The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Admirable Tinker, by Edgar Jepson
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Admirable Tinker
Child of the World
Author: Edgar Jepson
Illustrator: Margaret Eckerson
Release Date: August 8, 2006 [EBook #19010]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ADMIRABLE TINKER ***
Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: "Here's my father, or the police!"]
THE ADMIRABLE TINKER
CHILD OF THE WORLD
BY EDGAR JEPSON
Illustrated by
Margaret Eckerson
NEW YORK
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
MCMIV
Copyright, 1904, by
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
Published, March, 1904
Third Impression
COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. SIR TANCRED'S QUEST
II. THE FINDING OF TINKER
III. TINKER ACCEPTS HIS NAME
IV. THE TRAINING OF TINKER
V. TINKER'S BIRTHDAY BLOODHOUND
VI. THE RESCUE OF ELIZABETH KERNABY
VII. THE STOLEN FLYING-MACHINE
VIII. THE BARON AND THE MONEY-LENDER
IX. TINKER INTERVENES
X. TINKER'S FOUNDLING
XI. TINKER FROM THE MACHINE
XII. TINKER BORROWS A MOTOR-CAR
XIII. TINKER MEETS HIS OLD NURSE
XIV. TINKER TAKES SEPTIMUS RAINER IN HAND
XV. TINKER ASSERTS THE RIGHTS OF THE EMPLOYER
XVI. TINKER DISOWNS HIS GRANDMOTHER
XVII. TINKER AND THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Here's my father, or the police!" . . . Frontispiece
He surveyed himself with an excited curiosity.
"I can't hold him!"
He poured comforting assurances of safety into her ears.
"She was quite out of control for a good five minutes."
"To-night reflect on your misdeeds. To-morrow
we will treat of your ransom."
The pursuit was lively, but short.
It was his first essay as coiffeur.
As a battering-ram against the first and second buttons
of his waistcoat.
"Hold it back!" screamed Tinker.
Over these agreeable occupations they talked.
And she paused to let the splendour of the gift sink in.
It's time these lubbers walked the plank.
THE ADMIRABLE TINKER
CHAPTER ONE
SIR TANCRED'S QUEST
"It is," said Lord Crosland, "deucedly odd."
"What?" said Sir Tancred Beauleigh.
"That after seeing nothing of one another for nearly three years, we
should arrive at this caravanserai from different stations at the same
time, to find that our letters engaging this set of rooms came by the
same post."
"It comes of having been born on the same day," said Sir Tancred.
"Besides, I always told you that the only possible place to live in in
town was the top left-hand corner of the Hotel Cecil, with this view up
the river, and a nice open breezy space in front of you."
Lord Crosland, who was walking up and down the room as he talked,
stopped to gaze out of the window at Westminster, and Sir Tancred
lighted another cigarette.
"What I like about it is, it's retired--out of the world," said Lord
Crosland.
"It was just that recommended it to me."
A waiter came in, and cleared away the breakfast. Lord Crosland
admired the view; Sir Tancred lay back in his easy chair, gazing with
vacant, sombre eyes into the clear blue vault of the summer sky.
"I can't see why we shouldn't share these rooms for the season," said
Lord Crosland, when the waiter had gone with his tray. "We shall get
on all right; we always did at Vane's."
"Well," said Sir Tancred slowly, "I have a child, a boy, somewhere--I
don't know where. I've got to find him. I'm going to find him before
I do anything else."
"The deuce you have! Well, I'll be shot! To think that you're
married!"
"I was married when I said good-bye to you nearly three years ago,"
said Sir Tancred. "I was married to Pamela Vane."
"You were married to Miss Vane!" cried Lord Crosland. "But how--how on
earth did you manage it? It was impossible!"
"I committed that legal misdemeanour known as false entry," said Sir
Tancred coolly. "I added the necessary years to our ages."
"Oh, yes, that, of course," said Lord Crosland. "You wouldn't let an
informality of that kind stand in your way. But Miss Vane? How did
you persuade her? I should have thought it impossible--absolutely
impossible."
"It ran as near impossibility as anything I can think of," said Sir
Tancred slowly and half dreamily. "But when you are in love with one
another, impossibilities fade--and I was masterful."
"You were that," said Lord Crosland with conviction.
"Poor Pamela! She was wretched at having to keep it from her father;
and I was sorry enough. But it had to be done; when you are eighteen,
and in love with one another, twenty-one seems ages away, don't you
know?"
"Of course."
"And once done, I don't believe--honestly, I don't believe that she
regretted it," said Sir Tancred; and his sombre eyes were shining.
"Heavens, how happy we were!--for four months. But as you'll learn, if
ever you have it, happiness is a deucedly expensive thing. I paid a
price for it--I _did_ pay a price." And he shivered. "At the end of
four months it came out, and it was all up."
"Then that was why Vane gave up coaching, sold Stanley House, and went
abroad," said Lord Crosland quickly. "We could none of us make it out."
"That was why. When it came out, my stepmother came on the scene.
She's about as remarkable a creature as you'll chance on between now
and the blue moon. She has one idea in her head, the glory of the
Beauleighs. I believe she's as mad as a hatter about it. She was one
of the Stryke & Wigrams, the bankers, a Miss Wigram; and I think, don't
you know, that rising out of that wealthy and respectable firm, she
felt bound to be the bluest-blooded possible. That's what I fancy. At
any rate she's more of a Beauleigh than any Beauleigh since the flood."
"I know," said Lord Crosland, and he nodded gravely with the
immeasurable sapience of a boy of twenty-one.
"I must say, too," Sir Tancred went on thoughtfully, "that she's been
the most important Beauleigh for generations. She brought thirty
thousand a year to the restoration of our dilapidated fortunes; and she
did restore them. You know what a County is: well, little by little
she got a grip on the County, and now she just runs it. I tell you,
the County has taken to spending every bit of the year it can in town
or abroad; when it gets within thirty miles of her, it daren't call its
life its own."
"By Jove!" said Lord Crosland earnestly. "She must be a holy terror."
"They call it force of character when she's within thirty miles of
them," said Sir Tancred drily; and then he went on with more emphasis:
"But the banker streak comes out in her; she thinks too much of money.
She doesn't understand that money's a thing you spend on things that
amuse you; she's always making shows with it--dull shows. So it was
part of her scheme for the glory of Beauleigh, that if billions
couldn't be got, I was to marry millions. You can imagine her fury
when she learned that I was married to Pamela."
"I can that," said Lord Crosland.
"She got me back to Beauleigh, on some rotten pretence of legal
business about mortgages; and made a descent on Mr. Vane. You know
that he was as decent a soul as ever lived, and as sensitive. I'm
afraid that there was a lot of Stryke & Wigram in that interview--you
know, talk about having entrapped me into marriage with his
daughter--the last man in the world to dream of it. Fortunately, as I
gathered from her talk later, she made him angry enough to turn her out
of the house without seeing Pamela. She had to content herself with
writing to her--it must have been a letter."
"Why on earth didn't you interfere? I wouldn't have stood it!" said
Lord Crosland.
"I was at Beauleigh. I was pretty soon suspicious that our secret had
been discovered. When three days passed without my getting a letter
from Pamela, I was sure of it. And then Fortune played into my
stepmother's hands: I had a bad fall with a young horse, and injured my
spine. For two months it was touch and go whether I was a cripple for
life; and I was another four months on my back."
"By Jove!" said Lord Crosland with profound sympathy.
"Ah, but it was when I began to mend that my troubles began. There
were no letters for me--not a letter. Just think of it! I knew that
Pamela must be wanting me; and there I lay a helpless log. I was sure
that she had written; and, knowing my stepmother, I was sure that I
should never see the letters. I sent for her, and asked for them. She
coolly told me that she and her brother, my other guardian, Sir Everard
Wigram, Bumpkin Wigram he's generally called, had decided that I was to
be saved, if possible, from the results of my folly at any cost. They
would have taken steps to have the marriage nullified, if it hadn't
been for the risk of my being prosecuted for false entry. Then she
talked of my ingratitude after all her efforts to raise the Beauleighs
to their former glory. I couldn't stand any more that day; and the
nurse came in and fetched her out. That interview didn't do me any
good."
"It hardly sounds the thing for an injured spine," said Lord Crosland.
"A few days later we had another; and she had the cheek to tell me that
one day I should be grateful to her for having saved me from the
clutches of a designing girl--rank idiocy, you see, for she was only
keeping us apart for the time being. But it set me talking about the
firm of Stryke & Wigram; and for once I got her really angry. It did
me good. Yet, you know, she really believed it; she believed that she
was acting for the best."
"Of course," said Lord Crosland thoughtfully, "she didn't know Miss
Vane, I mean Lady Beauleigh, your wife. It would have made all the
difference."
"I've made that excuse for her often enough," said Sir Tancred. "But
it doesn't carry very far. Just look at the cold-bloodedness of it:
there was I, a helpless cripple, in a good deal of pain most of the
time, mad for a word of my wife; and that damned woman kept back her
letters. Talk about the cruelty of the Chinese--an ordinary woman can
give them points, and do it cheerfully!"
"They are terrors," said Lord Crosland with conviction.
"Well, there I lay; and I had to grin and bear it. But, well, I don't
want to talk about it. The only relief was that once a week my
stepmother seemed to feel bound to come and tell me that it was all for
my good; and I could talk to her about the manners and customs of the
banking classes. Then, after five and a half months of it, when I was
looking forward to getting free and to my wife, she came and told me
that Pamela was dead. I refused to believe it; and she gave me a
letter from Vane's solicitor informing her of the fact."
"Poor beggar!" said Lord Crosland.
Sir Tancred was silent; he was staring at nothing with sombre eyes.
Lord Crosland looked at him compassionately; presently he said, "It
explains your face--the change in it. I was wondering at it. I
couldn't understand it."
"What change? What's the matter with my face?" said Sir Tancred
indifferently.
"Well, you used to be a cheerful-looking beggar, don't you know. Now
you look like what do you call him--who fell from Heaven--Lucifer, son
of the Morning. I read about him at Vane's, mugging up poetry for that
exam."
"You'll hardly believe it," said Sir Tancred very seriously, "but I
took to reading books myself at Beauleigh, when I got all
right--reading books and mooning about. I had no energy. I went and
saw Vane's solicitor of course; but he could tell me nothing, or
wouldn't tell me. Said his client had called on him, and told him to
inform my stepmother of Pamela's death, and had not told him where she
died, or where he was now living. I fancied he was keeping something
back; but I had no energy, and I didn't drag it out of him. I went to
Stanley House; it was to be let. No one could tell me where the Vanes
had gone. I stayed at Beauleigh--mooning about. I wouldn't go to
Oxford; and I wouldn't travel. I mooned about. Six months ago I came
across Vicary at a meet--you remember Vicary at Vane's?--he told me
that Vane had died in Jersey. I went to Jersey, and found Vane's
grave. Next to it was my wife's."
Again Sir Tancred fell silent in a gloomy musing.
"Well?" said Lord Crosland gently.
"The oddest thing happened. It doesn't sound exactly credible; and you
won't understand it. I don't. But as I stood by the grave, I suddenly
felt that there was something for me to do, something very important
that had to be done. It was odd, very odd. I went back to my hotel
quite harassed, puzzling and racking my brains. Then an idea struck
me; and I had a hunt through the registers. I found that two days
before she died a boy was born, Hildebrand Anne Beauleigh--the old
Beauleigh names. She knew that I should like him to be called by them.
From the registers I learnt where they had been living. I rushed off
to the house, and found it empty and to let--always these shut-up
houses. I made inquiries and inquiries, from the house agents and the
tradespeople. I could learn nothing. They had lived very quietly.
But there was a child; people had seen him wheeled about in a
perambulator. He had disappeared. I suspected my stepmother at once;
and I hurried back to Beauleigh. It had bucked me up, don't you know,
to think that I had a child. I had it out with my stepmother; and what
do you think she told me?"
"Can't guess; but I'm laying odds that it doesn't surprise me," said
Lord Crosland.
"She said that the fact of my having a son and heir would stand in the
way of my making the marriage she hoped. That the boy was in the hands
of a respectable couple, where I need never hope to find him; that he
would be brought up in the station of life suitable to his mother's
having been the daughter of a Tutor. My word, I did talk about the
firm of Stryke & Wigram!"
"I should think you must have," said Lord Crosland.
"I lost no time, but put the matter in the hands of a crack Private
Inquiry Agency. When they learned what I was doing, I'm hanged if my
stepmother and uncle Bumpkin didn't stop my allowance." He laughed
ruefully. "However, I kept the inquiries going by selling my two
horses, my jewellery, my guns, and my clothes. That's why I'm in these
rags. But no good came of it; the private detective discovered
nothing, and charged me nearly three hundred for discovering it. But
the crowning point of my stepmother's madness came yesterday. We had
the proper business interview on my coming of age; and she and uncle
Bumpkin handed me over six hundred a year, and six thousand ready
money. Then she made me an offer. She would give me ten thousand a
year to enable me to keep up the glory of the Beauleighs, and marry the
millions to increase it, if I would give up searching for the boy, and
consent to his being brought up in his respectable position. I didn't
talk about swindling him out of his rights; for I've come to the
conclusion that it's no good talking of Justice to a woman. They don't
understand what you're driving at--those of the banking classes anyhow.
I told her she could stick to Beauleigh Court, since it would only be a
white elephant to me with my six hundred a year, and go on ruling the
County. But I was going to clear out, and I couldn't help saying that
I hoped her path and mine would never cross again."
"It was deuced little to say," said Lord Crosland.
"Oh, what was the good? She couldn't have understood. She's mad, mad
as a hatter about the glory of the Beauleighs. But it did one good
thing; it made her cast me off for good and all. She'd toiled for the
family: and this was her reward. I might go to the Workhouse my own
way. Now you see, she won't interfere to stop my finding the boy. And
I'm going to find him if I have to spend ten years on it, and every
penny I have. And when I have found him, I'm going to look after him
myself, and keep him with me. I don't suppose I shall find it much in
my line. I'm not fond of children; and I'm not an affectionate person.
That sort of thing is rather dried up in me. But it was little enough
I could do for my wife while she was alive, and now I should like to do
the only thing I can."
"I see," said Lord Crosland.
"Well, you can understand that, though I've agreed to share these rooms
with you for the next few days, I can't make it a permanent
arrangement. I may have to be off anywhere at a moment's notice. On
the other hand, by offering a thumping big reward, as I can do at last,
I shall probably find him at once; and you wouldn't care for rooms with
a small child about."
"Oh, I don't know. I rather like kids," said Lord Crosland. "They're
amusing little beggars often enough."
"Ah, but this one is so small; only two and a half," said Sir Tancred.
"And now I'll write the advertisement."
CHAPTER TWO
THE FINDING OF TINKER
Sir Tancred went to the writing-table, sat down, and began to write.
He wrote slowly, pausing to think, and made many erasures.
"I think the advertisement will make my stepmother squirm. It'll make
the County talk," he said thoughtfully.
"It seems to me you can't help giving the show away," said Lord
Crosland.
There came a knock at the door, and a waiter came in: "Please, Sir
Tancred, there's a lady, leastways a person, wanting to see you."
"To see me?" said Sir Tancred with some surprise. "Who can it be?
Show her up?"
He went on with his writing, and presently the waiter ushered in a
tall, gaunt woman, with a rugged, hard-featured face, dressed in the
rustiest black, and carrying a brown-paper parcel.
Sir Tancred turned round in his chair, and she said very nervously,
"Good-morning, sir."
"Good-morning," said Sir Tancred; then he sprang up and cried,
"Why--why--it's Selina Goodyear!"
"Yes, sir, it's me. I was afraid you wouldn't remember me after all
this time. And--and--it's a liberty I'm taking, coming to see you like
this," she went on with a voluble, nervous eagerness, twisting her
hands. "But not getting any answer to my letters, I went down to
Beauleigh Court yesterday on the chance of getting a word with you; for
I knew you'd be bound to be there, seeing as it was your coming of age.
But I didn't get a chance, and came back to London by the last train,
not knowing as you was in it, till I came out of Victoria, and saw you
getting into a cab and heard you tell the cabman to drive here. And I
made up my mind to come and see you here, though I know it's a liberty
I'm taking. But I can't help it,"--and her voice suddenly grew
fierce,--"it's about the boy."
"The boy! My boy!" cried Sir Tancred.
"Yes, sir. You see I was his nurse from the first. Poor Miss
Pamela--I mean Lady Beauleigh, sir--gave him to me to take care of
before she died--leastways, she didn't give him to me, she was too
weak, poor dear; but she told me to take care of him, as I wrote to
you, sir."
"As you wrote? Yes; go on."
"And I did take care of him till Mr. Vane died. And oh, he was such a
dear baby! Then, when the young lawyer came with Mrs. Bostock and told
me as how you had arranged for her to have charge of him, and I had to
give him over to her, it nearly broke my heart. But it isn't about
myself I came to talk, but about him. I know it's troubling you,
sir--and a gentleman has his pleasures, and they take up his time.
But, after all, he's your own son, sir, and if you'd only come and see
him for yourself, you wouldn't let him be treated like he is----"
"You know where he is!" Sir Tancred almost shouted.
"Why, of course, sir. I told you in my letters. He's living with them
Bostocks, out Catford way."
"You must take me to him at once!" cried Sir Tancred; and he rushed
into his bedroom, and came out with a hat and stick.
"Look here, old chap," said Lord Crosland. "I'm going to clear out for
a few days. You'd like the kid to yourself at first. Then I'll come
back and share the rooms if you like."
"Oh, no; it'll be all right," said Sir Tancred, and he hurried Selina
from the room to the lift, from the lift to a cab.
They were no sooner settled in it, and the driver was getting quickly
through the traffic under the stimulus of a promise of treble his fare,
than Sir Tancred turned to Selina, and said quickly: "What do you mean
by saying that I would not let the child be treated as he is? How's he
treated?"
"I mean that he's starved and beaten, that's what I mean, sir," said
Selina. "Just what I said in my letters."
"But I was told he was in the hands of respectable people."
"Respectable!" exclaimed Selina: "but I told you in my letters all
about them, sir."
"When did you write to me?" said Sir Tancred.
"First when Miss Pamela died; and then when Mr. Vane died,"--Sir
Tancred saw how his stepmother had obtained the information which
enabled her to get possession of the child,--"and three times since
October."
"Since October!" cried Sir Tancred; he had never dreamed that the
suppression of his letters had continued after his recovery.
"I only found the boy in October," said Selina.
"Look here," said Sir Tancred, "you'd better tell me the whole story
from the beginning. I didn't get your letters."
"You didn't get them?" said Selina, and her face cleared. "I thought
you couldn't have, sir. I knew you wasn't the one to take no notice of
them. Well, it was like this, sir. When Mrs. Bostock took the boy
away, I began to worry and worry about him; I kind of pined for him.
Then I thought if I could see him sometimes, I should feel better; and
I never liked the looks of Mrs. Bostock. She looked like a drinker;
though all the time she was in Jersey with the lawyer she kept sober
enough. I had got another place in St. Hellers, but I couldn't stand
worrying about him, and wondering if he was well treated. And I didn't
like the way she wouldn't tell me where she lived. I had my savings,
too; so I gave up my place, and came to London to look for her. I knew
she lived in South London from something she let drop; and I took a
room in Lambeth and looked for her in neighbourhoods which would be
likely for her to live in. But it's a large place, sir, and I was
months and months doing it, moving from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.
