Part 6

"That's young Josiah speaking," said Templeton. "We had better wait and explain, Tom."

"All right, the cart's coming on again."

They reached the farmyard gate and stood waiting. The lamps of the vehicle fell upon their faces, and both started when a lady's voice exclaimed:

"Robert!"

"Aunt Caroline!" said Templeton in an undertone to Eves.

"And Trenchard!" cried Eves. "What luck!"

A ramshackle fly pulled up at the gate, and Mr. Trenchard assisted Miss Templeton to alight.

"What has happened?" asked the lady. "We heard shots, and a little boy came running down the hill crying that his father was killed. It is Mr. Noakes, Mr. Trenchard says."

"Quite a mistake, Aunt," said Templeton. "I _am_ glad to see you. Come in; I'll explain. This is my friend Eves."

"Yes, yes; but the boy was greatly agitated. Run after him, Robert, and tell him that his father is _not_ killed."

"My hat!" muttered Eves, with a grimace, as Templeton sprinted down the hill.

"What was it, Mr. Eves? I am greatly concerned that the little fellow should have had such a terrible shock."

"Well, Miss Templeton, I really--you see--oh, yes, it was Bob's tar entanglement, you know. But Mr. Trenchard has told you about old Noakes, I expect."

"Mr. Trenchard has told me things about Mr. Noakes that I cannot credit. But I do not understand--a tar entanglement, you said?"

"Yes, an invention of Bob's, you know; a splendid thing. But there's such a lot to tell: won't you go into the house? Then Bob and I can tell you between us."

"Very well. Give the driver ten shillings for his fare."

"I've only four and elevenpence half-penny," said Eves, with a smile.

"Dear me! Then I must ask the driver to come to the house. My notes are in my dressing-case. One cannot be too careful."

By the time Miss Templeton had found her money and paid the driver Templeton was back.

"It's all right, Aunt. The boy is going home with his father."

Eves grinned.

"Oh!" said Miss Templeton. "Now, as Robert is out of breath, perhaps you will be good enough, Mr. Eves, to run down and tell Mr. Noakes that I desire to see him here, without fail, at ten o'clock to-morrow morning."

Eves threw a melancholy look at Templeton as he departed.

Mrs. Trenchard had received her visitor with transports of delight. It came out that Mr. Trenchard, having failed in his errand in London, had encountered Miss Templeton on his way back at the junction a few miles away, and, completing the journey with her, had explained the circumstances that had led to his absence from home. The lady heard his story with mingled incredulity and indignation. On its repetition by Mrs. Trenchard she exclaimed:

"I am amazed and horrified, Martha. Do you know that when I was last here, ten years ago, that man Noakes came to me and borrowed a considerable sum of money for the extension of his business. He seemed a civil and obliging person, and I was glad to lend to a respectable tradesman--of course, at a reasonable rate of interest. He has paid me the interest regularly, but always regretted that circumstances did not permit of his repaying the loan. It is shocking to find that he has actually used that money--my money--to involve your dear husband in difficulties. Such depravity! I shall deal very sternly with Mr. Noakes to-morrow, I assure you."

"Ah! To think of it, now," said Mrs. Trenchard. "And that dreadful man as he put in here--well, I do owe your nephew something, ma'am, for he and his friend Mr. Eves blowed him out with the most terrible smell that ever was, and no harm to a soul. Mr. Bob's inventions are that wonderful!"

"Really, Robert," said Miss Templeton, "I hope you have not been troubling Mrs. Trenchard with your inventions. It was clearly understood that you came here to work on the land."

"And so he hev, ma'am," put in Trenchard. "Him and his friend hev worked on the land, and done inventions as well, and one of 'em saved my root crops, it did. I'm not the man to say anything against inventions."

"I am glad to hear you have invented something useful, Robert. Was that tar entanglement that your friend spoke of also an invention of yours?"

"Well, yes, Aunt, it was," said Templeton, somewhat embarrassed. "It was an idea for worrying the Germans, you know. But, of course--here's Tom, he'll explain better than I can."

"Oh, I say!" protested Eves, who had just come in. Then he began to laugh. "My word! He did look funny--tar from head to foot. You see, Miss Templeton, we got rid of that ruffian Smail once by means of stinks--I mean, sulphuretted hydrogen, a gas very useful in chemistry. Then, suspecting he'd come back, it occurred to me that we might teach him a lesson by putting into practice Bob's idea of a tar entanglement. It really worked out splendidly. Noakes--he's a bad egg----"

"A what?" asked the lady.

