out of the hotel. He ran to the coach-house, wheeled his bicycle into
the courtyard, mounted, and rode down the street. He went at a
moderate pace through the town, but once on the Corniche road, he drove
the machine as hard as he could pedal.
He was well on his way before his mind cleared enough for him to think
what he was doing; and then his heart sank; he could do nothing. He
could not interrupt a duel; that was the last enormity. And if he did
interrupt it, it would be but for a few minutes; it would take place
all the same. As the sense of his helplessness filled him, two or
three great tears forced themselves out of his eyes. He dashed them
away with a most unangelic savageness; then, conscious only of a
devouring desire to be near his father in his perilous hour, he drove
on the machine as hard as he could.
The Corniche is a good road, but all up hill and down dale; and he knew
how much more time he lost by jumping off and running his bicycle up a
hill than he made by letting it rip down the descent. As he drew near
Monaco a kind of hopelessness settled on him. He almost wished, since
he could not stop it, that he might find the duel over. Now and again
a dry sob burst from his overloaded bosom.
It was ten minutes to eight when he came up the slope from the
Condamine. His legs were leaden, but they drove on the machine. At
last he came to the path which leads to the half glade, half rocky
amphitheatre, in which the gentry of the principality, and of the rest
of the world who chance to be visiting it, settle their affairs of
honour, slipped off his machine, and ran down it as fast as his stiff
legs would carry him. A few yards from the end of it he turned aside
into the bushes, came to the edge of the glade, saw his father and
Count Sigismond facing one another some forty yards away; saw a white
handkerchief raised in Lord Crosland's hand, and in spite of himself,
his pent-up emotion burst from him in one wild eldritch yell.
It still rang on the quivering air when the handkerchief fluttered to
the ground, and the pistols flashed together.
Now to those who enjoy an intimacy with Tinker, an eldritch yell is
neither here nor there. Piercing as this one was, it barely reached
Sir Tancred's consciousness; but it smote sharply on Count Sigismond's
tense nerves, and deflected the barrel of his pistol just so much as
sent the bullet zip past Sir Tancred's ear, as he received Sir
Tancred's bullet in his elbow, and started to traverse the glade in a
series of violent but ungainly leaps, uttering squeal on squeal.
Tinker turned and bolted, sobbing, gasping, and choking in the
revulsion from his hopeless dread. He seized his bicycle, ran it along
the road some fifty yards, turned in among the bushes, flung himself
down, and sobbed and cried.
There was confusion on the scene of the duel. Count Sigismond's
seconds had to chase him, catch him, and hold him while the doctor
dressed his wound. Then they fell to a discussion as to whether the
eldritch yell had been uttered by the Count or by someone in the wood
round the glade; it had fallen upon very ragged nerves, and for the
lives of them they could not be sure. Lord Crosland threw no light at
all upon the matter, though he did his best to help their dispute grow
acrimonious. Sir Tancred preserved the discreet silence of a principal
in a duel; the Count Sigismond only moaned.
At last they turned their attention to him, and carried him to the top
of the path. Sir Tancred and Lord Crosland started for the town to
send up a cab for him.
When they were out of hearing, Lord Crosland said, "Most likely, that
yell saved your life, old chap."
"I should say that there wasn't a doubt about it; but, really, in the
case of a sweep like Puy-de-Dôme, I can't say that I mind a little
irregularity. Besides, my conscience is quite clear. Heaven knows I
did my best to keep Tinker in the dark and at a distance."
"It can't be done," said Lord Crosland with conviction.
Tinker heard their voices, and by a violent effort, which did him good,
hushed his hysteric sobbing. After a while he heard the cab rattle up,
and rattle away.
Twenty minutes later he mounted his machine, and, passing through the
back streets of Monte Carlo, rode slowly back to Nice. On his way back
he washed his face at a spring, and when he mounted his machine again,
he said to himself firmly, "I'm _not_ ashamed--not a bit."
As he wheeled his bicycle into the coach-house of the hotel, Dorothy
ran into it, caught him by the arm, and cried, "Did they fight? Is
your father hurt?"
He looked at her white, strained face, and said with a dogged air, "My
father's all right. What do you mean about fighting? I--I've been for
a ride--on my bicycle."
"Then you did stop it!" cried Dorothy; and before he could ward her off
she had kissed him.
"Look here," said Tinker firmly, but gently, "these things won't bear
talking about. They won't really."