I used to trapse and trapse about all day, and at night I used to go
into Publics, the saloon bars as well as the common bars, for I didn't
know which class she really belonged to. I went into hundreds of
Publics, but I never set eyes on her. Then, last October, when I'd
nearly come to the end of my savings, I saw her going into a Public at
New Cross. I couldn't believe it; it seemed too good to be true. I
thought I must have made a mistake; I daren't go in, for fear she
should know me; and I thought she never would come out. When she did
come out, and I saw it was really 'er, I nearly fainted right away; but
I follered 'er, and she went from Public to Public with two shops in
between, and it was nearly ten o'clock when she took the tram, and past
eleven when she got to her cottage at Catford, for she stopped at two
more Publics. But I walked about all night, for I wasn't going to take
no chances; and next morning I found, sure enough, that the child was
there. But he was that changed, and he didn't know me." Her harsh
voice sank to the mournfullest tone; and she paused.
Sir Tancred said nothing, he could say nothing; he was amazed and
profoundly touched by the persistence of this passionate, single-eyed
devotion in this hard-featured, harsh-voiced, rugged creature.
"Well, sir," Selina went on, "I moved to Eltham, and took a room. I
soon found out what sort the Bostocks were. Every Saturday they drew
two pounds for the keep of the child; and they were hardly ever sober
till Thursday. And they starved the child, sir; and sometimes they
beat him. Now and then, when they were drunk, I've got food, good food
to him. But not often, for he was their livelihood, and however drunk
they was, they kept an eye on him; mostly he's locked up in a bedroom.
I wrote to you, sir, three times, and waited and waited for answers
till I was sick at heart; and things was getting worse and worse. I
couldn't have stood it any longer; I was just going to steal him and
carry him off somewhere where I could look after him without no one
interfering. But I thought I'd see you, and tell you about it first.
And now, sir, if you'd let me have charge of him"--her eyes fairly
blazed with eagerness--"I'd look after him properly--I would, indeed.
And I shouldn't want no two pounds a week--why, five shillings, five
shillings would be ample, sir. I'm a capable woman, and I can get as
much charring as ever I can do."
"Of course, you shall have charge of him," said Sir Tancred. "You seem
to be the only person in the world who has any right to have charge of
him."
"Oh, thank you, sir!" said Selina in a husky voice; and she dabbed at
her eyes.
"It's not for you to thank me; it's for me to thank you," said Sir
Tancred.
"Oh, no, sir!" said Selina quickly. "I know what gentlemen are. I've
been in service in good houses. They have their sport and their
pleasures; and they can't attend to things like this."
"I've been looking for him for six months--ever since I knew that I had
a child," said Sir Tancred in a very bitter voice.
"Have you now, sir?" said Selina. "Ah, if I'd only known, and come to
you!"
Her story had tided them over the greater part of their journey; and
for the rest of it they were silent, Sir Tancred immersed in a bitter
reverie, Selina sitting with a hand on each knee, bent forward, with
shining eyes, breathing quickly.
Towards the end of their journey she had to direct the cabman; and past
the last long row or little red-brick villas, in a waste from which the
agriculturalist had retired in favour of the jerry-builder, they came
to the goal, three dirty, tumble-down cottages. The cab stopped at the
third cottage; Selina sat back in the seat and pulled down her veil, in
case Mrs. Bostock should recognise her; Sir Tancred got down and
knocked at the door. A long-drawn snore was the only answer. He
hammered on the door with his cane till he heard the grating of a chair
on a brick floor; the door opened, and a blowsy, red-faced woman peered
at him with blinking eyes.
"You have a little boy here in your charge. I've come for him," said
Sir Tancred.
The woman only blinked at him stupidly.
"I've come for the little boy," said Sir Tancred loudly.
A look of drunken cunning stole into the woman's muddled face. She
said thickly, "There ain't no lil boy 'ere," and tried to shut the door.
Sir Tancred thrust it open with a vigour which sent her staggering into
a chair, and stepped into the squalid, reeking room. Hunched up in a
chair, opposite the woman, sat a snoring man.
"Come!" said Sir Tancred. "I want no nonsense! Where's the child?"
A dull, muddled rage gathered in the woman's eyes; she made an effort
to rise on quite irresponsive legs. "Halbut!" she howled. "Halbut,
wake up! Here's a thief an' a burglar trying to steal the brat!"
The man grunted, and jerked out of his sleep with the mystic word,
"Washishish?"
"It'sh burglarsh, Halbut!" cried the woman, who seemed suddenly to see
two or more Sir Tancreds. "They're shtealing bratsh! Bash 'em!"
Halbut jerked onto his feet, and stood lurching:
"Englishmansh oush ish ish cashle," he said, with a ferocity which
petered out in an idiotic grin.
"Thash it! Bash 'em!" cried the woman.
Halbut advanced in a circular movement on Sir Tancred, with his fists
up; "Englishmansh oush ish ish cashle," he said firmly.
Sir Tancred lunged smartly at his chest with his cane; and he tumbled
down with his face to the wall.
"Englishmansh oush ish ish cashle," he said drowsily to the wainscot,
and was still.
Sir Tancred took the woman gingerly by the shoulder, and gave her a
shake. "Where's the child?" he said.
Apparently he had shaken the fumes up and the intelligence down, for
her only answer was a burst of sibilant incoherence.
With an exclamation of impatient disgust he loosed her, and went into
the back room. It was empty. He went up the rickety stairs, and, as
he had expected, found the door of the bedroom locked. He kicked it
open and went into the frowsy room. The child was not in it. He came
downstairs and opened the back door. As he did so, he heard a
scuttling rustle. The garden was empty, but the rustle he had heard
set him exploring the dirty, rag-covered hedge with keen eyes. He saw
nothing, and walked down the garden, stooping and peering into the
bottom of the hedge. Half-way down it his eyes fell on two little
black feet, just sticking out; and above them two frightened eyes
stared through the twigs.
Sir Tancred put his hands in among them gently, and drew out a tiny
child; his peaked little face was black, his thin little arms and legs
were black, he was clothed in filthy rags; and his yellowish hair was a
tangled mat. The child struggled like a very feeble little wild beast,
clawing and scratching, but silent with a terrible silence which showed
how he had learned to dread drawing attention to himself.
"Quiet! quiet! I'm not going to hurt you," said Sir Tancred in a
gentle voice, a little husky with a piercing emotion which had invaded
him; and something in its tones really did quiet the child, for he
struggled no more, though his breath came in a quick, faint, terrified
panting.
Sir Tancred took him through the house, and felt a quivering throb run
through him at the sight of the brutes who had fallen back into their
drunken slumbers. He brought him out to the cab, and said hoarsely to
Selina, "Is this the child?"
"That's him, sir! That's him!" said Selina, holding out her hands for
him; and the tears of joy trickled down her rugged cheeks.
Sir Tancred gave him to her, bade the cab-man drive to the Hotel Cecil,
and got into the cab.
Selina had untied the brown-paper parcel, and was putting a little coat
on the child. "I took the liberty of getting it to bring him away, in
case you should let me have charge of him," she said.
The child still panted, but most of the terror had faded from his eyes;
he had recognised his friend. Sir Tancred looked at him hungrily; his
soul, so long starved, was feasting on the sight of that atom of
humanity, so grimy, so shocking to the eye, but his own child.
"They call you Hildebrand Anne, do they?" he said with a broken, joyful
laugh. "Tinker's the name for you!"
CHAPTER THREE
TINKER ACCEPTS HIS NAME
The child sat very still on Selina's lap, shrinking back as far as
possible from Sir Tancred. Selina kept talking to him, and his father
spoke to him several times, but he uttered never a sound. Once when
Sir Tancred moved suddenly, he threw up his little thin arm to guard
his face; and Sir Tancred swore.
They agreed that he would be happier if they took no notice of him for
a while, and sat quiet. He seemed relieved, for he sank into an easier
position on Selina's lap, and presently they saw him stroke his coat
with a caressing gesture, as though its softness pleased him. After a
long while, he sat up, looked at the horse, said in a quaint, thin
whisper, "Gee-gee--mine like gee-gee"; and then looked swiftly round
with frightened eyes, fearful lest he had drawn attention to his
existence.
Suddenly he began to blink, then, lulled by the motion of the cab, he
fell asleep. They sat quiet, and had reached a more civilised part of
London, when Sir Tancred said, "Do you think I could hold him without
waking him?"
Selina nodded, and lifted him into his arms, and so they came to the
Hotel Cecil.
When the cab stopped, the child awoke frightened, and at once began to
struggle. Sir Tancred handed him over to Selina, who soothed him, and
carried him to the lift. As soon as they were in his rooms, Sir
Tancred rang for a waiter, and when he came, bade him bring up bread
and hot milk at once. The child heard the words and said plaintively,
"Mine hungly! Mine hungly!"
"All right, my lamb," said Selina. "You shall have dinner very soon."
When the waiter brought the bread and milk, Selina prepared it, and sat
down at the table with the child on her knee. In a flash his grimy
little hands were in the basin, and he was thrusting the bread and milk
into his mouth with both of them. Selina pushed the bowl out of his
reach, and fed him with a spoon, very slowly, nor did she give him
much. Sir Tancred watched his ravenous eating with a constricted
heart. When she had given him as much as she thought good for him,
Selina put the bowl out of sight. The look of supreme content on his
little face was even more pathetic in its extravagance than his
ravenous hunger. He curled himself up on Selina's lap, surveyed the
room for a while with drowsy eyes, and fell asleep.
Sir Tancred opened the note from Lord Crosland, which he had left
unheeded on the table; it ran:
"DEAR BEAULEIGH:
"I have moved myself and my belongings to 411 and 412, till you have
got things arranged. I'm off to Lord's for the day, but shall dine at
the Cecil. Let us dine together.
"Yours sincerely,
"CROSLAND."
Sir Tancred felt relieved, and grateful for Lord Crosland's
thoughtfulness.
"We shall be able to have these rooms to ourselves," he said to Selina.
"Yes, sir," said Selina. "And he'll want some clothes. When he's had
a little sleep, and I've given him a bath, I'd better go out and get
some."
"No: I'll go now myself," said Sir Tancred. "Then, when he's had his
bath, they'll be ready for him."
He hurried down into a cab, and drove to Swan & Edgar's. There he
bought the finest little vests and petticoat and frocks and socks and
coats they could find him. On his way back with his purchases he
remembered shoes, stopped the cab at the boot-maker's, and bought a
dozen pairs. When he came back to his rooms, followed by two waiters
loaded with parcels, he heard a splashing in the bathroom, and when
they had set down their loads and were gone, Selina came to him and
said, "I should like you to come and look at him, sir."
She had been crying.
Sir Tancred went into the bathroom, and found Hildebrand Anne splashing
in the bath: "Hallo, Tinker," he said cheerfully, and turned sick at
the sight of the wales and bruises about the thin little body.
"Look at that, sir," said Selina fiercely; and she touched the worst of
them.
The child winced at her touch, gentle as it was, and said in his
quaint, thin voice, "Halbut did do that. Mine not like Halbut. No:
mine not like Halbut." And he shook his little head vigorously.
Sir Tancred groaned, and wished with all his heart that he had taken
advantage of his brief meeting with Halbut to give him a sound
thrashing. Then he thought with a vindictive satisfaction how bitterly
the brute would feel the loss of liquors consequent upon the loss of
his income. He went out, rang for a waiter, and bade him send for a
doctor.
When the doctor came he examined the bruises, and felt all the tiny
bones carefully. He declared that none of them were broken and that,
in spite of having been starved, the child was sound and healthy. The
moment the doctor's grip on him loosed, Tinker wriggled off his knee
and fled to Selina, who carried him away along with a selection from
the parcels to dress him.
"A bad case," said the doctor. "But I've seen worse, much worse. I
hope you'll put the matter into the hands of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and have the parents
prosecuted--picked him up in the gutter I suppose."
"I haven't made up my mind about prosecuting them," said Sir Tancred.
"Oh, have them prosecuted! Have them prosecuted! It stops others,"
said the doctor. "And besides, they might get the cat: it's the only
thing brutes of this kind understand." Then he added thoughtfully,
"There's one uncommon thing about this child--quite uncommon."
"What's that?"
"His vitality--he ought to be in bed, half-dying, with those bruises,
and starved as he is. But you saw how he struggled to get away from
me. Well, I'll write you a prescription for as strong a tonic as I
dare give a child."
He wrote the prescription, promised to be round every morning, and took
his fee. As he went away he said, "Someone ought to get six month's
hard labour for maltreating him."
After a while Selina brought in Tinker, dressed in his new clothes,
with his mat of hair cut close to his head. He was still grimy--many
baths were yet needed before he would be clean; but Sir Tancred saw
that, once clean, and his peaked face filled out a little, he would be
a very pretty baby. His features were fine, his eyes of a deep blue,
his head was small and well-shaped, and the close-cut hair clustered
about it in little curls.
He clung to Selina's gown, and Sir Tancred bade her sit down, and see
what he would do. It was a long time before he stirred from her side,
and then only a little way, moving with a curious, stealthy gait,
casting fearful glances at Sir Tancred. He was attracted by the bright
stuffs which covered the furniture, and went from piece to piece,
stroking it. Then he saw himself in the unnecessarily mirrored door of
the sideboard, and surveyed his image with an almost excited curiosity,
and, it almost seemed, approbation.
[Illustration: He surveyed himself with an excited curiosity.]
An idea struck Sir Tancred; he went out, took a cab, came back with an
armful of toys, and set them in the middle of the room. The child
stared and stared at them with great eyes. After a long while, in his
stealthy, timid way, he made a few steps towards them, and scuttled
back to Selina. He sallied out again, came nearer to them, and fled
back. In the fourth attempt he carried off a little horse, and escaped
with it behind the sofa. There he played with it, or rather sat
hugging it, stroking it, or fingering it, in a dead silence. Sir
Tancred watched his every movement, his every expression, missing
nothing; his eyes could not have enough of him.
Twice again Selina fed him, and twice he was again ravenous. At
half-past six she put him to bed.
Sir Tancred dressed for dinner, made arrangements for the feeding of
Selina, and went into the smoking-room. There Lord Crosland found him,
and they dined together. After dinner Lord Crosland pressed him to go
to a theatre or a music-hall; but Sir Tancred would not: the
discoveries of the day had left him no heart for amusement. He saw
Lord Crosland set out in search of diversion; came back to his room,
and sent Selina to her supper, while he watched over the child. He sat
by the window, looking up the river, and smoking, in an unhappy
reverie. Now and again he went and looked long at his sleeping boy.
When Selina came up from her supper he heard for the first time the
story of his wife's death, and received her last message, which had
been so long delivering. It was no little comfort to him in this
revival of sorrow to hear that she had learned of the accident which
prevented him from coming to her, and, sure of their ultimate meeting,
had come to bear patiently their separation. And the knowledge that
she must die without seeing him again had come to her in the merciful
and indifferent weariness so often the forerunner of death.
When he had heard, and heard again, all that Selina could tell him, he
gave her a cheque for five hundred pounds, putting aside her
protestations that she had never looked for it, and would rather not
have it, with the declaration that he had actually written out the
advertisement offering that reward for information about his missing
child, when she had brought it.
Long after she had gone to bed, he sat thinking over her story,
immersed in unhappy memories and unavailing regrets, and his bitterness
against his stepmother and uncle grew and grew in him at the ill
treatment his child had endured through their interference and neglect,
to a strength to which his own wrongs had never brought it.
The suppression and ignoring of Selina's last letters was inexplicable
to him; he could only suppose that his stepmother had burnt them on
reading only the signature; or had believed them to be the
misrepresentations of a person trying to supplant Mrs. Bostock. He
thought for a while of writing to his stepmother out of the fulness of
his heart; and then he told himself that it was no use. At last he
went heavily to bed. Three times in the night he awoke, and went and
listened at the door of the boy's bedroom; there was no sound; he was
sleeping peacefully.
After his morning bath Tinker looked a shade less grimy, and even the
few meals he had enjoyed since his rescue had filled out his face a
little. About eleven it was decided that a walk in the Embankment
gardens would be good for him, and Selina carried him out. But it was
very soon plain that it was anything but good for him. Every passer-by
thrilled him with a fresh terror; in three minutes he clung to Selina
panting and gasping with fright, his little fingers gripping her with a
convulsive clutch, his eyes starting out of his head, but all in a
terrible silence. It was appalling to see such an extremity of emotion
not dare to find a vocal expression. Quickly they perceived that there
was no reassuring or soothing him; Sir Tancred blindfolded him with his
handkerchief, took him from Selina, and carried him quickly back to the
hotel. He sat on Selina's lap, recovering very slowly, for nearly an
hour. Then he got to his toys.
That afternoon Sir Tancred made a search, and discovered a staircase
leading up to the roof. It was somewhat besprent with blacks; but
there the child could take an airing, unterrified, in a solitude _à
trois_, and in a very fresh air, when a south or west wind blew.
By the afternoon of the next day he had grown used to Sir Tancred, and,
when he was tired of his silent play with his toys, would sit on his
knee in perfect content. The skin of his face was almost white; now
only his knees were really grimy.
On the evening of the fourth day, as he was having his supper, eating
it with much less of the ravenous fervour of a wolf in winter-time, Sir
Tancred distinctly saw him smile; it was very faint, but it was an
undoubted smile.
Three mornings later Sir Tancred was lying awake, when his door was
pushed wider open, and Tinker stole in:
"Hallo, Tinker! Come here! You'll catch cold! What are you looking
for?" said Sir Tancred.
"Gee-gee," said Tinker.
"Come here, and get warm."
After a little thought Tinker accepted the invitation, and Sir Tancred
lifted him into bed. He huddled up to Sir Tancred, and presently found
that his unshaven chin was rough, and stroked it with some wonder.
"You _are_ a funny little Tinker," said Sir Tancred fondly.
"Mine Tinker. Mine Tinker!" said the child with a faint crow.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE TRAINING OF TINKER
Sir Tancred had a very sound theory that the air of London is as
healthy an air as can be breathed in England; but for all that Tinker
enjoyed the best quality of that air, on the roof of the Hotel Cecil,
varied by the ozone of Brighton and the air of many parts of the
country, it was many a long day before he showed a real tendency
towards sturdiness, and outgrew the effects of his privations. He was
long, too, outgrowing his terror of strangers.
Meanwhile Sir Tancred was trying to slake his intolerable thirst for
distraction, distraction from his memories and regrets, in that section
of London Society which, let us hope, cannot see itself for its own
brilliancy, or hear itself for its own noise, that curious collection
of Princes and millionaires, aristocrats and tradesmen, great ladies
and upper Bohemians, about which the only fitting thing is its title,
found for it by some inspired journalist, of the Smart Set. There,
where life forever bubbles a cheap and exceedingly dry champagne of a
very doubtful exhilaration, he did now and again find a poor respite
from regret till time blunted the edge of his sorrows. And when his
sorrow was no longer acute, he had formed a reckless and extravagant
habit of life from which, even when the reason for it had passed, he
never sought to free himself: indeed, it never occurred to him to try.
But he never let his effort to drown his sorrow in the whirlpool of
this strenuous life of pleasure interfere with his care of his little
son; in truth, Tinker's society was his chief relaxation from the
laborious and exacting round. Wherever he might be, in London, Paris,
Vienna, Monte Carlo, or a country-house, Tinker was at hand, in his
hotel, or lodged in the neighbourhood under the care of the faithful
Selina.
