CHAPTER I
THE HIRED CAR

Derby Day fell that year on the first Wednesday in June. By a whim of the British climate, the weather was fine; in fact, no rain had fallen on southern England since the previous Sunday. Wise after the event, the newspapers published cheerful “forecasts,” and certain daring “experts” discussed the probabilities of a heat wave. So London, on that bright Wednesday morning, was agog with excitement over its annual holiday; and at such a time London is the gayest and liveliest city in the world.

And then, wholly independent of the weather, there was the Great Question.

From the hour when the first ’bus rumbled Citywards until some few seconds before three o’clock in the afternoon the mass of the people seemed to find delight in asking and answering it. The Question was ever the same; but the answer varied. In its way, the Question formed a tribute to the advance of democracy. It caused strangers to exchange opinions and pleasantries in crowded trains and omnibuses. It placed peers and commoners on an equality. During some part of the day it completely eclipsed all other topics of conversation.

Thus, young Lord Medenham made no pretense of shirking it while he stood on the steps of his father’s mansion in Cavendish Square and watched his chauffeur stowing a luncheon basket beneath the front seat of the Mercury 38.

“You know a bit about racing, Tomkinson,” he said, smiling at the elderly butler who had brought the basket out of the house. “What’s going to win?”

“The King’s horse, my lord,” replied Tomkinson, with the unctuous conviction of a prelate laying down a dogma.

“Is it as sure as all that?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Well, I hope so. You are on a sovereign – By gad, you really are, you know.”

Tomkinson was far too keenly alive to the monetary side of the transaction to pay heed to the quip. His portly figure curved in a superb bow.

“Thank you, my lord,” said he.

“Remind me this evening if you are right. I shall not forget to damn you if you are wrong.”

Tomkinson ignored the chance of error and its consequences.

“Your lordship will be home for dinner?”

“Yes, I have no other engagement. All ready, Dale?” for the chauffeur was in his seat, and the engine was purring with the placid hum of a machine in perfect tune.

Tomkinson moved grandly down the steps, ushered Viscount Medenham into the car, and watched its graceful swoop into Holles Street.

“Times have changed,” said he to himself. “Twenty years ago, when I first came here, his lordship’s father would have given me a tip, and he wouldn’t have been coming home for dinner, neether.”

By that last fatal word Tomkinson betrayed the cloven hoof. At least, he was no prelate – and his assumption of the prophetic rôle would soon be put to the test. But he had answered the Great Question.

The Mercury crossed Oxford Street and insinuated itself into the aristocratic narrowness of Mayfair. It stopped in Curzon Street, opposite a house gay with flowers in window-boxes. The Viscount looked at his watch.

“How far to Epsom?” he asked over Dale’s shoulder.

“About sixteen miles by the direct road, my lord, but it will be best to go round by Kingston and avoid the worst of the traffic. We ought to allow an hour for the run.”

“An hour!”

“We are not in France now, my lord. The police here would have spasms if they saw the car extended.”

Lord Medenham sighed.

“We must reason with them,” he said. “But not to-day. Lady St. Maur declares she is nervous. Of course, she doesn’t know our Mercury. After to-day’s experience it will be quite another matter when I take her to Brighton for lunch on Sunday.”

Dale said nothing. He had met his employer at Marseilles in October, when Lord Medenham landed from Africa; during the preceding twelve months his license had been indorsed three times for exceeding the speed limit on the Brighton Road, and he had paid £40 in fines and costs to various petty sessional courts in Surrey and Sussex. Sunday, therefore, promised developments.

Medenham seemed to think that his aunt, Lady St. Maur, would be waiting for him on the doorstep. As no matronly figure materialized in that locality, he alighted, and obeyed a brass-lettered injunction to “knock and ring.” Then he disappeared inside the house, and remained there so long that Dale’s respect for the law began to weaken. The chauffeur had been given a racing certainty for the first race; the hour was nearing twelve, and every road leading to Epsom Downs would surely be congested.

His lordship came out, alone, and it was clear that the unexpected had happened.

“Nice thing!” he said, with the closest semblance to a growl that his good-natured drawl was capable of. “The whole show is busted, Dale. Her ladyship is in bed with her annual bilious attack – comes of eating forced strawberries, she says. And she adores strawberries. So do I. There’s pounds of ’em in that luncheon basket. Who’s going to eat ’em?”

