"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 pa.s.sed. 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 p.r.o.ng, 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 pa.s.s 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 h.e.l.l, 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.