My old father used to say that "woman's looks were his only books and
folly was all they taught him," which shows, I suppose, that what he
knew about the sex he learned from a circulating library.
Anyway, he never drove a motor-car, or he would have written in another
strain. Sometimes I pick up a piece in the newspapers about women and
then I laugh to myself, thinking how many mugs there are in the world
and how they were born for the other sex to make game of. Let 'em get
on the driver's seat and take madam round an afternoon or two. There
won't be much talk about gentle shepherdesses after that, I'll
wager--though if a crook or two don't get into the story I'm Dutchman.
Well, you must know that this is about Dolly St. John--a little
American girl, who hired a car from the Empire Company when I was one
of its drivers, and had a pretty little game with us. I used to go for
her every afternoon to some hotel or the other, and always a different
one, she not being domesticated, so to speak, and never caring to
overstay her welcome.
A daintier little body was never fitted upon a chassis. There are some
who like them fair, and some who like them dark--but Dolly St. John was
betwixt and between, neither the one nor the other, but a type that
gets there every time, and turns twenty heads when a policeman stops
you at a crossing.
It's very natural that young women should like to talk to their
drivers; and, if the truth were told, some of them will tell us things
they would never speak of, no, not to their own husbands, if they've
got any. Dolly was one of these, and a more talkative little body
never existed. I knew her history the very first afternoon I took her
round; and by the third, I could have told you that she had met the
Hon. John Sarand, and meant to marry him, even if his old father, Lord
Badington, had to go on the halls in consequence.
I had driven Dolly about three weeks, if I remember rightly, when our
people first began to get uneasy. It was all very well for her to talk
about her uncle, Nathaniel St. John, of New York City, who made a
hundred thousand dollars a day by blowing bubbles through a telephone;
but her bill for seventy-five sixteen and four remained unpaid, and
when Hook-Nosed Moss, our manager, asked her for it, all he got was a
cigarette out of a bon-bon box, and an intimation that if he came on a
similar errand again, she'd write to the papers about it. Had she not
been a born little actress, who could have earned twenty a week on any
stage in London, the man would have closed the deal on the spot, and
left it to the lawyers. But she just tickled him like a carburettor,
and he went home to say that the money was better than Consols, and the
firm making a fool of itself.
I drove her for another week after this, chiefly to the theatre with
the Honorary John, and to supper afterwards. She had a wonderful mania
for shopping, and used to spend hours in Regent Street, while I read
the _Auto-Car_ outside, and fell to asking myself how long it would
last. You don't deceive the man who drives the car--be sure of it.
Either she led the Honorary John to the financial altar, or her poor
uncle would be on the Rocky Mountains--I hadn't a doubt of it.
I liked her, that goes without saying. A man's a fool who tells you
that a pretty woman's charm is less because her bankers are wondering
how they shall get the cheque-book back, and the tradesman round the
corner is blotting his ledger with tears. In a way I was in love with
Miss Dolly, and would have married her myself upon any provocation; but
before I could make up my mind to it either way, she'd gone like a
flash, and half the bill collectors in London after her. This I
learned during the week following the disappearance. She sent for me
one day to pick her up at Joran's Hotel, and when I got there, and the
hotel porter had handed out two rugs and a Pomeranian, down comes the
chambermaid to say madam had not returned since eleven o'clock. And
then I knew by some good instinct that the game was up--and, handing
the Pomeranian back, I said, "Be good to him, for he's an orphan."
This was a surmise--a surmise and nothing more; and yet how true it
proved! I had a 'tec with me on the following afternoon, and a pretty
tale he had to tell. Not, mind you, as he himself declared, that Dolly
was really dishonest. She had left a few bills behind her; but where
is the woman who does not do that, and who would think the better of
her if she didn't? Dolly wasn't a thief by a long way--but her
shopping mania was wild enough to be written about, and she bought
thousands of pounds' worth of goods in London, just for the mere
pleasure of ordering them and nothing more.
I often laugh when I think how she fooled the tradesmen in Bond Street
and the West End. Just imagine them bowing and scraping when she told
'em to send home a thousand-pound tiara, or a two-hundred-guinea white
fox, and promised they should be paid on delivery. Why, they strewed
her path with bows and smiles--and when they sent home the goods to a
flat by Regent's Park--an address she always gave--they found it empty
and no one there to take delivery. No more bows and smiles after that;
but what could they do, and what offence had she committed? That was
just what the 'tec asked me, and I could not answer.
"We know most of 'em," he said, "but she's a right-down finger-print
from the backwoods. Nathaniel St. John cables from New York that he
doesn't know her, but will be pleased to make her acquaintance, if
we'll frank her over. I tell these people they can sue her--but, man,
you might as well sue the statue of Oliver Cromwell----"
"He being stony-broke likewise," said I. "Well, she had a run for her
money, and here's good luck to her. I hope that I haven't seen her for
the last time."
"If you have," says he, "put me in Madame Tussaud's. When next you
hear of Dolly St. John it will be in something big. Remember that when
the day comes."
