Chapter 2

"Of course I do, constable--very good of you, though. Tell them it's all right, just a little party to some of my old friends. And here's a sovereign for you; call again later on if you have anything to say. I'm half asleep and dead tired."

He threw a sovereign out on to the grass, and the police sergeant picked it up sharp enough. I thought there was a kind of hesitation in his manner, but couldn't make much of it. Whatever he thought or wished to say, however, that he kept to himself, and after remarking that the morning would break fine, and that he was much obliged to his lordship, he mounted and rode away. This was the moment Lord Crossborough ceased to work the signal, and, opening the front window, spoke to me direct.

"Stop your engine," he says in a low voice, "and see you don't start it until that fellow is out of the park."

I thought it a strange order, but did as he wished. It was plain to me, as it would have been plain to any one, that he didn't wish the constable to see us take the lower road, and had thought out this trick to work his will. I am a pretty good hand myself at stopping my engine, and being unable to start her, especially when my master or mistress wants to get there in a hurry and doesn't consult my convenience. So I was down in a jiffy when his lordship spoke, and there I stood, pretending to swing the handle and to poke about inside the bonnet until the sergeant had turned the corner of the drive, and it was safe to go ahead again.

The second lodge lay perhaps the third of a mile from the place where we had halted, and we must pass within a hundred yards of the house itself to get to it. I didn't need to be told not to sound my horn as we went by, and we were creeping along nicely when--and this was something which seemed to hit me in the very face--we came upon a man walking under the trees by the lake side, and he--believe me or not as you like--was the very living image of my passenger. "Good God!" says I, "then there are two of 'em," and in a very twinkling the whole nature of this night's business seemed clear to me.

A man just like his lordship, dressed in a tweed suit and with a thick stick in his hand--a man with a bushy black beard, a full round forehead, and the very walk and movement of the man I carried. What was I to make of him, what to think of it? Well, I can hardly tell you that, for, no sooner did we catch sight of the man than my passenger roared to me to go straight on, and, ducking down inside the landaulette, he hid himself as completely from sight as though he had been in the tool-box. For my part, remembering the old adage about "In for a penny in for a pound," I just let the Daimler fly, and we went down the drive and up to the lodge as fast as car ever travelled that particular road or will travel it whatever the circumstances.

"Gate," I roared, "gate, gate!" for the padlock was plain enough and a good stout chain about it. No one answered me for more than five minutes, I suppose, and no sooner did an old man appear, than I saw the stranger with his bushy black beard, his lordship's double, running down the drive for all he was worth, and bawling to the gate-keeper not to open.

A critical moment this, upon my word, and one to bring a man's heart into his mouth--the doddering old man tottering to the gate; the stranger running like a prize-winner; Lord Crossborough himself, doubled up in the bottom of the landaulette, and me sitting there with my foot on the clutch, my hand on the throttle, and my pulse going like one o'clock. Should we do it or should we not? Would it be shut or open? The question answered itself a moment later, when the lodge-keeper, not seeing the other fellow, half opened the iron gates and let my bonnet in between them. The car almost knocked him down as we raced through--I could hear him bawling "Stop!" even above the hum of the engine.

You will not have forgotten that his lordship had told me to go, hell for leather, directly I was through the gate, and right well I obeyed him. The lanes were narrow and twisty; there were morning mists blowing up from the fields; we passed more than one market cart, and nearly lost our wings. But I was out to earn fifteen of the best, and right well I worked for them. Slap bang into Potter's Bar, slap bang out of it and round the bend towards Prickly Hill. I couldn't have driven faster if I had had the whole county police at my heels--and the Lord knows whether I had or not.

This brought us to Barnet in next to no time. We were still doing forty as we entered the town, and would have run out of it at twenty-five after we'd passed the church and the police station--would have, I say, but for one little fact, and that was a fat sergeant of police right in the middle of the road, with his hand held up like a leg of mutton, and a voice that might have been hailing a burglar.

"Here, you," he cried, as I drew up, "who have you got in that car?"