A singularly early riser for one who sojourns in the Polite, or, to be
exact, the Impolite World,--even in London he breakfasted at ten,--Sir
Tancred was able to devote two or three hours every morning to the
child before the serious and exacting pleasures of the day, and, before
three years had passed, he had grown a veritable connoisseur in wooden
bricks, tin soldiers, and composite animals. However late he returned
at night, he never failed to look at Tinker in his cot in the room
adjoining his bedroom, to assure himself that he was warm enough, or,
if need were, lift him more comfortably on to his pillow. He watched
him in his childish complaints with more care than the careful nurses
he paid to watch him, or even than the fond and faithful Selina. And
yet he did not spoil him.
Till Tinker was six years old they were playmates. Then, little by
little, Sir Tancred found himself drifting into the position of general
instructor, and after a while began to give serious thought to the
matter. It was not, perhaps, a sound education that he gave the child.
The classical side of it and the commercial were alike neglected; the
historical was forgotten. The spelling was weak, and the handwriting
was very bad. But, riding, fencing, and boxing were very carefully
cultivated, with the result that Tinker, though he lacked the lumps of
muscle which disfigured that eminent ancient, might very well have vied
in strength and agility with the child Hercules.
In the matter of languages, by dint of spending some of each year in
the different European capitals, he learned to speak better French than
he did English, for his father enjoyed far better society on the
Continent than he did in London. In the same way, by sojourning in the
land, he learned to make himself understood in German; and two months
at Rome gave him a fair Italian. It must be admitted that he was as
bad at spelling in all three of those languages as he was in his own.
Again, his geography was hardly of the ornamental kind; he was entirely
and happily ignorant of the whereabouts of Leeds and Crim Tartary; it
is doubtful whether the Balearic Isles, which most boys of the Western
World could point you out on a map, were even a name to him. But by
the time he was ten he could so deal with continental or English
Bradshaw that in five or six minutes he could tell you the quickest or
the most comfortable way of reaching any town in which a
self-respecting person would care to find himself, and his knowledge of
steamer-routes and the Great American railways was no less sound.
Besides these accomplishments he was acquiring a wide knowledge of the
world. By his eleventh birthday, though inexperienced in Lestrygons
and Lotos-eaters, he had seen the cities of more men than that way-worn
wanderer Ulysses at the end of his voyages, and he had no mean
understanding of their disposition. Besides, as the years went on, Sir
Tancred's debts increased. To live the really strenuous London life,
you need a great deal of money; and though Fortune, so cruel to him in
love, was kind at Bridge, her kindness was not continuous; and
sometimes the ungracious importunities of his creditors drove him into
retirement in the country. During these times of exile Tinker was, for
the most part, his only companion, save for brief visits from Lord
Crosland; and since Sir Tancred made a point of talking to him as his
equal in age and experience, he gained from these times of close
intimacy a yet wider knowledge of the world. These retirements never
lasted long, not long enough indeed for Tinker, who was always happy
enough in the country. Sir Tancred after a while grew impatient for
the distractions of which he had acquired so deep-rooted a habit.
Moreover, in the country, out of a well-filled country house or
shooting-box, he might at any time fall into the old, sorrowful
brooding on his lost happiness.
The most uncommon part of Tinker's education was the careful
cultivation of his faculty of observation. Sir Tancred himself had a
natural gift of understanding his fellow-creatures, which, along with
his finer brain, little by little placed him in the noble but
unenviable position of being the first person to whom his friends flew
to be extricated from their scrapes. He had found that his gift stood
him in such good stead in his varying fortunes that he spared no pains
to equip Tinker with the faculty even more finely developed.
In forming Tinker's manners he was at once aided and hindered by many
women. The faithful Selina, with all the best-hearted intentions in
the world of spoiling the child, was foiled, partly by Sir Tancred's
watchfulness, and partly by the uncertainty of her own temper. She was
liable to the sudden, gusty rages of her class; and one of these rages
undid the harm of many days' indulgence. When, however, Tinker was
nine, she resigned with many misgivings, tears, and upbraidings of
conscience, her charge of him, to marry a middle-aged Parisian
hairdresser of Scotch nationality and the name of Angus McNeill. Sir
Tancred had far more trouble with the women who fell in love with him;
and many women fell in love with him or thought themselves in love with
him, for his handsome, melancholy face, his reputation for
recklessness, and above all for his cold insensibility to their charm.
In ten years of the strenuous, smart life, his name was never coupled
with that of any woman. All and each of these made a pet of Tinker,
since they found it the surest way to abate his father's coldness. On
the other hand the great ladies of the Faubourg de St. Germain petted
him because his seraph's face and delightful manners charmed them;
while any nice woman petted him because she could not help it.
Fortunately Tinker did not like being petted; his sentiments, indeed,
on the matter of being kissed by the effusive verged on the ungallant.
He liked to be a nice woman's familiar friend; his attitude toward her
could be almost avuncular; but if a woman would pet him, he endured it
with the exquisite patience with which his father forever taught him to
treat the sex. In weaker hands than those of his father, he would
doubtless have become a precocious and irritating monkey, always and
painfully in evidence. But Sir Tancred and his creditors saw to it
that his life in the world was broken by spells of healthy, boyish
life, and he remained modest enough and simple-hearted.
As to his nerves, though they were always high-strung, the effects of
his cruel treatment as a baby wore little by little and slowly away,
until there was left only a faint dread, or rather dislike, of being
alone in the dark, and a tendency to awake once in a month or so,
crying out from a bad dream.
CHAPTER FIVE
TINKER'S BIRTHDAY BLOODHOUND
Hildebrand Anne came out of the long glass doors of the morning room of
the Refuge, as Sir Tancred had happily named the cottage at
Farndon-Pryze, which he had bought soon after Jeddah won the Derby at a
hundred to one, and whither he retired when he was at loggerheads with
Fortune, or Hildebrand Anne began to look fagged by London life. His
father was reading a newspaper at the end of the lawn, and he walked
across to him.
Sir Tancred looked up from his paper, and said with a sigh:
"I'm afraid there's no birthday present for you, Tinker."
"That's all right, sir," said Tinker cheerfully.
Father and son made an admirable pair, a pair of an extraordinary
distinction. Reckless pride and sorrow had impressed on Sir Tancred's
dark, sombre face much of the look of Lucifer, Son of the Morning;
Tinker was very fair with close-cropped golden curls clustering round
his small head, features as finely cut as those of his father, sunny
blue eyes, lips curved like Cupid's bow, and the air of a seraph. The
name had clung to him from its perfect inappropriateness. A tinker is
but a gritty sight, and Hildebrand Anne had grown up, to the eye, an
angel child, of a cleanliness uncanny in a small boy.
"Even if there were anything to buy in Farndon-Pryze, our fortunes are
at a low ebb," said Sir Tancred with faint sorrow.
Tinker heaved a sympathetic sigh, and said again, "Oh, that's all
right, sir."
"And the papers offer no suggestions for a new campaign," and Sir
Tancred, looking with some contempt at the score of grey, pink, yellow,
and green sheets which littered the grass around his long cane chair,
fanned himself with his panama; for, though the month was May, the
morning was hot.
"We shall have lots of money soon," said Tinker cheerily.
"Well, I hope so. It is no use my reading these wretched rags, unless
they put me in the way of a coup."
"We always do," said Tinker with conviction; and he strolled away,
pondering idly the question of riches.
From the end of the garden of the Refuge, Tinker scanned the country
round with dissatisfied eyes. None of the low hills was hollowed by a
pirates', or brigands', or even a smugglers' cave with its buried
hoard, no ruin tottered above a secret treasure-chamber. For himself
he did not mind; it was all one to him whether he hunted his prey in
the Champs Elysées or the long, straggling street of Farndon-Pryze.
There were men in both places; and, though the methods of enraging them
were different, they grew crimson to much the same fieriness. He
found, indeed, an angry Frenchman more entertaining than an angry
Englishman, but he was no epicure in sensations: only, he liked them
exciting. But he would fain have discovered treasure for the sake of
his father who, as he well knew, did not find in Farndon-Pryze the
entertainment which satisfied his simpler, boyish heart.
As he scanned the unsatisfactory landscape, he heard the sound of
hoofs, and looking round, saw James Alloway, a young farmer of the
neighbourhood, riding along the highway. His face brightened; the
coast was clear; it was the very morning to play toreador. In a breath
he was through the hedge, and on the way to the village. He approached
it after the manner of a red Indian, only pausing to cut a switch from
a hedge. He had a score to settle with Josiah Wilby, a boy whose
talebearing had procured him his last, well-earned whacking. Fortune
favoured him: he spied his prey playing in careless security with two
other boys on the village green; crept between two cottages; and was
out on him or ever he was aware of the coming of an avenger. At the
sight of Tinker, Josiah bolted for home; but he had not gone twenty
yards before the stinging switch was curling round him. He ran the
harder, howling and roaring; and Tinker accompanied him to the door of
his father's cottage. As the roaring Josiah rushed in, the infuriated
Mrs. Wilby rushed out, and Tinker withdrew. From a convenient
distance, he raised his hat, and protested his regret at having had to
instruct her son in the first principles of honour. Mrs. Wilby took
his politeness as an insult, and with a rustic disregard of his pretty
manners called him a limb, and threatened him with merciless punishment
on the return of her husband. Tinker shrugged his shoulders, spread
out his hands, gestures he had acquired in France, and hurried off on
his main errand.
He came swiftly to a small field in which there browsed a large and
solitary ram, by name Billy, Tinker's playfellow in the game of
bull-fighting. With a somewhat unfair casting of the star part, Tinker
always played the matador, Billy played the bull.
Drawing a stout wooden sword, the handiwork of Sir Tancred, who never
dreamed of the purpose it served, from its hiding-place in the hedge,
Tinker slipped over the gate. Billy greeted his playfellow with an
ill-conditioned grunt expressive of no joy at all. Tinker saluted,
walked up to within ten yards, and waved his hat at him. Billy watched
him with a wicked eye, affected to graze, and of a sudden charged with
all his speed. Tinker sprang aside as the ram's head went down to
butt, and as he hurtled past, prodded him with the sword behind the
shoulder.
Billy pulled himself up as soon as he could check his momentum, and
turned and stood blinking. Twice he rapped the ground hard with his
forefoot. Tinker again drew to within ten yards of him; again Billy
charged; and again he was prodded behind the shoulder. It was a
beautiful game, and Tinker's lightness of foot, quickness of eye, and
coolness of head did every credit to the education he had received from
his father.
It was, indeed, a fine game, but as dangerous as it was fine; if Billy
had once downed the boy, he would never have left him till he had
ground the life out of him. This Tinker did not know, so that he did
not draw all the excitement out of the game he would have done. It had
grown more and more dangerous, also; for, by dint of playing it, Billy,
who had started as a fat, clumsy, and sulky beast, had grown thin,
nimble, and vicious. Alloway, indeed, often declared that he did not
know what ailed the ram; his food never seemed to be doing him any
good, and neither man, woman, nor child dare cross the field in which
he browsed.
The game lasted some twenty minutes; and Tinker's skill, sureness, and
lightness of movement was the prettiest sight. Sometimes, with a
snorting bleat, Billy would turn sharply at the end of his charge, and
charge again; then the concentration on the matter in hand, which his
father had so carefully cultivated in Tinker, proved a most fortunate
possession: he was never caught off his guard. But he was beginning to
think that he had had enough of it, and Billy was sure that he had,
when there came a roar from the road, and there sat Alloway on his
horse. Or rather, he was no longer sitting on his horse, he was
throwing himself off it.
Without one word of thanks to his playfellow for the pleasant game he
had enjoyed with him, Tinker bolted for the further hedge, Billy after
him, and Alloway after both. Tinker knew the ground, ran for a post
and rails which filled a gap, and skipped over them a few yards ahead
of his energetic playfellow, who stood gazing after him with a rueful
vindictiveness. Alloway came rushing up, and took no heed of the
disappointed ram, who butted his right leg against the rails with great
promptitude and violence. Alloway emulated his violence not only in
his language, but by cutting him as hard as he could with the whip he
carried, and rushed on after Tinker. Tinker could run at an admirable
pace for a boy of eleven, and he was used to keeping it up longer than
the rustic wind would last. But Alloway was brisker than a farm hand,
or a keeper, and at the end of a couple of fields he began to gain.
Tinker was soon aware of the painful fact, and knew that retribution
was on him. But, though he could not escape, he could postpone; and
his quick mind leaped to the fact that the more done Alloway was, the
less vigorously would he ply his whip; besides, there was a chance that
he might suddenly collapse.
At the entrance to the village there was a bare fifty yards between
them. As he came up to the smithy, Blazer, the blacksmith's dog, the
terror of the village, began to bark; and Tinker's saving idea came to
him. He ran into the yard, and walked quietly up to Blazer, who barked
and strained at his chain with every advertisement of savage fury.
Tinker knew a good deal about dogs; he came quietly up to him, and
tried to pat his head. Blazer caught at the hand, and Tinker left it
passive in his teeth. Blazer's teeth bruised the skin, but did not
pierce: and suddenly he realised that he did not know what to do with
it.
With a sheepish air he let it go, and resumed his barking. Tinker
stepped right up to his kennel, and the barking Blazer danced about him
in an agony of indecision. Alloway rushed into the yard, and crying,
"I've got you, you young devil! Have I?" made for Tinker.
Blazer saw a happy way out of his awkward uncertainty, and bit
Alloway's leg.
Alloway jumped back with a roar; and, lashing at Blazer, hopped about.
The blacksmith ran out of the smithy, and took in the situation at a
glance.
"Take away your dog, Green! Take him away!" shouted Alloway. "I'm
going to warm the young gentleman's jacket! He's been worriting my
ram!"
Alloway was a good customer; but Tinker was a familiar friend, and the
astute blacksmith scratched his head at great length before he said
slowly, "If zo be as you've 'it Blaazer, you'll 'av ter tak 'im away
yoursel'. I dussn't go near 'im; no, not wuz it ever so."
"I'm going to larrup the young limb!" cried Alloway obstinately.
"You'll 'ave to wait, then, till Blaazer gits quiet. I dussn't meddle
with 'im; an' I'm shoeing Mr. 'Utton's graay maare." And with a
natural, untrained diplomacy the blacksmith retired quickly into the
smithy.
For a minute or two Alloway cursed and Blazer barked. Then Tinker sat
quietly down on the threshold of the kennel, and fanned himself with
his hat. The empurpled Alloway grew purpler at the sight of a coolness
he did not share.
"You young rip!" he roared, dancing lightly in his exasperation, "I'll
larrup you if I stay here till to-morrow morning!"
"If you're speaking to me, Mr. Alloway, you needn't speak so loud. I'm
not deaf," said Tinker with gentle severity.
Mr. Alloway in his violent, rustic way, uttered a good many remarks
quite unfit for boyish ears.
Tinker paid no heed to him, but chirrupped to Blazer, who came to him
in a wondering sulkiness, and with many protesting growls suffered
himself to be patted. Alloway put his hands in his pockets, and stood
stolidly with his legs wide apart, a picture of florid manliness and
grim, but whiskered determination. Some small boys, heavy with their
midday meal, came to the gate of the yard, and in an idle repletion
exhausted themselves in conjectures as to the true inwardness of
Tinker's relation with Blazer, and Alloway's absorption in it. Twice
the blacksmith came to the smithy door, and a large, slow grin spread
painfully over his bovine face.
Tinker continued to pet Blazer till the surprised and mollified dog sat
down between his feet, and put his head on his knee. Then Tinker began
to apply that power of concentration in which he had been trained by
his father to the discovery of a method of final escape. Presently
Alloway went to the gate, and, climbing onto it, sat waiting for his
triumph in a stubborn doggedness.
After a while Tinker said gently, "That's a good horse you ride, Mr.
Alloway."
The farmer said nothing.
"He's young, isn't he?" said Tinker.
An acute and scornful expression of "You don't get round me!" filled
all of the farmer's face that was not covered with whiskers.
"Did you think to tie him up before you ran after me?" said Tinker
earnestly.
Alloway sprang from the gate as though a very sharp nail had of a
sudden sprouted up immediately beneath him, slapped his thigh, and
stood shaking his whip at Tinker with expressive, but starting eyes.
"I dare say he's out of the county by now," said Tinker thoughtfully.
"You young blackguard!" said Alloway, and stepped towards the kennel.
Blazer shot out to the length of his chain; and Alloway, in his fury,
cut him savagely with his whip. Blazer roared rather than barked; the
noise stimulated Tinker's wits; and he saw his way.
Alloway recovered himself sufficiently to say with choking emphasis,
"Horse, or no horse, you don't get me to leave here!" and went back to
the gate.
Tinker let him climb on it, and then he said gently, "Have you ever
played at being a runaway slave hunted by bloodhounds, Mr. Alloway?"
Alloway scowled at him most malignantly.
"I should think it would be quite an exciting game. It doesn't really
matter that Blazer's only a bull terrier; we can call him a bloodhound,
you know," Tinker went on, looking at the dog a little regretfully.
Alloway, coddling his fury, scarcely heard him.
"I'll be the slave-owner," said Tinker, fumbling with the chain.
It came out of the staple; and Alloway roared, "What are you doing, you
young rascal?"
"Oh, it's all right," said Tinker. "Don't be frightened; I'll keep him
on leash till you get a good lead."
Alloway jumped down from the gate, on the other side of it, his anger
changed to uncertainty spiced with discomfort.
Blazer felt the chain loosen, and darted forward, jerking Tinker after
him.
"I can't hold him!" yelled Tinker.
[Illustration: "I can't hold him!"]
Alloway turned, dropped his whip, and bolted up through the village.
Blazer dashed at the gate, clawing it; Tinker got a better grip on the
chain, opened the gate, snatched up the whip as Blazer jerked him
through; and they set off down the road after Alloway. The farmer ran
better than ever, faster than he had run after Tinker, faster,
probably, than he had ever run before in his life.
Blazer, though Tinker dragged for all he was worth, made a very fair
pace after him. But by the time they were a hundred yards beyond the
village, the throttling drag began to tell; Blazer slowed down; and
Alloway, still going hard, disappeared round the corner.
Blazer and Tinker fell into a walk, and then stopped.
Sir Tancred Beauleigh, on his quiet way to the village post-office, was
surprised at being nearly knocked down by one of the most respectable
young farmers of the neighbourhood, who was running with the speed and
face of a man pursued by all the tigers of Bengal. A hundred yards
further on he heard yells and screams, and shouts of laughter; and
coming round a corner, he saw a small boy rolling in recurring
paroxysms of joy on the grass by the roadside, watched by a puzzled
bull-terrier. He had no difficulty in connecting them with the flying
farmer.
He came up to the absorbed pair unnoticed, and standing over them, said
quietly, "What's the joke, Tinker?"
Tinker sprang to his feet, and wiping away the joyful tears, said, "I
have been playing at hunting runaway slaves."
"Ah, Alloway was the slave?" said Sir Tancred.
"Yes, sir," said Tinker.
Sir Tancred dropped the subject; he knew by experience that the truth
might be painful hearing, and that he would probably hear it from
Tinker's flying partner in the game quite soon enough.