CHAPTER TWELVE
TINKER BORROWS A MOTOR-CAR
A few days later, early in the afternoon, Sir Tancred was leaning on
the wall of the gardens of the Temple of Fortune, smoking a cigarette,
and looking down on the Mediterranean in a very thoughtful mood.
Tinker was by his side, also looking down on the Mediterranean, also
silent, out of respect to his father's mood.
Suddenly Sir Tancred turned towards him, and said abruptly, "What did
you say you paid your governess?"
"Thirty pounds a year," said Tinker.
"She dresses well," said Sir Tancred.
Tinker turned his head and eyed his father with a trifle of distrust.
"She does dress well," he said gravely, "and I can't quite make it out.
Sometimes I think that her people must have lost their money, and she
bought her gowns before that happened. Sometimes I really think she's
only being a governess for fun."
"For fun?" said Sir Tancred. "But I thought her references were all
right. Yes; you told me she carried them about with her."
"Well, she has the nicest kind of face," said Tinker; and his own was
out of the common guileless.
"Oh! her face was her reference, was it?" said Sir Tancred quickly.
"You can forge references, but you can't forge a face," said Tinker
with the air of a philosopher.
Sir Tancred laughed gently. "My good Tinker," he said, "I look forward
to the day when you enter the diplomatic service. The diplomacy of
your country will be newer than ever. But don't be too sure that a
woman can't forge her face."
"There'd be a precious lot of forgery, if they could forge faces like
Dorothy's," said Tinker with conviction.
"You seem a perfect well of truth to-day," said Sir Tancred.
They were silent a while, gazing idly over the sea; then Tinker said,
"I'm beginning to think that Dorothy is rather mysterious, don't you
know. She gets very few letters, but lots of cablegrams, from America.
She has lots of money, too, and she spends it. Sometimes I have to
talk to her seriously about being extravagant."
"You do? What does she say?"
"Oh, she laughs. That's what makes me think she's only a governess for
fun. I never knew a girl so ready to laugh--though she did cry that
morning." He spoke musingly, half to himself.
"What morning was that?" said Sir Tancred quickly.
"It was a few mornings ago," said Tinker vaguely; and he added hastily,
"I think I'll go after her and Elsie; they've gone down the Corniche
towards Mentone."
"Was it the morning I had an affair with M. le Comte de Puy-de-Dôme?"
"Ye-e-s," said Tinker with some reluctance, and he prepared for
trouble. Hitherto his father had said nothing of that timely but
eldritch yell. Now, by his careless admission about the tears of
Dorothy, he had opened the matter, and let himself in for a rating.
But Sir Tancred was silent, musing, and Tinker returned to his idle
consideration of the Mediterranean.
Presently he said, "She would make you a nice little wife, sir."
Sir Tancred started. "There are times," he said, "when I feel you
would take my breath away, if I hadn't very good lungs."
"I thought that that was what you were thinking about," said the
ingenuous Tinker.
"If you add thought-reading to your other accomplishments, it will be
too much," said Sir Tancred with conviction.
Of a sudden there came bustling round the right-hand horn of the bay a
most disreputable, bedraggled-looking vessel. By her lines a yacht,
her decks would have been a disgrace to the oldest and most battered
tin-pot of an ocean tramp. Her masts had gone, there were gaps in her
bulwarks, and the smoke of her furnaces, pouring through a hole in her
deck over which her funnel had once reared itself, had taken advantage
of this rare and golden opportunity to blacken her after-part to a very
fair semblance of imitation ebony, and to transform her crew to an even
fairer imitation of negroes dressed in black.
"She is in a mess!" said Tinker.
"Of the Atlantic's making, to judge by its completeness," said Sir
Tancred. "Whose yacht is it?"
"I don't know," said Tinker, staring at it with all his eyes.
"You ought to," said Sir Tancred with some severity. "You've been on
it. It's Meyer's."
"So it is," said Tinker, mortified. "I am stupid not to have
recognised it!"
"Your new clairvoyant faculty must be weakening your power of
observation. I shouldn't give way to it, if I were you."
Tinker wriggled.
A hundred yards from the jetty the yacht's engines were reversed; and
the way was scarcely off her, when her only remaining boat fell smartly
on the water, and was rowed quickly to the steps.
"They seem in a hurry," said Sir Tancred.
For a while they busied themselves in conjectures as to what errand had
brought the yacht to Monaco; Sir Tancred lighted another cigarette, and
they watched the crew of the yacht set to work at once to wash the
decks.