Dale foresaw no difficulties in that respect, but he did realize at once that his master cared little about racing, and, so far as Epsom was concerned, would abandon the day’s excursion without a pang. He grew desperate. But, being something of a stoic, he kept his feelings in check, and played a card that could hardly fail.

“You will find plenty of youngsters on the hill who will be glad of them, my lord,” said he.

“You don’t tell me so! Kiddies at the Derby! Well, why not? It shows what a stranger I am in my own land that I should never have seen the blessed race. Right ahead then, Dale; we must back the King’s horse and arrange a school treat. But I’ll take the wheel. Can you tuck your legs over that basket? I’m not going to sit alone in the tonneau. And, who knows? – we may pick up someone on the road.”

Starting on the switch, the car sprang off towards Piccadilly. Dale sighed in his relief. With ordinary luck, they ought to reach Epsom before one o’clock, and racing did not begin till half an hour later. He left wholly out of reckoning the mysterious element in human affairs that allots adventures to the adventurous, though close association with Viscount Medenham during the past nine months ought to have taught him the wisdom of caution. Several chapters of a very interesting book might be supplied by his lordship’s motoring experiences on the Continent, and these would only supplement the still more checkered biography of one who, at the close of the Boer War, elected to shoot his way home through the Mid-African haunts of big game rather than return by orthodox troopship. On the face of things, it was absurd to imagine that a self-confessed wanderer should be permitted to see his first Derby in the sacrosanct company of a stout aunt and a well-filled luncheon basket. Even Medenham’s recording angel must have smiled at the conceit, though doubtless shaking a grave head when the announcement of the Dowager’s indisposition revealed the first twist from the path of good intent. As for Lady St. Maur, she declared long afterwards that the whole amazing entanglement could be traced distinctly to her fondness for the ducal fruit raised under glass. A cherry-stone lodged in the vermiform appendix of an emperor has more than once played strange pranks with the map of Europe, so it is not surprising that a strawberry, subtly bestowed in a place well adapted to the exercise of its fell skill, should be able to convulse a section of the British peerage.

Be that as it may, the hap that put Medenham in control of his Mercury unquestionably led to the next turn in events. A man driving a high-powered car watches the incidents of the road more closely than the same individual lounging at ease in the back seat. Hence, his lordship’s attention was caught instantly by a touring car drawn up close to the curb in Down Street. That short thoroughfare forms, as it were, a backwash for the traffic of Piccadilly. At the moment it held no other vehicle than the two automobiles, and it required no second look at the face of the driver of the motionless car to discover that something was seriously amiss. Anger and despair struggled there for predominance. Richard the Third of England must have given just such a glance at his last horse foundered on Bosworth Field.

Medenham never passed another motorist in trouble without stopping.

“Anything the matter?” he asked, when the Mercury was halted with the ease of a trained athlete poised in suspended motion.

“Everything!”

The chauffeur snapped out the word without turning. He was a man devoid of faith, or hope, or charity.

“Can I help?”

“Can you h – l!” came the surly response.

Thereupon, many viscounts would have swept on into Piccadilly without further parley – not so Medenham. He scrutinized the soldierly figure, the half-averted face.

“You must be hard hit, Simmonds, before you would answer me in that fashion,” said he quietly.

Simmonds positively jumped when he heard his name. He wheeled round, raised his cap, and broke into stuttering excuse.

“I beg your lordship’s pardon – I hadn’t the least notion – ”

These two had not met since they discussed Boer trenches and British generals during a momentary halt on the Tugela slope of Spion Kop. Medenham remembered the fact, and forgave a good deal on account of it.

“I have seen you look far less worried under a plunging fire from a pom-pom,” he said cheerily. “Now, what is it? Wires out of order?”

“No, my lord. That wouldn’t bother me very long. It’s a regular smash this time – transmission shaft snapped.”

“Why?”

“I was run into by a railway van, and forced against a street refuge.”

“Well, if it was not your fault – ”

“Oh, I can claim damages right enough. I have plenty of witnesses. Even the driver of the van could only say that one of his horses slipped. It’s the delay I’m jibbing at. I hate to disappoint my customers, and this accident may cost me three hundred pounds, and a business of my own into the bargain.”

