"Do you know who you've been trotting about the country?" he asked, as he stepped down. I replied that I did not, but that I believed the lady to be a relative of Lord Badington's. Then he was fair angry.

"Lord Badington be d——d," he said, speaking through his nose as he always did, "her dabe's Dolly Sid John, and she's the sabe who did us id de winter. I wonder you were such a precious fool as not to recognise her. Do you mean to dell me you didn't dow her?"

"What!" I cried, opening my eyes wide, "she Dolly St. John! Well, you do surprise me; and she gone to Dover this very afternoon—leastwise, if it isn't to Dover, it's to Folkestone—but Biggs would tell us. Are you quite sure about it, sir?"

He swore he was sure, and went on to tell me that if I hadn't been the greatest chump in Europe I would have known it from the start.

"Where are your eyes?" he kept asking me; "do you mean to say you can drive a woman for ted days in London and not dow her again three months afterwards? A fine sort of chap you are. You deserve a statue in the Fools' Museum, upod my word you do. Now take me to the car, and let's see what's the matter. I'll have more to say to you whed we're in London, you mark that, my man."

I didn't give him any cheek, much as I would have liked to. My game was to protect Miss Dolly as far as I was able, and to hold my tongue for her sake.

Clearly her position was perilous. If this dun of a Jew went up to the house, and told them her name was not More, but St. John, the fat would be in the fire with a vengeance, and her chance of marrying John Sarand about equal to mine of mating with the crowned heads of Europe. What to do I knew no more than the dead. I had no messenger to send up to the house; I dare not leave Moss to get talking to the people of the inn; and there I was, helping him to fit and time the new magneto, and just feeling I'd pay ten pounds for the privilege of knocking him down with his own spanner.

We finished the job in about half an hour, and the Renault started up at once. Moss hadn't spoken of Miss Dolly while we were at work; but directly the engine started he remembered his business, and turned on me like a fury.

"Whed did you say she started off?" he asked.

"About two this afternoon, I think."

"In whose car?"

"Why, his lordship's, of course."

"She seems pretty thick with the dobility. Perhaps I'd better give her a chadce of paying?"

I smiled.

"There's boats to France at Dover," said I. "What if she's going over by the night mail?"

He looked at me most shrewdly.

"I can't make you out, Britten," says he; "either you are the greatest fool or the greatest rogue id my ebployment. Subtimes you seeb clever enough, too. Suppose we rud the car over to Dover and see what's doing there."

"Yes," said I, "and you can telephone to the pier at Folkestone to have her stopped if she's sailing from there."

He snapped his fingers and smiled all over his face.

"That's it!" he cried. "If she's leaving the coudtry I'll arrest her. I wish you'd been half as sharp when you picked her up id London."

"It's these motor veils," said I. "You can't expect a man to see through three thicknesses of shuffon—now can you, Mr. Moss?"

It was a lucky shot, and, upon my word, I really do believe that I began to wheedle him, Whether I did, or whether I did not, we had the car upon the road in ten minutes, and were off for Dover before a quarter of an hour had passed. Previous to that I had slipped into the inn on the pretence of leaving my coat, and had left a letter for Miss Dolly to be taken up by Biggs, when he came there to meet me for our evening walk. "Moss is here," I wrote, "look out for yourself."

I laugh now when I think of that journey to Dover, and old Shekels Moss sitting like a hawk on the seat beside me. What lies I had to tell him—what starts I gave him, when I pointed out that she might have gone by the afternoon boat, or perhaps motored right on to Southampton. My own idea was to stop the night at Dover, whatever happened, and no sooner had we drawn up at the "Lord Warden," than I had a penknife into the off front tyre, and turned my back when the wind fizzed out. This stopped the run to Folkestone straight away, and, by the time I'd done the job, Moss said he thought he would telephone the police, as I suggested, describing Miss Dolly, but saying nothing about his lordship.

"He might do pusiness with us, Britten," he remarked. "I won't have his dabe in it—but I'll tell him about her directly I get the chadce, and she won't be long in his house, dow will she?"

"Perhaps not," said I; "but if she marries his lordship's son, the boot will be on the other leg. You'd better think of that, Mr. Moss."

"What I want is my modey," he rejoined. "If she don't pay, she goes to prison—I dow too much about the peerage to be stuffed with promises. Either the modey or the writ. I'll feed here, Britten, and go back to Sadwich, if she's not on the boats. Perhaps we were a couple of fools to come at all."

I said nothing, but was pretty sure that one fool had come along in the car, anyway. My business was to keep Moss at Dover as long as might be, and in that I succeeded well enough. Nothing could save Miss Dolly if he went blundering up to Lord Badington's house with his story of what she'd done in London, and how fond certain West End tradesmen had become of her. Given time enough, I believed the pretty little lady would wheedle his lordship to consent to her marriage with Mr. Sarand. But time she must have, and if she did not get it, well, then, time of another kind might await her. It would have broken my heart to see misfortune overtake pretty Dolly St. John, and I swore that it should not, if any wit of mine could prevent it.

Moss took about an hour and a half over his dinner, and when he came out he was picking his teeth with a great steel prong, and looking as pleased as though he had done the hotel waiters out of fourpence. I saw that he had come to some resolution, and that it was a satisfactory one. There was a twinkle in his little eyes you could not mistake, and he shook his head while he talked to me, just as though I were buying old clothes of him at twice their value.

"Britten," he asked, "are you all ready?"

"Quite ready, sir," said I—for I'd just that minute shoved my knife into another tyre. "Are you going back to Sandwich?"

"I'm going to Lord Badington's," says he, with a roar of laughter, "why not? I'm going to ask for Miss Phyllis More, and say she's an ode fred of the family. Ha, ha! what do you think of that, Britten? Will I get the modey or won't I? Well, we'll see, my boy—so start her up, and be quick about it."

I said "Yes, sir," and went round to the front of the car. My cry of astonishment when I saw the burst tyre would have done credit to Mr. Henry Irving himself. Perhaps I said some things I shouldn't have said—Moss did, anyway, and he raved so loud that the ostler had to tell him his wife and children were upstairs.

"Another tyre gone—what do I pay you wages for? Adser me that! Who the —— is going to pay the bill? Don't you see I must get to Sadwich to-night? A pretty sort of a dam fool you must be. Now you get that car going in twedy minutes, or I'll leave you in the street—so help me heaven I will——" And so on and so on, until I could have dropped for laughing where I stood.

It was touching to hear him, upon my word it was; but I held my tongue for Miss Dolly's sake, and went to work quietly to take off the cover and examine the tube for the cut I didn't mean to find. When I told him presently that this was the last tube we had, and he'd better give me two pound eight to go and buy a new one, I thought his language would blow the ships out of the harbour; but he never gave me the money, and then I knew that he meant to stay at Dover all night, and that Miss Dolly had until the morning, anyway. "And by that time," said I to myself, "she'll be off to London if she's clever enough, and perhaps find Mr. Sarand at the station to meet her."

I slept upon this—for you will understand that Moss had no real intention of going on that night, after he heard about the tubes—and at nine o'clock next morning I had my car ready, and drove her round to the "Lord Warden." The run to Sandwich is not over-exciting in an ordinary way, but I found it quite lively enough on that particular occasion, when there were all sorts of doubts and fears in my head about Miss Dolly, and the sure and certain knowledge that I should get the sack whatever happened. Indeed, I might properly have been more anxious about myself than the lady, for I never doubted that she would have made a bolt for London by the time we arrived, and there was no more disappointed man in Thanet when, on reaching the inn, Biggs told me that she was still at the house. An inquiry whether he had delivered my letter met with the amazing response that they had given him no letter, and when I rushed into the house to ask what had become of it, there it was, on the mantelshelf of the bar-parlour, just where I had left it. Never did a man meet with a worse blow. I knew then that Miss Dolly was done for, and I did not believe that the day could pass and keep the police from Lord Badington's doorstep.

I should tell you that Moss had called at the police station at Sandwich as we drove through, and that a sergeant and a constable came over to the inn on bicycles about midday. Their questioning me helped them a mighty lot, for I contrived to look as foolish as a yokel when you ask him the way to Nowhere; and all I could tell them was that the lady had come down upon Lord Badington's invitation, and, when she was tired of it, I supposed she would go away again. All of which they took down in pocket-books about as large as a family Bible, and then set out for the house, while I watched them with my heart in my very boots, and the sort of feeling that might overtake a man if the police set out to arrest his own sweetheart.

Biggs, I should tell you, was with me when this happened, and mighty curious he was about it all. Of course, I told him that Moss was making a fool of himself, and that there would be a pretty action afterwards if he didn't behave properly to Miss Dolly. None the less, he was just as curious as I was, and directly the other party had left, we followed on their heels, and were through the lodge gates almost as soon as they were. As for Lal Britten, his heart went pat-a-pat, like a girl's at a wedding. I could have knocked Moss down cheerful, and paid forty bob for doing it with the greatest pleasure in my life. But that wouldn't have helped Miss Dolly, you see, so I just trudged up the drive after Moss, and said nothing whatever to anybody.

