The Lady in the Car

“Never mind, my dear fellow,” laughed the audacious Prince. “Clayton will be up there too. It’s he who knows the people, and is working the game pretty cleverly.”

“Is it jewels?” asked the chauffeur in a low voice.

“No, it just isn’t, this time! You’re mistaken, as you always are when you’re too inquisitive. Garrett, it’s something better,” he answered. “All you’ve got to do is to pretend to be smitten by the girl. She’s a terrible little flirt, so you won’t have very much difficulty. You make the running, and leave all the rest to me.” His master, having shown him on the map where Glenblair was situated, half way between Stirling and Perth, added:

“I’ll go up to-night, and you’ll be there in three days’ time. Meanwhile I’ll sing your praises, and you’ll receive a warm welcome from everybody when you arrive. Take your decent kit with you, and act the gentleman. There’s a level thousand each for us if we bring it off properly. But,” he added, with further injunctions not to fall genuinely in love with the pretty Elfrida, “the whole thing rests upon you. The girl must be devoted to you – otherwise we can’t work the trick.”

“What is the trick?” asked Garrett, his curiosity aroused.

“Never mind what it is, Garrett,” he said, rising to dismiss him.

“Have your lunch and get away. You’ve five hundred miles of bad roads and new metal before you, so the sooner you’re off the better. Call and see Clayton at his rooms. He’s got a bag, or something, to put in the car, I think. When we meet in Scotland, recollect that I’m Prince Albert incognito. We were at Bonn together, and have been friends for many years. Good luck to you!”

And with that he left the Prince’s cosy rooms, and soon found himself out in Dover Street again, much puzzled.

The real object of his visit and his flirtation at a Scotch castle filled his mind as, in the dull light of that fading afternoon, he swept along the muddy Great North Road his exhaust opened and roaring as he went ascending through Whetstone and Barnet in the direction of Hatfield. The “sixty” repainted cream with narrow gilt lines upon it certainly presented a very smart appearance, but in the back he had a couple of false number-plates, together with three big pots of dark-green enamel and a brush, so that if occasion arose, as it had arisen more than once, he could run up a by-road, and in an hour transform its appearance, so that its own maker would scarcely recognise it.

In the grey twilight as he approached Hitchin, swinging round those sharp corners at a speed as high as he dared, it poured with rain again, and he was compelled to lower the wind-screen and receive the full brunt of the storm, so blurred became everything through the sheet of plate-glass. The old “Sun” at Hitchin reached, he got a drink, lit his head-lamps, and crossing the marketplace, pushed forward, a long and monotonous run up Alconbury Hill and through Wansford to Stamford where, at the Stamford Hotel – which recalled memories of the Northovers – he ate a cold dinner and rested for an hour over a cigar.

Many were the exciting adventures he had had while acting as chauffeur to his Highness, but his instructions that morning had somehow filled him with unusual misgiving. He was on his way to pretend to make love to a girl whom he had never seen, the daughter of a millionaire shipbuilder, a man who, as the Prince had informed him, had risen from a journeyman, and like so many others who make money, had at once looked round for a ready-made pedigree, and its accompanying estate. Heraldry and family trees seem to exercise a strange and unaccountable fascination for the parvenu.

As he pushed north, on through that long dark night in the teeth of a bitter northeaster and constant rain, his mind was full of the mysterious coup which his Highness and his friend were about to attempt. Jewels and money were usually what they were in search of, but on this occasion it was something else. What it was, his Highness had flatly refused to tell.

Aided by the Rev. Thomas Clayton, one of the cleverest impostors who ever evaded the police, his Highness’s successes had been little short of marvellous. His audacity was unparalleled. The Parson, who lived constantly in that smug circle wherein moved the newly-rich, usually marked down the victim, introduced his Highness, or the fascinating Mr Tremlett, and left the rest to the young cosmopolitan’s tact and ingenuity. Their aliases were many, while the memory of both Tremlett and Clayton for faces was extraordinary. A favourite pose of the Prince was that of military attaché in the service of the German Government, and this self-assumed profession often gained him admission to the most exclusive circles here, and on the Continent.

Garrett’s alias of Herbert Hebberdine he had assumed on one or two previous occasions – once at Biarritz, when his Highness successfully secured the splendid pearl necklace of the Duchess of Taormino, and again a few months later at Abbazia, on the beautiful shore of the Adriatic. On both occasions their coup had been brought off without a hitch, he recollected. Therefore, why should he, on this occasion, become so foolishly apprehensive?