"Why," says I, "who should I have but somebody who has a right to be there? Ask his lordship for himself."

"His lordship--do you mean Lord Crossborough?"

I went to say "Yes," just as he opened the door. You shall judge what I thought of it when a glance behind me showed that the landaulette was empty.

"Now, who are you making game of?" cried the sergeant, throwing the door wide open. "There ain't no lordship in here. What do you mean by saying there was?"

"Well, he was there when I left Five Corners----"

"What! you've come from his house?"

"Straight away," says I, "and no calls. Ask him for yourself."

He could see that I was flabbergasted and telling him the truth. There was the landaulette as empty as a box of chocolates when the parlourmaid has done with them. How Lord Crossborough got out or where he had gone to when he did get out, I knew no more than the dead. One thing was plain--I was as clean sold as any greenhorn at any country fair. And I made no bones about telling the sergeant as much.

"He asked me to drive him down from town to his house at Five Corners. My mistress told me to take him, and I did. I was to have fifteen of the best for the job--and here you see what I get. Oh, you bet I'm happy."

I spoke with some feeling, and you may be sure I felt pretty kind towards Lord Crossborough just then. To be kept up all night and run about like a "yellow breeches," to have my ears crammed with promises and my skin drenched with the mists, to find myself stranded in Barnet at the end. It was more than any man's temper could stand, and that I told the sergeant.

"Well," says I, "next time I meet him, I shall have something pretty strong to say to that same Lord Crossborough, and you may tell him so when you see him."

"See him--I wish we could see him. There's half the county police looking for him this minute. Oh, we'd like to see him all right, and a few others as well. Now, you come down to the station and tell us all about it. There'll be a cup of hot coffee there, and I daresay you won't mind that."

I said that I wouldn't, and went along with him. An inspector at the station took my story down from the time I set off from the Carlton to the moment I quitted Five Corners. What he wanted it for, what Lord Crossborough had done, or what he was going to do, they didn't tell me, nor did I care. But they gave me a jolly good breakfast before they sent me off, and that was about the best thing I had had for twelve long hours. It was eleven o'clock when I got back to town at last. And at three o'clock precisely I saw my mistress again.

You will readily imagine that I was glad of this interview, and had been looking forward to it anxiously from the time I drove the car into the stable until the moment it came off. Miss Dartel had a flat in Bayswater just then; but she didn't send for me there, and it was at the theatre I saw her, in her own dressing-room between the acts of a rehearsal. A clean-shaven gentleman was talking to her when I went in, and for a little while I didn't recognise him; but presently he turned round, and something in his manner and tone of voice caused me to look up sharp enough.

"Why," says I, "his lordship!"

They both laughed at this, and Miss Dartel held up her finger.

"Whatever are you saying, Britten?" cried she. "That's Mr. Jermyn, of the Hicks Theatre."

"Jermyn or French," says I, my temper getting up, "he's the man I drove to Five Corners last night--and fifteen pounds he owes me, neither more nor less."

Well, they both laughed again, and the gentleman, he took a pocket-book from the inside pocket of his coat and laid three five-pound notes on the table. While they were there, Miss Dartel puts her pretty fingers upon them, and begins to speak quite confidentially--

"Britten," says she, "there's fifteen pounds. I daresay it would be fifty if you had a very bad memory, Britten, and couldn't recognise the gentleman you picked up last night. Now, do you think you have such a bad memory as all that?"

I twigged it in a minute, and answered them quite honestly.

"I must know more or less, madame," says I. "Remember my interests are not this gentleman's interests."

"Oh, that's quite fair, Britten, though naturally, we know nothing. But they do say that poor Lord Crossborough has gone quite silly about the rural life. He's been reading Tolstoy's books, and wants to live upon a shilling a day; while poor Lady Crossborough, who knows my cousin, Captain Blackham, very well, she's bored to death, and it will kill her if it goes on. So, you see, she persuaded his lordship to give that funny party at his old house in Portman Square last night, and all the papers are laughing at it to-day, and he'll be chaffed out of his life. I'm sure Lady Crossborough will get her way now, Britten; and when the police hear it was only an eccentricity upon his lordship's part, they won't say anything. Now, do you think that you would be able to swear that the man you drove last night was very like Lord Crossborough? If so, it would be lucky, and I'm sure her ladyship will give you fifty pounds."

