"There's boats to France at Dover," said I. "What if she's going over
by the night mail?"
He looked at me most shrewdly.
"I can't make you out, Britten," says he; "either you are the greatest
fool or the greatest rogue id my ebployment. Subtimes you seeb clever
enough, too. Suppose we rud the car over to Dover and see what's doing
there."
"Yes," said I, "and you can telephone to the pier at Folkestone to have
her stopped if she's sailing from there."
He snapped his fingers and smiled all over his face.
"That's it!" he cried. "If she's leaving the coudtry I'll arrest her.
I wish you'd been half as sharp when you picked her up id London."
"It's these motor veils," said I. "You can't expect a man to see
through three thicknesses of shuffon--now can you, Mr. Moss?"
It was a lucky shot, and, upon my word, I really do believe that I
began to wheedle him, Whether I did, or whether I did not, we had the
car upon the road in ten minutes, and were off for Dover before a
quarter of an hour had passed. Previous to that I had slipped into the
inn on the pretence of leaving my coat, and had left a letter for Miss
Dolly to be taken up by Biggs, when he came there to meet me for our
evening walk. "Moss is here," I wrote, "look out for yourself."
I laugh now when I think of that journey to Dover, and old Shekels Moss
sitting like a hawk on the seat beside me. What lies I had to tell
him--what starts I gave him, when I pointed out that she might have
gone by the afternoon boat, or perhaps motored right on to Southampton.
My own idea was to stop the night at Dover, whatever happened, and no
sooner had we drawn up at the "Lord Warden," than I had a penknife into
the off front tyre, and turned my back when the wind fizzed out. This
stopped the run to Folkestone straight away, and, by the time I'd done
the job, Moss said he thought he would telephone the police, as I
suggested, describing Miss Dolly, but saying nothing about his lordship.
"He might do pusiness with us, Britten," he remarked. "I won't have
his dabe in it--but I'll tell him about her directly I get the chadce,
and she won't be long in his house, dow will she?"
"Perhaps not," said I; "but if she marries his lordship's son, the boot
will be on the other leg. You'd better think of that, Mr. Moss."
"What I want is my modey," he rejoined. "If she don't pay, she goes to
prison--I dow too much about the peerage to be stuffed with promises.
Either the modey or the writ. I'll feed here, Britten, and go back to
Sadwich, if she's not on the boats. Perhaps we were a couple of fools
to come at all."
I said nothing, but was pretty sure that one fool had come along in the
car, anyway. My business was to keep Moss at Dover as long as might
be, and in that I succeeded well enough. Nothing could save Miss Dolly
if he went blundering up to Lord Badington's house with his story of
what she'd done in London, and how fond certain West End tradesmen had
become of her. Given time enough, I believed the pretty little lady
would wheedle his lordship to consent to her marriage with Mr. Sarand.
But time she must have, and if she did not get it, well, then, time of
another kind might await her. It would have broken my heart to see
misfortune overtake pretty Dolly St. John, and I swore that it should
not, if any wit of mine could prevent it.
Moss took about an hour and a half over his dinner, and when he came
out he was picking his teeth with a great steel prong, and looking as
pleased as though he had done the hotel waiters out of fourpence. I
saw that he had come to some resolution, and that it was a satisfactory
one. There was a twinkle in his little eyes you could not mistake, and
he shook his head while he talked to me, just as though I were buying
old clothes of him at twice their value.
"Britten," he asked, "are you all ready?"
"Quite ready, sir," said I--for I'd just that minute shoved my knife
into another tyre. "Are you going back to Sandwich?"
"I'm going to Lord Badington's," says he, with a roar of laughter, "why
not? I'm going to ask for Miss Phyllis More, and say she's an ode fred
of the family. Ha, ha! what do you think of that, Britten? Will I get
the modey or won't I? Well, we'll see, my boy--so start her up, and be
quick about it."
I said "Yes, sir," and went round to the front of the car. My cry of
astonishment when I saw the burst tyre would have done credit to Mr.
Henry Irving himself. Perhaps I said some things I shouldn't have
said--Moss did, anyway, and he raved so loud that the ostler had to
tell him his wife and children were upstairs.
"Another tyre gone--what do I pay you wages for? Adser me that! Who
the ---- is going to pay the bill? Don't you see I must get to Sadwich
to-night? A pretty sort of a dam fool you must be. Now you get that
car going in twedy minutes, or I'll leave you in the street--so help me
heaven I will----" And so on and so on, until I could have dropped for
laughing where I stood.
It was touching to hear him, upon my word it was; but I held my tongue
for Miss Dolly's sake, and went to work quietly to take off the cover
and examine the tube for the cut I didn't mean to find. When I told
him presently that this was the last tube we had, and he'd better give
me two pound eight to go and buy a new one, I thought his language
would blow the ships out of the harbour; but he never gave me the
money, and then I knew that he meant to stay at Dover all night, and
that Miss Dolly had until the morning, anyway. "And by that time,"
said I to myself, "she'll be off to London if she's clever enough, and
perhaps find Mr. Sarand at the station to meet her."