He could not tell. He tried to analyse his feelings as, hour after hour, he sat at the wheel, tearing along that dark, wet, endless highway due north towards York. But all in vain. Over him seemed to have spread a shadow of impending evil, and try how he would, he could not shake off the uncomfortable feeling that he was rushing into some grave peril from which he was destined not to escape.

To describe in detail that wet, uncomfortable run from Hyde Park Corner to Edinburgh would serve no purpose in this little chronicle of an exciting chapter of an adventurous life. Suffice it to say that, late in the night of the second day after leaving London, he drew up before the North British Hotel, in Prince’s Street, glad of shelter from the icy blast. A telegram from his Highness ordered him to arrive at the castle on the following evening; therefore, just as dusk was falling, he found himself before the lodge-gates of the splendid domain of the laird of Glenblair, and a moment later turned into the drive which ascended for more than a mile through an avenue of great bare beeches and oaks, on the one side a dense wood, and on the other a deep, beautiful glen, where, far below, rippled a burn with many picturesque cascades.

Once or twice he touched the button of the electric horn to give warning of his approach, when suddenly the drive took a wide curve and opened out before a splendid old mansion in the Scotch baronial style, situated amid the most romantic and picturesque scenery it had ever been his lot to witness.

At the door, brought out by the horn, stood his Highness, in a smart suit of blue serge, and the Parson, in severe clerical garb and pince-nez, while with them stood two women, one plump, elderly, and grey-haired, in a dark gown, the other a slim figure in cream with wavy chestnut hair, and a face that instantly fascinated the new-comer.

As he alighted from the car and drew off his fur glove the Prince – who was staying incognito as Mr Drummond – introduced him to his hostess, before whom he bowed, while she, in turn, said:

“This is my daughter, Elfrida – Mr Hebberdine.”

Garrett bowed again. Their eyes met, and next instant the young man wished heartily that he had never come there. The Prince had not exaggerated her beauty. She was absolutely perfect. In all the years he had been a wanderer he had never seen such dainty chic, such tiny hands and feet, or such a sweet face with its soft pink cheeks and its red lips made for kisses. She could not have been more than eighteen or so, yet about her was none of the gaucherie of the school-girl. He noticed that she dropped her eyes quickly, and upon her cheeks arose just the soupçon of a blush.

“Had a good run, Herbert?” asked the Prince as he entered the big hall of the castle.

“Not very. The roads were infernally bad in places,” replied the other, “and the new metal between York and Newcastle is most annoying.”

“Good car, that of yours!” remarked the Parson, as though he had never seen it before, while his Highness declared that a six-cylinder was certainly the best of all.

After a whisky and soda, brought by the grave, antiquated butler, Garrett drove the car round to the garage some little distance from the house, where he found three fine cars belonging to his host.

Then, as he went to his room to change for dinner, he passed his Highness on the stairs.

“The game’s quite easy,” whispered the latter as he halted for a second. “It remains for you to make the running with Elfrida. Only be careful. Old Blair-Stewart is pretty sly – as you’ll see.”

At dinner in the long old-fashioned panelled room, hung with the portraits of what were supposed to be the ancestors of the Blair-Stewarts of Glenblair, Garrett first met the rather stout, coarse-featured shipbuilder who had assumed the head of that historic house, and had bought the estate at three times its market value. From the first moment of their meeting Garrett saw that he was a blatant parvenu of the worst type, for he began to talk of “my hothouses,” “my motors,” and “my yacht” almost in the first five minutes of their conversation.

The party numbered about fifteen at dinner, and he had the good fortune to be placed next the dainty little girl in turquoise towards whom the part allotted to him was to act as lover.

She was, he saw, of very different type to her father. She had been at school in Versailles, and afterwards had studied music in Dresden she told him, and she could, he found, speak three languages quite well. She had apparently put off her school-girl shyness when she put up her hair, and indeed she struck him as being an amusing little friend to any man. Motoring was her chief hobby. She could drive one of her father’s cars, a “sixteen-twenty” herself, and often did so. Therefore they were soon upon a topic in which they were mutually enthusiastic.

A yellow-haired, thin-faced young man of elegant appearance, for he had a velvet collar to his dress-coat and amethyst buttons to his vest, was looking daggers at them. From that Garrett concluded that Archie Gould was the lover of the winning Elfrida, and that he did not approve of their mutual merriment. The Parson, who said grace, was a perfect example of decorum, and was making himself delightful to his hostess, while his Highness was joking with a pretty little married woman who, without doubt, was full of admiration of his handsome face.