"What are you doing with that dog?" he said.
"I borrowed him," said Tinker.
Sir Tancred looked Blazer carefully over. "He's a very good dog," he
said. "How would you like him for a birthday present?"
Tinker's eyes shone as a long vista of scrapes, out of which Blazer's
teeth might help him, opened before his mind.
"Ever so much!" he said quickly.
"Come on, then, we'll go and try to buy him." And they set out for the
village.
Mr. Green stood in the door of the smithy, and grinned enormously at
the sight of the returning Tinker. Sir Tancred said, "Good-morning,
Green; do you care to sell this dog? I'll give you three pounds for
him."
Mr. Green said, "Three pound," and stared helplessly at the cottages
opposite, confused by the need to assimilate, on the spur of the
moment, a new idea.
"Three pounds?" said Tinker quickly. "Why, he only cost fifteen
shillings a year ago!"
"An orfer is an orfer!" said Mr. Green quickly, his wits spurred at the
sudden prospect of a lowering of the price. "And I takes it."
As he led away Blazer, with a new proprietary pride Tinker said firmly
to Sir Tancred, "I shall go on considering him a bloodhound, sir."
CHAPTER SIX
THE RESCUE OF ELIZABETH KERNABY
Sir Tancred paused now and again in his leisurely breakfast to scowl
across the dining room at Mr. Biggleswade, who, with his sour-looking
wife and woebegone little girl, was breakfasting at an opposite table.
The Royal Victoria Hotel was second-rate. The cooking was poor, the
wine was bad, and Solesgate itself was dull. But these misfortunes Sir
Tancred would have endured cheerfully because the place suited
Hildebrand Anne, who had but lately recovered from an attack of scarlet
fever at Farndon-Pryze, but he could not endure Mr. Biggleswade. It
was not so much that he had reckoned up Mr. Biggleswade as a large,
fat, greasy rogue, nor was it that no snub once and for all stopped Mr.
Biggleswade from thrusting himself upon him with a snobbish
obsequiousness; it was Mr. Biggleswade's noisy and haphazard methods of
disposing of his food, which left small portions of each course
nestling in his straggling beard, and filled the air with the sound of
the feeding of pigs.
This Sir Tancred found unendurable, and the more unendurable that Mr.
Biggleswade had made up his mind that he enjoyed his meals more in the
presence of a baronet, and always waited for his coming.
Sir Tancred was eating his breakfast mournfully, therefore, reflecting
on the unkindness of Fortune, who had afflicted Tinker with his fever
at so inconvenient a time. For he had not been able to raise the money
to take him to make his convalescence at one of the more expensive
watering places, whither resort millionaires and the smart, whose
fondness for games of chance and skill would have kept him in careless
luxury. He had been driven to bring him to Solesgate, a town of six
bathing-machines; and there the rest of his ready money dwindled to a
few shillings. A sudden cessation of the sound of the feeding of pigs
caught him from his mournful reflections. He looked up quickly, to see
Mr. Biggleswade staring at his newspaper with a most striking
expression of triumphant greed.
On the instant Sir Tancred filled with the liveliest interest; emotion,
especially curious emotion, in his fellow creatures always aroused his
interest, and not infrequently brought him profit, and Mr.
Biggleswade's emotion seemed to him curiously violent to be excited by
the perusal of a newspaper. He made half a movement to show it to his
wife, caught Sir Tancred's eye, and setting it down, went on hastily
with his breakfast. He had not been so quick but that Sir Tancred had
seen that the paper was _The Daily Telegraph_, and the exciting
paragraph on the first page.
Sir Tancred brightened to the rest of his breakfast; he had little
doubt that he was on the track of some roguery or other, and he
promised himself a hunt through the paper till he found it. When the
Biggleswades, having finished their breakfast, went down to the beach,
he lighted a cigar, took his folding-chair and his pile of newspapers,
and settled down sixty yards away from them. As he had expected, their
first act was to discuss the newspaper with great animation, handing it
backwards and forwards to one another. And he took _The Daily
Telegraph_ from his pile, and set about seeking the source of their
excitement. He passed over the first advertisement in the agony
column, the offer of a reward for the recovery of the stolen child of
Kernaby, the Marmalade Millionaire, merely noting that it had been
raised to 4000 pounds, and came to the conclusion that the second
advertisement was genuine, while the third, which set forth at great
length the woes of a young woman parted from a young man, seemed to him
to read like thieves communicating. He had begun to eliminate the
superfluous words, when Tinker, with Blazer, his bull-terrier, came
suddenly up to him from behind, and bade him good-morning.
Tinker had breakfasted some three hours earlier, probably in the hotel
kitchen, for, as was his invariable custom, he was on the best of terms
with the servants; and for all that he had spent the intervening hours
on the uncovered slimy rocks, was in his usual state of spotless
cleanliness. He is the one living boy to whom dirt does not cling.
"How have you been amusing yourself?" said his father, his stern face
lighting up with a delightful smile.
"I'm still teaching Blazer to be a bloodhound. He's slow--very slow."
Blazer cocked an apologetic ear and sniffed.
"It must be tiring work."
"Yes," said Tinker sadly, and his eyes wandered slowly along the shore.
Sir Tancred flipped the ash off his cigar.
"Those Biggleswades are beasts!" Tinker broke out suddenly when his
eyes fell on them. "They treat that little girl of theirs shamefully!
When I went to bed last night she was crying again. She always is. I
don't believe she's their little girl at all. I believe they've stolen
her."
"The deuce!" cried Sir Tancred, and catching up his _Daily Telegraph_,
he read again the Marmalade Millionaire's advertisement. It ran:
4000 POUND REWARD. 4000 POUND REWARD. 4000 POUND REWARD.
The above sum will be paid to any person giving information leading to
the recovery of Elizabeth E. Kernaby, aged seven years. She strayed or
was stolen in Kensington Gardens between the hours of 10 and 11 a. m.,
on the 19th ultimo. She is fair with blue eyes, and long flaxen hair,
speaks with a lisp, and answers to the name of Bessie. Any person
bringing information to Messrs. Datchett & Hobb's, 127, Lincoln's Inn
Fields, or to Mr. Joseph W. Kernaby, 11a, Cadogan Square, will receive:
4000 POUND REWARD. 4000 POUND REWARD. 4000 POUND REWARD.
He laid the paper on his knee, and began to consider the facts of the
kidnapping, as he remembered them from the newspaper reports. Her
nurse had taken her to Kensington Gardens, where she had foregathered
with the little daughters of Sir William Uglow. The children's play
had little by little drawn them away from their gossipping nurses,
right out of their sight; and when their nurses went to look for them
they found only the little Uglows; Elizabeth Kernaby had gone. The
children said that a tall gentleman had come to them and, telling her
that her mamma had sent him for her, had taken her away in a cab. The
nurse had thought it strange, but suspected nothing wrong till she
reached home and found that Elizabeth had not returned. She did not
return; and since that day, in spite of all the efforts of Scotland
Yard and the private-detective agencies, nothing had been seen or heard
of her. The reward offered for her recovery had risen from 1000 pounds
to 4000 pounds.
It had been a crime of a masterly simplicity, and Sir Tancred had been
sure that the child would not be forthcoming till the reward satisfied
the cupidity of the child-stealers. He had reason to believe that the
present reward did satisfy the cupidity of the child-stealers; and
after a thoughtful glance at the Biggleswades, he turned to Tinker.
Tinker could be of help to him.
He turned to him and said:
"Do you remember my telling you of a little girl, Elizabeth Kernaby,
who was stolen a week or two ago?"
"Elizabeth Kernaby, aged seven, blue eyes, long flaxen hair, speaks
with a lisp, and answers to the name of Bessie," said Tinker glibly, in
the manner of one reciting a lesson.
"Quite right," said Sir Tancred approvingly; "you'll be another
Sherlock Holmes some day. Well, I have reason to believe that the
little girl with the Biggleswades is Elizabeth Kernaby."
Tinker's face brightened. "Her eyes are blue, but her hair is black,
and it's not very long."
"Hair can be dyed."
"Yes; and it doesn't match her face."
"It doesn't, doesn't it? Well, I want to know if she lisps, and if she
answers to the name of Bessie. You will find out?"
"Yes, I'll find out. But Mrs. Biggleswade never lets her speak to
anyone. I must think it out."
With that Tinker sat down; set his elbows on his knees, his chin on his
hands; and plunged into deep thought. His father sat equally
thoughtful; and their similar employment brought out extraordinarily
their strong likeness, for all that Tinker was a fair, angel child, and
his father's face as dark and proud and stern as Lucifer's.
For a long while neither said a word, nor moved. Sir Tancred was
trying to see how to work the affair on seven shillings, and debating
whether to call in the help of the police. Instinct assured him that
he had no time to lose, no time to walk to Beachley and pawn his watch,
that he must not lose sight of them, and in delicate matters he relied
chiefly on instinct. Mr. Biggleswade would not have looked so
triumphant, had not the 4000 pound reward satisfied him; it seemed
likely that he would leave for town that very day. On the other hand,
Sir Tancred was averse to going to the police; he knew what the
provincial police were. What was excellent evidence to him would seem
no evidence at all to them; and they would move too late, or, if they
moved in time, would muddle the whole business, and let the
Biggleswades know they were suspected. Besides, it hurt his self-love
to seek aid from anyone. No, the proper game was to rob the robbers,
and he had seven shillings to play it with.
Suddenly Tinker stirred. "I'm going to try now," he said.
Sir Tancred looked at the Biggleswades. Mr. Biggleswade lay sprawled
on his back, a handkerchief spread over his face; and mellowed by the
distance, the music of a long-drawn snore murmured over the sands.
Mrs. Biggleswade was nodding over a book.
Tinker rose, bade Blazer stay where he was; and walked off towards the
hotel. Sir Tancred twisted round his chair, tore a hole in his _Daily
Telegraph_, and watched him. Tinker fetched a circuit to within a
hundred yards of the backs of the Biggleswades, threw his straw hat on
the sand, dropped on to his stomach, and began to squirm along towards
them, taking advantage of every ridge and hollow. It was a long
business, but at last he lay in a hollow thirty yards away. He raised
his head cautiously, and in a low, clear voice said, "Bessie."
The little girl sprang to her feet, and stared about her wildly.
Tinker dropped his head and lay still. Mrs. Biggleswade, roused from
her napping, caught the child by the arm, and shaking her, said
savagely, "Sit down, you little brat! Keep quiet!"
The child sank down, and began to cry.
Tinker lay still for a while, and then began, to squirm away. When he
reached his hat, he rose to his feet, knocked the sand off his clothes,
and walked slowly back to his father.
"She answers to the name of Bessie, sir," he said quietly.
"Good!" said Sir Tancred, and he rose.
They walked down to the railway station; and on the way Sir Tancred
informed Tinker that he was to take Elizabeth Kernaby up to London, to
11a Cadogan Square, and, at a cost of six out of his seven shillings,
bought two half third-class tickets. On their way back he learned, no
less to his surprise than his joy, that Tinker was the possessor of
eighteenpence. To make assurance surer, therefore, he bought a basket
of strawberries, and when the Biggleswades returned to the hotel for
lunch, they found the Beauleighs in the porch, eating them.
"Would you like some strawberries, little girl?" said Tinker as they
passed, and he held out the basket to the child.
"Yeth, pleath," she said, and stepped forward to take one.
"No, no, Keziah," broke in Mrs. Biggleswade. "You know they don't
agree with you!" And she caught her away, and hurried her into the
hotel.
"Children like sweet things; but they sometimes don't agree with them,"
said Mr. Biggleswade sapiently, his loose and flabby bulk swelling yet
bigger at the thought that he was speaking to a member of the
aristocracy.
"That is very true," said Sir Tancred pleasantly.
Surprised by this affability, but swift to seize on a conversational
opening with a baronet, Mr. Biggleswade stayed talking with him in the
porch; he talked to him all lunch-time: and he talked to him on the
sands after lunch. His unbridled appetite for the society of the
aristocracy proved his undoing. For at a few minutes to three Sir
Tancred proposed a stroll along the shore. They went slowly, Mr.
Biggleswade rising to the great social occasion for which he had so
long hankered, and proving himself, in his talk, a thorough man of the
world.
As they passed round the promontory at the end of the little bay, and
Sir Tancred took out his handkerchief, Tinker was awaiting the signal,
impatient, but cool; and as they passed out of sight, he began to steal
up behind the drowsy Mrs. Biggleswade and presently, touching the child
on the shoulder, beckoned her to come with him.
She looked timidly at Mrs. Biggleswade whose eyes were closed, and
rose. Tinker drew her quietly away. They had not gone twenty yards
when a jerking nod awoke Mrs. Biggleswade, and she missed the child.
She scrambled up, turned and saw her, and cried, "Come here, you
naughty girl. Come here at once!"
"Are you Bessie Kernaby?" said Tinker to the child.
"Yeth, yeth," she said, turning to go to her tyrant.
Tinker gripped her arm, and cried, "Pstt! Pstt! Hold her, Blazer!
Hold her!" and waved him at Mrs. Biggleswade.
Blazer darted forward, growling with a fine show of teeth.
Mrs. Biggleswade, like a wise woman, stood stock-still, and sent a
shrill scream ringing down the shore, and another, and another, and
another.
Tinker caught Elizabeth's hand and cried, "Come on! Come on! We've
only just time to catch the train!" And the two children set off
running to the station.
On the edge of the sands Tinker stopped for a moment, whistled shrilly,
brought Blazer racing after them, and ran on again. He could hear the
far-away rattle of the express.
Mr. Biggleswade was too deeply engrossed in his talk with Sir Tancred
to notice the first half-dozen screams from his wife; and they came
faintly round the promontory. Then he heard them, said, "By Jove!
that's Maria!" and started to run back. Sir Tancred ran by his side.
When they came round the promontory they saw Mrs. Biggleswade waving
frantically towards the station, and half-way to it two little figures
running. Mr. Biggleswade showed himself a man of action. He swung
round, and, with the swiftness of an accomplished boxer, dealt Sir
Tancred an unexpected blow on the side of the head which knocked him
over half-stunned, and almost in the same moment started to run after
the children. He was half a mile from them, and they were less than a
quarter of a mile from the station, but naturally he ran much faster.
As the children reached the platform the express steamed in. Tinker
hurried his prize into an empty third-class carriage, in the forepart
of the train, and pushed the ticketless Blazer under the seat. Then he
put his head out of the window, and saw to his disgust Mr. Biggleswade,
his coat-tails flying, two hundred yards from the station, yelling
lustily, but making a very good pace indeed for his flabby bulk. The
doors were shutting, and Tinker watched the guard breathlessly. When
he whistled, Mr. Biggleswade had yet fifty yards to go. At the sound
he yelled louder than ever, and made a tremendous spurt. The train was
well on the move when he rushed into the station; but he dashed at a
compartment in the last carriage, wrenched the door open, scrambled on
to the footboard, and tumbled in, amidst the shouts of the indignant
porters.
Tinker drew in his head with a blank face. It had been no part of his
father's plan that Mr. Biggleswade should travel by the same train to
London, and his heart sank a little. But remembering Blazer, his
spirits rose, and he turned to the little girl with a cheerful face.
She was panting, crying, and wringing her hands in a paroxysm of
nervous excitement. He sat down beside her, thumped her on the back--a
way he had with tearful females--wiped away her tears with his
handkerchief, and poured comforting assurances of safety into her ears.
[Illustration: He poured comforting assurances of safety into her ears.]
When at last he had soothed her he began to question her, and drew from
her the story of her captivity. She had driven miles and miles with
the gentleman who had fetched her from Kensington Gardens, to a little
house in a long street. There she had found the Biggleswades. Mrs.
Biggleswade had taken away her nice clothes, and dressed her in these
common things. Then she had cut off her hair.
"I was wondering about your hair," interrupted Tinker.
For answer the little girl lifted up her black locks, hat and all;
displayed a fuzzy little fair poll underneath them, and let them drop
on it again.
"I see," said Tinker, and he went on with his questioning.
She had stayed with the Biggleswades, shut up in a room upstairs, she
did not know how many days; and then they had come down to Solesgate.
All the while Mrs. Biggleswade had been very unkind to her, and slapped
her whenever she cried for her mother.
The remembrance of her misfortunes set her crying again, and again,
with quiet patience, he consoled her. Presently she was babbling
cheerfully of her home, her mother, and her dolls, and asking many
questions. He made the replies politeness demanded, but he lent an
abstracted ear to her talk, for he was considering different plans for
escaping Mr. Biggleswade, most of them useless by reason of the
slowness of Elizabeth. He could only make up his mind that they must
dash for a cab as quickly as they could, and trust to Blazer for
protection.
It seemed to him a very long journey; and even when he had made his
plan, he found it no little task to take his part in the conversation.
As the train ran into London, he told her that Mr. Biggleswade was in
the train, and they must bolt for the cab. At once she was all panic
and tears, and he had much ado to brace her for effort before the train
slowed down at the terminus. Before it had stopped he was out of the
carriage, helping her down. They ran towards the barrier; but the
platform was long, and Elizabeth was slow. While they were yet thirty
yards from it, Mr. Biggleswade was on them. With a savage blow he sent
Tinker flying, caught up the screaming Elizabeth, and dashed on, crying
loudly, "The nearest hospital! The nearest hospital! My little girl!
My little girl!"
Everyone made way for him; but Tinker picked himself up, bolted after
him, hissing on Blazer, took a flying leap on to his back, and locked
his arms round his neck in a strangling grip, as the prompt and nimble
Blazer buried his teeth in his calf. Mr. Biggleswade dropped Elizabeth
and tore viciously at Tinker's hands. The passengers and porters came
crowding round, and the moment the throng was thick enough, Tinker
dropped to his feet and gripped Elizabeth by the arm, shouting,
"Police! Police!"
Mr. Biggleswade struggled to choke Blazer off his leg. A police
inspector pushed through the crowd, and cried, "What's all this?"
"The young rascal has enticed away my little girl, and brought her up
to London!" cried Mr. Biggleswade, who had divested himself of Blazer,
and was holding him off by the collar; and with the other hand he
grabbed at Elizabeth.
"It's a lie!" cried Tinker, as the inspector grasped his shoulder.
"This is Elizabeth Kernaby! He stole her!" And on the words he jerked
off her hat and wig.
At the sight of the fuzzy little bare poll light slowly dawned on the
inspector; but even more quickly Mr. Biggleswade had seen that the game
was up, flung Blazer away from him, and bolted through the barrier.
The Inspector rushed after him; but Blazer, who apparently had not had
enough of Mr. Biggleswade's calf, outstripped him, and pinned the
fugitive on the very step of a hansom.
When Tinker and Elizabeth, escorted by an excited and applauding crowd,
came out of the station they found Mr. Biggleswade, the inspector, two
constables, and Blazer in a tangled, battling group. Tinker saw his
chance of escaping any further aid from the police, thrust Elizabeth
into a hansom, gave the cabman the address, whistled Blazer out of the
fight, jumped in after her, and drove off amid the cheers of the crowd.
By the time the dishevelled police had Mr. Biggleswade secured, and
could turn their attention to them, the children were half a mile away.
