Cynthia's Chauffeur
to the inn. He consulted his watch.
"I'll give the postcard writer ten minutes--then I shall jar her
nerves badly," he promised himself.
Those minutes were slow-footed, but at last he closed the watch with a
snap. He called to a waitress visible at the end of a long passage.
The girl happened to be his friend of tea-time.
"Would you like to earn another half crown?" he asked.
She had wit enough to grasp essentials, and it was abundantly clear
that this man was not her lawful quarry.
"Yes--sir," she said.
"Take it, then, and tell the elderly lady belonging to my party--she
is somewhere inside--that Fitzroy says he cannot wait any longer. Use
those exact words--and be quick!"
The girl vanished. An irate yet dignified Mrs. Devar came out.
"Do I understand----" she began wrathfully.
"I hope so, madam. Unless you get in at once I intend going to
Bristol, or elsewhere, without you."
"Or elsewhere?" she gasped, though some of her high color fled under
his cold glance.
"Precisely. I do not intend to abandon Miss Vanrenen."
"How dare you speak to me in this manner, you vulgar person?"
For answer Medenham set the engine going.
"I said 'At once,'" he replied, and looked Mrs. Devar squarely in the
eyes.
She had her fair share of that wisdom of the serpent which is
indispensable to evildoers, and had learnt early in life that whereas
many men say they will do that which they really will not do if put to
the test, other men, rare but dominant, can be trusted to make good
their words no matter what the cost. So she accepted the unavoidable;
quivering with indignation, she entered the car.
"Drive me to the post-office," she said, with as much of acid repose
as she could muster to her aid.
Medenham seemed to be suddenly afflicted with deafness. After
negotiating a line of vehicles, the Mercury leaped past the caves of
Gough and Cox as though the drip of lime-laden water within those
amazing depths were reeling off centuries in a frenzy of haste instead
of measuring time so slowly that no appreciable change has been noted
in the tiniest stalactite during fifty years. Mrs. Devar then grew
genuinely alarmed, since even a designing woman may be a timid one.
She bore with the pace until the car seemed to be on the verge of
rushing full tilt against a jutting rock. She could endure the strain
no longer, but stood up and screamed.
Medenham slackened speed. When the curving road opened sufficiently to
show a clear furlong ahead, he turned and spoke to the limp,
shrieking creature clinging to the back of his seat.
"You are not in the slightest danger," he assured her, "but if you
wish it I will drop you here. The village is barely half a mile away.
Otherwise, should you decide to remain, you must put up with a rapid
speed."
"But why, why?" she almost wailed. "Have you gone mad, to drive like
that?"
"Again I pledge my word that there is no risk. I mean to overtake Miss
Vanrenen before the light fails--that is all."
"Your conduct is positively outrageous," she gasped.
"Please yourself, madam. Do you go, or stay?"
She collapsed into the comfortable upholstery with a gesture of
impotent despair. Medenham was sure she would not dare to leave him.
What wretched project she and Marigny had concocted he knew not, but
its successful outcome evidently depended on Mrs. Devar's safe arrival
in Bristol. Moreover, it was a paramount condition that he should be
delayed at Cheddar, and his chief interest lay in defeating that part
of the programme. Without another word, he released the brakes, and
the car sped onward.
Now they were plunging into a magnificent defile shadowed by sheer
cliffs that on the eastern side rose to a height of five hundred feet.
Fluttering rock pigeons circled far up in the azure riband that
spanned the opposing precipices. From many a towering pinnacle,
carved by the ages into fantastic imageries of a castle, a pulpit,
a lion, or a lance, came the loud, clear calling of innumerable
jack-daws. It was dark and gloomy, most terrifying to Mrs. Devar,
down there on the twining road where the car boomed ever on like
some relentless monster rushing from its lair. But the Cheddar
gorge, though majestic and awe-inspiring, is not of great extent.
Soon the valley widened, the road took longer sweeps to round each
frowning buttress, and at last emerged, with a quality of inanimate
breathlessness, on to the bleak and desolate tableland of the Mendips.
At this point, had Cynthia been there, Medenham would have stopped
for a while, so that she might admire the far-flung panorama of the
"island valley of Avallon" that stretched below the ravine. Out of
the green pastures in the middle distance rose the ruined towers of
Glastonbury. The purple and gold of Sedgemoor, relieved by the soft
outlines of the Polden hills, the grim summits of Taunton Dean and the
Blackdown range, the wooded Quantocks dipping to the Severn, and the
giant mass of Exmoor bounding the far horizon,--these great splashes
of color, softened and blended by belts of farmland and the blue smoke
of clustering hamlets, formed a picture that not even Britain's
storehouse of natural beauty can match too often to sate the eyes of
those who love a charming landscape.
He had, as it were, jealously guarded this vista all day, said not a
word of it, even when Cynthia and he discussed the route, so that it
might come at last in one supreme moment of revelation. And now that
it was here, Cynthia was hidden somewhere in the gray distance, and
Medenham was frowning at a flying strip of white road, with his every
faculty intent on exacting the last ounce of power from the superb
machine he controlled.
