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“It seems to me that I have barely ended lunch,” said Cynthia. “Shall we cut out your old-world Reigate inn, Mrs. Devar, and take tea at Crawley or Handcross?”
“By all means. How well you know the names of the towns and villages. Yet you have never before visited this part of England.”
“We Americans are nothing if not thorough,” answered the girl. “I would not be happy if I failed to look up our route on the map. More than that, I note the name of each river we cross and try to identify every range of hills. You must test me and count my mistakes.”
Mrs. Devar spread her hands in a gesture copied from her French acquaintances.
“My dear, I am the most ignorant person geographically. I remember how that delightful Count Edouard laughed when I asked him if the Loire joined the Seine above or below Paris. It seems that I was thinking of the Oise all the time. The Marchioness of Belfort told me of my error afterwards.”
Cynthia laughed merrily, but made no reply.
Medenham bent over the levers and the car danced on through Reigate. Mrs. Devar impressed him as a despicable type of tuft-hunter. His acquaintance with the species was not extensive; he had read of elderly dowagers who eked out their slender means by introducing the daughters of rich Americans to English society, and the thing was not in itself wholly indefensible; but he felt sure that Cynthia Vanrenen needed no such social sponsor, while the mere bracketing of Count Edouard Marigny with “Jimmy” Devar caused him to regard this unknown Frenchman with a suspicion that was already active enough so far as Mrs. Devar was concerned. And the Marchioness of Belfort, too! A decrepit old cadger with an infallible system for roulette!
Perhaps his mood communicated itself to the accelerator. At any rate, the Mercury seemed to sympathize, and it was a lucky hazard that kept the glorious stretch of road between Reigate and Crawley free of police traps on that memorable Wednesday. The car simply leaped out of Surrey into Sussex, the undulating parklands on both sides of the smooth highway appearing to float past in stately procession, and there was a fine gleam in Cynthia’s blue eyes when the first check to a splendid run came in the outskirts of Crawley.
She leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Tea here, please,” she said. Then she added, as if it were an afterthought: “If you promise to let her rip in that style after we reach the open country again I shall sit on the front seat.”
The words were almost whispered into his ear. Certainly they were not meant to enlighten Mrs. Devar, and Medenham, turning, found his face very near the girl’s.
“I’m bribed,” he answered, and not until both were settled back in their seats did they realize that either had said anything unusual.
Medenham, however, took his cup of tea à la chauffeur, helping himself to bread and butter from a plate deposited on the bonnet by a waiting-maid.
When the ladies reappeared from the interior of a roadside restaurant he was in his place, ready to start. He did not offer to put them in the car, adjust their wraps, and close the door. If Miss Vanrenen liked to keep her promise, that was her affair, but no action on his part would hint of prior knowledge that she intended to ride in front.
Nevertheless, he could not repress a smile when he heard Mrs. Devar’s distinctly chilly, “Oh, not at all!” in response to Cynthia’s polite apology for deserting her until they neared Brighton.
Somehow, the car underwent a subtle change when the girl took her seat by his side. From a machine quivering with life and power it became a triumphal chariot. By sheer perfection of mechanical energy it had bridged the gulf that lay between the millionaire’s daughter and the hired man, since there could be no question that Cynthia Vanrenen placed Viscount Medenham in no other category. Indeed, his occasional lapses from the demeanor of a lower social grade might well have earned him her marked disfavor, and, as there was no shred of personal vanity in his character, he gave all the credit to the sentient creature of steel and iron that was so ready to respond to his touch.
Swayed by an unconscious telepathy, the girl almost interpreted his unspoken thought. She watched his deft manipulation of levers and brakes, and fancied that his hands dwelt on the steering-wheel with a caress.
“You have a real lovely automobile, Fitzroy,” she said, “and I have a sort of notion that you are devoted to it. May I ask – is it your own car?”
“Yes. I bought it six months ago. I learnt to drive in France, and, as soon as I heard of the new American engine, I – er – couldn’t rest until I had tried it.”
He was on the point of saying something wholly different, but managed to twist the second half of the sentence in time. What would Miss Vanrenen have thought had he continued: “I sent my chauffeur to England, and, on receipt of his report, I had this car shipped within a week?”
There are problems too deep for speculation when a man is guiding a ton of palpitating metal along a hedge-lined road at forty miles an hour. This was one.
Cynthia, knowing nothing of any “new American engine,” would die rather than confess her ignorance. Moreover, she was pondering a problem of her own. If it was not his master’s car he might be open to a bargain.
“Simmonds is an old friend of yours, I suppose?” she said.
“Yes, I have known him some years. We were in South Africa together.”
“In the war, do you mean?”
“Yes.”
“How dreadful! Have you ever killed anybody?”
“Not with petrol, I am happy to state.”
There was an eloquent pause. Cynthia examined his reply, and discovered that it covered a good deal of ground. Perhaps, too, it conveyed the least little bit of a snub. Hence, her tone stiffened perceptibly.
“I mentioned Simmonds,” she explained, “because I think my father might arrange – to the satisfaction of all parties, of course – that you should carry through this present tour, while Simmonds would come into our service when we return to London.”
Medenham laughed. In its way, the compliment was graceful and well meant, but the utter absurdity of his position was now thrust upon him with overwhelming force.
“I am very much obliged to you, Miss Vanrenen,” he said, venturing to look once more into those alluring eyes, so shy, so daring, so divinely wise and childishly candid. “If circumstances permitted, there is nothing I would like better than to take you through this Paradise of a June England; but it is quite impossible. Simmonds must bring his car to Bristol, as I positively cannot be absent from town longer than three days.”