Some twenty minutes later a little group hurried into the gardens, the
manager of the Hôtel des Princes, a tall, bearded, grimy man, and a
stout, clean-shaven, grimy man. They came straight to Sir Tancred and
Tinker, and the bearded man said quickly, "My name is Rainer, Septimus
Rainer. I've just learnt that my daughter Dorothy is governessing your
little girl. Where is she?"
Sir Tancred bowed, and said languidly, "Miss Rainer is the governess of
my son's adopted sister. He is her employer, not I. Here he is."
Tinker stepped forward, and bowed.
Septimus Rainer stared at him with a bewildered air, and said, "Well,
if this don't beat the Dutch!" Then he added feverishly, "Where is
she? Where's my little girl? Where's Dorothy?"
"She went with Elsie--that's her pupil--down the Corniche towards
Mentone after déjeuner," said Tinker.
"Take me to her! Take me to her at once, will you? She's not safe!"
said Rainer quickly.
"Not safe! Come along!" said Sir Tancred; and his languor fell from
him like a mask, leaving him active and alert indeed.
"It's like this," said Rainer as they hurried through the gardens. "A
week ago I got a cable from Paris saying that a kidnapping gang were
after Dorothy. I'm a millionaire, and the scum are after ransom. I
cabled to McNeill, my Paris agent, to come right here with half a dozen
of the best detectives in France, scooped up Mr. Buist of the New York
police,"--he nodded towards the short, clean-shaven, grimy
man--"borrowed a yacht, and came along myself. Being in a hurry, we
had trouble with the Atlantic of course; but I've done it seven hours
quicker than steamer and train. Have McNeill and the detectives come?"
"No, they haven't," said Tinker.
"Sure?" said Rainer.
"Quite," said Tinker. "I've seen no one watching over Dorothy; and she
has gone about outside the town, in the woods, and down by the sea,
just as usual. She knew of no danger, I'm sure."
"Perhaps McNeill didn't want to frighten her, and just set his men to
watch over her from a distance," said Rainer.
"Perhaps McNeill is in it," said Sir Tancred drily.
"I'm glad I came right here," said Rainer.
They came out of the gardens, and as they passed the Hôtel des Princes,
Tinker said, "Go on down the Corniche! I'll catch you up!" and bolted
into it.
He ran upstairs into his father's room, and took from a drawer the
pocketbook which held their passports; ran into his own room, and
thrust into his hip-pocket the revolver he could use so well, into
other pockets five hundred francs in notes and gold. Then, sure that
he had provided against all possible emergencies, he ran smiling down
the stairs.
As he came out of the front-door, his eyes fell on a lonely, deserted
motor-car. In a breath he had pitied its loneliness, seen its use, and
jumped into it. He set it going, and in three minutes caught up his
father, Rainer, and the detective. Sir Tancred jumped into the seat
beside him, Rainer and the detective into the back seat.
"Whose car is this? How did you get it?" said Sir Tancred.
"I commandeered it," said Tinker firmly. "And I was lucky too; it's a
good car."
"I suppose there'll be a row about it. But we've got to use it," said
Sir Tancred.
"Oh, no! there won't," said Tinker cheerfully. "When we come back,
everyone but me can get out. I'll take it back, and explain things."
For a mile Tinker sent the car along at full speed. Then he slowed
down, and pulling up at every opening into the hills or down to the
shore, sent a long coo-ee ringing down it. No answer came back. At
the end of two miles his face was growing graver and graver, and its
gravity was reflected in the faces of the three men. At the end of two
miles and a half he stopped the car, and said, "They can't have gone
further than this."
"Just too late," muttered Septimus Rainer; and they looked at one
another with questioning eyes.
"Well, there's no time to be lost," said Sir Tancred. "Mr. Buist had
better hurry back to Monte Carlo, to the Hôtel des Princes, in case
we've missed them. We will go on hard, and he can wire to us, if they
come back to the hotel, at Ventimiglia."
"That's all very well," said the detective with a sudden air of
stubbornness. "But I don't like the look of the business. It's a
curious thing that Miss Rainer, the daughter of a millionaire, should
be a governess in your family. I don't understand it. There is a
chance, and I'm bound to consider it, of your being mixed up with this
kidnapping gang. What's to prevent you kidnapping Mr. Rainer?"
Sir Tancred's eyes flashed, and he looked as though he could not
believe his ears. Tinker laughed a gentle, joyful laugh.
