



Produced by Al Haines









[Illustration: Cover art]





THE MAN WHO

DROVE THE CAR


BY

MAX PEMBERTON



AUTHOR OF

"THE GIRL WITH THE RED HAIR"

"THE IRON PIRATE" ETC.




LONDON

EVELEIGH NASH

FAWSIDE HOUSE

1910




Printed by BALLANTYNE & Co. LIMITED

Tavistock Street, Coven Garden, London




CONTENTS

   I. THE ROOM IN BLACK
  II. THE SILVER WEDDING
 III. IN ACCOUNT WITH DOLLY ST. JOHN
  IV. THE LADY WHO LOOKED ON
   V. THE BASKET IN THE BOUNDARY ROAD
  VI. THE COUNTESS




I

THE ROOM IN BLACK

They say that every man should have a master, but, for my part, I
prefer a mistress.  Give me a nice young woman with plenty of money in
her pocket, and a bit of taste for seeing life, and I'll leave you all
the prying "amatoors" that ever sniffed about a gear-box without
knowing what was inside that same.

I have driven plenty of pretty girls in my life; but I don't know that
the prettiest wasn't Fauny Dartel, of the Apollo.  This story isn't
about her--except in a way--so it doesn't much matter; but when I first
knew Fauny she was getting thirty bob a week in "The Boys of Boulogne,"
and, as she paid me three pound ten every Saturday, and the car cost
her some four hundred per annum to run, she must have been of a saving
disposition.  Certainly a better mistress no man wants--not Lal
Britten, which is yours truly.  I drove her for five months, and never
had a word with her.  Then a man, who said he was a bailiff, came and
took her car away, and there was no money for me on the Saturday.  So I
suppose she married into the peerage.

My story isn't about Fauny Dartel, though it's got to do with her.
It's about a man who didn't know who he was--at least, he said so--and
couldn't tell you why he did it.  We picked him up outside the Carlton
Hotel, Fauny and me,[1] three nights before "The Boys of Boulogne" went
into the country, and "The Girls" from some other shop took their
place.  She was going to sup with her brother, I remember--astonishing
how many brothers she had, too--and I was to return to the mews off
Lancaster Gate, when, just as I had set her down and was about to drive
away, up comes a jolly-looking man in a fine fur coat and an opera hat,
and asks me if I was a taxi.   Lord, how I stared at him!

"Taxi yourself," says I, "and what asylum have you escaped out of?"

"Oh, come, come," says he, "don't be huffy.  I only wanted to go as far
as Portman Square."

"Then call a furniture van," says I, "and perhaps they'll get you
aboard."

My dander was up, I tell you, for I was on the box of as pretty a
Daimler landaulette as ever came out of Coventry, and if there's
anything I never want to be, it's the driver of a pillar-box with a
flag in his left ear.  No doubt I should have said much more to the
gentleman, when what do you think happens--why, Fauny herself comes up
and tells me to take him.

"I'm sure we should like some one to do the same for us if no taxis
were about," says she very sweetly; "please take the gentleman,
Britten, and then you can go home."

Well, I sat there as amazed a man as any in the Haymarket.  It's true
there weren't any taxis on the rank at the minute; but he could have
got one by walking a hundred yards along Trafalgar Square, and she must
have known it as well as he did.  All the same, she smiled sweetly at
him and he at her--and then, with a tremendous sweep of his hat, he
makes a gallant speech to her.

"I am under a thousand obligations," says he; "really, I couldn't
intrude."

"Oh, get in and go off," says she, almost pushing him.  "I shall lose
my supper if you don't."

He obeyed her immediately, and away we went.  You will remember that
his talk had been of a house in Portman Square; but no sooner had I
turned the corner by the Criterion than he began speaking through the
tube, and telling me to go to Playford's in Berkeley Square.  There he
stopped, notwithstanding that it was getting on for twelve o'clock; and
when he had rung the bell and entered the house, I had to wait a good
fifteen minutes before he was ready for the second stage.

"Is it Portman Square now?" I asked him.  He laughed and slipped a
sovereign into my hand.

"I can see you're one of the right sort," he said.  "Would you mind
running round to the King's Road, Chelsea, for ten minutes?  Perhaps
there'll be another sovereign before we get to bed to-night."

I pocketed the money--you don't find many drivers who are long off the
fourth speed in that line, and Lal Britten is no exception.  As for the
gentleman, he did seem a merry fellow, and his air was that of a Duke
all over--the kind of man who says "Do it," and finds you there every
time.  We were round at the King's Road, Chelsea, perhaps a quarter of
an hour after he had spoken, and there we stopped at the door of a lot
of studios, which I have been told since are where some of the great
painters of the country keep their pictures.  Here my friend was gone
perhaps twenty minutes, and when next I saw him he had three flash-up
ladies with him, and every one as classy as he was.

"Relations of mine," says he, as he pushes 'em into the landaulette,
and closes the door himself.  "Now you may drive to Portman Square just
as fast as you please, for I'm an early bird myself, and don't approve
of late hours."

Well, I stared, be sure of it, though staring didn't fit that riddle,
not by a long way.  My mistress had lent her landaulette to a stranger;
but I felt sure that she wouldn't have liked this sort of thing--and
yet, remember, the gentleman had told me to drive to Portman Square, so
there could not be much the matter, after all.

As for the ladies, it wasn't for me to quarrel with them.  They were
all very well dressed, and behaved themselves perfectly.  I came to the
conclusion that I was dealing with some rich man who had a bee in his
bonnet, and, my curiosity getting the better of me, I drove away to
Portman Square without as much as a word.