The miles rolled beneath, yet there was no token of the Du Vallon that
was to "run slowly up the hill" until overtaken by the industrious
writer of postcards. At the utmost, the French car was given some
twelve or thirteen minutes' start, which meant seven or eight miles
to a high-powered automobile urged forward with the determination
Medenham himself was displaying. Marigny's chauffeur, therefore, must
have dashed through that Titanic cleft in the limestone at a speed
utterly incompatible with his employer's excuse of sightseeing.
Of course, it would be an easy matter for Marigny to enlist Miss
Vanrenen's sympathies in the effort of a first-rate engine to conquer
the adverse gradient. She would hardly realize the rate of progress,
and, from where she was seated, the speed indicator would be invisible
unless she leaned forward for the express purpose of reading it.
Medenham was sure that the Mercury would catch the Du Vallon long
before Bristol was reached, but when the last ample fold of the bleak
plateau spread itself in front, and his hunter's eyes could discern no
cloud of dust lingering in the still air where the road dipped over
the horizon, he began to doubt, to question, to solve grotesque
problems that were discarded ere they had well taken shape.
Oddly enough, there came no more expostulation from Mrs. Devar. Like
the majority of nervous people, she was quelled by the need of placing
complete trust in one who understood his work. While Medenham was
still searching the sky-line for signs of the vanished car, she did
show some interest in his quest. He felt, since he could not see, that
she half rose and looked over his head, bent low behind the partial
shelter afforded by a glass screen. Then she settled back in the seat,
and drew a rug comfortably around her knees. For some reason, she was
strangely content.
The incident supplied food for active thought. So she felt safe! That
which she dreaded as the result of a too strenuous pursuit could not
now happen! Then what was it? Medenham swept aside the fantasy that
Mrs. Devar knew the country well enough to be able to say precisely
when and where she might be sure of his failure to snatch Cynthia from
that hidden evil the nature of which he could only guess at. Her world
was the artificial one of hotels, and shops, and numbered streets--in
the real world, of which the lonely wastes of the Mendips provided no
meager sample, she was a profound ignoramus, a fat little automaton
equipped with atrophied senses. But she blundered badly in composing
herself so cozily for the remainder of the run to Bristol. Medenham
had dwelt many months at a time in lands where just such simple
indications of mood on the part of man or beast had meant to him all
the difference between life and death. So now, if ever, he became
doubly alert; his eyes were strained, eager, peering; his body still
as the wild creatures which he knew to be skulking unseen behind many
a rock and grass tuft passed on the way.
This desolate land, given over to stones interspersed with patches of
wiry grass on which browsed some hardy sheep, resembled a disturbed
ocean suddenly made solid. It was not level, but ran in long, almost
regular undulations. In the trough between two of these rounded ridges
the road bifurcated, the way to Bristol trending to the left, and a
less important thoroughfare glancing off to the right.
There was no sign-post, but a child could scarce have erred if asked
to choose the track that led to a big town. Medenham, having consulted
the map earlier in the day, swung to the left without hesitation. The
car literally flew up the next incline, and the dark lines of trees
and hedges in the distance proved that tilled land was being neared.
Now he was absolutely sure that he had managed, somehow, to miss the
Du Vallon--unless, indeed, its redoubtable mechanism was of a caliber
he had not yet come across in the highways and byways of Europe.
With him, to decide was to act. The Mercury slowed up so promptly that
Mrs. Devar became alarmed again.
"What is it?--a tire gone?" she cried.
"No, I am on the wrong road--that is all."
"But there is no other. That turning we passed was a mere lane."
The car stopped where his watchful glance noted a carpet of sand left
by the last shower of rain. He sprang out and examined the marks of
recent traffic. Marigny's vehicle carried non-skid covers with studs
arranged in peculiar groups, and their imprint was plain to be seen.
But they had followed that road once only. It was impossible to
determine off-hand whether they had come or gone, but, if they came
from Bristol, then most certainly they had not returned.
Medenham took nothing for granted. Dusk was advancing, and he must
make no mistake at this stage. He ran the Mercury slowly ahead, not
taking his gaze off the telltale signs. At last he found what he was
looking for. The broad scars left by a heavy cart crossed the studs,
and had crossed after the passage of the car. Thus he eliminated the
vagaries of chance. Marigny had _not_ taken the road to Bristol--he
_must_ be on the other one--since no cart was in sight.
Medenham backed and turned. Mrs. Devar, of course, grew agitated.
"Where are you going?" she demanded.
Medenham resolved to end this farce of pretense, else he would not be
answerable for the manner of his speech.
"I mean to find Miss Vanrenen," he said. "Pray let that suffice for
the hour. Any further explanation you may require can be given at
Bristol and in her presence."
Mrs. Devar began to sob. He heard her, and of all things that he hated
it was to become the cause of a woman's tears. But his lips closed in
a thin seam, and he drove fast to the fork in the roads. Another halt
here, and the briefest scrutiny showed that his judgment had not
erred. The Du Vallon had passed this point twice. If it came from
Bristol in the first instance it had gone now to some unfamiliar
wilderness that skirted the whole northeastern slopes of the Mendips.
He leaped back to the driving seat, and Mrs. Devar made one more