Tinker's hands had been torn by the savage rascal, and on the way to
Cadogan Square he was busy staunching their bleeding. By tearing his
handkerchief in two he managed with Elizabeth's aid to bandage both;
but he was vexed that they must make such an unpleasant appearance
before her relatives. When they reached Cadogan Square he paid the
cabman, and rang the bell; but when the door opened, Elizabeth assumed
the leadership. She caught Tinker's hand, dragged him past the
astonished footman, hurried him up the stairs, and burst with him into
a drawing room, where half a score of mournful people were discussing
over their tea the further measures for her recovery.
"I've come back, mamma! And this is Hildebrand Anne Beauleigh, but his
real name is Tinker!" cried Elizabeth.
In a breath Mrs. Kernaby had her in her arms; there were screams and
pantings, and a bandying to and fro of smelling salts. Everyone was
hugging Elizabeth, or shaking hands with Mr. Kernaby, or slapping one
another on the back and assuring one another that they had always said
so. Tinker watched their exuberance with some distaste, which
redoubled when Elizabeth's tangled and incoherent tale drew upon him
the embraces of half a dozen animated and highly scented ladies of the
kind who haunt the houses of unprotected millionaires. When at last
quiet was restored, he told his story, omitting as many of his own
doings as were not absolutely necessary to make it clear, in a fear
lest they should provoke another outburst of embraces.
When he had clearly grasped the fact that Tinker was the son of Sir
Tancred Beauleigh, all the warm-heartedness of his native Drumtochty
bubbled up in Mr. Joseph Kernaby; he shook him warmly by the hand, and
cried:
"Mah mannie; eh, but you're a braw sonsie laddie; an' aiblins ye need
it, nor yoursel' nor any o' your noble an' deesteengueeshed family
shall ne'er ask the twice a wee bit bite or soop unner this humble
roof."
Tinker, not having the Gaelic, was somewhat taken aback by the cryptic
utterance; but an anxious-looking younger son of an embarrassed peer,
who for a considerable consideration was bear-leading the millionaire
through the social labyrinth, hurriedly interpreted it to him as a
standing invitation to dinner. He thanked Mr. Kernaby, and begged that
a telegram might at once be sent to his father, informing him of his
success and safety.
"They tallygrams they yanners the saxpences, mah mannie," said the
millionaire with a falling face. "A poostcaird is a verra----"
But the anxious-looking younger son cut him short, said that it should
be sent at once, and bade the footman charged with its despatch bring
also a doctor to dress Tinker's wounded hands.
Meanwhile Sir Tancred, as soon as he learnt that Mr. Biggleswade had
caught the express, had hurried hot-foot in a devouring anxiety to
Beachley, where dwelt a pawnbroker, raised money, and caught there a
train to town. When he reached Cadogan Square he found Tinker making
an excellent tea after his exhausting labours, and giving an account of
the Biggleswades to a detective from Scotland Yard. When he had heard
Sir Tancred's story, too, the detective said that Mr. Biggleswade would
get five years; and the event proved him right.
There was no getting away from the grateful Kernabys, but after the
cooking of the Royal Victoria hotel Sir Tancred was more than ready for
a good dinner. He found in his host and hostess a strong disposition
to adopt Tinker forthwith; and before the end of dinner he found them
no less inclined to adopt him, too. But it could not be.
After dinner, disregarding the faint expostulations of the
anxious-looking younger son, the millionaire rose to his feet and
pronounced a glowing, fervid, but, save for the couplet,
"The rank is but the guinea stamp
The maan's the maan for a' that"
unintelligible eulogy on the family of Beauleigh.
As he drove away with Tinker to the Hotel Cecil, Sir Tancred crinkled
the millionaire's cheque in his waistcoat pocket, and said, "Four
thousand pounds is a good day's work--two thousand for you--and two
thousand for me. We'll move to Brighton. But I spent some of the most
horrible hours of my life wondering if that beast had got into the same
compartment with you. None of the fools at the station could tell me."
"I was afraid you'd be anxious, sir," said Tinker, patting his arm.
"But I think that Blazer and I could have dealt with him."
Then he gave Blazer--who, distended by the fat of the land, was snoring
heavily through happy dreams of the human calf, at the bottom of the
cab--a gentle kick, and said with sad severity, "I shall never make a
real bloodhound of Blazer. Bloodhounds leap at a man's throat; they
don't collar him by the leg."
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE STOLEN FLYING-MACHINE
"You vas a vonder-child!" said Herr Schlugst. "You know dat machine as
good as me!" And his goggle eyes stared out of his round, good-natured
face at Hildebrand Anne in a wondering admiration.
"Yes; I think I have got the hang of her," said Hildebrand Anne with
some pride, looking up at the great cigar-shaped balloon which hung
motionless in the still air.
"Vat for do dey call thee Tinkar? You vas not look like a tinkar; and
you vas not haf--do not haf de tinkar brain."
"Well, I've been called Tinker ever since I can remember; and one
name's as good as another," said Hildebrand Anne indifferently. "But
you'll let me cross over to Paris with you to-morrow, won't you?"
"I vill not! I vill not! Dere is de danger! De great danger! We
must vant de calm dat ees dead! I take no von vith me but mine own
self! And I vas not vould go, not for nodings; but I vas vant de
tousand pounds. Dere is my leetle girl to be lived and educate."
"But I do so want to be one of the first to cross the Channel in a
flying-machine," said Tinker plaintively.
"Ach, to be vurst! to be vurst! Dat is you English top and toe! Do I
vas hunt de orchid to be vurst discoverer? Not mooch. I hunt him for
money. Do I cross de Channel in my machine to be vurst? Nein, nein.
I cross him for de tousand pounds. And you I vould not take, no, not
for de oder tousand pound. Bah! You vas not at all von vonder-child;
you vas von foolish! Good-night, mine young friend, good-night." And
Herr Schlugst went into the galvanised iron hut where for the time
being he lived, watching over his precious machine.
The Tinker came out of the palisade which surrounded it, and walked
down the cliff into Brighton quite disconsolate; he could not see how
to get his way. He came into the Paragon Hotel and dressed for dinner
as sulky as a naturally cheerful soul could be. He showed no readiness
to talk, and his father presently condoled with him on his lowness of
spirits. Tinker said briefly that he had had a disappointment.
"Ah, they are terrible things, disappointments, when one is eleven
years old," said Sir Tancred. "Later in life they lose their edge."
On his words there came into the dining room a rotund, middle-aged
Jewish gentleman, coated with dust and wearing a harassed air.
"Look," said Sir Tancred, "that's Blumenruth, the Jungle millionaire."
The financier gazed gloomily round the room, looking for a table. At
the sight of Sir Tancred, an idea seemed to strike him, his face
brightened a little, and he came to them.
"How do you do, Sir Tancred Beauleigh?" he said, shaking hands warmly.
"May I dine at your table? I want a word with you, a word which may be
profitable to both of us."
"By all means," said Sir Tancred in the manner he always adopted
towards profitable financiers of Hamburg extraction, a manner extremely
condescending, without being offensive.
The financier sat down; smudged the dust across his face with a
coloured silk handkerchief; and breathed heavily. Then he looked at
Tinker as though he would like him sent away.
"Anything you may say before him will go no further," said Sir Tancred,
quick to mark the meaning of the look. "Let me introduce you. Mr.
Blumenruth, my son Hildebrand."
The financier bowed, but he still looked unhappy at Tinker's presence.
A waiter brought him some soup, and he began upon it hurriedly. Sir
Tancred went on with his dinner in a tranquil indifference. The
financier finished his soup: looked again at Tinker, and burst out:
"Well, it can't make any difference! I want your help, Sir Tancred,
and you're the one man in England who can help me; you're used to these
things." And he smudged the dust on his face a little more.
Sir Tancred murmured politely, "Only too pleased."
"I must be in Paris either to-night or to-morrow morning for an hour's
talk with Meyer before the Bourse opens. And I must leave England
without anyone knowing I've left it. It may make a difference to me
of--of a hundred thousand pounds."
"Pardon me," said Sir Tancred suavely. "I like my clients to be open
with me. It will make a difference of ruin. The Cohens have you in a
hole."
The millionaire gasped, "My goodness! how did you know? It means
ruin--or--or I make a hundred thousand."
"I see," said Sir Tancred. "Well?"
"I left London quietly in a motor-car. Before I'd gone twenty miles, a
racing Panhard, stuffed with private detectives--men I've sometimes
employed myself"--he almost sobbed at the thought--"passed me; and
another came up, and dropped back to a mile behind. They're here in
Brighton. I'd given it up; I was going to dine here, sleep the night,
and go back to London to fight it out--not that it's of any use unless
I can see Meyer--when I saw you. I'll give--I'll give five thousand
pounds to anyone who can get me across to Paris secretly. It's
here--in my pocket." And he tapped his breast.
Sir Tancred thought earnestly for fully five minutes; then he said, "It
can't be done."
"Don't say so! now don't," said the financier, "The money's here!
Here!" and he again slapped his breast pocket.
"It's no use," said Sir Tancred. "I might smuggle you out of the
hotel; but there isn't any sort of vessel, steamer, steam yacht, or
launch to take you across."
"Let's go to Dover in my car!"
"What's the use? The detectives would follow in theirs."
The financier groaned, and some large tears ran down his face. He bent
his head to hide them; and for all that he was not pleasant to look
upon, Tinker felt sorry for him.
"Cheer up, man," said Sir Tancred. "You can always begin again!"
But the financier would not be heartened. He made a wretched dinner;
after it he followed Sir Tancred into the billiard room, and steadily
drinking brandies and sodas, watched him play pool. At eleven he went
to bed. Tinker had gone to bed long before, but his door was just
open, and he saw the financier go into his room. Five minutes later he
stole across the corridor, and, without knocking, opened the door and
went in. The financier was sitting at a table, gazing through a mist
of tears at a nice, new nickel-plated revolver. He had no real
intention of blowing his brains out, but with the childlike, emotional
spirit of his race, he had persuaded himself that he had, and was
luxuriating in his woe.
"What do you want?" he moaned.
"I've come to show you a way of getting to Paris," said Tinker, closing
the door softly.
"Mein Gott!" cried the millionaire, relapsing into his vernacular in
his excitement. "How? How?"
"By Herr Schlugst's flying-machine."
"A flying-machine! Is the boy mad?"
"No, I'm not. I've been with Herr Schlugst on three trial trips; and
the last two he let me work it most of the time. It's as easy as
winking, once you know how to do it, and he says I understand it as
well as he does. It's all ready for the journey. We've only got to
get into it without waking him; and he sleeps like a log."
"Mein Gott! Mein Gott! What a plan! I'm to fly in the air with a
little boy! Oh, good gracious me! Good gracious me! What am I to
do?" And he stamped up and down, wringing his hands.
"It's that or the revolver," said Tinker sweetly.
The financier clutched at his hair and raved: fear and avarice,
conflicting, tore at his vitals. He owed his millions to no genuine
force of character, but to luck, industry, and dishonesty. In this
great crisis of his life he was helpless. Tinker, trained from
babyhood by his wise father to study his fellow creatures, understood
something of this, and began to goad him to the effort.
"It's a lot of money to lose," said he thoughtfully.
"The sweat of my brow! The sweat of my brow!" groaned the financier,
who had really made it by the nimbleness of his tongue.
"And it seems a pity to blow your brains out, which hurts a good deal,
before you've tried every chance," said Tinker.
The financier groaned.
"At any rate, if we did come a cropper, you'd be no worse off."
"Ah!" cried the financier, stopping short. "Why shouldn't I wake Herr
Schlugst, and get him to take me?"
"Because he won't," said Tinker quietly. "He told me that nothing
would induce him to try a flight in the night. He's all right in the
daytime, but the darkness funks him. Foreigners are like that; they'll
go to a certain point all right, but there they stop. That's what I've
noticed. I notice these things, you know." He spoke indulgently.
It never occurred to the financier to doubt him; he was already a
little under the influence of the cooler head. He walked up and down a
little longer; and Tinker said no more. He had been taught to leave
people to themselves when he saw them beginning to come to his way of
thinking.
At last, with a horrible grimace which showed the depth of his agony,
the financier cried, "I'll come! I'll come! I'll trust my life--oh,
my precious life--to you. After all, you rescued the Kernaby child;
and you had to fight to do it! I'll risk it! Oh, my money! My money!"
"Very good," said Tinker. "I'll come for you at half-past twelve. Put
on your warmest great-coat. It'll be cold." And he slipped gently out
of the room.
Five minutes later the distracted financier rang his bell, and ordered
a bottle of 1820 liqueur brandy. It was the best thing he could have
done: a private detective, who was sitting on guard in a room lower
down the corridor to see that he did not go downstairs again, believed
him to have thrown up the sponge, and to be drowning his sorrow, and
allowed himself to become immersed in the current number of the _Family
Herald_.
As was his practice, Sir Tancred, on his way to bed, looked in on
Tinker, and found him sleeping the profound sleep of youth and
innocence. But no sooner did he hear his father in bed and still, than
he rose from that profound sleep of youth and innocence, dressed, even
to his great-coat. He took a letter from his pocket, and put it
prominently on the dressing-table. It ran:
DEAR FATHER:
I have taken Bloomenroot to Parris in Herr Shlugst flyingmacheen.
Bring him to meet me at the Ifell Tower.
Your affectionate son
TINKER.
Then, with his boots in his hand, he stole across to the financier's
room. Thanks to the brandy, the financier looked very much wound up.
Tinker bade him write on a sheet of notepaper, "Don't call me till
eleven," pinned it on the outside of his bedroom door, locked it, and
took the key. He left the sitting-room door unlocked. Then he opened
the window, and, followed by his protégé, who was already shivering
with dread, he stepped out on to the balcony with the air of the leader
of an army. The balcony ran round the hotel, as a way of escape during
a fire; it was broad, and since the night was starry, but fairly dark,
they were little likely to be seen from below by the detectives
watching the hotel doors. They walked round to the back, came through
a window into a bathroom, through the bathroom on to the servants'
staircase, and went right down into the basement.
"I get up early in the morning before the servants, and I had to find a
way out," said Tinker in an explanatory whisper.
He led the way through the kitchen into a long passage, set with the
doors of cellars on either side. At the end of the passage was a short
ladder with rounded iron rungs, by which barrels were lowered, and
Tinker, mounting three rungs, pushed back a bolt, raised the heavy trap
a little, and peered about from under it.
"The street's clear," he said. "Come on!"
He slipped out on to the pavement, helped the clumsy financier through
the trap, caught his hand, and ran him across the street into a narrow
lane.
"There!" he said cheerfully. "That's the most difficult part of the
business! You're out of the hotel, and not a soul knows it!"
The financier's spirits brightened. Tinker had shown him his mettle,
and he began to have confidence. Besides, he had drunk a good deal of
the bottle of brandy. They hurried through the town by byways, and up
on to the cliffs. As they neared the palisade, and saw the great bulk
of the balloon looming through the starlight, the panting financier's
spirits sank: his teeth chattered, and his knees knocked together.
"Oh, buck up! Buck up!" said Tinker impatiently. "You're all right!
You're all right!"
It was a matter of a few seconds for him to climb the door of the
palisades, drop lightly on the other side, and open it. He steered the
financier gingerly round the planes, past the propelling and steering
fans, and got him into the car. He set him well forward in the bows of
it, and began to let the rope unwind from the windlass which moored the
flying-machine. All the while he heard the steady snores of Herr
Schlugst, sleeping in his iron hut.
The flying-machine rose slowly with very little creaking for all the
greatness of the planes; the last of the rope ran out, and the lights
of the town sank like stones in water beneath them.
"Right away!" cried Tinker joyfully, and the financier gasped.
When the lights of the town were a mere blur beneath them, Tinker
switched on the electric lamps, and the millionaire saw him sitting on
a wicker seat in the stern of the boat-shaped car, surrounded by
levers, instruments, and dials. Tinker bade him grip the steel rails
on either side of the car, and get ready for a swoop. Then he set the
motor going, and steered round the flying-machine on to her course.
She rose and rose, moving steadily forward at the same time, far above
the sound of the waves of the Channel.
Now Herr Schlugst did not rely so much on his propeller for speed as on
his skilful adaptation of the principle on which the bird swoops. When
the aneroid told Tinker that the car had reached the height of 3000
feet, he opened a valve, and let the gas escape slowly from the
balloon. The instant she began to sink he switched to a slight
downward angle the great planes, some seventy feet long, which were
fixed parallel to the car. The machine began to glide downwards on
them, gathering momentum from the weight of the car, at a quickly
increasing speed, until she was tearing through the air at the rate of
forty miles an hour, and sinking a hundred feet in the mile. The
financier sat hunched up, gasping and shivering as the air whizzed past
his ears and shrilled among the ropes. Tinker, with an air of cheerful
excitement, kept the machine on her course, and watched the aneroid:
his face of a seraph was peculiarly appropriate to these high
altitudes, though the millionaire was too busy with his fears to
observe the fact.
In half an hour the machine had rushed down to five hundred feet above
the sea: Tinker switched the planes to the same angle upwards: and the
momentum drove her up the incline of the air with little diminished
speed. Then he turned a tap and let the stored gas, compressed in an
aluminum cylinder, flow into the balloon, and restored the whole
machine to its former buoyancy. Moving more and more slowly the higher
it rose, the flying-machine once more gained the height of 3000 feet,
and once more swooped down from it. At the beginning of the upward
sweep, Tinker said, "Another swoop like that will bring us to Paris."
The financier, who had spent the time qualifying for a place among the
invertebrates, only groaned. Tinker was disgusted; but he said, "Cheer
up! You're the first man who has ever crossed the Channel in a
flying-machine. You'll be in the History books!"
The car rose and rose: Tinker had just resolved to swoop from 3500 feet
this time, when of a sudden she rose out of the windless area into a
stiff breeze, icily chill. They learnt what had happened by the
balloon bumping down on their heads with apparent intent to smother
them, and in a breath the car was spinning round, and jerking furiously
to and fro. The millionaire screamed and bumped about the car, and
bumped and screamed. Tinker set his teeth, jammed the flying-machine
into the teeth of the wind, switched down the planes, and tried to
drive her down. It was no use; she was whirled along like a piece of
thistledown. Then he opened the valve and let her sink. In three
minutes she had fallen below the wind, and was shooting swiftly on the
downward swoop. The financier was staring at him with a frenzied eye.
Tinker closed the valve, and said with a joyous brightness, "She was
quite out of control for a good five minutes!"
[Illustration: "She was quite out of control for a good five minutes!"]
The financier frankly gave it up; with a rending gasp he fell back in a
dead faint.
Tinker shrugged his shoulders, regulated the pace of the machine by
letting gas flow from the cylinder into the balloon till it was of the
proper buoyancy, then roped the senseless financier to the bottom of
the car, and came back to the helm.
The wind they had risen into had been blowing towards the east, so they
had not lost ground during their tossing, but they had been driven
south of their course, and he did not know exactly how to get back to
it. On the dark earth beneath he could see towns as blurs of light on
all sides of him, but no one of them was big enough to be Paris. He
let the machine swoop on down to five hundred feet, and up again. On
the upward course, from fifteen hundred feet he saw a great blur of
light on the northern horizon: it was Paris, and he was swooping past
it. He steered the machine round without taking the way off her, and
swooped down towards the city. At the end of the swoop he was already
over the suburbs, and he switched off the electric lamps. He took the
way off the machine by switching up the planes; and then, using only
the propeller, circled round, seeking for the Eiffel Tower. Presently
he saw it looming through the first dim grey light of the dawn, steered
over it, let fall a grapnel, and hooked it into the railings which ran
round it; took a turn of the rope round the windlass, and wound the
machine down to within twenty feet of the top. Then he went to the
financier, unroped him, and kicked him in the ribs ungently.
