and fruit. As he ate and drank, he was all affability and information
to the group of the curious who gathered round the car. He was an
English boy; his family had gone on in front in a carriage, and he was
following them in the car. He learned at once that the carriage had
gone on to Dolceacqua, and was less than an hour ahead.
He paid for his food and milk, and without delay sent the car up the
steep hillside. He had to nurse and coax it up the steepest parts.
After another long jolting he reached Dolceacqua, vexed all the time by
the knowledge that the carriage was going as fast as he over such
roads. The magnificent view of the Mediterranean from the rose-gardens
of Dolceacqua afforded him no pleasure at all; it made only too clear
to him the risk he would run, if he recovered Dorothy and Elsie and had
to descend that steep at any pace. At Dolceacqua he learned that the
carriage was little more than half an hour ahead, on the road to
Islabona. He was pleased to hear that, for all the badness of the
road, he had gained upon it: plainly the horses were tiring.
Another steep climb brought him up to Islabona, to learn that the
carriage had turned to the right along the road to Apricale. To his
surprise and satisfaction he found this road smooth, and once more,
after long crawling, sent the car along at full speed. It was time to
make haste, for the sun was setting. A mile from Apricale he saw a
cloud of dust ahead of him, and he knew that he had the kidnappers in
sight. He slowed down, for he did not wish to be seen by them. Then
when the dust-cloud vanished into the straggling town, he hurried on
again, for if they pushed on through the darkness, he would have to
follow by the sound of their wheels.
He came through Apricale at a moderate speed. Then a mile beyond it,
as he came to the top of a little hill, he saw the carriage moving
slowly down an avenue, to a house on the left, some hundred yards from
the road. He stopped the car with a jerk, backed it a little way down
the hill, and from the brow watched the carriage drive up to the house.
Then the sun set, and the swift twilight fell.
He set about filling up the petrol tank, and making sure that the lamp
was ready to light. Then he backed the car into a clump of trees, and
set out across the fields for the house. It was the dark hour after
sunset, and he found most of the bushes thorny. Presently he came into
a deserted garden, overgrown with rank weeds and unclipped shrubs. He
hoped devoutly that the scorpions and tarantulas would await the
passing of the sunset chill in their lairs. To all seeming they did,
for he pushed through the garden without mishap, and came to the house.
It was a four-square, two-storied building, with something of the air
of a fortress, a useful abode in those once brigand-ridden hills, some
old-time gentleman's country-seat; a mat of creepers covered it to its
tiled roof. The side near him was dark; and from the back came the
voices of three stablemen about their business. He stole round to the
front; and that too was dark. But on the further side two rooms were
lighted, one on the ground floor, one above.
A chatter of excited voices came from the lower windows; and Tinker
came to within ten yards of it, and looked in through the heavy bars.
Three men were dining at the table: a freckled redheaded man with the
high cheekbones of the Scot, a dissipated young Italian of a most
romantic air, and a small, round, vivacious man, ineffably French.
"I'm going to marry the girl, say what you will!" the Italian cried.
"Where would your scheme have been without my aid? Where would you
have found a house like this, out of the world, secure from search, in
a country where everyone is as silent as the grave in my interests?"
"Pardon, my dear Monteleone," said the Frenchman; "_I_ am going to
marry the lady. Without me, there would have been no scheme for you to
help. I made it. I rank first. I marry the young lady."
"What's all this talk about marrying the girl?" roared the Scotchman,
in French. "We agreed on a ransom of a million and a half francs, five
hundred thousand francs each!"
"The lady's beauty has changed all that," said the Frenchman. "I am
going to marry her."
"No, no: it's me; it's me," said the Italian.
"Have done with this foolish talk!" roared the Scotchman, banging the
table. "If either of you marries her, the poor young thing will be a
widow in a fortnight. I know Septimus Rainer; he'll shoot such a
son-in-law at sight!"
"Shoot me! Shoot me! This American mushroom shoot a Monteleone for
marrying his daughter!" cried the Italian. "Why, the Monteleones were
Crusaders! He'll be proud of the alliance!"
"Very proud--very proud he'll be will Septimus Rainer--when he's shot
ye," jeered the Scotchman.
A movement overhead drew Tinker's attention; he looked up, to see
Dorothy leaning out of the window above. He uttered the short click
which served him as a signal when he played the part of chief
conspirator. She looked straight down at him, but did not move or
answer, and he knew that there was someone, an enemy, in the room with
her. The kidnappers still disputed vehemently; and he stole up to the
wall, and began to climb the vine which covered the side of the house.