"I mean no offence, sir," said the detective with some haste, at the
sight of Sir Tancred's face. "But I'm bound to look at it all ways."
"Just as you like," said Sir Tancred quietly. "Let Mr. Rainer go back,
or both of you go back. Only be quick!"
The millionaire had watched the faces of father and son with very keen
eyes while the detective had been speaking: "Off you go, Buist!" he
broke in. "I know where I am! Go, man! Go!"
The detective jumped out of the car, and Sir Tancred said, "Go to M.
Lautrec at the Police Bureau at Monte Carlo. He's the best man to set
things moving. Tell him to wire as far as Genoa: there's nothing like
being on the safe side." And Tinker started the car.
Two miles further on they came upon a peasant woman tramping slowly
along, with a heavy basket on her head. Tinker stopped the car, and
Sir Tancred asked her if she had seen a lady and a little girl walking
on the Corniche between that spot and Monte Carlo. She said she had
not seen a lady and a little girl walking, but a mile out of Monte
Carlo she had seen a lady and a little girl in a carriage with two
gentlemen; and the horses were galloping: oh, but they did gallop; they
had nearly run over her. The young lady had cried out to her as they
passed. She had not caught what she said; she had thought it a joke.
"It looks very like them: we had better follow this carriage. What do
you think, Mr. Rainer?" said Sir Tancred. "Of course they may be back
at the hotel by now, and we may be on a wild-goose chase."
"I guess we can afford to be laughed at; but we can't afford to lose a
chance," said the millionaire.
"They passed this woman a mile out of Monte Carlo, and we're four miles
and a half out," said Tinker. "She doesn't walk above three miles an
hour with that basket: they're an hour and twenty minutes ahead."
"You're smart, sonny," said the millionaire.
"Right away!" said Sir Tancred: and he tossed a five-franc piece to the
woman.
Tinker set the car going, and began to try his hardest to get her best
speed out of her.
The millionaire leaned forward, and said to Sir Tancred, "The scum are
hardly up-to-date to use a carriage instead of a motor-car."
"What I don't see is how they are going to get them across the
frontier. It looks--it looks as if the Italian police were in it,"
said Sir Tancred, frowning.
"Do you mean to tell me that the Italian police would connive at
kidnapping?" said the millionaire.
"No: but some rascal of a detective, who could pull a good many
strings, might be in it. At any rate if they get them across the
frontier undrugged, the authorities are squared or humbugged. What I'm
afraid of is that they're making for that rabbit-warren, Genoa. If
they get them there, we may be a fortnight finding them."
"I guess I'll squeal before that," said the millionaire; "yes, if I
have to put up a million dollars."
The car had reached a speed at which they could only talk in a shout,
and it seemed no more than a few minutes before Tinker slowed down for
Mentone, and stopped at a gendarme. Before saying a word Sir Tancred
showed him a twenty-franc piece; and the gendarme spoke, he was even
voluble. Yes, he had seen a carriage, rather more than an hour before.
It had galloped through the town. It carried fever-patients for the
hospital at Genoa, ill of the bubonic plague. The police and the
custom-house officials had been warned by wire from Monte Carlo and
Genoa not to delay it. There were relays of horses every twenty miles
to Genoa: the wires had said so.
"That was how they crossed the frontier, was it? What fools these
officials are!" said Sir Tancred, and he gave the gendarme his
Napoleon: and bade him tell his superior officer that the police had
been humbugged.
"If they're really bound for Genoa, we can catch them and to spare--bar
accidents," said Tinker cheerfully. "Besides, M. Lautrec will have
wired to look out for them." And he set the car going.
"Oh, they're bound for Genoa, sure enough," said Sir Tancred. "But
they won't enter it in that carriage, or much before daybreak. Still
the rascals don't know that you've come, Mr. Rainer, and that we're
already on their track. That ought to spoil their game."
The car ran through Mentone, and into Ventimiglia, but as it drew near
the custom-house, Sir Tancred cried, "By Jove, we're going to be
delayed! The guard's turned out!" And sure enough, a dozen soldiers
barred the road.
Tinker stopped the car: and a sergeant bade Sir Tancred and Mr. Rainer
come with him to the officer in command. Tinker gave his father the
pocketbook which contained their passports; the two of them got out of
the car, and followed the sergeant into the custom-house.
Tinker jumped down, and sure that he had plenty of time, looked at the
machinery and filled up the petrol tank from a gallon tin in the back
of the car. Then he went back to his seat.