Bless us all—how the chap did walk. There he was, head bent down, shoulders sagging, his step shuffling as though he wore slippers, and in his eyes that money fever which, to me, is one of the most awful things in all the world. Even the police were rather disgusted with him, I think, and the sergeant told me afterwards that he would have paid fifty pounds to have got out of the job. For that matter, neither he nor his underling said a word to Moss when they rang at the front door bell, and they didn't seem to think it at all wonderful that Biggs and I should be upon the doorstep with them. So all together we waited quite a long time before old Hill, the butler, came jauntily along the great corridor, and opened to us very deliberately. And now for it, I thought—and oh, my poor Dolly, whatever is going to happen to you!

"Party of the dabe of Miss More—is she sdaying in this house?" asks Moss, half pushing his way in, and trying to look impudent. You should have seen the butler's face when he answered him.

"Who the devil are you?" he asked, "and what do you mean by coming here like this? Outside, my man, or I'll put you there pretty quick."

He took Moss by the collar, and, turning him about as though he were a babe, shoved him on the wrong side of the door before you could have said "knife." Then he turned to the sergeant.

"What's all this, Sergeant Joyce?" he asked. "Why do you bring this person here?"

"Oh," stammered the sergeant, "he says that a certain Miss More——"

"I beg you pardon," cried the butler quickly, "I think you should speak of Lady Badington—my master left for Paris at eight o'clock this morning."

"What!" roared Moss—and you could have heard him on the Goodwin Sands—"Lord Badington's married her?"

"I believe those are the facts," says Hill, very quietly—and then—well, and then I sat down on the doorstep and I laughed until the tears ran down my face. Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!—and Moss's face! But you will understand all that, and how the sergeant looked, and the smile on the butler's face, without me saying a single word about it.

"Take a week's notice, and be d——d to you!" cried I, turning upon my master all of a sudden. "Do you think I'll serve with a man who sent policemen after his best customers? You go to hell, Moss—where you ought to have been long ago," and with that I just walked off down the drive, and Biggs with me. Lord, what an afternoon we had! And the night we spent afterwards in Ramsgate!

For, you see, it was quite true. Old Lord Badington, who never could look at a pretty woman twice without falling in love with her, found himself mostly alone with Mistress Dolly at Sandwich, and, by all that is true and wonderful, he married her.

Not that she was Dolly St. John at all, you must know, but Dolly Hamilton in reality; and connected, I am told, with the old American family, the Hamiltons of Philadelphia. What she did in London was done, I do believe, for the sheer excitement of doing it. And if folks have called her an adventuress, set that down to the rogues of trustees, who played ducks and drakes with her fortune, and left her in Europe to shift as best she might.

I got a hundred pounds for that job, sent by Miss Dolly herself from Venice. Moss got his car back, and three or four punctured tubes. Some day, I suppose, they'll pay him that seventy-five pounds sixteen shillings and four-pence. But I hope it won't be yet.

The Honorary John, they tell me, is very angry with his papa. But I'll back an old boy every time—notwithstanding what is written in the papers.



IV

THE LADY WHO LOOKED ON

I wonder how many nowadays remember that pretty bit of goods, Maisa Hubbard, who used to drive the racing cars in France, and was the particular fancy of half the motormen who drive on the other side of the blue water.

I first met her at the Gordon Bennett of 1901, and I must say I thought her "sample goods." It's true that many would have it she was over-well-known in America, and more than one young man got on the rocks because of her; but the world rather likes a bit of scandal about a pretty woman, and there's no shorter road to the masculine favour.

Anyway, Maisa Hubbard was popular enough down at Bordeaux, and you might still have called her the belle of the ball on June 26 in the year 1902, when we started from Champigny for the great race across the Arlberg Mountains. That was the occasion, you will remember, when two of our little company did something by way of a record in smashing up their cars—but the story of one of these, Max, who drove for a French company, has so often been told that I shall certainly not re-tell it here. The other is a different story, and since it is the story of a good man, a good car, and a pretty woman, there's no reason why Lal Britten should not put his pen to it.

Well, I was driving for an English company at that time, the Vezey they called themselves, though Wheezy would have been the better name. Such a box of tricks I do believe was never put upon a chassis before or since. It took two of us to start the engine in the morning, and the same number to persuade her to leave off firing at night. The works manager, Mr. Nathan, whose Christian name was Abraham, said that she'd done eighty miles an hour with him easily; but the only time I got her over fifty she broke her differential by way of an argument, and nothing but a soft place in a hayfield saved me from the hospital. All of which, of course, was good advertisement for the firm—and, truly, if it came to making a noise in the world, why, you could hear their car a good quarter of a mile away.

This was the flier I took over to France and tried to break in upon the fine roads we all know so well. As I finished the race almost before I began it, the less said about the affair the better—but I shall never forget that Paris to Vienna meeting, and I shall never forget it because of my friend Ferdinand,[1] one of the best and bravest who ever turned a wheel, and the right winner of that great prize, but for the woman who said "No," and said it so queerly and to such effect that a magician out of the story-books couldn't have done it better.

I liked Ferdinand, liked him from the start. A better figure of a man I shall never see; six feet to an inch, square set and wonderfully muscular. His hair was dark and ridiculously curly, so much so that talk of the "irons and brown paper" was the standing joke amongst the racing men in Paris, who knew no more of him than that he was an Italian by birth and had spent half his life in America. For the rest, he spoke English as well as I did, and I never knew whether Ferdinand was his real name, or one he took for the racecourse—nor did I care.

They say that there is no cloud without a silver lining—a poor consolation in a thunderstorm when your hood is at home and the nearest tree is three miles away. There had been a thunderstorm, I remember, on the morning I met poor Ferdinand, and my batteries had refused to hand out another volt, notwithstanding the plainest kind of speech in which I could address them. Just in the middle of it, when the rain was running in at the neck and out at the ankles, and I was asking myself why I wasn't a footman in yellow plush breeches, what should happen but that a great red car came loping up on the horizon, like some mad thing answering to the lightning's call—and no sooner was it a mile distant than it was by me, so to speak, and I was listening to my friend Ferdinand for the first time.

"Halloa, and what's taken your fancy in these parts?" he asked in a cheery voice. I told him as plainly.

"This musical box don't like the thunder," said I; "she's turned sour."

"Are you stopping here for the lady, or do you want to get back to Paris?"

"Oh," says I, "I haven't taken a lease of this particular furlong, if that's what you mean."

"Then I'll give you a tow," says he, and without another word, he got down from his seat and began to make a job of it. We were at Vendreux half an hour afterwards, and there we breakfasted together in the French fashion. That meal, I always say, was the luckiest friend Ferdinand ever ate.

He told me a lot about himself and a lot about his car; how he had been everything in America, from log-roller in the backwoods to cook in the Fifth Avenue palaces; how he met Herr Jornek, the designer of the Modena car, on a trip to St. John's to explore Grand River, and how he had come back to Europe to drive it in the big race. His luck, he said, had been out in New York because of a woman; to get far away from that particular lady was the inducement which carried him to Europe.

Here was something to awaken my curiosity, as you may well imagine, and I asked him all sorts of questions about the girl; but to no good purpose. His interest was in the car, one of the first made by the famous Herr Jornek, and called the Modena after the factory in that town. He told me it was unlike any car on the market, and that new features of gearbox, ignition, and engine design would certainly stamp it a winner if no bad luck overtook him. This persistent talk about misfortune set me wondering, and I fell to questioning him a little more closely about his story, and especially that part of it which concerned the woman.

"Who is the lady, and how did she interfere with you?" I asked. He would say no more than that he had known her by half a dozen names over in America, and that she was formerly a dancer at the old Casino Theatre in New York.

"She's done everything," he said: "gone up in balloons, ridden horses astride at Maddison Square Gardens, played the cowboys' show with Buffalo Bill, and sailed an iceboat on the Great Lakes. Whenever she's out to win I'm out to lose. Make what you like of it, it's Gospel truth. As certain as I'm up for one of the big prizes of my life, the girl's there to thwart me. If I were what my schoolmaster used to call a fatalist, I'd say she was the evil prophetess who used to play ducks and drakes with the soldier boys at Athens. But I don't believe anything of the sort—I say it's just sheer bad luck, and that woman stands for the figure of it."

I was troubled to hear him, and put many more questions. How did the girl thwart him? Was it just an idea, or had he something better to go upon? He did not know what to say; I could see it troubled him very much to speak of it.

"She puts it into my head that I shall lose, and lose I do," he said; "it's always been the same, and always will be. When I rode that great leaping horse, Desmond, and put him over the fences, she was in the arena with a bronco, and she just looked up to me as sweetly as a child, and said, "Ferdy, your horse is going to fall next time," and fall, sure enough, he did, and laid me on my bed for more than a month. After that I rode the bicycle match against the Frenchman, Devereux, and there she was, dressed like a picture amongst the crowd, and smiling like an angel in the Spanish churches. When I nodded to her she called me back a moment, and just put in her pretty word.

"Ferdy," she said, "that Frenchman can't ride straight; he's going to run into you, Ferdy." Will you believe it, we cannoned together at the last corner, and I was thrown so badly that although he walked his machine in I couldn't beat him."

