Cynthia's Chauffeur
Devil forebore to use when he planned to swamp a land of churches by
cutting the famous dyke.
Then the girl awoke from a day-dream, and the car was stopped on the
pretense that this marvelous landscape must be viewed in silence and
at rest. She rejoined Mrs. Devar, and began instantly to expatiate on
the beauties of Sussex, so Medenham ran slowly down the hill through
Patcham and Preston into Brighton.
And there, sitting in the wide porch of the Hotel Metropole, was a
slim, handsome Frenchman, who sprang up with all the vivacity of his
race when the Mercury drew up at the foot of the steps, dusty after
its long run, but circumspect as though it had just quitted the
garage.
"Mrs. Devar, Miss Vanrenen! what a delightful surprise!" cried the
stranger with an accompaniment of wide smiles and hat flourishing.
"Who would have thought of meeting you here? _Voyez_, _donc_, I was
moping in solitude when suddenly the sky opens and you appear."
"_Deae ex machina_, in fact, Monsieur Marigny," said Cynthia, shaking
hands with this overjoyed gentleman.
Mrs. Devar, not understanding, cackled loudly.
"We've had a lovely run from town, Count Edouard," she gushed, "and it
is just too awfully nice of you to be in Brighton. Now, _don't_ say
you have made all sorts of engagements for the evening."
"Such as they are they go by the board, dear lady," said the gallant
Count, who had good teeth, and showed them in a succession of grins.
"Ten to-morrow morning, Fitzroy," said Cynthia, turning on the steps
as she was about to enter the hotel. He lifted his cap.
"The car will be ready, Miss Vanrenen," said he.
He got down, and scowled, yes, actually scowled, at a porter who was
hauling too strongly at the straps and buckles of the dust-covered
trunks.
"Damage the car's paint and I'll raise bigger blisters on yours," was
what he said to the man. But his thoughts were of Count Edouard
Marigny, and, like the people's discussion of the Derby, they took the
form of question and answer.
"When is a coincidence not a coincidence?" he asked himself.
"When it is prearranged," was the answer.
Then he drove round to the yard at the rear of the hotel, where Dale
awaited him, for Medenham would intrust the cleaning of the car to no
other hands.
"You've booked my room at the Grand Hotel and taken my bag there?" he
inquired.
"Yes, my lord."
"Make these people give you the key when the door is locked for the
night, and bring the car to my hotel at nine o'clock."
He hurried away, and Dale looked after him.
"Something must ha' worried his lordship," said the man. "First time
I've ever seen him in a bad temper. An' what about Eyot? Three to one
the paper says. P'raps he'll think of it in the morning."
CHAPTER III
SOME EMOTIONS--WITHOUT A MORAL
Not until he was dressing, and the contents of his pockets were spread
on a table, did Medenham remember Dale's commission. It was quite
true, as he told Mrs. Devar, that he had backed Vendetta for a small
stake on his own account. But that was an afterthought, and the bet
was made with another bookmaker at reduced odds. Altogether, including
the few sovereigns in his possession at the beginning of the day, he
counted nearly fifty pounds in gold, an exceptionally large amount to
be carried in England, where considerations of weight alone render
banknotes preferable.
He slipped Dale's money into an envelope, and took thirty pounds to be
exchanged for notes by the hotel's cashier. At the same time he wrote
a telegram to his father, destroying two drafts before he evolved
something that left his story untold while quieting any scruples as to
lack of candor. It was not that the Earl would resent his unexpected
disappearance after nearly four years' absence from home, because
father and son had met in South Africa during the war, and were
together in Cannes and Paris subsequently. His difficulty was to
explain this freak journey satisfactorily. The Earl of Fairholme held
feudal views anent the place occupied in the world by the British
aristocracy. His own hot youth was crowded with episodes that Medenham
might regard with disdain, yet he would be shocked out of his well-fed
cynicism by the notion that his son was gallivanting round the country
as the chauffeur of an unconventional American girl and a middle-aged
harpy like Mrs. Devar.
So Medenham's message was non-committal.
Aunt Susan was unable to come Epsom to-day. Have taken car
to Brighton, and Bournemouth. Home Saturday, perhaps
earlier. GEORGE.
Of course, he meant to fill in details verbally. It was possible in
conversation to impart a jesting turn to an adventure which would be
unconvincing and ambiguous in the bald phrases of a telegram.
Then he dined, filled a cigarette case from the box of Salonikas which
Tomkinson had not omitted to pack with his clothes, and strolled out,
bare-headed, to enrich Dale. He could trust his man absolutely, and
was quite sure that the Mercury would then be in the drying stage
after a thorough cleaning. Thus far he was justified, but he had not
counted on the pride of the born mechanic. Though the car was housed
for the night, when he entered the garage the hood was off, and Dale
was annoying two brothers of the craft by explaining the superiority
of _his_ engine to every other type of engine.
All three were bent over the cylinders, and Dale was saying:
"Just take a squint at them valves, will you?--ever seen anything like
'em before? Of course you haven't. Don't look like valves, eh? Can
you break 'em, can you warp 'em, can you pit 'em? D'ye twig how the
mixture reaches the cylinder? None of your shoulders or kinks to choke
it up--is there?--and the same with the exhaust. Would you ever have a
mushroom valve again after you've once cast your peepers over this
arrangement? Now, if I took up areonotting--if _I_ wanted to fly the
Channel----"
He stopped abruptly, having seen his master standing in the open
doorway.