What would the good people of Glenblair have thought had they been aware of the identity of the trio they were entertaining at their table? As Garrett reflected, he smiled within himself. His fellow guests were mostly wealthy people, and as he looked around the table he saw several pieces of jewellery, necklets, pendants and the like for which the old Jew in the Kerk Straat at Amsterdam would have given them very fair prices.

If jewellery was not the object of their visit, then what was?

Two days passed, and Garrett took Elfrida and the Prince for several runs on the “sixty,” much to the girl’s delight. He watched closely the actions of his two companions, but could detect nothing suspicious. Blair-Stewart’s wife was a quaint old crow with a faint suspicion of a moustache, who fancied herself hugely as wife of the wealthy laird of Glenblair. She was busy visiting the poor of the grey straggling Highland village, and his Highness, flattering her vanity, was assisting her. Next to the Prince, the Parson was the most prominent person in the house-party, and managed to impress on every occasion his own importance upon the company.

With the dainty Elfrida, Garrett got on famously, much to the chagrin and disgust of her yellow-headed young admirer, Gould, who had recently inherited his father’s estate up in Inverness-shire, and who it was currently reported, was at that moment engaged in the interesting occupation of “going through” it.

Elfrida, though extremely pretty, with a soft natural beauty all her own, was an essentially out-door girl. It being a hard frost, they had been out together on the “sixty” in the morning, and later she had been teaching him curling on the curling-pond in the park, and initiated him into the mysteries of “elbow in” and “elbow out.” Indeed, every afternoon the whole party curled, a big bonfire being lit on the side of the pond, and tea being taken in the open. He had never practised the sport of casting those big round stones along the ice before, but he found it most invigorating and amusing, especially when he had as instructress such a charming and delightful little companion.

Just as the crimson light of sundown was tinting the snow with its blood-red glow one afternoon, she suddenly declared her intentions to return to the house, whereupon he offered to escort her. As soon, however, as they were away from the rest of the party she left the path by which they were approaching the avenue, saying that there was a shorter cut to the castle. It was then that they found themselves wandering over the snow in the centre of a leafless forest, where the deep crimson afterglow gleamed westward among the black trunks of the trees, while the dead silence of winter was upon everything.

Garrett was laughing with her, as was his habit, for their flirtation from the first had been a desperate one. At eighteen, a girl views nothing seriously, except her hobbies. As they walked together she presented a very neat-ankled and dainty appearance in her short blue serge skirt, little fur bolero, blue French beret, and thick white gloves. In the brief time he had been her father’s guest, he had not failed to notice how his presence always served to heighten the colour of her cheeks, or how frequently she met him as if by accident in all sorts of odd and out-of-the-way corners. He was not sufficiently conceited to imagine that she cared for him any more than she did for young Gould, though he never once saw him with her. He would scowl at them across the table; that was all.

Of a sudden, as they went on through the leafless wood she halted, and looking into his face with her beautiful eyes, exclaimed with a girl’s frankness:

“I wonder, Mr Hebberdine, if I might trust you? – I mean if you would help me?”

“Trust me!” he echoed very surprised, as their acquaintanceship had been of such short duration. “If you repose any confidence in me, Miss Blair-Stewart, I assure you I shall respect its secrecy.”

Her eyes met his, and he was startled to see in them a look of desperation such as he had not seen in any woman’s gaze before. In that moment the mask seemed to have fallen from her, and she stood there before him craving his pity and sympathy – his sympathy above that of all other men!

Was not his position a curious one? The very girl whom he had come to trick and to deceive was asking him to accept her confidences.

“You are very kind indeed to say that,” she exclaimed, her face brightening. “I hardly know whether I dare ask you to stand my friend, for we’ve only known each other two or three days.”

“Sufficiently long, Miss Elfrida, to win me as your faithful champion,” the young man declared, whereupon her cheeks were again suffused by a slight flush.

“Well, the fact is,” she said with charming bluntness, “though I have lots of girl friends, I have no man friend.”

“There is Archie Gould,” he remarked, “I thought he was your friend!”

“He’s merely a silly boy,” she laughed. “I said a man friend – like yourself.”

“Why are you so anxious to have one?”

She hesitated. Her eyes were fixed upon the spotless snow at their feet, and he saw that she held her breath in hesitation.