He was serious enough about it all, and I must say that his talk put some queer ideas into my head. I've never been a believer over-much in luck myself, holding that we make it or mar it for ourselves, and that what some call misfortune is nothing more or less than misdoing; but here was a tale to make a man think, and think I did while he ate his breakfast and went on to speak of his car almost as lovingly as a man speaks of the new girl he met for the first time yesterday. Just as we were leaving the hotel and he was getting back to his doleful manner a bit, I put in my word and I could see that he took it well enough.

"All said and done," said I, "there's a little matter of three thousand miles between you and the lady just at present. Whatever may have happened over yonder is hardly likely to happen in La Belle France, look at it how you like. You should think no more about it, Ferdinand. You're to win this great race, and win it you certainly will if I'm a judge. Why, then, think about a woman at all?"

"Because," he replied, and he was as grave as a judge at the moment, "because I must; I've been thinking of her ever since I picked you up. It's queer, Britten, but I do believe you're going to bring me luck, and that's as true as Gospel."

"And true it shall be," said I, "if good wishes can do it, my boy. Let's go and get the cars. My box of tricks will be melted down if I leave it in the sun any longer. Let's get back to Paris and have some fun; I'm sure that's what you're wanting."

He did not object; and the storm having passed, and my coil behaving itself properly now that the damp was off the contacts, we jogged along the road to Paris in company with many who were returning from their morning practice, and just a few amateurs out to see the fun. We had gone a mile, I suppose, when we met a girl driving one of the De Dion motor tricycles, and no sooner had I seen her than she went by with a flash and a nod; and I knew her for little Maisa Hubbard, of whom the town had been talking for three days past. Then I ran my car alongside Ferdinand's just to make a remark about it—but, will you believe me?—he was as pale as a sheet, and his eyes were staring right into vacancy, as though a ghost stood in his path, and he didn't know how to get by it.

"Why," cried I, "and what's up now?"

He brought himself to with an effort, closed his hand about the wheel, and then answered me:

"That's the girl, right enough," he said; "you saw her for yourself."

"Oh, look here, I can't take that. Don't you know Maisa Hubbard, who drove the big Panhard last autumn?"

"I know Maisa Hubbard who used to dance at the Casino Theatre in New York, and she's the same. Didn't I tell you she'd follow me to France?"

"You told me a lot of things," I retorted; "perhaps you dreamed some of them."

"Perhaps I did," he answered, and then I was sorry I had spoken, for his face was as sad as a woman's in sorrow, and just as pitiful.

"You want cheering up, my boy," said I; "wait till we get back to Paris, and I'll take you in hand myself. It's over-driving that's done it; I've known the kind of thing, and can understand what you feel; but you wait a bit, and then we'll see. Didn't you say I was going to bring you luck?"

"I did, but not while Maisa Hubbard's in France. There's no man born could do it."

He was down enough about it, I must say, and a more melancholy driver never steered a car into Champigny—the place where the great race was to start from, and our destination for the time being. When we had done the necessary tuning up and had cleaned ourselves, I took Ferdinand back to Paris, and gave him a bit of dinner at a little restaurant near the Faubourg St.-Honore.

When we had eaten five shillings' worth for three-and-sixpence, and drunk a good bottle of sour red wine apiece, I took him round to "Olympia," and there we saw the famous show they called the "Man in the Moon." This didn't cheer him up at all, and once during the evening he told me that he thought he'd soon be in the moon himself, or any place where they have a job for damaged racing drivers. This made me laugh at him, but laughing wasn't any good, and I had it in my mind to take him off to supper at a little place I knew on the Boulevards, when what should happen but that Maisa Hubbard appeared suddenly in the promenade where we stood, and immediately came up to him with such a smile as might have brought a saint out of a picture to say "Good evening" to her.

"Why, it's Ferdy!" she cried, "and he's trying to turn his back on me. Oh, my dear boy, whatever do you look like that for?"

He shook hands with her quite civilly, and made some excuse about the show and his not feeling very funny about it. She had another girl with her, and her brother, Jerome Hubbard, the "whip" who used to drive with Mr. Fownes. When I had been introduced, she asked me to come to supper at a place I'd never heard of, and declared that her brother would have a fit if we didn't disburse some of his savings immediately. The little girl who was with her (I shan't write her name down) was a lively bit of goods, and I was ready enough to go if only to cheer up "Ferdy," who, to be sure, had become a different man already, and was talking and laughing with Maisa just as though they had been first "cousins" for a twelvemonth or more. In the end we ate Mr. Jerome's supper, and got back to our little beds at two in the morning: not an over-good preparation for a great race, as any driver will admit; but my friend seemed himself again, and I would have eaten half a dozen suppers to bring that about.

This was two days before the meeting, I should tell you, and I saw little of Ferdinand until that memorable June morning, when, at half-past three precisely, Girardot got away on his C.G.V., and was followed two minutes later by Fournier on his Mors. I have taken part in many a big race since, but never one which excited me more than that famous dash from Paris to Vienna, which was to make the fortune of more than one English house, and to bring the Gordon Bennett Cup to England for the first time in the motor story.

I firmly believed my friend Ferdinand was to win the race, and presentiment goes farther in this world than many folks think. Such a dashing, daring driver I never saw. His car was a wonder. I took several trips with him before the race, and I do believe that we made eighty or ninety miles an hour upon her—a miracle for those days, though not thought so much of in this year 1909. What was more, he seemed to have forgotten all about that little devil of a Maisa Hubbard and her prophecies, and when we breakfasted together upon the morning of the start I would have said that he was fit to race for his life.

And what a start it was, notwithstanding the hour! What a roaring and racing of engines, cars tearing here and tearing there, gendarmes everywhere, men with silver on their heads and silver on their toes; jabbering officials telling you to do twenty things at once, and quarrelling because you did them. The enclosure itself was like the meat-market at Smithfield on a busy morning. I never heard so much noise in any one place before; and if there was a man, woman, or child who slept through it in the peaceful village of Champigny, well, he, she, or it ought to go into a museum.

Of course, all this was exciting enough, and I caught something of the fever when twenty soldiers pushed my old rattle-trap into the roadway, and a very fine gentleman gave the signal to "Go." Upon my word, I do believe there was just a moment when I thought I could get to Vienna before the others; and, letting my clutch in gently, and telling Billy, my mechanician, to make himself fast, I soon had her upon third speed, and was racing as fast as the bad road would let me towards Provins. This was a bumpy bit, to be sure, and if I had put her on the "fourth," some one would have had to sweep up the pieces quickly. But I kept her steady, though the great cars began to go by like roaring locomotives on a down incline, and really she was doing very well when the offside front tyre asked for a change of air, and we knew that it was No. 1, so far as punctures were concerned.

Well, this was twenty miles from Provins, upon a long and desolate stretch of a poor road, with a distant view of the hills and a couple of sleepy peasants out among the hay. We had been lucky with our draw, and started early in the list, and you can imagine my surprise when a car flashed into view and I recognised Ferdinand, who was almost the last to get off, and must have passed any number of cars to overtake us as he did. My word, and he was driving, too! His great machine frightened you to watch it, leaping over the bumps as it did, and threatening every moment to be flung sheer off the road into the hayfield on the other side of the dyke. But there was a master at the wheel, and with a cheery wave of the hand to us Ferdinand went by, and was lost immediately in a mighty cloud of dust which rose clear above the poplars.

I need hardly tell you how glad I was to see him doing so well, and how I laughed at all his foolish ideas about Maisa Hubbard. Win I felt he would, though all the ladies of the Casino ballet came out to tell him not to; and when old Dobbin, my own particular turn-out, condescended to move again, I pushed on for Belfort, no longer deluding myself that I was to be within a hundred miles of the winner, but hoping that I should get to Vienna in time to shake "Ferdy" by the hand and to tell him what a fool he had been.

If I didn't say this at Belfort, where Herr Jornek, the designer of the car, stood in between us and took Ferdy away for the evening to talk to him, it was well enough said at Brigenz. There a second halt was made; and although we turned in at an early hour, I had plenty of time to put the idea of winning into his head, and the idea of Maisa Hubbard out of it. All the world knows that we had to go through France, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria for that big race, and the Swiss part was slow enough, since no racing was allowed by the timid old gentlemen at the capital. Indeed, if there is one country in Europe a motorist does well to keep out of at any time, it is Switzerland. We simply rolled through the place on that particular journey, and at Brigenz my friend Ferdinand was high up in the list, none but De Knyff, Jarrott, and the Farmans being ahead of him. I told him that if he got over the Arlberg Mountains as his car ought to get, he was winner for a certainty. And that was the point we stuck to until it was time to turn into our little beds and dream about to-morrow.

"I hear that the devil himself might be frightened to drive across that pass at any speed," said I, "and there's your chance, Ferdy. You say it will be the making of you to win this race. Well, you give your mind to it, and don't shirk the risks, and you're as good as a winner already. There isn't a car in the bunch can hold you on the mountains, and you know it."

"You're right," said he, "and I wish I could say the same to you. But Lal, my boy, it isn't exactly a war-horse that you've got under you, and I can't say it is. I'm not frightened of the mountains, and can break my neck as well as most; don't think otherwise. If my luck holds, Lal Britten has fixed it up, and I shan't forget him when the shekels are paid out. You may think me a bit dotty, but this I will say, that I never felt so sure of myself or of the car as I do this night, and if confidence and a good engine won't win across the Arlberg, then we'll give it up, Lal, and take to perambulators."

