Yes, I shall never forget "Benny," and I shall never forget his
beautiful red hair. Gentlemen, I have driven for many ... and the
other sort, but "Benny" was neither the one nor the other--not a man,
but a tribe ... not a Jew nor yet a Christian, but just something you
meet every day and all days--a big, blundering heap of good-nature,
which quarrels with one half the world and takes Bass's beer with the
other. That was Benjamin Colmacher--"Benny" for short--that was the
master I want to tell you about.
I was out of a job at the time, and had picked up an endorsement at
Hayward's Heath and left a matter of six pounds there for the justices
to get busy with. Time is money, they say, and I have found it to be
so ... generally five pounds and costs, though more if you take a
quantity. It isn't easy for a good man with a road mechanic's
knowledge and five years' experience, racing and otherwise, to place
himself nowadays, when any groom can get made a slap-bang "shuffer" for
five pounds at a murder-shop, and any old coachman is young enough to
put his guv'nor in the ditch. My knowledge and my experience had gone
begging for exactly three months when I heard of Benny, and hurried
round to his flat off Russell Square, "just the chap for you," they
said at the garage. I thought so, too, when I saw him.
It was a fine flat, upon my word, and filled up with enough fal-de-lals
to please a duchess from the Gaiety. Benny himself, his red hair
combed flat on his head and oiled like a missing commutator, wore a
Japanese silk dressing-gown which would have fired a steam car. His
breakfast, I observed, consisted of one brandy-and-soda and a bunch of
grapes; but the cigar he offered me was as long as a policeman's boot,
and the fellow to it stuck out of a mouth as full of fine white teeth
as a pod of peas.
"Good-morning," says he, nodding affably enough; and then, "You are
Lionel Britten, I suppose?"
"Yes," says I--for no road mechanic who respects himself is going to
"sir" such as Benny Colmacher to begin with--"that's my name, though my
friends call me Lal for short. You're wanting a driver, I hear."
He sat himself in a great armchair and looked me up and down as a vet
looks at a horse.
"I do want a driver," says he, "though how you got to know it, the Lord
knows."
"Why," says I, "that's funny, isn't it? We're both wanting the same
thing, for I can see you're just the gentleman I would like to take on
with."
He smiled at this, and seemed to be thinking about it. Presently he
asked a plain question. I answered him as shortly.
"Where did you hear of me?" he asked.
"At Blundell's garage," I answered.
"And I was buying a car?"
"Yes, a fifty-seven Daimler ... that was the talk."
"Could you drive a car like that?"
"Could I--oh, my godfathers----"
"Then you have handled fast cars?"
"I drove with Fournier in the Paris-Bordeaux, was through the Florio
for the Fiat people, and have driven the big Delahaye just upon a
hundred and three miles an hour. Read my papers, sir ... they'll show
you what I've done."
I put a bundle into his hand, and he read a few words of them. When
next he looked at me, there was something in his eyes which surprised
me considerably. Some would have called it cunning, some curiosity; I
didn't know what to make of it.
"Why would you like to drive for me?" he asked presently.
"Because," said I, quickly enough, "it's plain that you're a gentleman
anybody would like to drive for."
"But you don't know anything at all about me."
"That's just it, sir. The nicest people are those we don't know
anything at all about."
He laughed loudly at this, and helped himself to the brandy-and-soda,
but didn't drink over-much of it. I could see that he was much
relieved, and he spoke afterwards with more freedom.
"You're one that knows how to hold his tongue?" he suggested. I
rejoined that, so far as tongues went, I had mine in a four-inch vice.
"Especially where the ladies are concerned?"
"I'd sooner talk to them than about them, sir."
"That's right, that's right. Don't take the maid when you can get the
mistress, eh?"
"Take 'em both for choice, that's my motto."
"You're not married, Britten?"
"No such misfortune has overtaken me, sir."
"Ha!"--here he leered just like an actor at the Vic--"and you don't
mind driving at night?"
"I much prefer it, sir."
He leered again, and seemed mightily pleased. A few more questions put
and answered found me with that job right enough ... and a right good
job, too, as things are nowadays. I was to have four pounds a week and
liveries. Such a mug as "Benny" Colmacher would not be the man to ask
about tyres and petrol, and if he did, I knew how to fill up his tanks
for him. Be sure I went away on my top speed and ate a better lunch
than had come my way for six months or more. Who the man was, or what
he was, I didn't care a dump. I had got the job, and to-morrow I would
get up in the driver's seat of a car again. You can't wonder I was
pleased.
I slept well that night, and was round at Benny's early on the
following morning. If I had been surprised at my good luck yesterday,
surprise was no word for what I felt when the valet opened the door to
me and told me that Mr. Colmacher was in the country and wouldn't be
back for a month. Not a word had been said about this, mind you--not a
hint at it; and yet the stiff and starched gentleman could tell me the
news just as coolly as though he had said, "My master has gone across
the street to see a friend." When I asked him if there was no message
for me, he answered simply, "None."
"He didn't give no instructions about the car?"
"The car is at the yard being repaired."
"But I was engaged to drive her----"
"You will drive Mr. Colmacher when he returns."
"And my wages----?"
"Oh, those will be paid. This is a place where they know what is due
to us."
"And I am to do nothing meanwhile?"
"If you have nothing to do, by all means."
It was an odd thing to hear, to be sure, and you can well understand my
hesitation as I stood there on the landing and watched that stiff and
starched valet, who might have just come out of a tailor's shop.