He disturbed a number of roosting small birds; but Dorothy's suitors
were putting forward their pretensions to her hand with a clamour which
drowned the flutter of wings. He climbed up and up, and Dorothy never
stirred; and at last he looked under her arm into the room. Elsie,
with her elbows on the table, was staring miserably at the grim,
forbidding face of an elderly woman who sat on a chair backed up
against the door.
Tinker looked at the woman and could scarcely believe his eyes, then he
laughed gently, slipped over the window-sill, and said cheerfully,
"Hullo, Selina, how are you?"
The grim woman started up with a little cry, stared at him, ran across
the room, and began to hug him furiously, crying, "Oh, Master Tinker!
Master Tinker! What a turn you did give me!"
"Drop it, Selina! Drop it!" said Tinker, struggling out of her
embrace. "You know how I hate being slobbered over!"
Then he dodged Dorothy and Elsie, who advanced upon him with one accord
and one purpose of kissing him, and cried, "No, no! This is no time
for foolery!"
"But I don't understand," said Dorothy.
"Oh! Selina's my old nurse. What are you doing here, Selina? I never
expected you to turn kidnapper at your age!"
"Nothing of the kind, Master Tinker! I'm paid to help save these poor
lambs from them Popish Jesuits, and I'm going to do it!"
"Let's hear about this," said Tinker, sitting down on the table.
"It's my poor husband's cousin, Mr. Alexander McNeill. He engaged me
to come here to act as maid to a young lady he was helping get away
from those Jesuits who were trying to force her into a convent to get
her money," said Selina.
"You've been humbugged, then. What you are doing is helping to kidnap
my adopted sister Elsie, and Miss Dorothy Rainer, the daughter of an
American millionaire," said Tinker joyfully.
Dorothy started and flushed. "How did you learn that?" she said
quickly.
"Your father's come from America, and he and my father are looking for
you, though where they are there's no saying. I left them at
Ventimiglia arrested as spies," said Tinker.
"Arrested as spies?" cried Dorothy.
But Selina, whose face had undergone a slow but violent change, broke
in, "So Alexander's humbugged me, has he? He's brought me all the way
from Paris here by a lie about Jesuits having tried to bury this young
lady in one of their nasty convents, to do his dirty kidnapping work,
has he? I'll kidnap him! I'll teach him to play these tricks on me!"
"Do!" said Tinker with warm approval. "You let him have it! Think
that you're pitching into me like you used to! Come along, all of you!
Selina's simply tremendous when her back's up!"
Selina opened the door, and went down the stairs with all the outraged
majesty of a Boadicea. The three of them followed her quietly, and at
the bottom Tinker bade Dorothy and Elsie unbar the door of the house
and himself kept close behind Selina. She opened the door of the room;
and at the sight of her the sustained shriek in which the Italian and
the Frenchman were conversing died suddenly down, and the three
kidnappers stared at her.
"You nasty, body-snatching scum!" said Selina, glowering at them.
"Eh! What? You're daft, woman! What's the matter?" said McNeill.
"Don't you woman me, Alexander McNeill!" said Selina. "Daft, am I?
Daft to listen to your lies about Jesuits and the young lady! Daft to
believe you when you told me not to listen to her, for the Jesuits had
got round her, and she didn't know what was good for her! But I've
found you out! I'm going to take the young lady straight back to her
father, and send the police here for you."
"Woman, you're mad!" said McNeill, rising with a scared face.
"Don't you woman me, you low Scotchman! You ought to be ashamed of
yourself, mixing yourself up with these foreign rascals! You that's
had a Christian up-bringing!"
"You do what you're paid to do!" roared McNeill.
"Il faut agir!" said the Frenchman, with the true Napoleonic grasp of
the situation, and he bounced in a lithe, over-confident manner at
Selina.
In a flash she had her left hand well gripped in his abundant hair, and
was clawing his face with her right. He screamed and writhed; and the
struggle gave Tinker his chance. He slipped the key out of the inside
of the door, thrust it into the outside; as the Frenchman tore himself
away yelling, he cried, "Outside, Selina!" strengthened the command by
a strong drag on her arm; got her outside; slammed to the door, and
locked it almost before the kidnappers had realised that he was there.