“By gad! That sounds rather stiff. What’s the hurry?”

“This is my own car, my lord. Early in the spring I was lucky enough to fall in with a rich American. I was driving for a company then, but he offered me three hundred pounds, money down, for a three months’ contract. Straightaway I bought this car for five hundred, and it is half paid for. Now the same gentleman writes from Paris that I am to take his daughter and another lady on a thousand miles’ run for ten days, and he says he is prepared to hire me and the car for the balance of another period of three months on the same terms.”

“But the ladies will be reasonable when you explain matters.”

“Ladies are never reasonable, my lord – especially young ones. I have met Miss Vanrenen only once, but she struck me as one who was very much accustomed to having her own way. And she has planned this tour to the last minute. Any other day I might have hired a car, and picked up my own somewhere on the road, but on Derby Day and in fine weather – ”

Simmonds spread wide his hands in sheer inability to find words that would express the hopelessness of retrieving his shattered fortunes. Dale was fidgeting, fingering taps and screws unnecessarily, but Medenham was pondering his former trooper’s plight. He refused to admit that the position was quite so bad as it was painted.

“Oh, come now,” said he, “I’ll give you a tow to the nearest repair shop, and a word from me will expedite the business. Meanwhile, you must jump into a hansom and appeal to the sympathies of Miss – Vanrenen, is it?”

“No use, my lord,” was the stubborn answer. “I am very much obliged to you, but I would not dream of detaining you.”

“Simmonds, you are positively cantankerous. I can spare the time.”

“The first race is at 1.30, my lord,” muttered Dale, greatly daring.

Medenham laughed.

“You, too?” he cried. “Someone has given you a tip, I suppose?”

Dale flushed under this direct analysis of his feelings. He grinned sheepishly.

“I am told that Eyot can’t lose the first race, my lord,” he said.

“Ah! And how much do you mean to speculate?”

“A sovereign, my lord.”

“Hand it over. I will lay you starting price.”

Somewhat taken aback, though nothing said or done by Viscount Medenham could really surprise him, Dale’s leather garments creaked and groaned while he produced the coin, which his master duly pocketed.

“Now, Simmonds,” went on the pleasant, lazy voice, “you see how I have comforted Dale by taking his money; won’t you tell me what is the real obstacle that blocks the way? Are you afraid to face this imperious young lady?”

“No, my lord. No man can provide against an accident of this sort. But Miss Vanrenen will lose all confidence in me. The arrangement was that to-day’s spin should be a short one – to Brighton. I was to take the ladies to Epsom in time for the Derby, and then we were to run quietly to the Metropole. Miss Vanrenen made such a point of seeing the race that she will be horribly disappointed. There is an American horse entered – ”

“By gad, another gambler!”

Simmonds laughed grimly.

“I don’t think Miss Vanrenen knows much about racing, my lord, but the owner of Grimalkin is a friend of her father’s, and he is confident about winning this year.”

“I am beginning to understand. You are in a fix of sorts, Simmonds.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And what is your plan? I suppose you have one.”

“I have sent for a boy messenger, my lord. When he arrives I shall write – Oh, here he is.”

Viscount Medenham descended leisurely and lit a cigarette. Dale, the stoic, folded his arms and looked fixedly at the press of vehicles passing the end of the street. Vivid memories of Lord Medenham’s chivalrous courtesy – his lordship’s dashed tomfoolery he called it – warned him that life was about to assume new interests.

The boy messenger, summoned telephonically by a sympathetic maid-servant in a neighboring house, guessed that the gentleman standing on the pavement owned the “motor-car” to which he had been directed. Here were two cars, but the boy did not hesitate. He saluted.

“Messenger, sir,” he said.

“This way,” intervened Simmonds curtly.

“No. I want you,” said Medenham. “You know Sevastopolo’s, the cigarette shop in Bond Street?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take this card there, and ask him to dispatch the order at once.” Meanwhile he was writing: “Kindly send 1,000 Salonikas to 91 Cavendish Square.”

Simmonds looked anxious. He was not a smooth-spoken fellow, but he did not wish to offend Lord Medenham.