Gentlemen are not usually reserved between themselves, but this fellow
beat me altogether, and I liked him but little. Such a
"don't-touch-me-or-I-shall-vanish" manner you don't come across often
even in Park Lane, and I soon saw that whatever else happened, Joseph,
the valet, as they called him, and Lal Britten, the "shuffer," were
never going to the North Pole together.
"If it's doing nothing," said I at last, "Mr. Colmacher won't have
cause to complain of his driver. Am I to call again, or will he send
for me?"
"He will send for you, unless you like to see Mr. Walter in the
meantime?"
I looked up at this. There had been no "Mr. Walter" in the business
before.
"Mr. Walter--and who may Mr. Walter be?"
"He is Mr. Colmacher's son."
"Then I will see him just as soon as you like."
He nodded his head and invited me in. Presently I found myself in a
fine bedroom on the far side of the flat, and what was my astonishment
to discover Mr. Walter himself in bed with a big cut across his
forehead and his right arm in a sling. He was a lean, pale youth, but
with as cadaverous a face as I have ever looked upon; and when he spoke
his voice appeared to come from the back of his head.
"You are the new driver my father has engaged?"
"Yes, sir, I am the same."
"I hope you understand powerful cars. Did my father tell you that ours
is a steam car?"
"He talked about a fifty-seven Daimler, sir."
"But you have had experience with steam cars----"
"How did you know that, sir?"
He smiled softly.
"We have made inquiries--naturally, we should do so."
"Then you have not been misinformed. I drove a thirty-horse White
three months last year."
"Ah, the same car that we drive. Unfortunately, I cannot help my
father just now, for I have met with an accident--in the hunting field."
I jibbed at this. Motor-men don't know much about the hunting field,
as a rule, but I wasn't such a ninny that I supposed men hunted in July.
"Hunting, did you say, sir?"
"That is, trying a horse for the hunting season. Well, you may go now.
Leave your address with Joseph. My father will send for you when he
returns, and meanwhile you are at liberty."
I thanked him and went off. Oddly enough, this fellow pleased me no
more than the valet. His smile was ugly, his scowl uglier
still--especially when I made that remark about the hunting field.
"Better have held your tongue, Lal, my boy," said I to myself; and
resolving to hold it for the future, I went to my own diggings and
heard no more of the Colmachers, father or son, for exactly twenty-one
days. The morning of the twenty-second found me at the flat again.
"Benny" Colmacher had returned, and remembered that he had paid me
three weeks' wages.
Now this was the middle of the month of August, and "Benny" certainly
was dressed for country wear. A dot-and-go-one suit of dittoes went
for best, so to speak, with his curly red hair, and got the better of
it by a long way. He had a white rose in his button-hole, and his
manner was as smooth as Vacuum B from a nice clean can. He had just
breakfasted off his usual brandy-and-soda and dry toast when I came in;
and the big cigar did sentry-go across his mouth all the time he talked
to me.
"Come in, come in, Britten," he cried pompously, when I appeared. "You
like your place, I hope--you don't find the work too hard?"
"That's so--sir--a very nice sort of place this for a delicate young
man like myself."
"Ah, but we are going to be a little busier. Has Mr. Walter shown you
the car?"
"No, sir, not yet. I hear she is a White steamer, though."
"Yes, yes; I like steam cars; they don't shake me up. When a man
weighs fifteen stun, he doesn't like to be shaken up, Britten--not good
for his digestion, eh? Well, you go down to the Bedford Mews, No. 23B,
and tell me if you can get the thing going by ten o'clock to-morrow--as
far as Watford, Britten. That's the place, Watford. I've something on
down there--something very important. Upon my soul, I don't know why I
shouldn't tell you. It's about a lady, Britten--ha, ha!--about a lady."
Well, he grinned all over his face just like the laughing gorilla at
the Zoo, and went on grinning for a matter of two minutes or more.
Such a laugh caught you whether you would or no; and while I didn't
care two-pence about his business, and less about the lady, yet here I
was laughing as loudly as he, and seemingly just as pleased.
"Is it a young lady?" I ventured to ask presently. But he stopped
laughing at that, and looked mighty serious.
"You mustn't question me, my lad," he said, a bit proudly. "I like my
servants to be in my confidence, but they must not beg it. We are
going down to Watford--that is enough for you. Get the car ready as
soon as possible, and let me know at once if there is anything the
matter with her."
I promised to do so, and went round to the mews immediately. "Benny"
seemed to me just a good-natured lovesick old fool, who had got hold of
some new girl in the country and was going off to spoon her. The car I
found to be one of the latest forty White's in tip-top trim. She
steamed at once, and when I had put a new heater in, there was nothing
more to be done to her, except to wash her down, a thing no
self-respecting mechanic will ever do if he can get another to take the
job on for him. So I hired a loafer who was hanging about the mews,
and set him to the work while I read the papers and smoked a cigarette.
He was a playful little cuss to be sure, one of those "ne'er-grow-ups"
you meet about stables, and ready enough to gossip when I gave him the
chance.
"He's a wonder, is Colmacher," he remarked as he splashed and hissed
about the wheels. "Takes his car out half a dozen times in as many
hours, and then never rides in her for three months. You would be
engaged in place of Mr. Walter, I suppose. They say he's gone to
America, though I don't rightly know whether that's true or not."