"A bad man, ma'am. He and Smail came up, and we let off the guns just to encourage 'em, and they fell slap on their faces in the lane over there, and I'm sure they won't get the tar off for a month."

"You gave Mr. Noakes my message?"

"Yes."

"And he said he would come, no doubt."

"I'm sorry to say, ma'am, he swore like a trooper. But in the circumstances I dare say you would have done the same--not you, of course. I didn't mean that; I mean any one--that is, any man."

"But no gentleman, Mr. Eves."

"Certainly--that is, of course not; but then no gentleman would ever be Noakes."

Noakes did not appear next morning. Miss Templeton sent one of the maids to fetch him. She came back and reported that Mr. Noakes had been suddenly called away. He never reappeared in Polstead. The story of the tarring was told by Smail, who felt aggrieved, at the village inn that night, and Noakes saw next morning that his position in the village was ruined. He gave instructions for the sale of his business, and Miss Templeton generously cancelled his debt to her in return for his release of Mr. Trenchard.

Miss Templeton gave her lecture on food economy, the last of her tour, and the holidays being over, returned with her nephew and Tom Eves to London.

"A ripping holiday, old man," said Eves as the friends parted. "Lay in a stock of bright ideas for next year."

*THE CLIPPER OF THE ROAD*

*I*

"How long will you be, Bob?"

"Can't say: perhaps twenty minutes. You needn't shout."

"Jolly sensitive, ain't you? What about my tender spots? After I've taken the trouble to write to your Aunt Caroline for your address, and got it, with yards and yards of advice to a young man, and then sacrificed a day of my leave to hunt you up, you won't spare a jiff to talk to a fellow, and when I ask you a civil question, tell me not to shout, with the wind roaring like a barrage, and that wretched machine squeaking like----"

"Oh, come now, Tom, that's not fair!" said Templeton. "I told you I must finish grinding these valves, then I'm free. And as for talking, I can hear you quite well; that's all that matters, isn't it?"

"Been cultivating repartee with your C.O., I suppose," remarked Eves. "Or else your naturally amiable disposition has broken down under the tender mercies of the Boche. Aunt Caroline warned me, I admit: said you had undergone great mental strain, underlined, and were feverishly anxious to repair your wasted life, underlined twice. What did the Boche do to you, Bobby, old man?"

"Tell you by and by: must finish this job."

Eves sighed with resignation, and looked round for a seat. There was nothing available except a bench along the wall, littered with tools and odds and ends of machinery. Being also plentifully besmeared with black grease, it looked far from inviting, especially as Eves was wearing a new pair of slacks; but he cleared a space large enough to afford sitting room, and taking the outer sheets of a newspaper that lay handy, spread them on the board, seated himself thereon, and opened the inner sheet to kill time until Templeton should have finished his job.

Tom Eves, whose cap bore the badge of a certain regiment of Light Infantry, was in the final stage of convalescence from wounds received in action before Amiens. While in hospital he had learnt that Templeton, taken a prisoner in the early days of the Germans' spring offensive, was among the first batch of officers repatriated under the terms of the armistice, and on applying to Miss Templeton for her nephew's address, was astonished and amused to hear that he was hard at work in a little Dorset town within easy reach.

"Just like old Bob!" he said to himself. "Two months' leave! And instead of playing the giddy goat, as any sensible fellow would do in his place, he feels he must make up for lost time and swot away at his old inventions. With a good balance at Cox's, too. Aunt Caroline says she quite approves of his spending his money in preparation for his career--just the sort of thing she would say! Well, I'll look him up, the old juggins, first leave I have!"