He wrenched the key out of the lock just as Dorothy had got the
front-door open; ran down the hall; caught Elsie's hand, and crying,
"Come along! Come along!" ran down the avenue, followed by Dorothy and
Selina as fast as they could pelt.
Three minutes brought them to the car; and he bundled his breathless
charges into it, drove it out of the clump of trees, and sent it hard
down the road. Just before Apricale he bade them crouch down in the
car that they might not be seen, and rushed through the ill-lighted
street at full speed. A mile beyond the town he lighted the lamp and
drove her at full speed again, along the smooth road to Islabona.
Beyond Islabona he was forced to go very slowly down the jolting
descent; if he had tried to go at any pace, the car on those loose
stones might at any moment have taken its own steering in hand and
smashed itself against the rocky banks. Dorothy and Elsie took
advantage of the slowness to pour into his ears the tale of how the
kidnappers had seized them on the Corniche a mile outside the town,
thrust them into the carriage, and kept them quiet by threats. Now and
again he hushed them, to listen for pursuing horses. He had not much
fear of pursuit. The kidnappers would be some time breaking out of the
room in which he had locked them; and when they were out they would
scour the neighbourhood on foot. He had kept well out of sight behind
Selina; and they would hear nothing of the car before they began to
pursue. When they did pursue, it would be on the sure-footed hill
horses; they would come three yards to the car's one.
At last they reached Dolceacqua, and pushed steadily and carefully
downwards. Half-way between that town and Camporossa, they came round
a bend in the road, to see half a mile below them the flaring lamp of a
motor-car.
"Here's my father, or the police!" said Tinker with a sigh of relief.
In five minutes Dorothy was kissing her father; and Tinker was
presenting the new-found Selina to Sir Tancred with a joyful account of
her delinquencies.
It had taken Sir Tancred little more than two and a half hours to get
free of the Italian authorities; and as Tinker had expected he had
hired a motor-car, and came straight and hard for Genoa, to be turned
aside on to the right track by Tinker's shepherdess.
When they had exchanged stories, Mr. Rainer was for going on and taking
vengeance on the kidnappers. But Sir Tancred dissuaded him, pointing
out that there was no need to have every gossip in Europe talking about
Dorothy. If the police, who were in a bustle from Mentone to Genoa,
caught them, it must be endured. But Dorothy had escaped unharmed, and
the less fuss made about the matter the better.
Mr. Rainer listened to reason; Dorothy got into the car with Sir
Tancred and her father; and they continued the descent. Once on the
highroad they set out for Monte Carlo as hard as they dared go at
night. It was past midnight when they reached the hotel, where Buist
was awaiting them in great anxiety. The sight of them set his mind at
rest; but to this day he is inclined to believe that Sir Tancred had a
hand in the kidnapping of Dorothy, and that Selina was an accomplice.
To his intimates he speaks of him with great respect as "a mastermind
of crime."
They were all very hungry and they supped at great length, in very good
spirits. As they were going upstairs to bed, Tinker succeeded in
keeping Dorothy back.
"It's all very well your being the daughter of a millionaire," he said
with some severity. "But an employer has his rights. I can't lose a
governess who suits Elsie so well, straight off. I shall expect a
month's notice."
"But I've no intention of resigning that excellent post," said Dorothy,
smiling.
Tinker looked at her gravely, thinking, and then he said gloomily,
"Your father will never let you be a governess. I suppose you expect
me to back you up against him."
"That's just what I do expect," said Dorothy.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TINKER TAKES SEPTIMUS RAINER IN HAND
On awaking next morning Dorothy's first thought was how would her
father's coming affect her relations with Sir Tancred; and she at once
changed it to how would it affect her relations with the whole of the
little circle into which a fortunate whim had led her. She was an honest
soul, and now she tried to be as honest with herself as a woman can bring
herself to be. She did not hide from herself that of late she and Sir
Tancred had been more and more drawn together; she even went to the
length of admitting that her feeling for him was something stronger than
friendship. Indeed, she was full of pity for him. She had learned from
Tinker something of the story of his earlier life, and like a good woman
she wished she might give him the happiness he had missed. She did not
know how strongly she longed to give him that happiness, much less was
she able to distinguish where pity merged into love. Now she was in a
great dread of her father's millions. She knew well enough that with
many, indeed, with most men of Sir Tancred's class they would have been
primroses, very large primroses, on the path of love; she feared that if
he was the man she thought him, and she would not have him any other,
they would prove barriers on that path, hard indeed to surmount. She
dressed in no very good spirits, and came downstairs to find her father
awaiting her in the hall, ready to stroll out and hear how the world had
gone with her.