I thought about it a minute, rolling up the notes and putting them into my pocket. Of course I could swear as she wanted me to. And fifty of the best. Good Lord, what a temptation!

But I'll tell you straight that I got the fifty, and never swore nothing at all. The party was a job put up by Lady Crossborough. The man I drove was Mr. Jermyn, of the Hicks Theatre, and the world and the newspapers laughed so loud at his lordship, who never convinced anybody he hadn't done it, that he went off to India in a hurry, and never came back for twelve months. Which proves to me that honesty is the best policy, as I shall always declare.

And one thing more--where did Mr. Jermyn get out of my car? Why, just as I slowed up for the corner by the church at Barnet--not a hundred yards from where the constable stopped me. A clever actor--why, yes, he is that.

[1] The Editor has left Mr. Britten to speak for himself in his own manner when that seems characteristic of his employment.

[2] Mr. Britten's spelling of Quat'z-Arts is eccentric.

II

THE SILVER WEDDING

Yes, I shall never forget "Benny," and I shall never forget his beautiful red hair. Gentlemen, I have driven for many ... and the other sort, but "Benny" was neither the one nor the other--not a man, but a tribe ... not a Jew nor yet a Christian, but just something you meet every day and all days--a big, blundering heap of good-nature, which quarrels with one half the world and takes Bass's beer with the other. That was Benjamin Colmacher--"Benny" for short--that was the master I want to tell you about.

I was out of a job at the time, and had picked up an endorsement at Hayward's Heath and left a matter of six pounds there for the justices to get busy with. Time is money, they say, and I have found it to be so ... generally five pounds and costs, though more if you take a quantity. It isn't easy for a good man with a road mechanic's knowledge and five years' experience, racing and otherwise, to place himself nowadays, when any groom can get made a slap-bang "shuffer" for five pounds at a murder-shop, and any old coachman is young enough to put his guv'nor in the ditch. My knowledge and my experience had gone begging for exactly three months when I heard of Benny, and hurried round to his flat off Russell Square, "just the chap for you," they said at the garage. I thought so, too, when I saw him.

It was a fine flat, upon my word, and filled up with enough fal-de-lals to please a duchess from the Gaiety. Benny himself, his red hair combed flat on his head and oiled like a missing commutator, wore a Japanese silk dressing-gown which would have fired a steam car. His breakfast, I observed, consisted of one brandy-and-soda and a bunch of grapes; but the cigar he offered me was as long as a policeman's boot, and the fellow to it stuck out of a mouth as full of fine white teeth as a pod of peas.

"Good-morning," says he, nodding affably enough; and then, "You are Lionel Britten, I suppose?"

"Yes," says I--for no road mechanic who respects himself is going to "sir" such as Benny Colmacher to begin with--"that's my name, though my friends call me Lal for short. You're wanting a driver, I hear."

He sat himself in a great armchair and looked me up and down as a vet looks at a horse.

"I do want a driver," says he, "though how you got to know it, the Lord knows."

"Why," says I, "that's funny, isn't it? We're both wanting the same thing, for I can see you're just the gentleman I would like to take on with."

He smiled at this, and seemed to be thinking about it. Presently he asked a plain question. I answered him as shortly.

"Where did you hear of me?" he asked.

"At Blundell's garage," I answered.

"And I was buying a car?"

"Yes, a fifty-seven Daimler ... that was the talk."

"Could you drive a car like that?"

"Could I--oh, my godfathers----"

"Then you have handled fast cars?"

"I drove with Fournier in the Paris-Bordeaux, was through the Florio for the Fiat people, and have driven the big Delahaye just upon a hundred and three miles an hour. Read my papers, sir ... they'll show you what I've done."