"Not meaning any reference to the lady," said I; but his face clouded, and I wished I hadn't spoken.

"She's in Paris, and thank God for it," he exclaimed, rising to go up to bed; "if she were here in Brigenz to-night, I wouldn't give sixpence for my chances, and that's the whole truth. Now, let's go to by-by; if we don't, I'll be dreaming of her, and dreams won't win laurel-wreaths, as even you will admit."

I let him go, and followed some ten minutes later to my own room. It was just cussedness, I suppose, which kept me back, for, as I went across the corridor of the first floor of our hotel I heard a woman with a laugh which struck sparks off you; and turning round, there was Maisa Hubbard herself in a fine Paris gown and a great straw hat, with a pink feather in it large enough to decorate the Shah. She just gave a pleasant nod to me and then went downstairs, while I made for my bedroom, wondering what Ferdy would have said if he had seen her, and what real bad luck brought her to Brigenz at such a time.

Of course, she had come on by train. Lots of people did, to follow the racing; and here she was with a merry party, just as simple-looking and as guileless as a shepherdess at the Vic, and looking no older than a school-girl. When I got up at four next morning I was full of curiosity to know if Ferdy had seen her. But he was out at his car in the "control," cheerful enough as far as he himself was concerned, but mighty anxious about his mechanician, Down, who had broken his arm trying to start up the engine, and had already been taken to the hospital. A minute later I heard that our old wheezer wouldn't start at all, and there it was, as though a special Providence had ordered it.

"You can't move your own char-a-banc—the crank-shaft's broken," Ferdinand said to me, as he asked me for the tenth time to get up beside him; "I've got no one, and I'm going to win this race. If you could conjure up a new crankshaft out of nothing, you would still be three behind the last in, and all the town out to laugh at you. Get up, Lal, and have done with it. I tell you I knew it from the first."

Well, I stared at this: and having just a word with my mechanician Billy, and being quite sure that the Vezey, however good she was at going back on me, wouldn't go forward that day or for some days to come, I left instructions for telegrams to be sent to England, and was up beside Ferdinand without further ado.

I have told you that he stood already high in the list, and so you will understand that we hadn't long to wait for the word "Go!" Before that could be given, however, and while the car was still in the "control," who should come up to us but Maisa Hubbard herself; and, will you believe it, I felt all my confidence, both in man and car, oozing out of my finger-tips, just like water running out of a tap. How or why that should have been I am not the man to say; but there was the fact, that this pretty woman could work this magic upon me just by a look out of her sly eyes, and could do worse to my friend Ferdinand, as I plainly perceived. As for that poor chap, he turned as white as a ghost directly he saw her, and I really thought he would never be able to start the car at all.

"Oh, my dear boy, I have been looking for you everywhere," cried she, offering him a little bunch of red roses, just as though she loved him dearly. "Now, won't you take these for luck? I'm sure you'll want luck to-day, Ferdy. Do you know, I dreamed about you last night?"

He said "Yes," and laid the flowers on the seat beside him. I could see him licking his lips as though his mouth were dry, and presently he asked her a question.

"What did you dream, Maisa?"

She shook her head and began the play-actress style.

"Oh, I guess I wouldn't tell you, anyway."

"But I want to know, Maisa?"

"It was only a dream, of course—aren't they real sometimes, Ferdy? Why, I saw you drive your car over the side of the mountain, just as plainly as ever I saw anything in my life."

He laughed quietly, looking at me with a look I shall never forget.

"You're quite a wonder at dreaming, Maisa. Suppose I disappoint you this time?"

"Don't be foolish, Ferdy—you shouldn't have asked me to tell you. Why, you're too clever to be such a silly, and you know it. Good-bye and good luck. I shall see you in Vienna."

He just nodded his head and let in his clutch with such a bang that he nearly threw me over the dash. I could see that his nerve had gone to the winds with the woman's words, and if wishes could have repaid her, she'd have got something for her pains, I do assure you. As it was, I could do nothing but pretend to laugh at it, and that I did to the best of my ability.

"Dreams go by contraries," said I; "any child knows that."

"She didn't dream it at all," was his answer; "she said it out of spite."

"Why should she be spiteful——?"

"You ask the man and his master. She's out for another car to win, and will spoil my chances if she can."

"More fool you, then, to listen to her. Make up your mind to forget it. You can do it if you try."

"Ah," he said, and upon my word I was sorry for him, "that girl's going to be my ruin, Lal, as sure as we're on this car."

"You speak like a coward, Ferdy—didn't you say I brought you luck——"

"And you shall—I'll try to believe, Lal—I've thought it from the start. If it wasn't for her——"

"Oh, be d——d to her," said I; and that I really meant.

We were on the starting line as these words were spoken, and in two minutes we got the word to go, and the great Modena car rushed away like some giant bird upon the wing. This was the crucial stage of that famous race, when we had to climb the Arlberg Mountains and drop down to Innsbruck. It was the day which saw Edge the proud winner of the Gordon Bennett Cup, and the morning upon which Jarrott broke up his bedroom furniture to stiffen the frame of his 70-h.p. Panhard. Our car was not in for the Gordon Bennett, and our race did not finish at Innsbruck, but at far Vienna—that is, if we crossed the terrible Arlberg Mountains safely, and got down the other side with our heads still upon our shoulders. This depended upon my friend Ferdinand, the greatest driver that ever lived upon an ordinary day, but a mad devil that morning if ever there was one.

Oh! you could see it from the start. That woman's words had entered into his very soul, and he did not deny that he believed his hour had come. We were early away, and the two big cars ahead of us we caught almost in the first hour. When we came to the mountain we began to climb as though a magic wind was lifting us. Grand as the scene was, with the mighty mountains towering above us and the valley full of wonders spreading out below, I had eyes for nothing but the winding road, nor thoughts of any goal but that of distant Innsbruck, where the danger would be passed. Sometimes I wished that Ferdinand would change seats with me and let me drive. No woman that ever was born would frighten me, I thought, and yet I could not be sure even about that. The words that were spoken in the "control" went echoing in my head. "We were going over the mountain-side." Good God, if it were true!

The climb up the Arlberg Mountains is a wonderful thing, but I would have you know that it is child's play to the drop down on the other side. Imagine a series of fearful zigzags with a sheer wall of rock on one side, and on the other a precipice just as sheer, and so open and undefended that some fellows in this race were driven almost mad with terror at the bare sight of it. Luckily for me, I sat upon the left-hand side of the car and could see very little of what was going on; but I knew that our off-side front wheel was within two inches of the edge more than once as we went up; and when we passed over the top and began the descent I could have sworn that even Ferdinand himself had lost all hope of getting down safely.

Once, I remember, he gave a great cry, and shot the car over to the inside with such a twist that our wheels scraped the very rock; there were moments when he came to a stand altogether, and passed his hand over his eyes as though he could not see clearly. By here and there I thought he drove like a madman, swooping round a fearful corner with our wheels over the very chasm, or dashing down a straight as though nothing could save him at the bottom. If I called out at this and implored him not to be a fool, he answered back that "What was to be, would be"; and then he mentioned Maisa's name, and I knew he had not forgotten.

Well, as many know, the end came at that great dome of rock which looks for all the world like St. Paul's Cathedral. I confess that I should have been no wiser here than Ferdinand. We seemed to be following a gentle curve round the dome, with the rock upon our left hand, and the valley three thousand feet down upon our right. There was nothing to tell us of the danger trap; and, thinking he had a clear road, Ferdinand opened his throttle and we shot ahead like a shell from a gun. Less than a second afterwards I had made a wild leap from my seat—and Ferdinand, without a cry or a sound, had gone headlong to the valley below.

I suppose five good minutes must have passed before I knew anything at all, either of the nature of this awful accident or of the good luck which attended my leap. Lying there on my back, I became conscious presently that I was in a thick scrub of gorse, which lined the road hereabouts. It had caught me just as a spider's web catches a fly. I ached intolerably, that is true—my whole body seemed numbed, as though it had been hit with irons, while my leather clothes were torn to rags. But, by-and-by, it came to me that I could get up if I chose, and when I looked below me and saw the sheer precipice, and that nothing but a bush stood between me and it, you may be sure I scrambled back to the road quicker than a man counts two. And there I lay, trying to remember what had happened, and what my duty called upon me to do.

Ferdy and the car! Good God, what had happened to them? The sweat poured off me like rain when the truth came back. Ferdy was over there, down that awful precipice. Quaking in every limb, I dragged myself to the edge and looked over. Yes, I could see the car, looking like a little toy thing, far down in the valley. It lay wheels upwards, in what appeared to be a little brook or river; but of my comrade not a sign anywhere. In vain I shouted his name again and again. The cars began to pass me, and, warned by my presence, they took that awful corner safely; but not a man of their drivers guessed that a good fellow had gone over, and that I was half mad because of it. Away they went, with a nod and a shout, leaving that cold silence of the mountains behind them, and Lal Britten crying like a woman because they didn't stay. In the end I ceased to think of them at all, and, going to the brink again, I shouted "Ferdinand" until the hills rang.

