The Seven Sights travel bureau was here – well within reach of the Argiletum where the Tullia lived and the Via Lata home of Caesius. It occupied a one-room lock-up in a dark alley, off a low street where I passed a knife fight being ignored by some small boys having a cockfight near to a dead beggar. I could see why locals would want a getaway. When I stepped across the threshold, I looked nervous and it was not acting. The male occupant ignored me as I glanced along faded wall-maps of Achaea and Egypt, pausing at the sketch of a miserable Trojan horse.

Poor geegee Looks like he's caught the Strangles from his stablemate. Or has he just got woodworm?'

Planning a trip, sir?' The bored salesman retaliated for this bad joke by showing me a set of mainly missing teeth I tried not to stare at the gaping rictus.. You've come to the right place. We'll make everything run smoothly.'

How much would it cost?'

Keener, the salesman approached He was a swarthy, paunchy fraudster,, with a short curly beard and lashings of hair oil He wore a mid-calf tunic in vomit yellow, straining across his belly. How long have you got, and where do you want to go?' I won't say this man was avoiding my gaze, but he was watching an invisible fly that he had dreamed up to the left of my ear.

Greece, maybe. Wife wants to visit her brother I'm scared of the price.'

The agent applied a sympathetic pucker of the lips With practised ease, he hid the fact that fleecing scared voyagers was the sole reason Seven Sights existed. It need not be exorbitant!'

Give me some idea.

Difficult, sir. Once you take off, you're bound to get hooked. I wouldn't want you to be locked into a package if you hankered for a little add-o. suppose you had gasped at the Colossus of Rhodes, then heard of some up-country village that made fabulous cheeses.