"Quicker, Gjanni!"

Wild-eyed and bloody-faced from cuts and gashes, a terrified Greek chauffeur pulled up with screaming brakes last week in front of Athens' Evangelismos Hospital. Nimbly out of the bullet-riddled car stepped Eleutherios Venizelos, since 1910 eight times Premier of Greece, bitter foe of present Premier Panayoti Tsaldaris. Startled internes leaped forward, helped 68-year-old M. Venizelos, who was unscathed, to lift from the floor of the car the limp body of his rich wife. Blood oozed from her clothing. After a hasty examination doctors found that four bullets had grazed her lungs and stomach but that she would live. Dead lay a Venizelos bodyguard.

Statesman Venizelos told with frenzied, expressive gestures how it all happened: "The assassins! My wife and I were motoring from Amaroussi to Athens when I saw a green seven-passenger car. So! It allowed my car to pass and then they opened fire. ... I ordered the car to dash full speed toward Athens. The assassins reloaded and kept firing at us for three miles. All the time I kept asking my wife whether she had been hit but she said no.

"When the firing recommenced, I saw blood and knew she had been wounded. We passed three passenger busses but they took no notice of our plight, preferring to get out of range of the shots. During all this time I urged my chauffeur with cries of 'Quicker, Gjanni!' Despite his wounds he drove like mad and got us to the hospital."

Promptly Premier Tsaldaris professed "horror" that his worst enemy had been shot at. "I am sure," said he, "that the most exemplary punishment will be meted out to the culprits."

Not so sure, Eleutherios Venizelos stalked to a balcony of the hospital outside which a cheering crowd had gathered.

"Everyone knows," he said, ''who is responsible."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.