Traffics and Discoveries

"Did they get you? What did you get? I was coming into Linghurst as witness to character – your man told me what happened – but I was stopped near Instead Wick myself," cried Kysh.

"What for?"

"Leaving car unattended. An infernal swindle, when you think of the loose carts outside every pub in the county. I was jawing with the police for an hour, but it's no use. They've got it all their own way, and we're helpless."

Hereupon I told him my tale, and for proof, as we topped the hill, pointed out the little group round my car.

All supreme emotion is dumb. Kysh put on the brake and hugged me to his bosom till I groaned. Then, as I remember, he crooned like a mother returned to her suckling.

"Divine! Divine!" he murmured. "Command me."

"Take charge of the situation," I said. "You'll find a Mr. Pyecroft on the quarter-deck. I'm altogether out of it."

"He shall stay there. Who am I but the instrument of vengeance in the hands of an over-ruling Providence? (And I put in fresh sparking-plugs this morning.) Salmon, take that steam-kettle home, somehow. I would be alone."

"Leggat," I said to my man, "help Salmon home with my car."

"Home? Now? It's hard. It's cruel hard," said Leggat, almost with a sob.

Hinchcliffe outlined my car's condition briefly to the two engineers. Mr. Pyecroft clung to our guest, who stared with affrighted eyes at the palpitating Octopod; and the free wind of high Sussex whimpered across the ling.

"I am quite agreeable to walkin' 'ome all the way on my feet," said our guest. "I wouldn't go to any railway station. It 'ud be just the proper finish to our little joke." He laughed nervously.

"What's the evolution?" said Pyecroft. "Do we turn over to the new cruiser?"

I nodded, and he escorted our guest to the tonneau with care. When I was in, he sat himself broad-armed on the little flap-seat which controls the door. Hinchcliffe sat by Kysh.

"You drive?" Kysh asked, with the smile that has won him his chequered way through the world.

"Steam only, and I've about had my whack for to-day, thanks."

"I see."

The long, low car slid forward and then dropped like a bullet down the descent our steam toy had so painfully climbed. Our guest's face blanched, and he clutched the back of the tonneau.

"New commander's evidently been trained on a destroyer," said Hinchcliffe.

"What's 'is wonderful name?" whispered Pyecroft. "Ho! Well, I'm glad it ain't Saul we've run up against – nor Nimshi, for that matter. This is makin' me feel religious."

Our impetus carried us half-way up the next slope, where we steadied to a resonant fifteen an hour against the collar.

"What do you think?" I called to Hinchcliffe.

"'Taint as sweet as steam, o' course; but for power it's twice the Furious against half the Jaseur in a head-sea."

Volumes could not have touched it more exactly. His bright eyes were glued on Kysh's hands juggling with levers behind the discreet backward sloping dash.

"An' what sort of a brake might you use?" he said politely.

"This," Kysh replied, as the last of the hill shot up to one in eight. He let the car run back a few feet and caught her deftly on the brake, repeating the performance cup and ball fashion. It was like being daped above the Pit at the end of an uncoiled solar plexus. Even Pyecroft held his breath.

"It ain't fair! It ain't fair!" our guest moaned. "You're makin' me sick."

"What an ungrateful blighter he is!" said Pyecroft. "Money couldn't buy you a run like this … Do it well overboard!"

"We'll just trundle up the Forest and drop into the Park Row, I think," said Kysh. "There's a bit of good going hereabouts."

He flung a careless knee over the low raking tiller that the ordinary expert puts under his armpit, and down four miles of yellow road, cut through barren waste, the Octopod sang like a six-inch shell.

"Whew! But you know your job," said Hinchcliffe. "You're wasted here. I'd give something to have you in my engine-room."

"He's steering with 'is little hind-legs," said Pyecroft. "Stand up and look at him, Robert. You'll never see such a sight again!"

"Nor don't want to," was our guest's reply. "Five 'undred pounds wouldn't begin to cover 'is fines even since I've been with him."

Park Row is reached by one hill which drops three hundred feet in half a mile. Kysh had the thought to steer with his hand down the abyss, but the manner in which he took the curved bridge at the bottom brought my few remaining hairs much nearer the grave.

"We're in Surrey now; better look out," I said.

"Never mind. I'll roll her into Kent for a bit. We've lots of time; it's only three o'clock."

"Won't you want to fill your bunkers, or take water, or oil her up?" said Hinchcliffe.

"We don't use water, and she's good for two hundred on one tank o' petrol if she doesn't break down."

"Two hundred miles from 'ome and mother and faithful Fido to-night, Robert," said Pyecroft, slapping our guest on the knee. "Cheer up! Why, I've known a destroyer do less."

We passed with some decency through some towns, till by way of the Hastings road we whirled into Cramberhurst, which is a deep pit.

"Now," said Kysh, "we begin."

"Previous service not reckoned towards pension," said Pyecroft. "We are doin' you lavish, Robert."

"But when's this silly game to finish, any'ow?" our guest snarled.

"Don't worry about the when of it, Robert. The where's the interestin' point for you just now."

I had seen Kysh drive before, and I thought I knew the Octopod, but that afternoon he and she were exalted beyond my knowledge. He improvised on the keys – the snapping levers and quivering accelerators – marvellous variations, so that our progress was sometimes a fugue and sometimes a barn-dance, varied on open greens by the weaving of fairy rings. When I protested, all that he would say was: "I'll hypnotise the fowl! I'll dazzle the rooster!" or other words equally futile. And she – oh! that I could do her justice! – she turned her broad black bows to the westering light, and lifted us high upon hills that we might see and rejoice with her. She whooped into veiled hollows of elm and Sussex oak; she devoured infinite perspectives of park palings; she surged through forgotten hamlets, whose single streets gave back, reduplicated, the clatter of her exhaust, and, tireless, she repeated the motions. Over naked uplands she droned like a homing bee, her shadow lengthening in the sun that she chased to his lair. She nosed up unparochial byways and accommodation- roads of the least accommodation, and put old scarred turf or new-raised molehills under her most marvellous springs with never a jar. And since the King's highway is used for every purpose save traffic, in mid-career she stepped aside for, or flung amazing loops about, the brainless driver, the driverless horse, the drunken carrier, the engaged couple, the female student of the bicycle and her staggering instructor, the pig, the perambulator, and the infant school (where it disembogued yelping on cross-roads), with the grace of Nellie Farren (upon whom be the Peace) and the lithe abandon of all the Vokes family. But at heart she was ever Judic as I remember that Judic long ago – Judic clad in bourgeois black from wrist to ankle, achieving incredible improprieties.

We were silent – Hinchcliffe and Pyecroft through professional appreciation; I with a layman's delight in the expert; and our guest because of fear.

At the edge of the evening she smelt the sea to southward and sheered thither like the strong-winged albatross, to circle enormously amid green flats fringed by martello towers.

"Ain't that Eastbourne yonder?" said our guest, reviving. "I've a aunt there – she's cook to a J.P. – could identify me."

"Don't worry her for a little thing like that," said Pyecroft; and ere he had ceased to praise family love, our unpaid judiciary, and domestic service, the Downs rose between us and the sea, and the Long Man of Hillingdon lay out upon the turf.

"Trevington – up yonder – is a fairly isolated little dorp," I said, for I was beginning to feel hungry.