Sir Tancred also awoke with the sense of something unpleasant having
happened. But at first he could not for the life of him remember what it
was. Then he began to consider the change which would be brought about
by the irruption of the millionaire. He resented it. He found the
prospect of Tinker's losing Dorothy's services exceedingly disagreeable.
For a while he ascribed that resentment to the fact that she would cease
to be the excellent influence with Tinker she certainly was; and then he
grew resentful on his own account. It was hard, indeed, that he should
suddenly be deprived of the presence of so charming a creature at his
table, of so delightful a companion of his evening stroll in the gardens
of the Casino. If it hadn't been for those confounded millions--there he
checked himself sternly; the millions were there, and there was no more
to be said, or thought. But his temper was none the better for the
constraint.
After his late hours the night before, Tinker did not get up as early as
usual, and he and Elsie decided to forego their bathe in the sea, but
went straight to breakfast in the kitchen of the hotel. He found the
staff greatly concerned about the trouble which was likely to befall him
for borrowing the motor-car. It seemed that on finding it gone, its
owner, a M. Cognier, had displayed a wrath of the most terrible. Of
course an Argus-eyed busy-body had seen Tinker depart in it; and M.
Cognier, an Anglophobe, had declared his intention of punishing this
insolence of Perfidious Albion by handing him over to the police. Tinker
heard all their prophecies of evil with his wonted tranquillity; but he
had no little difficulty in setting their minds at rest.
M. Cognier had been impressive.
The two children had finished their breakfast, and were about to set out
in search of adventure, when Selina found them and began to set forth a
petition. She wished to be allowed to enter Tinker's service again. She
was, she said, alone in the world once more, for her husband, having
spent all her savings, had with determined Scotch thriftiness
incontinently died, and left her to shift for herself. She had been
making a mean living as an ironer in a Parisian laundry, when Alexander
McNeill had sent for her to Apricale to help him deliver a young lady
from the Jesuits; and she saw in her curious meeting with Tinker, at the
country seat of the young Monteleone, the finger of Providence pointing
the way back to her old situation. Would he lay the matter before his
father, and support her petition?
Tinker was somewhat taken aback, and said, "But I'm too old for a nurse."
"Oh, there are lots of things I could do, Master Tinker. There are
really," said Selina. "You want a housekeeper when you're at the Refuge,
a housekeeper who could get up your linen and Sir Tancred's as they can't
do it at Farndon-Pryze. You want someone to look after you, when you've
got a cold. You never did take any care of yourself." She was wringing
her hands in her earnestness.
"You'd be a sort of valet-housekeeper then," said Tinker, pondering the
matter.
"Yes, and I should want very little wages. All I want is to be in your
service again. I never ought to have left it. I never had no real peace
all the time I was married, what with wondering how you were being looked
after, and whether you was ill or not. I always took in _The Morning
Post_, though Angus did grumble at the expense, all the time I was in
Paris, on purpose to see where you was; and every day I looked at the
Births, Deaths, and Marriages first, to see if anything had happened to
you."
She stopped; and Tinker was silent a while, thinking; then he said, "Do
you think you could act as maid to Elsie?"
"Why, of course I could, Master Tinker!"
"She wants someone to brush her hair most," said Tinker thoughtfully.
"I don't want a maid. And I don't want anyone to brush my hair but you,"
said Elsie firmly. "No one could do it so well."
"Oh, you'll soon get used to Selina's doing it," said Tinker cheerfully.
"And you'll find it so much more--so much more important having a maid of
your own. You'll feel so grown-up, don't you know? I tell you what,
we'll go upstairs, and Selina can have a try at it, while I talk to my
father."
Elsie shook her head doubtfully; but she came. Tinker left them at the
door of Elsie's room, and went to his father. He found him dressing, and
after bidding him good-morning, came at once to the matter in hand.
"Selina wants to come back to us," he said. "She thinks she could be
useful as valet-housekeeper and maid to Elsie. She's awfully keen on it."
"If she wants to come back, she most certainly can," said Sir Tancred.