I slept upon this--for you will understand that Moss had no real
intention of going on that night, after he heard about the tubes--and
at nine o'clock next morning I had my car ready, and drove her round to
the "Lord Warden." The run to Sandwich is not over-exciting in an
ordinary way, but I found it quite lively enough on that particular
occasion, when there were all sorts of doubts and fears in my head
about Miss Dolly, and the sure and certain knowledge that I should get
the sack whatever happened. Indeed, I might properly have been more
anxious about myself than the lady, for I never doubted that she would
have made a bolt for London by the time we arrived, and there was no
more disappointed man in Thanet when, on reaching the inn, Biggs told
me that she was still at the house. An inquiry whether he had
delivered my letter met with the amazing response that they had given
him no letter, and when I rushed into the house to ask what had become
of it, there it was, on the mantelshelf of the bar-parlour, just where
I had left it. Never did a man meet with a worse blow. I knew then
that Miss Dolly was done for, and I did not believe that the day could
pass and keep the police from Lord Badington's doorstep.
I should tell you that Moss had called at the police station at
Sandwich as we drove through, and that a sergeant and a constable came
over to the inn on bicycles about midday. Their questioning me helped
them a mighty lot, for I contrived to look as foolish as a yokel when
you ask him the way to Nowhere; and all I could tell them was that the
lady had come down upon Lord Badington's invitation, and, when she was
tired of it, I supposed she would go away again. All of which they
took down in pocket-books about as large as a family Bible, and then
set out for the house, while I watched them with my heart in my very
boots, and the sort of feeling that might overtake a man if the police
set out to arrest his own sweetheart.
Biggs, I should tell you, was with me when this happened, and mighty
curious he was about it all. Of course, I told him that Moss was
making a fool of himself, and that there would be a pretty action
afterwards if he didn't behave properly to Miss Dolly. None the less,
he was just as curious as I was, and directly the other party had left,
we followed on their heels, and were through the lodge gates almost as
soon as they were. As for Lal Britten, his heart went pat-a-pat, like
a girl's at a wedding. I could have knocked Moss down cheerful, and
paid forty bob for doing it with the greatest pleasure in my life. But
that wouldn't have helped Miss Dolly, you see, so I just trudged up the
drive after Moss, and said nothing whatever to anybody.
Bless us all--how the chap did walk. There he was, head bent down,
shoulders sagging, his step shuffling as though he wore slippers, and
in his eyes that money fever which, to me, is one of the most awful
things in all the world. Even the police were rather disgusted with
him, I think, and the sergeant told me afterwards that he would have
paid fifty pounds to have got out of the job. For that matter, neither
he nor his underling said a word to Moss when they rang at the front
door bell, and they didn't seem to think it at all wonderful that Biggs
and I should be upon the doorstep with them. So all together we waited
quite a long time before old Hill, the butler, came jauntily along the
great corridor, and opened to us very deliberately. And now for it, I
thought--and oh, my poor Dolly, whatever is going to happen to you!
"Party of the dabe of Miss More--is she sdaying in this house?" asks
Moss, half pushing his way in, and trying to look impudent. You should
have seen the butler's face when he answered him.
"Who the devil are you?" he asked, "and what do you mean by coming here
like this? Outside, my man, or I'll put you there pretty quick."
He took Moss by the collar, and, turning him about as though he were a
babe, shoved him on the wrong side of the door before you could have
said "knife." Then he turned to the sergeant.
"What's all this, Sergeant Joyce?" he asked. "Why do you bring this
person here?"
"Oh," stammered the sergeant, "he says that a certain Miss More----"
"I beg you pardon," cried the butler quickly, "I think you should speak
of Lady Badington--my master left for Paris at eight o'clock this
morning."
"What!" roared Moss--and you could have heard him on the Goodwin
Sands--"Lord Badington's married her?"
"I believe those are the facts," says Hill, very quietly--and
then--well, and then I sat down on the doorstep and I laughed until the
tears ran down my face. Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!--and Moss's face! But you
will understand all that, and how the sergeant looked, and the smile on
the butler's face, without me saying a single word about it.
"Take a week's notice, and be d----d to you!" cried I, turning upon my
master all of a sudden. "Do you think I'll serve with a man who sent
policemen after his best customers? You go to hell, Moss--where you
ought to have been long ago," and with that I just walked off down the
drive, and Biggs with me. Lord, what an afternoon we had! And the
night we spent afterwards in Ramsgate!
For, you see, it was quite true. Old Lord Badington, who never could
look at a pretty woman twice without falling in love with her, found
himself mostly alone with Mistress Dolly at Sandwich, and, by all that
is true and wonderful, he married her.
Not that she was Dolly St. John at all, you must know, but Dolly
Hamilton in reality; and connected, I am told, with the old American
family, the Hamiltons of Philadelphia. What she did in London was
done, I do believe, for the sheer excitement of doing it. And if folks
have called her an adventuress, set that down to the rogues of
trustees, who played ducks and drakes with her fortune, and left her in
Europe to shift as best she might.
I got a hundred pounds for that job, sent by Miss Dolly herself from
Venice. Moss got his car back, and three or four punctured tubes.
Some day, I suppose, they'll pay him that seventy-five pounds sixteen
shillings and four-pence. But I hope it won't be yet.
The Honorary John, they tell me, is very angry with his papa. But I'll
back an old boy every time--notwithstanding what is written in the
papers.