As he kicked, saying, "Get up! Get up!" an astonished voice below
cried, "Qui vive?"
Looking over the side of the car Tinker saw dimly the figure of a
gendarme, and said briskly, "Santos-Dumont!"
"Vive Santos-Dumont!" cried the gendarme with enthusiasm.
Tinker went back to the financier, and kicked him again.
"Where am I? Where am I?" he murmured faintly.
"On the top of the Eiffel Tower," said Tinker.
"What? Saved! Saved!" cried the financier, for all the world as
though he had been in a melodrama; and he sat up.
"I should like the five thousand pounds, please," said Tinker, brought
back by the touch of earth from his aerial dreams to cold reality.
"Five thousand pounds!" cried the financier, every faculty alert at the
mention of money. "No, no! How am I to get five thousand pounds?
Five hundred now! Five hundred pounds is an enormous sum--an enormous
sum for a little boy, or even fifty! Yes, yes; fifty!"
"That's really very tiresome," said Tinker very gently. "I never
thought you'd be so foolish as to leave all that money in empty rooms
in an hotel. Well, well, we must fly straight back and get it. I hope
we shall have as good luck as we had coming over." And he turned to
the levers.
"Here! here! here!" screamed the financier; tore a button off his coat
in his haste to get at his breast pocket; whipped out his notecase, and
with trembling fingers took five notes from the bundle which stuffed
it, and thrust them into Tinker's hand.
Tinker counted them, made sure that each was for a thousand pounds, and
put them in his pocket. Then he looked down at the gendarme, and said
in French:
"I want to drop my assistant. Will you conduct him to the bottom of
the tower?"
"Mais oui! Avec plaisir, Monsieur le Comte!" cried the gendarme,
striking himself hard on the chest to show his eager enthusiasm.
"Merci bien," said Tinker, lowering the rope ladder.
The gendarme held it steady, and the financier descended gingerly.
When he was off it, and the gendarme had loosed it, Tinker said "Au
revoir! and mind you wire to my father at once, and let the grapnel
rope slip out of the windlass." Lightened of the financier, the
machine shot up into the air.
Tinker's task was done: he had only to restore the machine to Herr
Schlugst; but he had a long while to wait. He realised suddenly that
he was hungry and very, very sleepy. By letting some gas escape, he
reduced the machine to a controllable buoyancy, and set about warming
the coffee which the thoughtful Herr Schlugst had ready made. Then
with brown bread, butter, and German sausage, he made an excellent
breakfast. It was light by the time he had finished; and he set about
looking for a sleeping-place, for he could not keep awake long. A wood
on a hill some miles away seemed to him the spot he sought. He swooped
gently for it, and was soon anchored to a tree-top and sleeping
peacefully. It was past noon when a shouting awoke him. He looked
down to find the wood full of people, four or five bold photographic
spirits in the tree to which he was anchored, but nowhere near his
grapnel, which was among the smaller branches. The roads leading to
the wood were choked with bicycles, motor-cars, and pedestrians; and a
station near was disgorging a crowd of people from an excursion train.
It was time to be going.
He cut the grapnel rope, and started leisurely for Paris. He reached
it in about an hour, and circled about it, observing it from above.
Then he came to the Eiffel Tower, and practised steering round it, to
the great joy of an excited and applauding crowd which thronged its top
and stages. It was a great moment. He steered away over Paris, made a
meal of the coffee, brown bread, and sausage left, and came back.
He was growing tired of waiting, and was meditating crossing over the
top of the tower and pouring a little water from the ballast tank on
the sympathetic crowd, when he saw his father and Herr Schlugst forcing
their way through it. At once he rose above the tower and let down the
grapnel. A dozen hands seized it, and drew down the machine. Tinker
let the stored gas flow into the balloon to allow for Herr Schlugst's
extra weight; and lowered the rope-ladder. The bursting Teuton came
clambering up it, forcing down the car and planes by his weight on to
the heads of the crowd, which was forced to hold them up with a
thousand hands.
"Ach, you young tevil my machine to sdeal!" he cried, tumbling into the
car.
"You shouldn't have refused to take me with you," said Tinker,
preparing to slip over the other side on to anyone's head.
"What haf you broke? What haf you broke?" cried Herr Schlugst, looking
round at the instruments with a practised eye, and seeing them unharmed.
"Nothing. What should I break anything for?" said Tinker scornfully.
"No; dere is nodings broke, schoundrel. But vere--vere is mine von
tousand pound? I ask you! Vare is mine von tousand pound! You haf
ruined me! Ruined me!"
"Oh, that's all right!" said Tinker. "I had a passenger who paid his
fare. Here are two thousand pounds." And he gave him two of the notes.
Herr Schlugst opened his mouth and stared at the notes, "Doo tousand
pound! Doo tousand pound!" he muttered thickly. "You vas von
vonder-child! Von vonder-child!"
Tinker bade him good-bye, and slipped out of the car, leaving him to
fly to some smooth place in the environs, where he could dismantle his
machine. Sir Tancred was too thankful for Tinker's safety to be very
angry with him: and they descended the tower surrounded by gendarmes,
who were put to it to preserve Tinker from the embraces of excited
persons of either sex. One fat Frenchman, indeed, kissed him on both
cheeks, crying, "Vive le rosbif! vive le rosbif!" before he could ward
him off.
At the bottom of the tower Mr. Blumenruth, radiant and triumphant,
burst through the throng, flung himself upon them, and dragged them to
a smart victoria which awaited them. He told them joyously that he had
cleared eighty-seven thousand pounds, and protested that they should be
his guests at his hotel as long as they stayed in Paris. On the way to
it Sir Tancred got down to buy some cigars, and he was barely in the
shop when the financier said in a jerky way to Tinker, "I saw a very
neat little motor-car, which I should like to make you a present of.
But I say--I don't want you to tell anyone--how--how ill I was up
there. My spirit was all right, of course; but that rarefied
air--acting on business worries--produced a state of nervous
prostration. I--I wasn't quite myself, in fact."
Tinker looked at him with intelligent interest, and, closing one of his
sunny blue eyes, said thoughtfully, "Nervous prostration? Is the motor
a Panhard?"
"Yes," said Mr. Blumenruth.
"If you hadn't been so--so--upset, I've no doubt you'd have sailed the
machine yourself," said Tinker warmly.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE BARON AND THE MONEY-LENDER
Sir Tancred would only stay four days in Paris with the grateful
Blumenruth, because he wished Hildebrand Anne to have the sea air, for
it seemed to him that he had not yet got back his full strength after
the scarlet fever. They returned, therefore, to Brighton, and when the
weather grew hotter, removed to the more bracing East Coast. Tinker
was for sharing the three thousand pounds he had made out of his trip
in the flying-machine equally with his father; but Sir Tancred would
not hear of it. Chiefly to please him, however, he borrowed a thousand
of it at five per cent., and invested the rest in Tinker's name. With
this thousand-pound note and three notes of fifty pounds, he paid off
the loan of a thousand pounds which he had borrowed from Mr. Robert
Lambert, a money-lender, five years before, with the balance of the
interest up to date, and found himself once more unencumbered save for
a few small debts, and with plenty of money for his immediate needs.
During August and September they stayed at different country houses;
and Fortune being in a kindly mood, the money remained untouched. In
the middle of October they came to London to their usual rooms in the
Hotel Cecil; and Sir Tancred was one morning at breakfast disagreeably
surprised to receive from Mr. Robert Lambert a demand for the immediate
payment of 1450 pounds. At first he thought it was a mistake, then he
remembered that he had paid Mr. Lambert in notes; and that Mr. Lambert
had promised to get at once from his bank the promissory note on which
the money had been borrowed, and send it to him. The promissory note
had not come, and the matter had passed from Sir Tancred's mind. Now,
he perceived that, if Mr. Lambert chose to deny that payment, he was in
no little of a plight.
After breakfast, therefore, he took a hansom, and drove to Mr.
Lambert's office. The worthy money-lender received him at once, and
with no less delay began to deny with every appearance of honest
indignation that he had been paid the debt. Sir Tancred grew
exceedingly disagreeable; he set forth with perfect frankness his
opinion of Mr. Lambert's character, declared that he would rather go to
that uncomfortable abode of contemptuous debtors, Holloway, than be
swindled in so barefaced a fashion; and exclaiming, "You may go to your
native Jericho, before I pay you a farthing, you thieving rascal!" went
out of the office, and banged the door behind him.
The worthy money-lender smiled an uncomfortable and malignant smile at
the banged door, and at once gave instructions to his manager to take
proceedings. Sir Tancred explained the transaction to Tinker; warned
him against laxness in matters of business; prepared for immediate
flight; and they caught the midnight mail from Euston. By the time an
indefatigable bailiff had ascertained next day that they had left
London, they were eating their dinner, in a secure peace, at Ardrochan
Lodge in Ardrochan forest, which Sir Tancred had borrowed for the while
from his friend Lord Crosland.
Hildebrand Anne was used to long periods unenlivened by companions of
his own age; and he began forthwith to make the best of the forest.
Some days he stalked the red deer with his father; some days were
devoted to his education, fencing, boxing, and gymnastics; and on the
others he explored the forest on a shaggy pony. It was of a
comfortable size, forty square miles or thereabouts, stretches of wild
heath, broken by strips of wood, craggy hills, and swamps, full of
streams, and abounding in many kinds of animals. It was an admirable
place for Indians, outlaws, brigands, and robber barons, and Tinker
practised all these professions in turn, with the liveliest
satisfaction.
At first it was something of a tax on his imagination to be a whole
band of these engaging persons himself; with one companion it would
have been easy enough, but his imagination presently compassed the
task. And when he found his way to the Deil's Den, a low stone tower
on a hill some six miles from Ardrochan, his favourite occupation was
that of robber baron. It would have been more proper to put the tower
to its old use of a lair of a Highland cateran; but, to his shame,
Tinker funked the dialect with which such a person must necessarily be
cursed.
The Deil's Den had earned its name in earlier centuries from the bloody
deeds of its first owners. No gillie would go within a mile of it,
even in bright sunshine. Tinker's carelessness of its ghosts, a
headless woman and a redheaded man with his throat cut, had won him the
deepest respect of the village, or rather hamlet, of Ardrochan. Twice
he had constrained himself to wait in the tower till dusk, in the hope
that his fearful, but inquiring, spirit would be gratified by the sight
of one or other of these psychic curiosities.
It was a two-storied building, and its stone seemed likely to last as
long as the hills from which it had been quarried. In some thought
that it might be used as a watch-tower by his keepers, Lord Crosland
had repaired its inside, and fitted it with a stout door and two
ladders, one running to the second story and another to the roof. From
here the keen eyes of Hildebrand Anne, Baron of Ardrochan, scanned
often the countryside, looking for travelling merchants or wandering
knights; while his gallant steed Black Rudolph, whose coat was drab and
dingy, waited saddled and bridled below, and Blazer the bloodhound
sniffed about the burn hard by. Blazer had a weakness for rats quite
uncommon in bloodhounds.
Tinker cherished but a faint hope that Fortune would ever send him a
prisoner, even a braw, shock-headed lad, or sonsie, savage lassie of
the country. But he did not do justice to that goddess's love of
mischief. It was she who inspired into Mr. Robert Lambert the desire
to shine in the Great World; and it was she who gave him the idea of
taking for the season Lord Hardacre's house and forest of Tullispaith,
in lieu of the cash which he would never get. Thither he invited
certain spirited young clients, who had practically only the choice of
being Mr. Lambert's guests at Tullispaith or King Edward's at Holloway.
Thither he came, a week beforehand, to make ready for them.
At once he set about becoming an accomplished deer-stalker. For three
days he rode, or tramped, about the forest of Tullispaith, in search of
red deer which, in quite foolish estimate of their peril, insisted
always on putting a hill between themselves and his rifle. On the
fourth day he rested, for though his spirit was willing, his legs were
weak. This inactivity irked him, for he knew the tireless energy of
the English sportsman; and at noon Fortune inspired him with the most
disastrous idea of all, the idea of taking a stroll by himself. He
took his rifle and a packet of sandwiches, and set out. Now to the
unpractised eye any one brae, or glen, or burn of bonnie Scotland is
exactly like any other brae, or glen, or burn of that picturesque land.
He had not gone two miles before he had lost his way.
He did not mind, for he was sure that he knew his direction. He was
wrong; he may have been like his Oriental ancestors in some of his
qualities, but he lacked their ingrained sense of orientation; and he
was walking steadily away from the house of Tullispaith. He rested
often and he looked often at his watch. He passed over the border of
Tullispaith into the forest of Ardrochan, and wandered wearily on and
on. The autumn sun was moving down the western sky at a disquieting
speed, when at last he caught sight of the Dell's Den, and with a new
energy hurried towards it.
At about the same time Hildebrand Anne, the robber baron of Ardrochan,
caught sight of him, mounted Black Rudolph, and rode down to meet him,
ready to drag or lure him to his stronghold. The angel face of Tinker
had never looked more angelic to human being than it looked to the
weary money-lender. He had never seen him before; therefore, he had no
reason to suppose that that face was not the index to an angelic
nature. Unfortunately, Tinker knew by sight most of his father's
friends and enemies, and at the first glance he recognised the squat
figure, the thick, square nose, and muddy complexion of Mr. Robert
Lambert.
"My lad," said the money-lender, failing to perceive that he was
addressing one of the worst kind of man in all romance, "I've lost my
way. I want to get to the house of Tullispaith. Which is the road?"
"There is no road; and it's eight miles away," said Tinker, knitting
his brow into the gloomy and forbidding frown of a robber baron.
"Eight miles! What am I to do? Where is the nearest place I can get a
conveyance?"
"It would be a twenty-mile drive if you got a cart, and there's no cart
nearer than Ardrochan, and that's six miles away."
"Well, then, a horse, or a pony, and a guide?"
"You could get a pony at Hamish Beg's; and one of his sons could guide
you."
"Where does he live? How can I get there?"
"Three miles the other side of that tower."
"Will you show me the way? I'll give you--I'll give you half-a-crown."
"Hildebrand Anne of Ardrochan is not the hired varlet of every
wandering chapster," said Tinker with a splendid air.
"I'm not a wandering chapster," said the money-lender. "I'm a
gentleman of London. I'll give you five shillings--half a sovereign--a
pound!"
"The offer of money to one in whose veins flows the proudest blood of
the North is an insult!" said Tinker in a terrible voice.
"No offence! No offence!" said Mr. Lambert, cursing what he believed
to be the penniless Highland pride under his breath.
Suddenly Tinker saw his way. "From the top of yon tower I can show you
the path to Hamish Beg's. Follow me," he said, turned his pony, and
led the way up the hill with a sinister air.
With a groan, the money-lender, quite unobservant of the sinister air,
breasted the ascent. He set down his rifle by the door of the tower,
and followed Tinker up the ladders.
"You see those two pine trees between those two far hills?" said Tinker.
Mr. Lambert drew round his field-glasses, and after long fumbling,
focussed them on the pines. "Well?" he said.
There was no answer; he turned to his angel guide, and found himself
alone on the tower. He ran to the top of the ladder and looked down.
At the bottom stood Tinker regarding him with an excellent sardonic
smile: "Ha! ha!" he cried in a gruff, triumphant voice,
"Trapped--trapped!" And he turned on his heel.
The money-lender heard the door slam and the key turn in the lock. He
ran to the parapet, and saw Tinker mounting his pony with an easy grace
and the air of one who has performed a meritorious action.
"Hi! Hullo! What are you up to?" cried Mr. Lambert.
"Foul extortioner! Your crimes have found you out! You have consigned
many a poor soul to the dungeon, it is your turn now," said Tinker with
admirable grandiloquence. Then, dropping to his ordinary voice, he
added plaintively: "Of course it's not really a dungeon; it ought to be
underground--with rats. But we must make the best of it."
"Look here, my lad," said Mr. Lambert thickly. "I don't want any of
your silly games! I shall be late enough home as it is. You unlock
that door, and show me the way to this Beg's at once! D'ye hear?"
Tinker laughed a good scornful laugh. "Lambert of London," he said,
returning to the romantic vein, "to-night reflect on your misdeeds.
To-morrow we will treat of your ransom. Hans Breithelm and Jorgan
Schwartz, ye answer for this caitiff's safe keeping with your heads! I
charge ye watch him well. To horse, my brave men. We ride to
Ardrochan!" And he turned his pony.
[Illustration: "To-night reflect on your misdeeds. To-morrow we will
treat of your ransom."]
The money-lender broke into threats and abuse; then, as the pony drew
further away, he passed to entreaties. Tinker never turned his head;
he rode on, brimming with joyous triumph; he had a real prisoner.
Mr. Lambert shouted after him till he was hoarse, he shouted after him
till his voice was a wheezy croak. Tinker passed out of sight without
a glance back, and, for a while, that iron-hearted, inexorable man of
many loans, sobbed like a child with mingled rage and fear. Then he
scrambled down the ladder, and tried the door. There was no chance of
his bursting it open; that was a feat far beyond his strength; and
though he might have worked the rusted bars out of the window, he could
never have forced his rotundity through it. Then he bethought himself
of passers-by, and hurried to the top of the tower. There was no one
in sight. He shouted and shouted till he lost his voice again; the
echoes died away among the empty hills. He leaned upon the parapet
waiting, with the faintest hope that the diabolical boy would tire of
his joke, return, and set him free. Again and again he asked himself
who was this boy who had recognised him in this Scotch desert.
The dusk gathered till he could not see a hundred yards from the tower.
Then he came down, struck a match, and examined the bottom room; it was
being borne in upon him that he was destined to spend the night in it.
It was some twelve feet square, and the stone floor was clean. In one
corner was a pile of heather; but there was no way of stopping up the
window, and the night was setting in chill.
He went back to the top of the tower; it was dark now. He shouted
again. The conviction of the hopelessness of his plight was taking a
strong hold upon him, and he was growing hungry. He stamped wearily
round the top of the tower to warm his chilling body, pondering a
hundred futile plans of escape, breaking off to consign to perdition
the deceptive angel child, and meditating many different revenges. At
the end of an hour he went down the ladder, and flung himself on the
pile of heather in a paroxysm of despair.
Till nearly ten o'clock he went now and again to the top of the tower,
and shouted. He was beginning to grow very hungry. At ten o'clock he
buried himself in the heather, and slept for an hour. He awoke cold
and stiff, and his sensitive stomach, used to the tenderest indulgence,
was clamouring angrily. He was learning what the cold and hunger,
which, by a skilful manipulation of the laws of his adopted country, he
had been able to mete out to many foolish innocents with no grudging
hand, really were. He went to the top of the tower, and shouted
fruitlessly; he warmed himself by stamping up and down; then he came
and slept again. This was his round all the night through: snatches of
uneasy sleep, cold and hungry awakenings, shoutings, and stampings
round the top of the tower.
Meanwhile Tinker had ridden joyously home, and shown himself in such
cheerful spirits during dinner that Sir Tancred had observed him with
no little suspicion, wondering if it could really be that he had found
opportunities of mischief even in a deer-forest. After dinner Tinker
went into the kitchen, where he found Hamish Beg supping. He talked to
him for a while, on matters of sport; then he said, "I say, you told me
about the headless woman and the red-headed man with his throat cut, at
the Deil's Den, but you never told me about the man in brown who shouts
and waves from the top of the tower, and when you come to it, it's
empty."