"I owe Selina a debt I can never pay--and so do you, for that matter. I
don't pretend to know what the functions of a valet-housekeeper are, but
doubtless Selina knows her own capabilities best. Besides, as you are
losing your governess, you will want some woman about Elsie."
"But I don't intend to lose my governess!" cried Tinker.
Sir Tancred looked at him with unaffected interest. "Am I to understand
that you propose to retain the daughter of a millionaire as your adopted
sister's governess?" he said.
"Yes," said Tinker firmly. "Dorothy's a very good governess: she suits
Elsie and she suits me."
"That sounds like a reason," said Sir Tancred. "But I shall be
interested to see if Mr. Rainer listens to it."
"I think," said Tinker thoughtfully, "we shan't have much trouble with
Mr. Rainer."
"Of course, if you've made up your mind--but millionaires are kittle
cattle."
Tinker went to Selina and Elsie, looked carefully into the matter of
hair-brushing; gave Selina a few hints on the process, and then told her
that her request was granted. He fled from the room to escape her joyful
gratitude; and went down into the hall to await the conclusion of the
process, and Elsie's coming.
Of a sudden there descended on him an exceedingly animated French
gentleman of forty, who cried, "Tell me then a little, good-for-nothing!
Why did you steal my motor-car yesterday?"
Tinker was suavity itself; he protested that he was desolated, grieved
beyond measure that the necessity of borrowing the motor-car had been
forced on him; but he had borrowed it in the service of a lady; and he
told briefly the story of the kidnapping. The aggrieved Frenchman
listened to it with a face in which amazement battled with incredulity;
but fortunately, towards the end of it, Dorothy and her father came into
the hotel from walking in the garden of the Casino; and Tinker introduced
the Frenchman to them. At the sight of Dorothy's beauty, he forgot his
righteous wrath; forgot that it was an international matter, another
instance of the cunning insolence of Perfidious Albion; protested his
delight that his car should have been of use to her; would not listen to
Septimus Rainer's proposal to fit it out with fresh tires, declaring that
the tires on it, worn in her service, had become one of his most
cherished possessions; and in the end turned upon Tinker with
outstretched arms, and cried, "Embrace me! I have called you a
good-for-nothing! But you are a hero!"
With infinite quickness Tinker seized the nearest hand, wrung it warmly,
and ducked out of the way of the embrace. Then he explained that unless
the police caught the kidnappers, they desired to let the matter drop,
for the gossip would be unpleasant to Dorothy. The Frenchman understood;
and assured them that as far as he was concerned, it should be buried in
the most secret depths of his bosom.
With that he took his leave of them; and on his heels came two Italian
detectives to inquire into the kidnapping. Sir Tancred was summoned to
the conference; and for all that their questioners assumed a good deal of
the air of inquisitors with all the horrors of the torture-chamber behind
them, he and Tinker saw to it that they went away very little wiser than
they came.
At déjeuner Septimus Rainer told them that now he was in Europe he
proposed to stay in Europe, and enjoy a little of his daughter's society.
He could carry on all of his business he wanted to by cablegram and
letter. One thing, however, he must have, and that was clothes, for in
his haste he had come away with a gripsack and nothing more. Sir Tancred
suggested that Tinker, who knew his Nice, should take him over there, and
put him in the hands of the right tailor, hatter, hosier, and bootmaker;
and Septimus Rainer accepted the offer gratefully.
Accordingly the two of them caught a train early in the afternoon, and
went to Nice. Septimus Rainer had supposed the getting of clothes to be
a simple and tiresome affair of a few minutes; you went to a tailor and
said, "Make me suits of clothes," or to a bootmaker and said, "Make me
pairs of boots." He was vastly mistaken. He found himself embarked upon
a serious business.
He awoke to the seriousness of it in the train, when he found Tinker, who
had taken his commission to heart, regarding him with a cold, calculating
air, very disquieting. He endured it as long as he could, then he said
cautiously, "You aren't measuring me for my coffin; are you, sonny?"
"Oh, no!" said Tinker with a reassuring smile of a seraphic sweetness.
"I was only thinking how you ought to be dressed."
"Oh, anything will do for me," said Septimus Rainer carelessly.
"I'm afraid not; you see I'm responsible," said Tinker seriously. "And I
was thinking that, getting your clothes here in Nice, I shall have to
keep a very sharp eye on them, or they'll go dressing you like a French
American--you know, an American who is dressed by a Paris tailor. And
that wouldn't do at all."