Templeton, in fact, taking his usual serious view of things in general and his inventions in particular, had been unable to reconcile himself to the prospect of two months' idleness, after having kicked his heels for seven months in a prisoners' camp, months during which his brain had teemed with "notions." There was the two-way motor; the turbine motor; an automatic fire extinguisher; a sound increaser; a combined tin-opener and fountain pen, with corkscrew attachment; a road yacht; a push and pull door-handle. Aunt Caroline was so much impressed with the potential public utility of the bright ideas he expounded to her, that she placed L25 to his credit with Cox's, and warmly commended him when he told her that he had found a field for his experiments in the little town of Pudlington. "A _delightful_ spot!" she said, in her emphatic way. "A quaint old town, quite _charming_! And _such_ invigorating air!" The manager of the British Motor Garage, just outside the town aforesaid, had agreed to give Templeton facilities for experimenting in exchange for his services--an arrangement that suited with his own and his aunt's ideas of economy. Wilkins, the manager, was short-handed: indeed Templeton found himself more often than not in sole charge of the garage, for Wilkins was frequently absent, driving his only serviceable car for the officers of the camp a few miles away. Thus, when Eves made his appearance on this bright, windy December morning, he found his old friend, encased in the blue overalls of a mechanic, alone in the repairing shop, and engrossed in the job he had in hand.

For a few minutes Eves read the newspaper, without addressing any further remark to Templeton.

"I say, Bob!" he exclaimed at last, "here's a chance for you.... All right--I won't shout, but listen! 'G.R.--Notice. Tenders for the purchase of waste from the Upper Edgecombe Camp should reach the Officer Commanding not later than noon on Thursday, December 12.' Fortunes have been made out of waste. Perhaps you have tendered already: I see the paper's nearly a week old."

"I haven't," replied Templeton, curtly.

"Well, you're not a rag and bone merchant, it's true, but----"

"Considering that to-day's the 12th, and it's just on eleven now, it's too late to tender, even if I wanted to."

"Which you don't! _My_ bright ideas are always nipped in the bud. I say, Bob, was there anything in that story we heard in our mess at Corbie--that idea of yours, you know?"

"Which one?" asked Templeton, pausing for a moment in his task. He was always interested in ideas.

"Well, they said you were showing off one of your inventions to a brass hat--some sort of a door-handle, I think it was--and he got fixed up in a dug-out, and you couldn't release him for three hours or so, and he got no lunch. Everybody said it was a splendid rag."

"Idiots!"

"But wasn't it true? The story ran through the front line trenches for thirty miles or so, and bucked the men up no end."

"It wasn't a rag at all. The fact is, the staff-major was too impatient. He wouldn't wait till I'd finished explaining the idea, and the result was what you might have expected. It was his own fault--the idea's all right."

"What about your gas machine, then?"

"Well, what about it?" The inventor was roused: he stood facing Eves, with the air of a cat whose fur has been rubbed the wrong way.

"The story that came to us was that you nearly caused a vacancy in the command of your battalion. Everybody said you were taking a short cut to getting your second pip."

"Asses!" growled Templeton. "The explanation simply is that a screw was a trifle loose----"

"Now nobody said that, Bob, I assure you. Everybody said you were an awfully clever chap, only----"

"I tell you a screw was a bit loose, owing to the lack of suitable appliances, and the gas came out a second or two before it ought. And the C.O. needn't have put his nose quite so close to the machine: I didn't ask him to!"

"I suppose the adjutant was too inquisitive, then. Not that time; I mean when you were trying that self-adjusting bomb of yours. The Brigade Bombing Officer was full of it, and the mess were quite jealous, because we never had such rags on our sector."

"Rags!" snorted Templeton in disgust. "I hate the word! You know perfectly well that I never rag. That self-adjusting bomb was a very serious matter."

"Quite so. It's only lucky it wasn't more serious, isn't it? We were told it cost your adjutant his left eyebrow and half a promising moustache."

"Grossly exaggerated!" Templeton exclaimed.

"As Mark Twain said when he read the report of his own death! But what's this, Bob?"

A long green motor-car was drawing up slowly and noisily in front of the garage, emitting a cloud of smoke. From the seat beside the chauffeur sprang a large man, wearing a heavily furred coat. He came round the car and called out, before he reached the open door of the repairing shop:

"Here, I say there! Can you do anythink for this car? My fool of a shover can't find out what's wrong, and we'll crock up altogether if we go on like this. The engine's knocking like anythink."

By this time he had reached the doorway, and he stood there facing Templeton, after shooting one brief glance at Eves on the bench. Templeton, looking a little more solemn even than usual--or perhaps his expression was partly due to the black smears on his face--had not time to reply before Eves put in a word.

