Ripping Time by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

He shifted the unconcious girl, cradled her in both arms, now, as though he were merely assisting a young lady in distress, and stared down at her pallid features. She was a tiny little thing, delicate of stature. Her face was exquisite and her rich black hair and olive cast of skin bespoke Mediterranean heritage. She’d gabbled out her plea for help in English, but the words spoken in shock—almost, he frowned, in a trance—had been the purest Greek he’d ever heard. But not modern Greek. Ancient Greek, the language of Aristotle and Aristophanes . . . yet with a distinctive dialectic difference he couldn’t quite pin down.

He’d studied a great deal, since his charity school days, educated as a scholarship pupil at a school where the other boys had tormented him endlessly. He’d learned everything he could lay hands on, had drunk in languages and history the way East End whores downed gin and rum, had discovered a carton of books in the back of the school’s dingy, mouldering library, books donated by a wealthy and eccentric patroness who had dabbled in the occult. John Lachley’s knowledge of ancient languages and occult practices had grown steadily over the years, earning him a hard-earned reputation as a renowned SoHo scholar of antiquities and magical practices. Lachley could read three major ancient dialects of Greek, alone, and knew several other ancient languages, including Aramaic.

But he couldn’t quite place the source of this girl’s phrasing and inflections.

Her half-choked words spilled through his memory again and again, brilliant as an iron welder’s torch. Who was this insignificant slip of a girl? As he peered at her face, stepping back out into Drury Lane to find a gaslight by which to study her, he realized she couldn’t be more than twenty years of age, if that. Where had she learned to speak ancient Greek? Ladies were not routinely taught such things, particularly in the Mediterranean countries. And where in the names of the unholy ancient gods which Lachley worshiped had she acquired the clairvoyant talent he’d witnessed outside the Opera House? A talent of that magnitude would cause shockwaves through the circles in which Lachley travelled.