I told him I would not forget it, and we parted upon it. Dolly was a
pretty bit of goods for a tea-party, but a driver sees too many faces
to keep one over-long in his memory, and I will say straight out, that
I had forgotten her very name when next I saw her, and was just about
the most astonished man inside the four-mile radius when I picked her
up one fine afternoon at a West End hotel, and she told me we were
going to drive into the country together.
"But," says I, "this car has been hired by Miss Phyllis More----"
"Oh, you stupid man!" cried she. "Don't you see that I am Miss Phyllis
More? I thought you were clever enough to understand that ladies
change their names sometimes, Britten. Now, why shouldn't I be Phyllis
More if I wish to? Are you going to be unkind enough to tell people
about it? I'm sure you are not, for you were so very good to me when
last I was in England."
Now all this took place in her private room, to which I had been sent
up by the porter. Three months had passed since I drove Dolly and the
Honorary John, but not a whit had she changed; and I found her just the
same seductive little witch with the dimples and the curly brown hair,
who had played the deuce with the West End tradesmen last
Christmas-time. Beautifully dressed in green, with a pretty motor
veil, she was a picture I must say; and when I looked at her and
remembered Hook-Nosed Moss, our traffic manager at the Empire Company,
and how he docked me four and nine last Saturday, I swore I'd take her;
yes, if she ordered me to drive through to San Francisco.
"I don't suppose I ought to do it, miss," I said, "unless your uncle in
New York has left you anything----"
"Oh," she burst out, laughing as she said it, "he's dead, Britten;
besides, I don't want any uncles now, for I shall marry Mr. Sarand
directly Lord Badington gives his consent--and that won't be long, for
we are going down to his house to-night to get it."
I told her frankly that I was glad to hear it, and that I thought Mr.
Sarand a very lucky gentleman. What's more, I believed her story, and
I knew that if this marriage came off, there would not be much trouble
about my firm's seventy-five, and that half the tradesmen in London
would be running after Dolly again inside a week. So I made up my mind
to do it, and, sending a wire back to the yard, telling them that the
lady wanted the car for two or three days, and explaining to her that I
must buy myself some luggage as she went--for I do like a clean collar
of evenings--I was ready for Miss Phyllis More, and not at all
displeased with the venture.
"She'd been hard put to it to keep going in London, while John did the
courting," said I to myself, "and that's what caused her to change her
name. If she doesn't catch him, we're another twenty-five down, and
Moss will have to turn Jew. Well, I can get plenty of jobs as good as
his, and there aren't many Dolly St. Johns in the world, all said and
done. I'll risk it, and take my gruelling afterwards. What's more, if
Mr. John's papa don't come up to the scratch, I'll put a word in for
myself. It would make a line in the newspapers anyway, and who knows
but what we mightn't both get engaged at the halls?"
Of course, this was only my way of putting it; but I really was pleased
to be driving such a pretty girl again; and when her old cane trunk
came down, and we fixed it on to the grid behind, and half a dozen
hat-boxes littered up the back seats, I felt that old times had come
again, and that I was one of the luckiest drivers in the country.
"How far are we going, miss?" I asked her when all was ready.
"To Lord Badington's house--near Sandwich in Kent."
"It's a longish run, and we shan't get there before dark."
"Oh," says she, "they don't expect me until quite late; indeed, I don't
think Lord Badington himself returns before the last train from town."
I noticed that she laid a lot of stress upon the words, "Lord
Badington," for the benefit of the hotel porters, no doubt; but I
wasn't angry with her for that, remembering that she was a single
woman, and perhaps unprotected; and without any more words we set out
across Westminster Bridge, and were very soon picking our way down the
Old Kent Road. A couple of hours later we came to Maidstone, where we
had tea; it was a quarter past five precisely when we made a new start
for Canterbury, and a good hour and a half later when we entered that
musty old town.
I shall never forget that journey, the country just showing the buds of
spring, the roads white and beautiful, the twenty Renault running as
smooth as a beautiful clock. Three months had passed since I had
driven Miss Dolly, and this was the month of May. Yet here she was,
just the same wicked little witch as ever, trotting round on a wild
errand, and about to come out best, I could swear. As for me, I had
the sack before me for a certainty; but little I cared for that. Who
would have done, with Dolly St. John for his passenger?
We drove through Canterbury, I say, and set the car going her best on
the fair road after Sturry is passed. I know the country hereabouts
pretty well, being accustomed to visit fashionable watering-places from
time to time, and well acquainted with Ramsgate and Margate, to say
nothing of Deal and Dover. My road lay by Monkton, down toward Pegwell
Bay, and it was just at the entrance to Minster that Dolly made me stop
without much warning, and took me into her confidence for the first
time.
"Britten," says she, "there is something I didn't tell you, but which I
think I ought to tell you now. I'm not asked to Lord Badington's house
at all."
"Not asked," said I, with a mouth wide enough open to swallow a pint of
gear-box "B." "Then what's the good of going there, if you're not
invited?"
"Oh," says she, more sweetly than ever, "I think they'll be glad to
have me if I do get inside, Britten; but we shall have to act our parts
very well."