Now, this would have been some time after twelve o'clock.  It was, I
think, a quarter to one when we turned into Portman Square, and he
began to work the signal on the driver's seat which tells you whether
you are to go to the right or the left, slow or easy, out or home
again.  All sorts of contradictory orders baffling me, we drew up at
last before a big house on the Oxford Street side, and this, to my
astonishment, had a "To Let" board in the window, and another at the
pillar of the front door.  What was even more astonishing was the fact
that this empty house--for I saw at a glance it was that--was just
lighted up from cellar to attic, while there was as many as three
furniture vans drawn up against the pavement, and sending in their
contents as fast as a dozen men could carry them.  All this, mind you,
I took in at a glance.  No time was given me to think about it, for the
stranger was out of the car in a jiffy and had given me my instructions
in two.

"Here's your sovereign," says he; "if you want to earn ten times as
many come back for me at four o'clock--or, better still, stay and give
'em a hand inside.  We want all the help we can get to-night, and no
mistake about it.  You can get your supper here, and bring that car
round when I'm ready."

Well, I didn't know what to do.  My mistress had said nothing about
stopping up until four o'clock--but for that matter she hadn't
mentioned ten pounds sterling either--and here was this merry gentleman
talking about it glibly enough.

For my part the fun of the whole thing began to take hold of me, and I
determined to see it through whatever the cost.  There were goings on
in Portman Square, and no mistake about it--and why should Lal Britten
be left out in the cold?  Not much, I can tell you.  And I had the car
away in the garage off the Edgware Road, and was back at the old
gentleman's house just about as quick as any driver could have made the
journey.

There I found the square half full of people.  Three policemen stood at
the door of the house, and a pretty crowd of loafers, such as a party
in London can always bring together, watched the fun, although they
couldn't make much of it.  Asking what the hullabaloo was about, a
fellow told me that Lord Crossborough had come up from the country
suddenly, and was "a-keeping of his jubilee" at No. 20B.

"Half the Gaiety's there, to say nothing of the Merry Widow," says he,
as I pushed past him, "and don't you be in a hurry, guv'nor, 'cause
you've forgotten yer diamond collar.  They won't say nothink up there,
not if you was to go in a billycock 'at and a duster, s'welp me, they
wouldn't----"  But I didn't listen to him, and going up the front door
steps by the policemen, I told them I was Lord Crossborough's driver,
and passed right in.

Now I have been through many funny scenes in my life, seen many funny
gentlemen, to say nothing of funny ladies, and have had many a good
time on many a good car.  But this I shall say at once, that I never
got a greater surprise than when I got back to 20B, and found myself in
the empty hall among twenty or thirty pairs of yellow breeches and as
many cooks in white aprons, all pushing and shouting, and swearing that
the area gate was locked and bolted, and the kitchen in no fit state to
serve supper to a dog.

Upstairs on the landings men in white aprons were carrying plants in
pots, and building up banks of roses; while higher up still stood Lord
Crossborough himself--the gentleman I had driven from the
Carlton--shouting to them to do this and to do that, smoking a cigar as
long as your arm, and all the time as merry as a two-year-old at a
morning gallop.

As for the young ladies, they had taken off their cloaks, and all wore
pretty gowns, same as they would wear for any party in that part of the
world, and they were standing by his lordship's side, apparently just
as much amused as he was.  What astonished me in particular was this
nobleman's affability towards me, for he cried out directly he saw me,
and implored me for heaven's sake to get the padlock off the area gate,
or, says he, "I'm d--d if they won't be cooking the ducks in the
drawing-room."

I was only too ready to oblige him, that goes without saying, though I
had to run round to the garage for a file and a chisel, and when I got
back for the second time, it took me twenty minutes to get off the
padlock, after which they sent me upstairs, as they said, "to help with
the flats."  Then I discovered that a play, or something, was to be
given in the drawing-room, the back part of which was full of scenery,
showing a castle on the top of a precipice and a view of the Thames
Embankment just below it, while away in the small library on the other
side of the staircase stood twenty or thirty ballet girls, just come
from one of the West End theatres.

Immediately after they had arrived, a number of fiddlers came tumbling
up the stairs, and the fun began in earnest.  A proper gentleman, who
seemed to know what he was talking about, though, to be sure, he did
call all the ladies his "darlings," started to put 'em through their
paces.  I saw one of our leading musical ladies coming down the stairs
from the rooms above, and presently a lot of guests arrived from the
hall below, and went into the great drawing-room, where the audience
was to sit.  "After all," says I, "this is just his lordship's bit of
fun--he's giving one of those impromptu parties we've heard so much
about, and this play-acting is the surprise of it."  You shall see
presently how very wrong I was.

Well, the play went merry enough, as it should have done, seeing it was
performed by people who have to make their living by plays.  When it
was over, his lordship gets up and says something about their having
supper, not in the English way but the French, same as they do at the
Catsare[2] in Paris.  This pleased them all very much, and I could see
that the most part of them were not real ladies and gentlemen at all,
but riff-raff Bohemian stuff out for a spree, and determined to have
one.  The supper itself was the most amusing affair you ever saw; for
what must they do but flop down on the floor just where they stood, not
minding the bare boards at all, and eat cold chicken and twist rolls
from paper bags the footman threw to them.  As for the liquor, you
would have thought they never could have enough of it--but it's not for
me to say anything about that, seeing I had a bottle of the best to
myself down in the corner by the conservatory, and more than one paper
bag when the first was empty.

Now, this supper occupied them until nearly three in the morning.  I
make out--as I had to do to the police--that it was just a quarter past
three when the real business began, and a pretty frightening business,
as