Cynthia did not pout. She nodded appreciation of the weighty if undescribed business that called Fitzroy and his Mercury back to London, but in her heart she mused on the strangeness of things, and wondered if this smiling land produced many chauffeurs who lauded it in such phrases.
Up and down Handcross Hill they whirred, treating that respectable eminence as if it were a snow bump in the path of a flying toboggan. Medenham had roamed the South Downs as a boy, and he was able now to point out Chanctonbury Ring, the Devil’s Dyke, Ditchling Beacon, and the rest of the round-shouldered giants that guard the Weald. In the mellow light of a superlatively fine afternoon the Downs wore their gayest raiment of blue and purple, red and green – decked, too, with ribands of white roads and ruffs of rose-laden hedges.
Cynthia forgot many times, and he hardly ever remembered, that he was a chauffeur, and the miles, too, were disregarded until the sea sparkled in their eyes as they emerged from the great gap which the 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.”
“Deæ ex machinâ, 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 mother sent a note to say that the fair Cynthia has retired to her room to write letters. I have been waiting here ten minutes.”
Now, it chanced that Medenham’s widespread touring in France had rubbed up his knowledge of the language. It is ever the ear that needs training more than the tongue, and in all likelihood he would not have caught the exact meaning of the words were it not for the hap of recent familiarity with the accents of all sorts and conditions of French-speaking folk.
“Jimmy Devar!” he breathed, and his amazement lost him Marigny’s muttered answer.
But he heard Devar’s confident outburst as the two walked off together in the direction of the West Pier.
“You are growing positively nervous, my dear Edouard. And why? The affair arranges itself admirably. I shall be always on hand, ready to turn up exactly at the right moment. What the deuce, this is the luck of a lifetime…”
The squeaky, high-pitched voice – a masculine variant of Mrs. Devar’s ultra-fashionable intonation – died away midst the chatter and laughter of other promenaders. Medenham’s first impulse was to follow and listen, since Devar had yielded to the common delusion of imagining that none except his companion on the sea-front that night understood a foreign language. But he swept the notion aside ere it had well presented itself as a means of solving an astounding puzzle.
“No, dash it all, I’m not a private detective,” he muttered angrily. “Why should I interfere? Confound Simmonds, and d – n that railway van! I have a good mind to hand the car over to Dale in the morning and return to town by the first train.”
If he really meant what he said he ought to have gone back to his hotel, played billiards for an hour, and sought his bedroom with an easy conscience. He was debating the point when the conceit intruded itself that Cynthia’s pretty head was at that moment bent over a writing-table in a certain well-lighted corner apartment of the second floor, so he compromised with his half-formed intent, whisked round to face the sea again, and lighted another cigarette from the glowing end of its predecessor. Some part of his unaccountable irritation took wings with the cloud of smoke.
“Blessed if I can tell why I should worry,” he communed. “Never saw the girl before to-day … shall never see her again if I put Dale in charge… Her father must be a special sort of fool, though, to trust her to the care of the Devar woman… What was it that rotter said? – ‘The affair arranges itself admirably.’ And he would be ‘always on hand.’ What is arranging itself?.. And why should Jimmy Devar be ready, if need be, ‘to turn up exactly at the right moment?’ I suppose the answer to the first bit of the acrostic is simple enough. Cynthia Vanrenen is to become the Countess Marigny, and the Devar gang stands in on the cash proceeds. Oh, a nice scheme! This Frenchman is posted as to the tour. By the most curious of coincidences he will reappear at Bournemouth, or Bristol, or in the Wye Valley. What more natural than a day’s run in company?.. Ah, I’ve got it! Jimmy is to come along when Marigny thinks that Cynthia will take a seat in the 59 Du Vallon for a change – just to try the new French car… By gad, I shall have a word to say there… Steady, now, George Augustus! Woa, my boy; keep a tight hand on the reins. Why in thunder should you concern yourself with the wretched business, anyhow?”
It was a marvelously still night. Beneath him, on an asphalted path nearly level with the stone-strewed beach, passed a young couple. The man’s voice came up to him.
“Jones expects to be taken into partnership after this season, and I am pretty certain to be given the management of the woolen department. If that comes off, no more long hours in the shop for you, Lucy, but a nice little house up there on the hill, just as quick as we can find it.”
“Oh, Charlie dear, I shall never be tired then…”
A black arm was suddenly silhouetted across the shoulders of a white blouse, whose wearer received a reassuring hug.
“Let’s reckon up,” said the owner of the arm – “July, August, September – three months, sweetheart…”
Medenham had never given a thought to marrying until his father hinted at the notion during dinner the previous evening, and he had laughed at it, being absolutely heart-whole. There was something irresistibly comical then about the Earl’s bland theory that Fairholme House needed a sprightly viscountess, yet now, twenty-four hours later, he could extract no shred of humor from the idyl of a draper’s assistant. It seemed to be a perfectly natural thing that these lovers should talk of mating. Of what else should they whisper on this midsummer’s night, when the gloaming already bore the promise of dawn, and the glory of the sea and sky spread quiet harmonies through the silent air?
Perhaps he sighed as he turned away, but his own evidence on that point would be inconclusive, since the first object his wondering eyes dwelt on was the graceful figure of Cynthia Vanrenen. There was no possibility of error. An arc lamp blazed overhead, and, to make assurance doubly sure, his recognition of Cynthia was obviously duplicated by Cynthia’s recognition of her deputy chauffeur.