"Can yer do anythink for the gentleman?" he said.

"P'raps you've got another car handy?" said the stranger.

"No, there's none in just now," replied Templeton.

"Can't you find one? Look here, young feller, I'll make it worth yer while. I've got to call on the mayor and be at the camp inside of an hour. What yer say?"

"There's not another car in the place. They're all at the camp."

"Well, then, you got to do somethink, and look alive!"

"Don't keep the gentleman waiting!" said Eves, already enjoying himself. The turn things had taken seemed to carry prospects of what he called a "splendid rag."

Templeton asked the chauffeur to step out, and taking his place, started the car, listening intently.

"There! Didn't I tell yer?" said the owner, trotting alongside. "What's wrong, eh?"

Templeton pulled up within a few yards, and backed.

"Oil," he said, laconically. "Your big ends are going."

"Big ends! What the jooce! Here, you Thomson, why didn't you give the engine no oil?"

"'Cos there warn't none," said the chauffeur, sulkily. "I told yer----"

"None of yer lip, now! Well, if it's only oil--Here, mister, oil up, and look sharp about it! None of yer country dawdling: get a move on!"

Templeton looked over the side of the car, and said quietly, in his mild considered way:

"I should just like to remark that unless you can moderate your impatience, or curb your somewhat insolent expression of it, you may take yourself and your car elsewhere."

"Yes," cut in Eves, who had come out into the road. "If I were you, young feller, I'd jolly well chuck him into the horse-pond."

The stranger looked from one to the other, his astonishment at Templeton's address yielding to wrath.

"Who are you a-talking to?" he cried, making an aggressive move towards Eves.

"Not to you, my dear sir, not to you. I was merely telling this young feller what I should do if I were he, and you may thank your lucky stars I'm not."

The man eyed the speaker truculently, as if meditating chastisement; but Eves, in spite of the blue band on his arm, looked so well knit, so vigorous, that valour subsided into discretion. Muttering something about "young pups in khaki," the stranger turned towards the car, saw that Templeton had begun lubricating, and strolled across the yard towards a strange vehicle standing outside the garage.

"Here, Thomson, come and look at this," he called.

For a few minutes the two men walked round the vehicle, discussing its appearance, laughing as one pointed out this or that feature to the other.

"It ain't a car," said the chauffeur.

"More like a boat," said his employer. "This here's a mast, ain't it? P'raps it's one of them hydroplanes."

"They're the same as airyplanes without the wheels. My idea it's an agricultural implement: now-a-days they've all sorts of rum contraptions in country parts."

They examined the vehicle, perfunctorily and without knowledge, until Templeton called out that the oiling was finished.

"Quite time too," said the stranger, looking at his watch. "She'll go all right?" he asked, as he rejoined Templeton in the road.

"Naturally I can't give any guarantee," replied Templeton, "but in all probability the engine will last out a few hours--until you have time to give it a thorough overhauling. If I may make a suggestion, let it cool down and run slowly, or the big ends will go altogether."

"H'm! S'pose you know! How much?"

"Oh! say half-a-crown."

"Here y'are. Get in, Thomson." He shoved the chauffeur into the car. "Straight up!" he cried.

The car rattled away, still smoking, but less vigorously than before.

"Charming man!" said Eves, as the two returned to the shop. "Come across many like him, Bobby?"

"Oh! one meets all sorts. But I really think, Tom, I should be in danger of losing my temper if everybody who stopped here for repairs were quite so--so----"

"Exactly. Well, old sport, do hurry up with those valves. I had an early breakfast, and no squish--simply rotten, breakfast without squish. So hurry up, and we'll go and swop some coupons."

*II*

Templeton placidly resumed his job; Eves remounted the bench and again took up the newspaper. After a minute or two he exclaimed:

"I say, what do you think of this? 'Our worthy mayor, Alderman Noakes'----"

"Who?"

"Alderman Noakes. Recalls sweet memories, eh, old sport? That summer idyll in our early youth--law! what ages ago it seems! 'But ah! how it was sweet!' That's Browning, old man; not my own, I assure you. I seem to see, down the dim vista of departed years, the figure of our Noakes, smothered in half-consumed carbon, otherwise soot; and again the same Noakes, sprawling in a purling stream; and yet again the same Noakes, affectionately embracing his mother earth--various phases of Noakes concurrent with the flow of ideas in the cerebellum of----"

"Oh, dry up, Tom! You really are an awful ass sometimes."