I put a bundle into his hand, and he read a few words of them. When next he looked at me, there was something in his eyes which surprised me considerably. Some would have called it cunning, some curiosity; I didn't know what to make of it.

"Why would you like to drive for me?" he asked presently.

"Because," said I, quickly enough, "it's plain that you're a gentleman anybody would like to drive for."

"But you don't know anything at all about me."

"That's just it, sir. The nicest people are those we don't know anything at all about."

He laughed loudly at this, and helped himself to the brandy-and-soda, but didn't drink over-much of it. I could see that he was much relieved, and he spoke afterwards with more freedom.

"You're one that knows how to hold his tongue?" he suggested. I rejoined that, so far as tongues went, I had mine in a four-inch vice.

"Especially where the ladies are concerned?"

"I'd sooner talk to them than about them, sir."

"That's right, that's right. Don't take the maid when you can get the mistress, eh?"

"Take 'em both for choice, that's my motto."

"You're not married, Britten?"

"No such misfortune has overtaken me, sir."

"Ha!"--here he leered just like an actor at the Vic--"and you don't mind driving at night?"

"I much prefer it, sir."

He leered again, and seemed mightily pleased. A few more questions put and answered found me with that job right enough ... and a right good job, too, as things are nowadays. I was to have four pounds a week and liveries. Such a mug as "Benny" Colmacher would not be the man to ask about tyres and petrol, and if he did, I knew how to fill up his tanks for him. Be sure I went away on my top speed and ate a better lunch than had come my way for six months or more. Who the man was, or what he was, I didn't care a dump. I had got the job, and to-morrow I would get up in the driver's seat of a car again. You can't wonder I was pleased.

I slept well that night, and was round at Benny's early on the following morning. If I had been surprised at my good luck yesterday, surprise was no word for what I felt when the valet opened the door to me and told me that Mr. Colmacher was in the country and wouldn't be back for a month. Not a word had been said about this, mind you--not a hint at it; and yet the stiff and starched gentleman could tell me the news just as coolly as though he had said, "My master has gone across the street to see a friend." When I asked him if there was no message for me, he answered simply, "None."

"He didn't give no instructions about the car?"

"The car is at the yard being repaired."

"But I was engaged to drive her----"

"You will drive Mr. Colmacher when he returns."

"And my wages----?"

"Oh, those will be paid. This is a place where they know what is due to us."

"And I am to do nothing meanwhile?"

"If you have nothing to do, by all means."

It was an odd thing to hear, to be sure, and you can well understand my hesitation as I stood there on the landing and watched that stiff and starched valet, who might have just come out of a tailor's shop. Gentlemen are not usually reserved between themselves, but this fellow beat me altogether, and I liked him but little. Such a "don't-touch-me-or-I-shall-vanish" manner you don't come across often even in Park Lane, and I soon saw that whatever else happened, Joseph, the valet, as they called him, and Lal Britten, the "shuffer," were never going to the North Pole together.

"If it's doing nothing," said I at last, "Mr. Colmacher won't have cause to complain of his driver. Am I to call again, or will he send for me?"

"He will send for you, unless you like to see Mr. Walter in the meantime?"

I looked up at this. There had been no "Mr. Walter" in the business before.

"Mr. Walter--and who may Mr. Walter be?"

"He is Mr. Colmacher's son."

"Then I will see him just as soon as you like."

He nodded his head and invited me in. Presently I found myself in a fine bedroom on the far side of the flat, and what was my astonishment to discover Mr. Walter himself in bed with a big cut across his forehead and his right arm in a sling. He was a lean, pale youth, but with as cadaverous a face as I have ever looked upon; and when he spoke his voice appeared to come from the back of his head.

"You are the new driver my father has engaged?"

"Yes, sir, I am the same."

"I hope you understand powerful cars. Did my father tell you that ours is a steam car?"

"He talked about a fifty-seven Daimler, sir."

"But you have had experience with steam cars----"

"How did you know that, sir?"

He smiled softly.

"We have made inquiries--naturally, we should do so."