* * * * *

He answered me—as I am a living man—Ferdinand answered me at last. At first I could believe so little in the truth of what I heard that I almost thought the mountains were mocking me and sending my voice back in echoes. Then I understood that it was not so at all, but that my friend really called to me from a place thirty or forty yards down the road, where the scrub was thicker. It was the spot where our tank and tool-box, cast ahead as the car swerved and went over, lay shattered on the rocks. These I hardly noticed at the moment; but, dashing to the place, I threw myself flat on my face and hung right over the precipice to answer my comrade. And then, in an instant I knew what had happened—then I understood.

The car, I say, had swerved away to the right as she took the precipice. The tremendous force of it not only sent all our loose impedimenta flying down the road, which turned to the left, but it threw Ferdinand sideways; and, although he had gone over, he fell, as the newspapers have told you, just where the sheer wall bulged; and here, holding for dear life to the shrubs, he waited for me to save him. Such a torture I have never known, or shall know again. The sight of my friend, not ten feet away from me, the precipice forbidding me to go down, for it was quite sheer at the top; his white face, his desperate hold at the scrappy shrubs—oh, you can't imagine or think of the truth of it as I had to upon that awful morning.

"How long can you hold on?" I asked him, clenching my teeth when I had spoken.

"Perhaps a minute, perhaps two. If you could get a rope, Lal——"

"I'll stop a car," said I—a madder thing was never said, but I had to say something—"I'll stop a car and make them help me. Perhaps my shirt will do it, Ferdy."

"Good-bye if it doesn't," he said quite quietly; and I knew then that he was prepared for death, and had expected it; but I was already busy with my shirt, tearing it up with twitching fingers, when he spoke again.

"Pity we haven't got the rope I towed you with the other day," he said suddenly; and at that I started up as though he had hit me.

"The rope—where did you carry it?"

"It was in the tool-box," he answered, still quite calm.

I think I shouted out at that—I know I was crying like a woman a minute afterwards. The tool-box! Why, it lay there, against the rock, before my very nose, the d——d fool! And the very rope which had first brought our friendship about: was it accident or destiny which put it into my hands, and did Ferdinand do right or wrong to say I brought him luck?

I shan't answer these questions—for he was sitting beside me less than two minutes afterwards, and we were hugging each other like brothers.

* * * * *

Maisa Hubbard's friend didn't get first to Vienna, and pleased enough I was. Whether Ferdy just imagined that she had an evil influence over him, or whether it is true that some women are the mistresses of men's destiny, I don't pretend to say. The story is there to speak for itself.

And Maisa, I may add, is in the halfpenny papers. Do you remember that famous case of Lord—but perhaps it isn't my place to speak about that?



[1] The names of the driver, Ferdinand, and the car, the Modena, have been substituted by the Editor for those in Mr. Britten's own narrative. The reasons for this will be obvious to the reader.



V

THE BASKET IN THE BOUNDARY ROAD

The doctors will tell you sometimes that motoring is good for the nerves; and since so many of them now buy cars, and there's no man like a doctor for looking after his own flesh and blood, I suppose they mean what they say. All the same, I wish I'd had a doctor with me the night I picked up Mabel Bellamy; for if his nerves had stood that and he hadn't given himself quinine and iron for the next two months, why, I'd have paid his fee myself.

You see, it was a rum job from the very beginning of it. I was working for Hook-Nosed Moss at the time, and, being Lent, and half the theatrical ladies of position doing penance down at Monte Carlo, we weren't exactly knocking a hole in the Bank of England—nor, for that matter, even earning our fares to Jerusalem. Moss came down to the garage in the West End gloomier and gloomier every day; and one morning when I saw that he'd pawned his diamond shirt-stud (the same that we called "The Bleriot"), why then, says I, Lal Britten, keep off the Stock Exchange and don't put your last thirty bob in Consols, wherever else you place it.

Now this was the state of things when one morning, early in the month of March last year, we were rung up from a public telephone call in Bayswater, and the covered Napier was ordered for a house in the Richmond Road, Bayswater—a locality with which I was unfamiliar, but which Moss declared must be all right, since the gentleman who lived there knew that we had a Napier car and therefore was in a manner introduced to us. Half an hour later he discovered that Richmond Road was nothing better than a mean street of lodging-houses, and, my word, didn't he reel off his instructions to me like texts out of a copy-book.

"Dot's a shame, Britten," he said, coming round by the bonnet of the car, which I was tuning up for the trip—"I was deceived by the dabe of the street. We must have our modey before they have the goods. Mind that now, you dote drive a mile unless they pay the shinies. Three guideas id your pocket and then you drive 'em. Are you listening, Britten?"

I managed to give him a squirt of oil out of my can—for we do love Moss, and then I told him that Nelson on the quarter-deck of the Victory wasn't more alive to his duties.

"Three guineas cash down and then I drive 'em. Is this a round trip to see the beauties of Surrey, Mr. Moss, or do I return to my little cot after the ball is over? I'd like to know on account of taking my Court suit, if you don't mind."

"Oh," says he, "you're ordered for ded o'clock, so I suppose id's the light fadastic toe, Britten. But mide you get your modey—or I'll stop your salary, sure. Three guideas and what you cad hook for yourself—I shan't touch that, Britten—I dow how to treat my servants well."

I laughed at this, but didn't say too much for fear he should find out that he'd got a patch of oil as big as a football on the back of his beautiful new spring suit, and when he had told me that the party's name was Faulkland Jones and had given me the number of the house, I got on with my work again and soon had the three-year-old Napier running as well as ever she did in all her life. Nor did anything else happen until ten o'clock that night, at which hour precisely I drove her up to the house in the Richmond Road, Bayswater, and sent a small boy to knock at the door.

It was a twopenny-ha'penny shop, and no doubt about it; a two-storied day-before-yesterday lodging-house, with a bow window like a Metallurgique bonnet and a door about as big as the top of your gear-box.

So far as I could see from the road there was only one lamp showing in the place, and that was on the off-side, so to speak, in a little window of a bedroom—but the boy said afterwards that there was a glim in the hall, and he was old enough to have known. Taken altogether, you wouldn't have offered them thirty pounds a year for the lot unless you had been a Rothschild with a cook to pension off—and what such people wanted with a Napier limousine at three guineas the job I really could not have said. This, however, was no business of mine; so I just gave the lad a penny and settled myself down in my seat until the Duchess in the apron should appear.

It wasn't a long time I had to wait, perhaps five minutes, perhaps ten. I told the police, when they questioned me afterwards, to split the difference, for none but a policeman could have told you what it had got to do with my story. When the door did open at last, a couple of men carrying a basket came down the bit of a garden, and the first of them wished me "Good evening" very civilly. Then they let the basket down softly on to the pavement and began to talk to me about it.

"How strong's your roof?" asked the first, speaking with a nasal twang I couldn't quite place. "Will it take this bit of a basket all right?"

"Why," says I, "it might depend on what you've got inside that same. Have I come for the washing, or do I drive your plate to the Bank of England?"

The second, the taller man of the two, laughed at this; but the first seemed very uneasy, and it was not lost upon me that he glanced to the right and the left of him as though afraid that someone would come up and hear what his friend had to say next.

"I guess it's neither one nor the other," the first speaker went on. "We're playing theatricals at the Hampstead Town Hall to-morrow night, and these are the dresses. We want you to take them up to the Boundary Road, St. John's Wood—I'll show you the house when we get there; but it's called Bredfield, and you'll know it by a square-toed lamp up against the side-track. Perhaps you can give us a hand with the baggage—and say, have you any objection to gold when you can't get silver?"

He passed up a sovereign and I put it inside my glove. Moss had told me to collect the shekels before I drove them a mile, and so I told the pair of them as I was getting down the luggage ladder, which fortunately I had brought, not knowing the job. A bit to my surprise they paid up immediately, but I made no remark about that; and when I had signed the receipt by the light of my near-side lamp, I helped them up with the basket and soon had it strapped to the rails in a way that satisfied even the nervous little man with the saucer eyes.

Many have asked me if I had no suspicions about that basket, was not curious as to its contents, and remarked nothing as we hoisted it up. To these I say that the men themselves were the chief actors in the business; that they lifted the baggage from the pavement, and that my task was chiefly to guide it to the rails and to make it fast when I had got it there. Otherwise, this basket was no different from any dress-basket you may see upon half a dozen four-wheelers the first time you look in at a railway station; and I should be telling an untruth if I said that I thought about it at all. Indeed, it was not until we got to the Boundary Road, and I stopped at the house called Bredfield, that so much as a notion of anything wrong entered my head. There, however, I did get a shock, and no mistake; for no sooner had I pulled up than I discovered that I had come on alone, and that neither the big man with the Yankee accent nor the little man with the saucer eyes had deigned to accompany me.

Well, I got down from the driver's seat, opened and shut the door as though to be sure that neither the one nor the other was hiding under the seat, and then I rang loudly at the front door bell and waited to see what fortune had got in her lucky-bag.