"Who are you a-talking to, young feller? I was just pointing out that the name Noakes, on the principle of the association of ideas--but let's see what it says. 'Our worthy mayor, Alderman Noakes, accompanied by the bailiff and reeves, will on December 21, for the four hundred and fifty-second time in the history of this ancient borough, perform the quaint ceremony of anointing the British Stone.' The worthy mayor must be a hoary old Methuselah if he's performed the ceremony four hundred and fifty-one times: he might be the great-grandfather ten times removed of that old rascal we knew. And if he's even so distantly related as that, he's probably a rascal too, and deserves to be kept waiting."

"Waiting? What for?"

"Why, for that model of urbanity and fur collar who wanted you to do somethink to this 'ere car and look alive, young feller. He said he was going to call on the mayor, you remember."

"He's part of the show, perhaps. I wonder what that ceremony is. What a ramshackle old car that was! But all existing cars will be scrapped when I get my two-way motor going."

"That's the latest, is it?"

"Yes: I've great hopes of it. I've partly drawn up the specification--I'm going to take out a patent--but I can't finish it until I get a nozzle that's being specially manufactured to my order."

"Rum thing, Bob, that most of your thingummy-bobs seldom do get finished: what? But we've had some splendid rags out of them all the same."

"Now that's not fair," cried Templeton, swinging round, and speaking with a heat pardonable in an earnest inventor. "My road yacht is complete; it's out there in the yard at this very moment."

"That thing old Rabbit-skin was poking his nose into! What's the idea?"

"Well, it's not exactly new; it's an adaptation of the sand yacht. With petrol scarce, I asked myself, why waste petrol when the wind can be harnessed for nothing an hour?"

"Jolly patriotic, and sporting too, old son. How's it work?"

"Well, you see, it's a light chassis and a skeleton body with a mainsail, rigged sloop fashion, which gives me several miles an hour in a light wind; it's good for twelve or fourteen in a fair breeze on a good road on the flat. What it can do in the kind of wind we have to-day I don't know."

"But hang it all, what if you're becalmed? And what about hills, and bridges, and all that?"

"You've spotted my main difficulty--to obtain the maximum sail area consistent with the stability of the craft and the limitations of road navigation. Of course I've got an auxiliary motor for use in calms and uphill; but bridges aren't such a nuisance as the hedges; they constrict the roads confoundedly. I have to stick to the highway ... I say, old chap, just answer that telephone call for me, will you? Another five minutes will see me through."

Eves walked across to the telephone box in the corner. The following conversation ensued.

"Hullo!"

"Are you Mr. Wilkins?"

"Am I Wilkins, Bob?" (in a whisper).

"Say you're the British Motor Garage," said Templeton. "Wilkins is out."

"Are you there? Righto! We're the British Motor Garage."

"Well, I say, sorry to trouble you, but Noakes's 'phone is out of order. Tell him he can cut his tender thirty per cent.: no other offers."

"Hold on a jiff." Eves moved from the mouthpiece and turned towards Templeton. "Noakes again, Bob. Our worthy mayor. You're to give him a message, something about cutting a tender."

"Tell him I know nothing about Noakes."

"Righto! Leave it to me.... Hullo! A tender cut, you said?"

"Can't you hear? I said, tell Noakes he can cut his tender by thirty per cent."

"All right; I've got it now. But who's Noakes, and what have we to do with him?"

"Aren't you Mr. Wilkins?"

"Wilkins is out. I'm speaking from his shop."

"Oh, hang!"

"He's cut off, Bob," said Eves, ruefully, hanging up the receiver. "I wanted to ask him about Methuselah. You've done at last?"

"Yes, thank goodness!"

"Well, clean yourself, and come along. Hullo! Here's another visitor."

A tall, lean, loosely-built man was hurriedly crossing the yard towards the shop door.

"Good morning to you," he said, somewhat breathlessly. "I'm just off the train from London, and there's never a bit of a car, and what'll I do at all, when I've to be at the Upper Edgecombe camp before twelve? I'll be glad now if so be you can tend me the loan of a car."

"You're the second man within ten minutes or so who has wanted to get to the camp in a hurry," said Templeton.