"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 b.u.t.ton-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."