He could hear a murmur of voices from the custom-house, and it grew
louder and louder; he caught disjointed scraps of angry talk. Of a
sudden his father's voice rose loud in apparent fury, and he cried in
Italian, "Spies! We're nothing of the kind!" and then in English,
"Bolt!"
In a flash the car was moving, and half a dozen soldiers sprang
forward, crying, "Stop! Stop!"
"It's running away!" screamed Tinker in Italian, and switched it on to
full speed.
It jerked forward; and the soldiers ran heavily after it.
"Hold it back! Hold it back!" screamed Tinker, and with the
unquestioning obedience of the perfectly disciplined man, a simple
young soldier caught hold of the back of the car, and threw all his
heart and strength into the effort to stop it, only to find himself
running fast. At sixty yards he was running faster and shouting
loudly. At eighty yards, he stopped shouting, let go, and fell down.
Tinker looked back, and saw him sitting up in the dust and shaking his
fist, while forty yards beyond him his fellow-soldiers danced
gesticulating in the middle of the road.
[Illustration: "Hold it back!" screamed Tinker.]
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TINKER MEETS HIS OLD NURSE
Tinker let the car rip on, the while he considered what he should do.
He was excited, determined, he accepted readily enough the
responsibility which had fallen upon him, but he was hardly happy. He
could see no hope of rescuing Dorothy and Elsie by himself, even if he
caught the carriage; and since he reckoned that it would take his
father two or three hours to turn the Riviera upside down, and
extricate himself and Mr. Rainer from the extremely neat and effective
trap into which they had fallen, he could look for no help from them
till far into the night. For a while he suffered from the sense that
he had bitten off, or rather had had thrust into his mouth, more than
he could chew. Then of a sudden he saw that the really important
thing, the dogging the kidnappers, was in his power, and he regained
his cheerfulness.
He drove on the car at full speed for ten miles, and inquired of a
peasant walking beside a cart loaded with bags of grain, if he had seen
the carriage. The peasant had seen it; he was vague as to how long
ago, and how far away, but Tinker was sure that he had seen it.
Accordingly, he drove on the car at full speed again. In this way,
going at full speed, and now and again slowing down to inquire, he got
over a good many miles. He was frightened when he went through a town
lest the police should try to stop him, but it seemed that they had
received no such instructions from Ventimiglia. All the while he was
drawing nearer the carriage, for all that, somewhere or other, it had
plainly changed horses.
At last he made up his mind that he would overtake it in the next seven
miles; and he bucketed the car along for all she was worth. At the end
of the seven miles he had not overtaken it, nor was there any
appearance of it on the road before him, a level stretch of two miles.
However, he ran on another five miles, and there was no sign of it, nor
had anyone he passed or met, seen it. Plainly he had overshot it.
He turned the car, and came back, stopping to examine branch roads for
its wheel-tracks, losing the ground he had made up. Some seven miles
back, he came to a road leading to a great gap in the hills. A little
girl was feeding a few lean sheep at the corner of it. No: she had
seen no carriage; she had only been here a little while: the road ran
up to Camporossa. Tinker considered it, and it invited his search. It
went high into the hills, and he saw little towns here and there on
their sides. He sent the car slowly down it. For seventy yards the
roadway was hard, or stony; then came a patch of dust, smooth and
unmarked by a wheel-track. Any vehicle going along the road must have
passed over it, and a wave of disappointment submerged Tinker's spirit;
the road had seemed so very much the right one. He stopped the car,
and stared blankly at the patch of dust. Suddenly his quick eye caught
a curious marking on its surface. He jumped down, and bent over it:
sure enough, the patch had been brushed and smoothed with a bough.
He hurried the car back to the corner of the road, and by entreaties,
persuasion, cajoling, a five-franc piece, and even--great
concession!--a kiss, he wrung from the little shepherdess a promise
that she would wait till dark if need were, stop every motor-car that
came from the direction of the frontier, and say, "The kidnappers have
gone up this road." He was assured that his father would borrow or
hire a motorcar, and follow in it.
Then he turned the car for Camporossa. Three hundred yards up the road
he came to another patch of dust, and saw the wheel-tracks of the
carriage deep and plain. He sent along the car as hard as he dared,
for, as the road grew steeper along the hillside, it grew stonier and
stonier, thanks to its serving, like most Italian hill roads, as a
watercourse to carry off the rain from the hills. A very slow and
painful jolting brought him among the olive groves of Camporossa and
into that little town.