Had the men told me plainly that I was to go alone, I should never have given the matter a second thought; but I could have sworn that the pair of them were inside the limousine when I started away from the Richmond Road, and how or where they got down I knew no more than the Lord Chancellor. It remained to be seen if the people in the house were any wiser; and you may be sure that I was curious enough by this time, and, if the truth must be told, not a little frightened.

Boundary Road, as many will know, is a quiet thoroughfare in St. John's Wood, most of the houses being detached, and many of them having twenty feet of garden back and front. This particular house was larger than ordinary, and owned an odd iron lamp fixed above the garden gate and conspicuous a hundred yards away. Unlike the shanty in the Richmond Road, nearly every window showed a bright light; and I don't suppose I had waited twenty seconds, though they seemed like a quarter of an hour, when the front door flew open and one of the prettiest parlourmaids I have ever clapped eyes upon came running down the path, and asked, even before she had opened the gate, if the lady had arrived.

"Why," says I, quickly enough, "that she certainly has not, being took to dine with the Grand Duke Isaac at the Metropolitan Music Hall. But her dresses are here, miss, and if you like to try on any of 'em before she arrives, why, you're welcome so far as I am concerned."

She laughed at this and came out on to the pavement. I have said she was pretty, but that's hardly the word for it. If she went on the Gaiety stage to-morrow, she'd be the talk of the town in a fortnight—and as for her manners, well, it isn't my place to remark on those. Affability appeals to me wherever I find it, and if Betsy Chambers isn't affable, then I don't know the meaning of the term.

"Where have you come from?" she asked me as we stood there; "have you come from Scotland?"

"More like from Scotland Yard in these times," says I; "why should you ask me that?"

"Because the gentleman said that his wife would be arriving from Scotland to-night, but that he would not be here until to-morrow. I wouldn't have stopped in the house for anything if he had not said she was coming!"

"Then you're alone, my dear?"

She tossed her head.

"Yes, I am, and that's why all the lamps are lighted."

"Why, to be sure," cried I, "there might have been a man under the bed;" but she was too polite to notice this, and I could see she was very much afraid of sleeping alone in that strange house, and I don't wonder at it.

"I can walk up and down the front garden all night, if you like," said I, "or maybe I could sleep on the drawing-room sofa, if you prefer it. Is this the first time they have left you alone here?"

She looked at me in surprise.

"I was only engaged yesterday from the registry office in Marylebone. This is a furnished house, and they have taken it for three months certain. The gentleman comes from Edinburgh and the lady is an American. They haven't got a cook yet, but hope to have one by to-morrow. Whatever shall I do if they never come at all?"

"Oh," says I, "try on her dresses and see how they suit you. Suppose we get the basket in to begin with. Here's a chap coming who looks as though he could lay out sixpence if he hadn't got a shilling; we'll enlist him and then talk about supper afterwards. Is your name Susan, by the way? The last nice girl I met was called Susan, and so I thought——"

"Oh, don't be silly," says she; "my name's Betsy, and if you squeeze my hand like that, some one will see you."

I told her it must have been done in a moment of abstraction, and then I hailed the "cab runner" who was loafing down the road; and, what with him and a messenger boy in a hurry, we got the basket down and lifted it into a big square hall and laid it almost at the foot of the staircase, up which we should have to carry it presently.

Somehow or other it seemed to me over-heavy for a clothes' basket; but I said nothing about it at the time, and, telling Betsy I would return in a minute, I went back to my car to turn off the petrol and see that all was shipshape. When I entered the house again, and almost as soon as I had shut the door, the queerest thing I can remember happened to me. It was nothing less than this—that the girl, Betsy, came toward me with her face as white as a sheet; and, before I could utter a single word or ask her the ghost of a question, she just slipped headlong through my arms and lay like a dead thing.

Now, this was a nice position to be in and no mistake about it. The girl limp and helpless in my arms, not a soul in the house, me not knowing where to lay hands on a drop of brandy, to say nothing of a glass of water, and, above all, the peculiar feeling that something not over-pleasant must have frightened Betsy, and that it might frighten me before many minutes had passed. Listening intently, I could not at first hear a sound in all the house—but just when I was telling myself not to be a fool, I heard, as plainly as ever I heard anything in my life, a sigh as of some one groaning in pain; and at that I do believe I dropped the girl clean on to the floor and made a dash into the nearest room in a state of mind I should have been ashamed to confess even to my own brother.

What did it mean, who was playing tricks with us, and what was the mystery? I looked round the apartment and made it out to be the dining-room, plainly furnished, well lighted, but as empty of people as Westminster Abbey at twelve o'clock of a Sunday night. A smaller room to the right lay in darkness, but I found the switch and satisfied myself in a moment that no one was hidden there; nor did a search in every nook and cranny near by enlighten me further. What was even worse was the fact that I could now hear the groaning very plainly; and when I had stood a minute, with my heart beating like a steam pump and my eyes half blinded with the shadows and the light, I discovered, just in a flash, that whoever groaned was not in any room of the house, neither in the hall nor upon the staircase, but in the very basket I had just laid down and should have carried to the floor above before many minutes had passed.

I am not going to state here precisely what I thought or did when I made that astonishing discovery, or just what I felt at the moment when I tried to understand its significance. Perhaps I could not remember half that happened even if I tried to do so. My clearest memory is of a dark, silent street, and of me standing there, bare-headed, with a fainting girl in my arms, and a civil old chap with white whiskers asking again and again, "My good fellow, whatever is the matter and what on earth are you doing here?" When I answered him it was to beg him for God's sake to tell me the name of the nearest doctor—and at that I remember he simply pointed to the house opposite and to a brass plate upon its door.

"I am Mr. Harrison, the surgeon," he said quickly; "I am just buying a motor, and so I crossed the road to look at yours. Tell me what has happened and what is the matter with the woman."

I told him as quietly as I could.

"God knows what it is—perhaps murder. The girl heard it and fainted. She'll be all right in a minute if I can lay her down. I never thought any woman weighed half as much. Anyway, she's coming to and that's something—if you could call a policeman, sir."

He was a self-possessed gentleman, I must say, and, looking up and down the street, while I set the girl down on the footboard of the car, he espied the little messenger boy who had helped us to carry the basket into the house and sent him for a policeman. Betsy had opened her eyes by this time, but all she could say had no meaning for me, nor was it any clearer to him. When we had got her across to his surgery and left her there, we returned to the house together, and as we went I tried to tell him just what had happened and how I came to be mixed up in such a strange affair. The story was still half told when we mounted the steps of Bredfield and walked straight up to the basket which had scared the girl out of her wits and left me wondering whether I was awake or dreaming. Now, however, I had no doubt at all about the matter, for whoever was under that lid was struggling pretty wildly to get free, and would have broken the cords in another minute if the doctor had not cut them.

A couple of slashes with a lancet severed the stout rope with which my "bundle" had been tied, and a third cut the bit of string which bound the hasp to the wickerwork. I stepped back instinctively as the gentleman raised the lid, and so, to be honest, did he—the same thought, I am sure, being in both our heads and the belief that our own lives might be in danger. When the truth was revealed, my first impulse was to laugh aloud, my second to set off in my car without a moment's loss of time, and try to lay by the heels the pair of villains who had done this thing.

In a word, I may tell you that the basket contained a young girl, apparently not more than fifteen years of age; that she was dressed in rags, though apparently a lady of condition, and that when we lifted her out it appeared that her reason had gone and that her young life might shortly follow it.

I've been through some strange times in my life; had many a peep into the next world, so to speak; seen men die quick and die slow—but for real right-down astonishment and pity I shall never better that scene in the Boundary Road, St. John's Wood, if I live as long as the patriarchs.

Just picture the brightly lighted hall and the open basket, and this pretty little thing with yellow hair streaming over her shoulders and her bare arms extended as though in entreaty toward the doctor and me, and such cries upon her lips as though we, and not the men who had sent her here, had been her would-be murderers. I tell you that I would have sold my home to save her, and that's no idle word. Unhappily, I could do nothing, and what I would have done the police forbade me to do, for there were three of them in the room before five minutes had passed; and I might be forgiven for saying that half the local force was present inside half an hour.

Well, you know what a policeman is when anything big turns up; how there's a mighty fine note-book about two foot long to be produced, and perhaps a drop of whisky and soda to whet his pencil, and then the questions and the answers and what not—all the time the thief is running hard down the back street and the gold watch is sticking out of his boot.

I answered perhaps a hundred and fifty questions that night, and nobody any the wiser for them. Notes were taken of everything: the time I set out, where my father was born, what they paid me for the job, the address of the garage, Christian name and surname of Abraham Moss—whether I'd had my licence endorsed or kept it clean—until at last, able to stand it no longer, I told the inspector plainly that this wasn't Colney Hatch, and the sooner he understood as much the better.

"Here's my car and there's the street," said I; "will you drive to Richmond Road and see the house for yourself or will you not? I tell you there were two of them, and one may be there now. You can prove it for yourself or let it go, as you like. But don't say it wasn't talked about or I shall know how to contradict you."