"Then you have not been misinformed. I drove a thirty-horse White three months last year."

"Ah, the same car that we drive. Unfortunately, I cannot help my father just now, for I have met with an accident--in the hunting field."

I jibbed at this. Motor-men don't know much about the hunting field, as a rule, but I wasn't such a ninny that I supposed men hunted in July.

"Hunting, did you say, sir?"

"That is, trying a horse for the hunting season. Well, you may go now. Leave your address with Joseph. My father will send for you when he returns, and meanwhile you are at liberty."

I thanked him and went off. Oddly enough, this fellow pleased me no more than the valet. His smile was ugly, his scowl uglier still--especially when I made that remark about the hunting field. "Better have held your tongue, Lal, my boy," said I to myself; and resolving to hold it for the future, I went to my own diggings and heard no more of the Colmachers, father or son, for exactly twenty-one days. The morning of the twenty-second found me at the flat again. "Benny" Colmacher had returned, and remembered that he had paid me three weeks' wages.

Now this was the middle of the month of August, and "Benny" certainly was dressed for country wear. A dot-and-go-one suit of dittoes went for best, so to speak, with his curly red hair, and got the better of it by a long way. He had a white rose in his button-hole, and his manner was as smooth as Vacuum B from a nice clean can. He had just breakfasted off his usual brandy-and-soda and dry toast when I came in; and the big cigar did sentry-go across his mouth all the time he talked to me.

"Come in, come in, Britten," he cried pompously, when I appeared. "You like your place, I hope--you don't find the work too hard?"

"That's so--sir--a very nice sort of place this for a delicate young man like myself."

"Ah, but we are going to be a little busier. Has Mr. Walter shown you the car?"

"No, sir, not yet. I hear she is a White steamer, though."

"Yes, yes; I like steam cars; they don't shake me up. When a man weighs fifteen stun, he doesn't like to be shaken up, Britten--not good for his digestion, eh? Well, you go down to the Bedford Mews, No. 23B, and tell me if you can get the thing going by ten o'clock to-morrow--as far as Watford, Britten. That's the place, Watford. I've something on down there--something very important. Upon my soul, I don't know why I shouldn't tell you. It's about a lady, Britten--ha, ha!--about a lady."

Well, he grinned all over his face just like the laughing gorilla at the Zoo, and went on grinning for a matter of two minutes or more. Such a laugh caught you whether you would or no; and while I didn't care two-pence about his business, and less about the lady, yet here I was laughing as loudly as he, and seemingly just as pleased.

"Is it a young lady?" I ventured to ask presently. But he stopped laughing at that, and looked mighty serious.

"You mustn't question me, my lad," he said, a bit proudly. "I like my servants to be in my confidence, but they must not beg it. We are going down to Watford--that is enough for you. Get the car ready as soon as possible, and let me know at once if there is anything the matter with her."

I promised to do so, and went round to the mews immediately. "Benny" seemed to me just a good-natured lovesick old fool, who had got hold of some new girl in the country and was going off to spoon her. The car I found to be one of the latest forty White's in tip-top trim. She steamed at once, and when I had put a new heater in, there was nothing more to be done to her, except to wash her down, a thing no self-respecting mechanic will ever do if he can get another to take the job on for him. So I hired a loafer who was hanging about the mews, and set him to the work while I read the papers and smoked a cigarette.

He was a playful little cuss to be sure, one of those "ne'er-grow-ups" you meet about stables, and ready enough to gossip when I gave him the chance.

"He's a wonder, is Colmacher," he remarked as he splashed and hissed about the wheels. "Takes his car out half a dozen times in as many hours, and then never rides in her for three months. You would be engaged in place of Mr. Walter, I suppose. They say he's gone to America, though I don't rightly know whether that's true or not."

I answered him without looking up from my paper.

"Who says he's in America?"

"Why, the servants say it. Ellen the housemaid and me--but that ain't for the newspapers. So Mr. Walter's home, is he? Well, he do walk about, to be sure, and him not left for New York ten days ago."

"You seem to be angry about it, my boy."