Hamish, the cook, and the two maids burst into a torrent of
exclamations in their strange language. "Yes," said Tinker, "a man in
brown who shouts and waves from the top of the tower, and when you come
to it, no one's there."
He kept his story to this, and presently came back to his father,
assured that the more loudly Mr. Lambert yelled, and the more wildly he
waved, the further would any inhabitant of Ardrochan fly from the
Deil's Den. He went to bed in a gloating joy, which kept him awake a
while; and it was during those wakeful moments that a memory of "Monte
Cristo" suggested that he should gain a practical advantage from what
had so far been merely an act of abstract justice.
It was past eleven when Tinker came riding over the hills at the head
of his merry, but imaginary men. Horribly hungry, but warmed by the
sun to a quite passable malignity, the money-lender watched his coming
from the top of the tower, pondering how to catch him and thrash him
within an inch of his life. He did not know that far more active men
than he had cherished vainly that arrogant ambition, but Tinker's
cheerful and confident air afforded little encouragement to his purpose.
"Halt!" cried the robber baron, reining up his pony. "Hans and Jorgan,
is your captive safe? Good. Bring him forth." He turned to his
invisible band. "To your quarters, varlets! I would confer alone with
the usurious"--he rolled the satisfying word finely off his
tongue--"rogue."
Hand on hip he sat, and watched his merry figments dismount and lead
away their horses.
He turned, and frowned splendidly on the prisoner. "What think ye of
our hospitality, Lambert of London?" he said.
Mr. Lambert scowled; his emotion was too deep for words.
Suddenly Tinker dropped the robber baron, and became his frank and
engaging self: "I'm sorry to be so late," he said with a charming air
of apology, "but I had to send a message to Tullispaith to say that you
would not be back till Saturday, or perhaps Monday."
"What!" screamed Mr. Lambert. "What do you mean?"
"Well, I didn't want them to hunt for you. I'm going to keep you here
till you do what I want," said Tinker with a seraphic smile.
"You young rascal! You mean to try and keep me here!" screamed Mr.
Lambert, jumping about in a light, but ungainly fashion. "Oh, I'll
teach you! I'll make you repent this till your dying day! You think
you can keep me here! You shall see. The first shepherd, the first
keeper who passes will let me out. And I won't rest"--and he swore an
oath quite unfit for boyish ears--"till I've hunted you down!"
"No one will come within a mile of the Deil's Den," said the unruffled
Tinker. "It's haunted by a headless woman and a redheaded man with his
throat cut. But perhaps you've seen them. Besides, I've told them
that there's a man in brown who shouts and waves, and then disappears
when anyone comes to the tower. Why, if they see you, they'll run for
their lives." He spoke with a convicting quietness.
Mr. Lambert doubled up over the parapet in a gasping anguish.
"You're not going to leave here till you give me a letter for your
clerk, telling him to hand over Sir Tancred Beauleigh's promissory
note," said Tinker.
Mr. Lambert rejected the suggestion in extravagant language.
"You bandy words with me!" cried the Baron Hildebrand Anne of
Ardrochan. "Lambert of London, beware! Think, rash rogue, on your
grinders! Hans and Jorgan, prepare the red-hot pincers! You have a
quarter of an hour to reflect, Lambert."
He flung himself off his pony, tethered it, strode down to the spring
which trickled out of the hillside some forty yards away, and came back
bearing a big jug full of water.
Mr. Lambert watched him in a bursting fury, at whiles scanning the
empty hills with a raging eye. Suddenly light dawned on him: "Are you
the boy who stole the flying-machine?" he cried.
"You mind your own business!" said Tinker tartly; it was his cherished
belief that he had borrowed the flying-machine.
Mr. Lambert understood at last with whom he had to deal; and the
knowledge was not cheering. His angry stomach clamoured at him to come
to terms, but his greed was still too strong for it.
"The time is up, Lambert of London!" said Tinker presently, very
sternly. "Will you ransom your base carcase?"
The money-lender turned his back on him with a lofty dignity.
"Ha! ha! Hunger shall tame that proud spirit!" said the Baron of
Ardrochan.
Suddenly the money-lender heard the door opened, and he dashed for the
ladder. He scrambled down it in time to hear the key turn again, but
the jug of water stood inside. He took it up and drank a deep draught.
He had not known that he was so thirsty, never dreamed that water could
be so appetising. He heard Tinker summon his men, and when he came
back to the top of the tower, he was riding away. He watched him go
with a sinking heart, and, since he was so empty, it had a good depth
to sink to. Twice he opened his mouth to call him back, but greed
prevailed.
The day wore wearily through. His spoilt stomach was now raving at him
in a savage frenzy. Now and again he shouted, but less often as the
afternoon drew on, for he knew surely that it was hopeless.
As the dusk fell, he found himself remembering Tinker's words about the
headless woman and the redheaded man, and began to curse his folly in
not having come to terms. At times his hunger was a veritable anguish.
This night was a thousand times worse than the night before. His
hunger gave him little rest, and he awoke from his brief sleep in fits
of abject terror, fancying that the redheaded man was staring in
through the window; he saw his gashed throat quite plainly. He grew
colder and colder, for he was too faint with hunger to stamp about the
top of the tower. Later he must have grown delirious, for he saw the
headless woman climbing up the ladder to the second story. It must
have been delirium, for the figure he saw wore an ordinary nightrail,
whereas the lady of the legend wore a russet gown. Some years later,
as it seemed to him, the dawn came. It grew warmer; and he huddled
into the pile of heather and slept.
He was awakened by a shout of "Lambert of London, awake!" and tottering
to the window, groaning, he beheld a cold grouse, a three-pound chunk
of venison, two loaves, and a small bottle of whiskey neatly set out on
a napkin. His mouth opened and shut, and opened and shut.
"The letter, rogue! Are you going to give me the letter?" shouted the
Baron Hildebrand Anne fiercely.
Mr. Lambert tore himself from the window, and flung himself down on the
heather, sobbing. "Fourteen hundred and fifty pounds!" he moaned,
"Fourteen hundred and fifty pounds!--and costs!" Suddenly his wits
cleared . . . What a fool he'd been! . . . Why shouldn't he give the
boy the letter, and wire countermanding his instructions? . . . Oh, he
had been a fool!
He hurried to the window, and cried, "Yes, yes, I'll give it you! Give
me the paper. I've got a fountain pen!"
"You'd better have a drink of whiskey first; your hand will be too
shaky to write your usual handwriting," said the thoughtful Tinker,
handing him the bottle along with the note-paper.
Mr. Lambert took a drink, and indeed it steadied his hand. Sure that
he could make it useless, he wrote a careful and complete letter, lying
at full length on the floor, his only possible writing table.
He scrambled up, and thrust it through the window, crying, "Here you
are! Let me out!"
Tinker spelled the letter carefully through, and put it into another
letter he had already prepared to send to Sir Tancred's solicitors.
Then he handed the money-lender a thick venison sandwich, cut while he
had been writing.
The tears ran down Mr. Lambert's face as his furious jaws bit into it.
"Don't wolf it!" said Tinker sternly. "Starving men should feed
slowly."
Mr. Lambert had no restraint; he did wolf it. Then he asked for more.
"In a quarter of an hour," said Tinker, and he gave him nothing sooner
for all his clamorous entreaties.
After a second sandwich the money-lender was another man, and Tinker,
seeing that he was not ill, said, "I must be going; I have a long ride
to post this letter"; and he began to hand in the rest of the food
through the window.
"Be careful not to eat it all up at once," he said. "It's got to last
you till to-morrow."
"What's this! What's this!" cried Mr. Lambert. "You promised to
release me when you got the letter!"
"When I get the promissory note, or when my father's solicitor gets it.
I've told him to wire."
The money-lender snarled like a dog; his brilliant idea had proved of
no good. He stormed and stormed; Tinker was cheerful, but indifferent.
He thrust a rug he had brought with him through the window, summoned
his phantom band, and rode away.
Mr. Lambert spent a gloomy, but, thanks to the soothing of his stomach,
a not uncomfortable day. He was very sad that he had lost the chance
of swindling Sir Tancred Beauleigh out of 1450 pounds; and his sadness
and an occasional twinge of rheumatism filled him with thoughts of
revenge. Slowly he formed a plan of disabling Tinker by an unexpected
kick when he opened the door, thrashing him within an inch of his life,
riding off on his pony, and leaving him helpless, to starve or not,
according as he might be found. This plan was a real comfort to him.
He passed an unhaunted night; and next morning Tinker brought him more
food. For some hours he played at robber baron, and now and again held
conversations about the money-lender with his band. None of them
contained compliments. Mr. Lambert watched him with a sulky malignity,
and matured his plan.
The next morning he awoke late, but very cheerful at the prospect of
freedom and revenge. He came to the window rubbing his hands joyfully,
and saw a little parcel hanging from the bars. He opened it, and found
the key of the door, a little compass, and a letter. Swearing at his
vanished chance of revenge, he opened it; it ran:
Fly at once. Steer N. E. for Tulyspathe. Hamish believes you are
uncanny, and has molded a silver bullet out of a half crown to lay your
resless spirrit with. His rifel is oldfashuned, but he will not miss
and waist the half crown he is so thriffty.
A SEKRET WORNER.
Mr. Lambert steered N.E. at once; he went not like the wind, but as
much like the wind as his soft, short legs would carry him. He scanned
every bush and gully with fearful eyes; he gave every thicket a wide
berth, and every time he saw Hamish, and he saw him behind a thousand
bushes and boulders, he shouted: "I'm Mr. Lambert from London, I'm not
a spirit!"
It was, indeed, a wasted and dirty money-lender who reached Tullispaith
late in the day. He had but one thought in his mind, to fly
immediately after dinner from this expansive and terrifying country.
He wired to his guests not to come; he discharged his servants; and as
he crossed the border next day, he bade farewell to the stern and wild
Caledonia in a most impressive malediction.
When Sir Tancred Beauleigh received his lawyer's letter containing the
promissory note, he was not a little bewildered; Tinker was quick to
enlighten him; and he heard that angel child's explanation of his
application of mediaeval German methods to a modern monetary difficulty
with a grateful astonishment.
CHAPTER NINE
TINKER INTERVENES
Sir Tancred lingered on at Ardrochan Lodge, for he saw that in that
strong air Tinker was losing the last of the delicacy which had been
the effect of his attack of scarlet fever. And when Lord Crosland and
two other men joined him there, he was very well contented. The others
shared his content; Tinker, more and more the Baron Hildebrand of
Ardrochan, was quite happy, and there they stayed till the Scotch
winter came down on them in all its fell severity.
Then they moved southwards to Melton Mowbray, and hunted till the frost
put an end to that sport. On the third night of the frost, as they
were cutting for partners for a fresh rubber of bridge, Lord Crosland
said: "I tell you what, Beauleigh, the sooner we get out of this
weather the better. Let's be off to Monte Carlo, make up a pool, and
try that system of yours."
"It's a very good idea," said Sir Tancred. "The only question is
whether the English winter isn't good for Tinker. It's hardening, you
know."
"Always Tinker," said Lord Crosland with a smile. "I tell you what,
Nature ought to have made you a woman: what a splendid mother you'd
have made!"
"I think she'd have found she'd made a pretty bad mistake," said Sir
Tancred.
"Besides," said Lord Crosland, "the Admirable is as hard as a tenpenny
nail as it is. I've never seen the little beggar tired yet; and I've
seen him at the end of some hardish days."
"Well, we'll see," said Sir Tancred. "We're partners." And the game
went on.
Next morning he asked Tinker if he would like to go to the south of
France, or stay and be hardened. Tinker thought a while, made up his
mind that his father would like to go to the South of France, and said,
"I think I'm hard enough, sir,--to go on with. Besides,
"When the wind is in the East
It's neither fit for man nor beast.
In fact it shrivels me up. I should like some sunshine."
"Then we will go," said Sir Tancred.
Accordingly, the middle of the next week found them lodged at the Hôtel
des Princes, Monte Carlo, enjoying the nourishing sunshine of the
Riviera. At least Tinker was enjoying it; the demands of a system
required his father and Lord Crosland to spend most of their day in the
darker, though hardly cooler air of the Temple of Fortune. But the
system went well, and they did not repine.
The first time he dined in the restaurant of the hotel, Sir Tancred was
disagreeably surprised to see sitting at a neighbouring table his
loathed uncle, Sir Everard Wigram. They had met now and again during
the past nine years; but as such a meeting had always resulted in some
severe wound to the Baronet's dignity, he shunned his nephew like the
pest, and abused him from a distance. At the same table sat a
charming, peach-complexioned English girl. After a careful scrutiny of
her, Sir Tancred decided that she must be his cousin Claire, Sir
Everard's eldest child, and admitted with a very grudging reluctance
that even the rule that thorns do not produce grapes is proved by
exceptions. The third person at their table was a handsome young man,
with glossy black hair, a high-coloured, florid face, and a roving
black eye. Sir Tancred's gaze rested on him with a malicious
satisfaction; he knew all about Mr. Arthur Courtnay.
Presently Lord Crosland's eye fell on that table. "Hullo!" he said
sharply. "How on earth comes that bounder Courtnay to be dining with
the Wigrams?"
"Like to like," said Sir Tancred with a surprising, cheerful animation.
A few mornings later Sir Tancred, Tinker, and Lord Crosland were
sitting in the gardens of the Temple of Fortune, and on a bench hard by
sat Claire and Courtnay. He was bending over her, talking volubly, in
a loverlike attitude, exceedingly offensive in so public a place. To
Sir Tancred's shrewd eyes he seemed to be deliberately advertising
their intimacy. She was gazing dreamily before her with happy eyes,
over the sea. Lord Crosland grew more and more fidgety; and at last he
said hotly, "You ought to interfere!"
"Not I!" said Sir Tancred. "I'm not going to interfere. I have enough
to do to keep Tinker out of mischief without acting as dry-nurse to the
children of Uncle Bumpkin."
"But hang it all, the man's a regular bad hat!" said Lord Crosland.
"He was advised to resign from the Bridge Club, and I happen to know
that he is actually wanted in London about a cheque."
"And in Paris, Berlin, Petersburg, Vienna, and Buda-Pesth. Men who
speak French as well as he does always are," said Sir Tancred. "Which
reminds me, Tinker, your accent is getting too good. The honest
English tongue was never made to speak French like a Frenchman. Let up
on it a little."
"Yes, sir," said Hildebrand Anne.
"But you ought to do something, don't you know?" said Lord Crosland.
"The child's very pretty, and nice, and sweet, and all that. It would
be no end of a shame if she came to grief with that bounder Courtnay."
"I won't stir a finger," said Sir Tancred firmly, "for two reasons.
One, Bumpkin Wigram helped my stepmother spoil my early life; two, if
this bounder Courtnay has got round Bumpkin words would be wasted.
Bumpkin is as dense and as obstinate as any clodhopper who ever chawed
bacon."
"But she's a pretty child and worth saving," said Lord Crosland. "What
do you think, Tinker?"
"I should think she was rather inexperienced," said Hildebrand Anne,
with admirable judgment.
"Solomon, va!" said Lord Crosland, clutching the boy's ribs, and
drawing from him a sudden yell.
"Well, come along; we have a hard day's work before us," said Sir
Tancred; and the two of them rose and strolled off towards the Temple
of Fortune.
They left Tinker sitting still and thoughtful, the prey of a case of
conscience. He knew the story of his father's marriage, his separation
from his wife by the action of Lady Beauleigh and Sir Everard. He had
been trained to detest them, and to believe any revenge on them a mere
act of justice. But his dead mother was but a shadowy figure to him,
and this girl was very charming, and sweet, and kind, for he had had a
long talk with her one evening, and she had shared a box of chocolates
with him. Did those chocolates constitute the tie of bread and salt
between them which his father had taught him was so binding? He wished
to help the girl, therefore he made up his mind that they did. With a
sigh of satisfaction he rose, sauntered up to the absorbed lovers, and
began to parade up and down before them. His nearness put something of
a check on the eloquence of Mr. Arthur Courtnay, and every time
Tinker's shadow fell on them he looked up and frowned.
At last he said, "Go away, my lad, and play somewhere else."
"I don't want any cheek from a hairdresser's assistant," said Tinker
with blithe readiness.
There is nothing so wounding as the truth, and Courtnay knew that he
was weak about the hair; he never could bring himself to keep it
properly cropped; it was so glossy. His florid face became quickly
florider, and he cried, "You impudent young dog!"
"Do not speak to me until you've been introduced. You're always
forcing your acquaintance upon someone, Roland Macassar," said Tinker.
It was again the wounding truth; and Courtnay sprang up and dashed for
him. Tinker bolted round a group of shrubs, Courtnay after him.
Finding him unpleasantly quick on his feet Tinker bolted into the
shrubs. Courtnay plunged after him right into a well-grown specimen of
the flowering cactus. It brought him up short. He began to swear, and
though he could have sworn with equal fluency and infelicity in French,
German, or Italian, in the depth of his genuine emotion he returned to
the tongue of his boyhood, and swore in English. When he came out of
the shrubs, adorned on one side of his face and both hands with neat
little beads of blood, he found that Claire had risen from her seat,
and was looking shocked, surprised, and worst of all, disgusted. He
did not mend matters much by mixing his apologies with threats of
vengeance on Tinker; but his temper, once out of control, was not
easily curbed. He made a most unfortunate impression on her; the beads
of blood scarcely excited her pity at all.
Meanwhile Tinker had taken advantage of his pursuer's meeting with the
cactus to leave the terrace swiftly. He went back to the Hôtel des
Princes, and took out Blazer for a walk, and as he walked, his
seraph-like face glowed with the pleasantest complacency. Blazer did
not like Monte Carlo at all; for him there was no sport and little
exercise in it; Tinker liked it very much. He had made many friends in
it, and enjoyed many amusements, the chief a pleasant, perpetual war
against the heavy, liveried guardians of the gambling rooms. It was
his opinion that people came to Monte Carlo to gamble; it was the
opinion of the Société des Bains de Mer de Monte Carlo that children
ought not to be admitted to the tables. They asserted their opinion;
and Tinker asserted his, with the result that his bolt into the Salles
de Jeu and his difficult extrication from them by the brawny, but
liveried officials was fast becoming one of the events of the day.
Sometimes Tinker would make his bolt from the outermost portal;
sometimes, with the decorous air of one going to church, he would join
the throng filing into the concert room, and bolt from the midst of it.
The process of expulsion was always conducted with the greatest
courtesy on either side; for his bolt had become an agreeable variety
in the monotonous lives of the guardians; they never knew when or in
what fashion it would come next.
Now he had another occupation, the shadowing of Mr. Arthur Courtnay.
That florid Adonis never grew used to hearing a gentle voice singing
softly:
"Get your hair cut! Get your hair cut!"
or,
"Oh, Tatcho! Oh, Tatcho!
Rejoice, ye bald and weary men!
You'll soon be regular hairy men!
Sing! Rejoice! Let your voices go!
Sprinkle some on your cranium!
What, ho! Tatcho!"
The poetry was vulgar; but long ago his insight into the heart of man
had taught Tinker to attack the vulgar with the only weapon effective
against them, vulgarity.