He came down to ground at this and consented to go with me. We were back again in the Richmond Road inside a quarter of an hour and knocking at the door of the house where I had picked the basket up about two minutes later. A very old woman opened to us this time, and answered very civilly that the two strange gentlemen had left for the Continent by the evening train, and she had no idea if they would return or no. They had always paid her regularly, she said, though not often at home; while as for their room, we could examine that with pleasure. The more amazing confession came after, for when she was pressed to tell us something about the young lady, she declared stoutly that she had never seen one, and that the Messrs. Picton—for so she called her lodgers—kept no female company, and very rarely had asked even a gentleman to their rooms.

The inspector listened to all she had to say and then made a formal search of the house. It would be waste of time to insist that he found nothing—not so much as a scrap of paper or an empty collar-box to enlighten him; but he gave strict orders that no one was to enter the men's room upon any pretext whatsoever; and when he had locked it and pocketed the key, he made me drive him back to the Boundary Road and then up to the hospital at Hampstead, to which the little girl had been carried and where she was then lying. Naturally I had the entree as well as he—for there were three or four swagger men from Scotland Yard on the carpet by this time, and all of them mighty anxious to make my acquaintance. From these I learned that the child was still incoherent in her talk, and utterly unable to remember who she was or whence she had come. Fright had paralysed her faculties. She might have been born yesterday for all she knew about it.

For my part, I had a strong desire to talk to the girl myself and put a few questions which had come into my head while we were waiting; but the police would have none of this, and the most they would permit me to do was to look at her from the far end of the ward, which I did for a long time, watching her face very closely, and wondering how beautiful it was.

When they sent me away at last I returned to the garage down West, and so to my bed, but not to sleep. It must have been three o'clock of the morning by this time, and I lay until I heard some noisy church-clock striking seven, when I determined to stop there tossing about no longer, but to get up and read the morning papers. Few of them, however, had more than a brief paragraph announcing the fact, and we had to wait for the "evenings" to discover the real sensation. My word, how thick they laid it on—and what a hero they made of me. I must have been interviewed a dozen times that day, and when the following morning's papers came, I read for the first time that a reward of five hundred pounds had been offered for the capture of the perpetrators of this outrage, and that it would be paid by the Editor of the Daily Herald on the day that the mystery was solved.

Of course, there were many theories. Some believed it to be a case of abduction pure and simple, some of revenge; a few recommended the doctors to follow the poison clue and to ascertain if the child had been drugged before she was put into the basket.

Speaking for myself, I had an idea in my head, which I didn't mention even to Betsy Chambers, whom it was necessary for me to see pretty often about that time, and generally of evenings. This idea, I suppose, would have knocked the Scotland Yard braves silly with laughing; but I had no fancy to share five hundred with them—more especially since they took seven fifteen off me at Kingston last Petty Sessions—so I just kept a quiet tongue in my head and mentioned the matter to nobody. Perhaps it was unfortunate I did not; I can't tell you more than this, that the next ten days found me walking about Soho as though I had a fancy to buy up the neighbourhood, and that on the eleventh day precisely I found what I wanted—found it by what I might have called a turn of Providence if I didn't know now it was something very different.

I should remind you hereabouts that the case was still the rage of the town, though hope of bringing the would-be assassins to justice had almost been abandoned.

The little girl now began to remember her past in a dim sort of way, and had told the police that she lived in a foreign country by the sea—which was not the same as saying Southend-on-the-Mud by a long way, Her father she recollected distinctly, and cried out for him very often in her sleep. She did not seem to think she had a mother, and of what happened in the Richmond Road her mind recalled nothing. I had seen her twice; but she was so frightened when I went near her that the police forbade me to go at all—and I do believe, upon my solemn word, that if it hadn't been for the witnesses they would have said I had something to do with the job myself.

This, be sure, didn't trouble me at all. What was in my mind was the five hundred sterling offered by the Daily Herald for the solution of the mystery; and that sum I did not lose sight of night or day. To win it I must discover the Yankee with the voice like a saw-mill, and the little cove with the saucer eyes, and for these, upon an instinct which I can hardly account for even to myself (save to say it was connected with three days I spent in Paris eight months ago) I hunted Soho for eleven days as other men hunt big game in Africa. And, will you believe it, when I discovered one of them at last, it was not by my eyes, but by his, for he spotted me at the very top of Wardour Street, and, coming across the road, he slapped me on the shoulder, just as though I had been his only brother let loose on society for the especial purpose of shaking him by the hand.

"Why," says he, "I guess it's the coachman."

"Coachman be d——d," says I; "hasn't Pentonville taught you no better manners than that? You be careful," says I, "or they'll be cancelling your ticket-of-leave——"

He wasn't to be affronted, for he continued to treat me as though he loved me and life had been a misery since we lost each other.

"Say," cried he, "you got through with the basket all right. Well, see here, now; do you want to get that five hundred, Britten, or do you not? I'll play the White Man with you—do you want to get it?"

"Oh," cried I, "if it's a matter of five hundred being put in the cloak-room because there isn't a label on it——"

"Then come along," he rejoined, and, taking me by the arm, he led me along the street, turned sharp round to the right into a place that looked like a disused coach-house; and before I could wink my eye, he dragged me through a door into a room beyond, and then burst out laughing fit to split.

"Britten," says he, "you're fairly done down. I've got the cinch on you, Britten. Don't you perceive that same?"

Well, of all the fools! My head spun with the thought; not at first the thought of fear, mind you, though fear followed right enough, but just with the irony of it all, and the rightdown lunacy which sent me into this trap as a fly goes into a spider's web. And this man would suck me dry; I hadn't a doubt of it; a word might cost me my life.

"Well," I rejoined, knowing that my safety depended upon my wits, "and what if I am? Do you suppose I came here without letting Inspector Melton know where I was coming? You'd better think it out, old chap. There may be two at the corner and both on the wrong side. Don't you make no mistake."

He laughed very quietly, and as though to make his own words good he put up the shutters on the only window the miserable den of a place possessed. We were in a kind of twilight now, in a miserably furnished shanty, with the paper peeling off the walls and the fire-grate all rusted and the very boards broken beneath our feet. And I believed he had a pistol in his pocket, and that he would use it if I so much as lifted my hand.

"Oh," says he presently, and in a mocking tone which ran down my back like cold water from a spout. "Oh, you're a brave boy, Britten, and when you spread yourself about the tecs, I like you. Now, see here, did I try to murder that girl or did I not? Fair question and fair answer. Am I the man the police are looking for, or is it another?"

I answered him straight out.

"The pair of you are in it. You know that well enough—and the reward is five hundred, to say nothing of what the police are offering."

"You mean to have that reward, Britten."

"If I can get it fairly, yes."

"As good as to say you'll walk straight out of here and give me up?"

"Unless you can tell me you didn't do it."

He swung round on his heel and looked at me as savage as a devil out of hell.

"I did it, Britten—Barney, my mate, had nothing to do with it. Didn't you see him sweat the night you picked us up? Barney's a tender-foot at this game; he'll never cut a figure in the 'Calendar,' why, not if he lives to be a chimpanzee in the human menagerie. Barney ought to be holding forth in the tabernacle round the corner. Him do it—why, he couldn't kill a calf."

Well, I think I sat back and shuddered at this; anyway, an awful feeling of horror came upon me, both at the man's word and at the thought of my lonely situation, and of what must come afterwards. All the calculations seemed against me. I am a strong man, and would have stood up to this Yankee, fist to fist, for any sum you care to name; but the pistol in his pocket, and the certainty that he would use it upon any provocation, held me to my seat as though I were glued there. And thus for five whole minutes, an eternity of time to me, I watched him pace up and down the room, gloating upon his horrid work, and wondering when my turn would come.

"Britten," he said presently—and his voice had changed, I thought—"Britten, would you like a whisky and soda?"

"If it's only whisky and soda——"

"What! You think I'm going to doctor it—same as I did Mabel's?"

"I don't know to what you refer—but something of the kind was in my head."

It amused him finely—and I must say again that his attitude all through was that of a man who could hardly keep from laughing whatever he did, so that I came to think he must be little short of a raving maniac, and that perhaps the Court would find him such.

"Oh," says he, "don't you fear, Britten, I shan't treat you that way—you may drink my whisky all right, a barrelful if you can. When I want to deal with you, Britten, it will be another way altogether—cash, my boy; have you any objection to a little cash?"

I opened my eyes wide, telling myself, for the second time, that he was as certainly mad as any March hare in the picture-books; but I said nothing, for he had turned to a little wooden cupboard near the fireplace, and before he spoke again he set a bottle of whisky, a syphon, and two tumblers on the table, and poured out a stiffish dose for himself and its fellow for me. When I had watched him drink it, and not before, I followed suit, and never did a man want a whisky and soda as badly.

"Your health," says he—I believe I wished him the same. "And little Mabel Bellamy's——"

I put the glass down on the table with a bang.

"Good God!" said I, "not Mabel Bellamy that did the disappearing trick at the Folies Bergeres in Paris two years ago?"

"The same," says he.

"And you are telling me——"

"That she was a very fine actress. Do you deny it, Mr. Britten?"

I rose and buttoned my coat—but the black look was in his eyes again.

"Britten," says he, "not in so much of a hurry, if you please. I am going round to the Daily Herald this afternoon to get that five hundred. You will sit here until I return, when I shall pay you fifty of the best. Is it a bargain, Britten—have we the right to the money or have you?"

