over the San Lucido property for the sum of £150,000 sterling. In addition, they would refund the money spent on works concessions, on commissions and adjudications, and the sums advanced for harbour dues. The Greeks were also to take over the material already brought to the spot and would compensate the French Bank for the two waterfalls already harnessed and for the turbines installed, even taking over the dynamos then on their way between Marseilles and Porto Empedocle. In consideration of this, 167,000 shares (out of the 200,000 which Lewis controlled) would pass into their black Palikar paws.

At this moment a boy brought in a message.

The oldest, Pisistrates, his skull as bare as a Greek landscape, pulled out his watch:—

"My cousin Irene has telephoned to say she will be a few minutes late. She only landed from Trieste this morning. It is essential that she should be here for the exchange of signatures."