"By gad, Dale," cried Medenham, "I have never heard your tongue
wagging in that fashion before."
Dale was flustered.
"Beg pardon, my lord, but I was only----" he began.
"Only using the cut-out, I fancy. Come here, I want you a minute."
The other chauffeurs suddenly discovered that they had urgent business
elsewhere. They vanished. Dale thought it necessary to explain.
"One of them chaps has a new French car, my lord, and he was blowing
so loudly about it that I had to take him down a peg or two."
Medenham grew interested. Like every keen motorist, he could "talk
shop" at all times.
"What sort of car?"
"A 59 Du Vallon, my lord. It is the first of its class in England, and
I rather think his guv'nor is running it on show."
"Indeed. Who is _he_?"
"A count Somebody-or-other, my lord. I did hear his name----"
"Not Count Edouard Marigny?" said Medenham, with a sharp emphasis that
startled Dale.
"That's him, my lord. I hope I haven't done anything wrong."
Medenham, early in life, had formed the habit of not expressing his
feelings when really vexed, and it stood him in good stead now. Dale's
blunder was almost irreparable, yet he could not find it in his heart
to blame the man for being an enthusiast.
"You have put me in a deuce of a fix," he said at last. "This
Frenchman is acquainted with Miss Vanrenen. He knows she is here, and
will probably see her off in the morning. If his chauffeur recognizes
the car he will be sure to speak of it. That gives the whole show
away."
"I'm very sorry, my lord----"
"Dash it all, there you go again. But it is largely my own fault. I
ought to have warned you, though I little expected this sort of a
mix-up. In future, Dale, while this trip lasts, you must forget my
title. Look here, I have brought you your winnings over Eyot--can't
you rig up some sort of a yarn that I am a sporting friend of yours,
and that you were just trying to be funny when you addressed me as 'my
lord'? If you have an opportunity, tell Count Marigny's man that your
job is taken temporarily by a driver named Fitzroy. By the way, is the
chauffeur a Frenchman, too?"
"No, my l----." Dale caught Medenham's eye, a very cold eye at that
instant. "No, sir. He's just a fitter from the London agency."
"Well, we must trust to luck. He may not remember me in my chauffeur's
kit, which is beastly uncomfortable, by the way. I must get you a
summer rig. Here is your money--five to one I took. Don't lose sight
of those two fellows, and spend this half sovereign on them. If you
can fill that chap with beer to-night he may have a head in the
morning that will keep him in bed too late to cause any mischief. When
we meet in Bournemouth and Bristol, say nothing to anybody about
either the car or me."
Dale was a model of sobriety, but the excitement of "fives" when he
looked for "threes" was too much for him.
"I'll tank him all right, my l----, I mean, sir," he vowed cheerfully.
Medenham lit a new cigarette and strolled out of the yard.
From the corner of his eye he saw Marigny's helper looking at
him. Without undue exaggeration, he craned his neck, rounded his
shoulders, and carried himself with the listless air of a Piccadilly
idler. He reflected, too, that a bare-headed man in evening dress
would not readily be identified with a leather-coated chauffeur, and
Dale, he hoped, was sufficiently endowed with mother wit to frame a
story plausible enough to account for his unforeseen appearance. On
the whole, the position was not so bad as it seemed in that first
moment when the owner of the 59 Du Vallon was revealed in the handsome
Count. In any event, what did it matter if his harmless subterfuge
were revealed? The girl would surely laugh, while Mrs. Devar would
squirm. So now for a turn along the front, and then to bed.
It was a perfect June evening, the fitting sequel to a day of unbroken
sunshine. A marvelous amber light hovered beyond the level line of the
sea to the west; an exquisite blue suffused the horizon from south to
east, deepening from sapphire to ultramarine as it blended with the
soft shadows of a summer's night. He found himself comparing the sky's
southeasterly tint with the azure depths of Cynthia Vanrenen's eyes,
but he shook off that fantasy quickly, crossed the roadway and
promenade, and, propping himself against the railings, turned a
resolute back on romance. He did not gain a great deal by this
maneuver, since his next active thought was centered in a species of
quest for the particular window among all those storeyed rows through
which Cynthia Vanrenen might even then be gazing at the shining
ocean.
He looked at his watch. Half-past nine.
"I am behaving like a blithering idiot," he told himself. "Miss
Vanrenen and her friends are either on the pier listening to the band,
or sitting over their coffee in the glass cage behind there. I'll wire
Simmonds in the morning to hurry up."
A man descended the steps of the hotel and walked straight across
King's Road. A light gray overcoat, thrown wide on his shoulders, gave
a lavish display of frilled shirt, and a gray Homburg hat was set
rakishly on one side of his head. In the half light Medenham at once
discerned the regular, waxen-skinned features of Count Marigny, and
during the next few seconds it really seemed as if the Frenchman were
making directly for him. But another man, short, rotund, very erect of
figure, and strutting in gait, came from the interior of a "shelter"
that stood a little to the right of Medenham's position on the rails.
"Hello, Marigny," said he jauntily.
The Count looked back towards the hotel. His tubby acquaintance
chuckled. The effort squeezed an eyeglass out of his right eye.
"Aie pas peur, mon vieux!" cried he in very colloquial French. "My