I thought upon it for a moment and could not deny the justice of it.

"Do you mean to say you did it for an advertisement?" I cried.

"The very same," says he, "and this night, Mabel's fond papa, the gentleman with the big eyes, Britten, will go to Hampstead and take his long-lost daughter to his breast. She makes her first appearance at the Casino Theatre to-morrow night, Britten——"

I rose and shook him by the hand.

"Fifty of the best," said I, "and I'll wait for them here."

* * * * *

Well, I must say it was a tidy good notion, first for the pair of them to work a trick like that on the public just for the sake of letting all the world know that Mabel Bellamy was to disappear from a basket at the Casino Theatre; and secondly, dropping on the Daily Herald for five hundred of the best—and getting it, too, before the story got wind.

You see, the Herald lost no money, for they had a fine scoop all to their little selves, while the other papers gnashed their teeth and looked on. Nor was the whole truth told by a long way, but a garbled version about foreign coves who worked the business and bolted, and a doting father who never consented to it—and such a hash-up and hocus-pocus as would have made a pig laugh.

Whether, however, the public really took it all, or whether it resented the manner of the play, is not for me to say.

Sentiment is, after all, a very fine thing, as I told Betsy Chambers the night I gave her the anchor brooch and asked her to wear it for auld lang syne, to say nothing of the good time we had when I took her to Maidenhead in old Moss's car and pretended I was broken down at Reading with a dot-and-go-one accumulator. Of course, Moss weighed in with an interview. I wonder the sight of his ugly old mug didn't shrivel the paper it was printed on.

Anyway me and Betsy—but that's another story, and so, perhaps, I had better conclude.



VI

THE COUNTESS

To begin with, I suppose, it would be as well to tell you her name, but I only saw it once in the address-book at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, and then I couldn't have written it down for myself—no, not if a man had offered me five of the best for doing so.

You see, she gave it out that she came from foreign parts, and her husband, when she remembered that she'd got one, was supposed to be a Hungarian grandee with a name fit to crack walnuts, and a moustache like an antelope's horns set over a firegrate to speak of her ancestors. Had I been offered two guesses, I would have said that she came from New York City and that her name was Mary. But who am I to contradict a pretty woman in trouble, and what was the matter with Maria Louise Theresa, and all the rest of it, as she set it down in the visitors' book at the hotel?

I'd been over to Paris on a job with a big French car, and worked there a little while for James D. Higgs, the American tin-plate maker, who was making things shine at the Ritz Hotel, and had a Panhard almost big enough to take the chorus to Armenonville—which he did by sections, showing neither fear nor favour, and being wonderful domesticated in his tastes.

When James was overtaken by the domestic emotions, and thought he would return to Pittsburg to his sorrowing wife and children, he handed me over to the Countess, saying that she was a particular friend of his, and that if her ancestors didn't sail with the Conqueror it was probably because they had an appointment at the Moulin Rouge and were too gentlemanly to break it—which was his way of tipping me the wink; and "Britten, my boy," says he, "keep her out of mischief, for you are all she has got in this wicked world."

Well, it was an eye-opener, I must say; for I hadn't seen her for more than two minutes together, and when we did meet, I found her to be just a jolly little American chassis, slim and shapely, and as full of "go" as a schoolgirl on a roundabout. Her idea, she told me, was to drive a Delahaye car she had hired, from Paris to Monte Carlo, and there to meet her husband with the jaw-cracking name; whom, she assured me, with the look of an angel in the blue picture, she hadn't seen for more than two years.

"Two years, Britten—sure and certain. Now what do you think of that?"

"It would depend upon your husband, madame," said I; upon which she laughed so loud they must have heard her in the garden below.

"Why, to be sure," says she, "you've got there first time. It does depend upon the husband, and mine is the kindest, gentlest, most foolish creature that ever was in this world. So, you see, I am determined not to be kept from him any longer."

"Then, madame," said I, "we had better start at once."

I thought that she hesitated, could have sworn that she was about to admit me further into her confidence; but I suppose she considered the time unsuited; and after asking me a few questions about the car, and whether I knew the road and was a careful driver, she gave me instructions to be at the hotel at nine o'clock on the following morning. So away I went, telling myself that the world was a funny place, and wondering what Herr Joseph, the jaw-cracker, would have to say to his good lady when she did turn up at Montey and laid her new beehive hat upon his doting bosom.

This was no business of mine. I am a motor-driver, and two pound ten on Saturday is my abiding anxiety. Give me my wages regular, and the class of passenger who feels for the driver's palm at the journey's end, and I'll ask nothing more of Providence. So on the following morning, at nine sharp, I drove the big Delahaye round to the Ritz, and by a quarter past her ladyship was aboard and we were making for Dijon and the coast.

No motorist who knows anything of the game will ask me to describe this journey, or to tell him just where he should stop because of the dead 'uns of five hundred years ago, or where he should hurry on because of the livestock of to-day. I had a fine car under me, a pretty woman in the tonneau, a May-day to put life into me, and a road so fine that a man might dream of it in his sleep. And if that's not what the schoolmaster calls Eldorado, then I'll send him a halfpenny card to find out just what is.

So let it suffice to say that we went at our leisure—slept at Dijon and at Lyons, were one night at Avignon, and two nights later at Nice. If there was anything to remark during the journey, it was Madame's growing anxiety as we approached the Mediterranean, and the number of telegrams she sent to her friends whenever we chanced to halt—even in the meanest villages.

The telegrams I had the pleasure to read more than once as I handed them over the counter; but those that were in German were no good to me, and those that were in French I could but half decipher. None the less, I got the impression that she was in a state of much distress and perplexity, and that all her messages were to one end—namely, that she should have the right to go somewhere at present forbidden her, and that the Baron Albert, whoever he might be, should be interviewed on her behalf and persuaded that she was a lady of all the virtues.

A final telegram to an English gentleman at Vienna capped all, and was not to be misunderstood. It simply said, "I shall publish the story if they persevere." And that seemed to me an ugly threat to come from so pretty a sender, though of its meaning I had no more knowledge than the dead.

Perhaps you will say that I was a poor sort to have been reading her telegrams at all; that it didn't concern me; and that I was paid to hold my tongue. Well, that is true enough, and Madame had little to complain of on such a score, I must say. To all and sundry who questioned me at the hotels, I just said she was the wife of a Hungarian nobleman, and that she travelled for her pleasure. When we arrived at Nice, and an impertinent policeman got me into a corner, so to speak, and tried to put me through the catechism, I simply said, "No speakee Frenchee—Mistress Americano," and at that he shook his head and wrote it down in a note-book about as large as a grocer's ledger. But I plainly perceived that something more than mere police curiosity accounted for all this cross-examination; and when Madame sent for me to her private sitting-room that night, I guessed immediately that something was up, and that I was about to learn the nature of it.

I shall always remember the occasion, as beautiful a night of a Southern summer as a man could hap upon. Still and starry, the sea without a ripple; the ships like black shapes against an azure sky; the lights of the houses shining upon the moonlit gardens; the music of the bands; the gay talk of the merry people—oh, who would go northward ho! if Providence set him down on such a spot as this? And upon it all was the picture of Madame herself—of that lady of the gazelle's eyes and the milk-white skin, as she invited me into her sitting-room and asked me to sit down while she talked.

You could not have matched her for beauty in Nice; I doubt if you could have done it nearer than Paris and the Ritz. Dressed in a lot of fluffy stuff, with a pink satin skirt, and arms bare to the shoulders and a chain of diamonds about her neck—dressed like this, and so sweet and gracious in her manner, talking to me just as though she had known me from infancy, and asking me, Lal Britten, to help her—why, you bet I said "Yes," and said it so plainly that even she could not mistake me.

"Why, Britten," says she, "do you know what has happened to-day?"

"Couldn't guess it if I tried, madame," said I.

"Well, then, I must tell you: they won't let me go to Monte Carlo, Britten. They say the Emperor forbids it."

"But, madame, is there any need to ask the old gentleman's permission? Aren't you an American citizen?"

She laughed at my idea of it, and asked me if I would like a glass of port wine, which I did to oblige her; while she took another as though she liked it, which I have no reason to suppose she did not.

"You see, Britten," she said, presently, "a woman is of her husband's nationality, and so, of course, I am a Hungarian. That is why the Emperor has the power to say that I must not be admitted to Monte Carlo just at the moment when my dear husband is waiting for me there. Now, don't you think it is very hard upon us both?"

"It's very hard on him, madame, seeing you are in the case. I should want to know him before I said the same thing for you, asking your pardon for the liberty."

She took no notice of this, but casting up her eyes to heaven—and at that game Miss Sarah Bernhardt out of Paris couldn't beat her—she exclaimed:

"Oh, my poor Joseph, whatever will he think of me? I dare not contemplate it, Britten—I really dare not."

"Then I should leave it alone, madame. Is there no way of getting this decision altered?"

"None that I can think of, unless——"

"Unless what, madame?"

She tapped the table with her pretty fingers, and poured me out a second glass of port wine.

"Unless the mountain will come to Mahomet—but I guess you don't know what that means, Britten, now do you?"