Sooner or later, whether he was walking, or sitting with Claire, those
vulgar strains would be wafted to Mr. Arthur Courtnay's ears, and they
injured his cause. They kept alive in the girl's mind an uneasy doubt
whether her father was right in asserting Arthur Courtnay to be one of
the nicest fellows he had ever met, a veritable gentleman of the old
school, an opinion founded on the fact that Courtnay was the only man
who had ever given two hours' close attention to his views on
Protection.
But, for all this lurking doubt, Courtnay's influence over her was
growing stronger and stronger. He was forever appealing to her pity by
telling her of the hard and lonely life he had lived since his father,
a poor gentleman of good family, had died in exile at Boulogne.
Really, his father, a stout but impecunious horse-dealer of the name of
Budgett, certainly in exile at Boulogne owing to a standing difference
with the bankruptcy laws of his country, was alive still. But Arthur
was very fond of himself, and once in the mood of self-pity, he could
invent pathetic anecdote after pathetic anecdote of his privations
which would have touched the heart of a hardened grandmother, much more
of a susceptible girl. She fell into the way of calling him "King
Arthur" to herself.
He devoted himself to winning her with an unrelaxing energy, for she
had forty thousand pounds of her own.
But he cared very little for her, and sometimes he found his
love-making hard work. She was not the type of girl whom he admired;
her delicacy irritated him; he preferred what the poet has called "an
armful of girl," buxom and hearty. Often, therefore, when she had gone
to bed, he would refresh himself by a vigorous flirtation with Madame
Séraphine de Belle-Île, a brisk and vivacious young widow, who affected
always gowns of a peculiarly vivid and searching scarlet. And this
self-indulgence proved in the end the ruin of his fine scheme of
establishing himself in life on a sound monetary basis.
Tinker was about to get into bed one evening, and found himself slow
about it. His conscience was worrying him about some duty left undone,
and he could not remember what the duty was. Of a sudden his terrible
omission flashed into his mind: in his patient application to the task
of shadowing and annoying Mr. Arthur Courtnay he had forgotten his
daily bolt into the gambling rooms. Reluctant, but firm, he slipped on
his pumps and went downstairs. Four minutes later the feverish
gamblers in the Salles de Jeu were gratified by the sight of a
seraph-like child in blue silk pyjamas who flew gaily round the tables
pursued by two stout and joyfully excited Southern Europeans in livery.
The pursuit was lively, but short, for Tinker ran into the arms of a
wily croupier who had slipped from his seat, and unexpectedly joined
the chase. He was handed over to his pursuers and conducted from the
rooms, amidst the plaudits of the gamblers. He bade good-night to his
liveried friends on the threshold of the Casino, congratulating them on
their increasing efficiency in "Le Sport," and warm, but happy with the
sense of one more duty done, he strolled into the gardens to cool.
[Illustration: The pursuit was lively, but short.]
He was noiseless in his pumps, and coming quietly round a clump of
shrubs, he caught Mr. Arthur Courtnay in the act of trying to kiss
Madame de Belle-Île with a fervour only justified by the most romantic
attachment.
"Oh!" said Tinker reproachfully; and even more reproachfully he began
to sing:
"Coupez vos cheveux! Coupez vos cheveux!"
With an execration which was by no means muttered, Mr. Arthur Courtnay
sprang up. Tinker darted away, and Courtnay followed. They pelted
through the gardens, Courtnay gaining; but as he passed a couple of
gendarmes standing in front of the Casino, Tinker yelled: "Gare le
voyou! Gare le voyou!" Instinctively the gendarmes flung themselves
before Courtnay, and his impetus brought the three of them to the
ground with some violence.
With one fleeting glance behind, Tinker scudded on to the hotel, and
once safely in his room abandoned himself without restraint to
convulsions of inextinguishable delight. When he recovered his
habitual calm, he saw that Fortune had given him a weapon with which he
might save his cousin.
Mr. Arthur Courtnay and the gendarmes picked themselves up; he made his
explanations, and wisely compensated them for the bruises they had
received in his fall. Then giving no more thought to Madame de
Belle-Île, who sat awaiting him eagerly, he returned gloomily to his
hotel, reflecting on the carelessness which had delivered him into the
hands of an indefatigable imp of mischief. The upshot of his
reflection was a resolve to press his wooing to an immediate
conclusion. The next day and the day after, therefore, he redoubled
his lamentations that the smallness of his means prevented him from
going, as his natural honesty dictated, straight to Claire's father,
and asking for her hand, and protested that he dare not risk the loss
of her, which would work irreparable havoc in his life. It was only
another step to suggest that, once they were married, her father's
strong liking for him would soon bring about their forgiveness. He
pressed and pressed these points, pausing at times to declare the
vastness of his affection for her, until at last, against her better
judgment, and in spite of a lurking distrust of him, of which she could
not rid herself, she yielded to his persistence and the overwhelming
influence of his stronger personality, and consented to elope with him.
Two days later, as Tinker, Sir Tancred, and Lord Crosland were at
déjeuner, Claire and Courtnay passed them on their way to the gardens.
"I shouldn't wonder if those two ran away together," said Lord
Crosland; and his cheerful face fell gloomy.
"They have the air," said Sir Tancred coolly.
"Look here, you ought to interfere, don't you know? You ought,
really," said Lord Crosland, who had fallen under the fascination of
Claire's fresh charm.
"Why don't _you_?" said Sir Tancred.
"Well," said Lord Crosland uncomfortably, "I did go to Sir Everard, and
tell him to keep an eye on Courtnay; and he as good as told me to go
to--Jericho."
"Just like Bumpkin," said Sir Tancred contemptuously. "I'll bet you a
fiver they bolt to-night--by the train _des décavés_."
"I don't want to bet about it," said Lord Crosland very gloomily.
Their talk made Tinker thoughtful. It would have been easy enough to
settle the matter by revealing Courtnay's injudicious display of
affection towards Madame de Belle-Île, but that was not Tinker's way.
He had a passion for keeping things in his own hands, and a pretty eye
for dramatic possibilities. Besides, he had taken a great dislike to
Courtnay, and was eager to make his discomfiture signal.
At half-past four in the afternoon he knocked at the door of Madame de
Belle-Île's suite of rooms, and her maid conducted so prominent a
figure in Monte Carlo society straight to her mistress.
Madame de Belle-Île, having just changed from a bright scarlet costume
into a brighter, was taking her afternoon tea before returning to the
tables.
"Bonjour, Monsieur le Vaurien," she said with a bright smile. "Have
you at last succeeded in gambling?"
"No; it would be no pleasure to me to gamble unless your bright eyes
were shining on the table," said Tinker with a happy recollection of a
compliment he had overheard.
"Farceur! Va!" said the lady with a pleased smile.
"I came to ask if you would like to sup with Mr. Courtnay to-night?"
said the unscrupulous Tinker.
"Ah, le bel Artur!" cried the lady. "But with pleasure. Where?"
"Oh, in the restaurant of the hotel," said Tinker.
The lady's face fell a little; she would have preferred to sup in a
less public place, one more suited to protestations of devotion.
"At about eleven?" she said.
"At half past," said Tinker. "And I think he'd like a note from you
accepting--it--it would please him, I'm sure. He--he--could take it
out, and look at it, you know." It was a little clumsy; but, though he
had thought it out carefully, it was the best that he could do.
"You think so? What a lot we know about these things!" said Madame de
Belle-Île with a pleased laugh; and she went forthwith to the
écritoire, and in ten minutes composed the tenderest of billets-doux.
Tinker received it from her with a very lively satisfaction, and after
a few bonbons, and a desultory chat with her, escorted her down to the
Casino.
The rest of the day seemed very long to his impatience, while to
Claire, harassed by vague doubt and real dread, it seemed exceedingly
short. When the hour for action came, she braced herself, by an
effort, to play her part; but it was with a sinking heart that she
stole, thickly veiled, and bearing a small hand-bag, out of the hotel
and down to the station. She was far too troubled to notice that she
was followed by two guardian angels in the shape of a small boy and a
brindled bull-terrier.
Courtnay met her on the top of the steps which lead down to the
station; and when she found him in a most inharmonious mood of triumph,
she began, even so early, to repent of her rashness. Then went down to
the station as the train _des décavés_, the train of the stony-broke,
steamed in; and they settled themselves in an empty first-class
compartment. Her heart seemed to sink to her shoes as she felt the
train move. Then the door opened, and, hauling the panting Blazer by
the scruff of his neck, Tinker tumbled into the carriage.
Claire gave a great gasp of relief: the sight of him gave her a faint
hope of escape; his presence was a respite. Tinker lifted Blazer on to
the seat between him and Courtnay, crying cheerfully, "I thought I'd
just missed you! I've got a note for you from Madame de Belle-Île, and
I knew she'd never forgive me if I didn't give it to you!"
Courtnay's florid face had already lost a little colour at the mere
intrusion of his inveterate persecutor that alone presaged disaster; at
his words his eyes displayed a lively, but uncomfortable tendency to
start out of his head. "I don't know what you mean!" he stuttered. "I
don't know Madame de Belle-Île!"
"You don't know Madame de Belle-Île!" cried Tinker in well-affected
amazement and surprise. "Why, only three nights ago I saw you trying
to kiss her in the gardens!"
"It's a lie!" roared Courtnay.
"The Beauleighs don't lie," said Tinker curtly.
For the moment, breathless with rage, Courtnay could find no words, and
Claire, very pale, stared from one to the other with startled,
searching eyes.
"At any rate, here's her letter," said Tinker stiffly, holding it out
over Blazer's back.
Claire stooped swiftly forward and took the letter. "I am the person
to read that letter," she said with a spirit Courtnay had never dreamed
of in her. "It is my right!"
She tore it open, and had just time to read "Mon Artur adoré," when
Courtnay, with a growl of rage, snatched it from her, and tore it into
pieces, crying, "I will not have you victimised by this mischievous
young dog! It's an absurd imposition! I claim your trust!"
But the doubt of him which had lurked always in the bottom of Claire's
heart had sprung to sudden strength; she looked at him with eyes that
were veritably chilling in their coldness, and, turning to Tinker, she
said, "Is it true?"
"It is--on my honour," said Tinker.
There was a quivering movement in Claire's throat as she choked down a
sob: she rose, and walked down the carriage to the seat opposite
Tinker, farthest from Courtnay. Slowly collecting his wits, Courtnay
grew eloquent and ran through the whole gamut of the emotions proper to
the occasion: honourable indignation, and passion so deep as to be
ready to forgive even this heart-breaking distrust. She listened to
him in silence with an unchanging face, her lips set thin, her sombre
eyes gazing straight before her.
Suddenly despair seized Courtnay, and he gave the rein to the fury
which he had been repressing with such difficulty. "At any rate, I'll
be even with you, you young dog!" he cried savagely. "I'm going to
throw you out of the train!"
"Oh, no; you're not!" said Tinker pleasantly. "By the time you've
thrown Blazer out there won't be enough of you left to throw me out."
Courtnay jumped up with a demonstrative hostility; Tinker hissed; with
an angry snarl Blazer drew in his tongue and put out his teeth, and
Courtnay sat down. For a while he was silent, seeking for an object to
vent his rage on; they could hear him grinding his teeth. Then he
burst out at Claire, taunting, jeering, and abusing.
"That's enough!" cried Tinker angrily. "Pstt! Pstt! At him, Blazer!
At him!"
For a few seconds Courtnay tried fighting, but his upbringing in France
had not fitted him to cope with a heavy bull-terrier. When the train
ran into the station at Nice, he was out on the footboard, on the
further side, yelling lustily.
"Come on quick, before there's a fuss!" cried Tinker, catching up
Claire's handbag, and opening the door. They jumped down, Tinker
whistled Blazer, and the three of them bustled along the platform.
"I've no ticket!" gasped Claire, who every moment expected Courtnay to
be upon them.
"I thought of that! I've got one for you!" said Tinker; and before
Courtnay had quite realised that the train had stopped, they were out
of the station.
Tinker hurried his charge along the line of fiacres, and stopped at a
victoria and pair.
"Holà, cocher!" he said. "From the Couronne d'Or? Wired for to drive
a lady and a boy to Monte Carlo?"
"Oui, monsieur!" cried the driver, gaily cracking his whip.
They scrambled in; and the horses stepped out. Tinker knelt on the
seat, looking back over the hood. They were almost out of sight of the
station when he fancied that he saw a hatless figure run out of it into
the road. It might have been only fancy; they were so far off he could
not trust his sight. Three minutes later he dropped down on the seat
with a sigh of relief. "That's all right!" he said.
"Oh," said Claire, "how can I ever thank you? You've saved me--oh,
what haven't you saved me from!"
"A bad hat--a regular bad hat," said Tinker gravely.
"You wonderful boy!" she cried, threw her arms around his neck and
kissed him.
Tinker wriggled uncomfortably. He often wished that there were not
quite so many women in the world who insisted on embracing him.
"Well, you're a kind of cousin, you see," he said by way of defence.
After a while Claire cooled from her excitement to the cold
understanding of her folly. Then she grew, very naturally, bitterly
unhappy, and to his horror Tinker heard the sound of a stifled sob.
"I think, if you'll excuse me," he said hurriedly, "I'll go to sleep."
And, happily for his comfort, his pretence at slumber was soon a
reality. It was no less a comfort to Claire: she had her cry out, and
felt the better for it.
When the carriage drew up before the Hôtel des Princes, they found an
excited group about the doorway. Sir Everard Wigram was the centre of
it, raging and lamenting. He had missed his daughter, and with his
usual good sense was taking all the world into his confidence. Lord
Crosland and Sir Tancred stood on one side; and it is to be feared that
Sir Tancred was enjoying exceedingly the distress of his enemy.
"Leave the bag to me! I'll give it to you to-morrow," whispered Tinker
as the horses stopped. "Say we've been for a drive. I shan't split!"
As Claire stepped out of the carriage, her father rushed up to her,
crying, "What does this mean? Where have you been? What have you been
doing?"
"Oh," said Claire coolly, raising her voice that all the curious group
might hear, "I've been for a drive with Cousin Hildebrand. I couldn't
find you to tell you I was going." And taking out her purse, she
stepped forward to pay the coachman.
Tinker, keeping the bag as low as he could, slipped through the group.
Lord Crosland hurried after him, and caught him by the shoulder.
"Where have you really been?" he said. "What happened? Where's
Courtnay?"
"I've been for a drive with my cousin," said Tinker, looking up at him
with eyes of a limpid frankness.
"Ah, let's see what you've got in that bag."
"Can't. It's locked," said Tinker shortly.
"Well, never mind. I owe you fifty pound," said Lord Crosland joyfully.
Tinker stopped short and his face grew very bright. "Do you?" he said.
"I think I should like it in gold--a fiver at a time."
CHAPTER TEN
TINKER'S FOUNDLING
On the following afternoon Tinker met Madame de Belle-Île hurrying out
of the hotel in a scarlet travelling costume.
At the sight of him she stopped short and cried, "Have you heard the
sad news?"
"No; what sad news?" said Tinker.
"About poor Monsieur Courtnay! He has had an accident; he is laid up
at Nice, ill among strangers! I go; I fly to nurse him!"
"Nurse that brute!" said Tinker quickly. "That--that is a waste of
kindness."
Madame de Belle-Île's face fell, and then flushed with anger. "You are
a horrid and detestable boy!" she cried angrily.
"Oh, no! I'm not! It's quite true," said Tinker quietly, and he
looked at her seriously. He wanted to warn her; then he saw that he
could not do so without revealing Claire's secret. "I wish I could
tell you about him," he went on. "But I can't. He really is a sweep!"
"You are an impertinent little wretch!" she said, and left him.
"Au revoir," said Tinker gently.
But she only tossed her head, and hurried on. Yet Tinker's honest
expression of opinion had impressed her: she had a belief in the
instinct of children generally and, like most people who came into
contact with him, she had a strong belief in the instinct of Tinker.
She tried to forget his words; but they kept recurring to her, and in
spite of herself, unconsciously, they put her on her guard.
Tinker watched her out of sight, then he had half a thought of telling
Claire that she had gone to Courtnay, doubtless at his summons. But he
saw quickly that there was no need, and dismissed the thought from his
mind. Also, he kept out of his cousin's way for some days; he had a
feeling that,--however grateful she might be to him, the sight of him,
reminding her of how badly Courtnay had behaved, would be unpleasant to
her.
However, he watched her from a distance, and saw that she was pale and
listless. Then he saw with great pleasure that Lord Crosland contrived
to be with her a good deal, that he even neglected the system for her.
But for all this pleasure, he was not quite easy in his mind; the
knowledge that he had done his grand-uncle Bumpkin the service of
saving him from such a son-in-law as Courtnay was a discomfort to him:
he felt that this was a matter which must be set right, and he kept his
eyes open for a chance. He looked, too, for the return of Courtnay and
Madame de Belle-Île; but the days passed and they did not return.
One morning he found himself in an unhappy mood. It seemed to him that
his wits had come to a standstill; for three days no new mischief had
come the way of his idle hands, and his regular, dally, mischievous
practices had grown so regular as almost to have acquired the
tastelessness of duties. The peculiar brightness and gaiety of Monte
Carlo life had begun to pall upon him. Loneliness was eating into his
soul; for of all the French boys who paraded the gardens of the Temple
of Fortune, he could make nothing. Their costumes, which were of
velvet and satin and lace, revolted him; their lack of spirit, their
distaste for violent movement, their joy in parading their revolting
costumes filled him with wondering contempt. As for the little French
girls, he was at any time uninterested in girls; and these
spindle-shanked precocities walked on two-inch heels, and tried to
fascinate him with the graces of mature coquettes. His careful
politeness was hard put to it to conceal his distaste for their
conversation. Possibly he was hankering after a healthier life; but at
any rate he, who was generally so full of energy, had mooned listlessly
about the gardens all the morning, with a far-away look in his eyes,
and the air of a strayed seraph.
During his mooning about he had passed several times a little girl who
looked English. She sat on a seat in the far corner--a strange, shy,
timid child, watching with a half-frightened wonder the
strikingly-dressed women and children who strolled up and down,
chattering shrilly. He gave her but indifferent glances as he passed;
but, thanks to his father's careful training of his natural gift of
observation, the indifferent glance of that child of the world took in
more of a fellow-creature than most men's careful scrutiny. He saw
that she was frail and big-eyed, that her frock was ill-fitting and
shabby, her hat shabbier, her shoes ready-made, that she wore no
gloves, and that her mass of silky hair owed its unsuccessful attempts
at tidiness to her own brushing. He summed her up as that archetype of
patience, the gambler's neglected child.
Just before he went to his déjeuner, he saw that she was sitting there
still. He took that meal with his father and Lord Crosland; and
instead of hurrying off, directly he had eaten his dessert, to some
pressing and generally mischievous business, he sat listening to their
talk over their coffee and cigars, and only left them at the doors of
the Casino. He strolled along the terrace, moody and disconsolate,
able to think of nothing to amuse him, and, as he came to the end of
the gardens, he saw a group of French children gathered in front of the
seat on which the little girl was sitting, and, coming nearer, he heard
jeering cries of "Sale Anglaise! Sale Anglaise!"
In a flash Tinker's face shone with a very ecstasy of pure delight, and
he swooped down on the group. The child was clutching the arm of the
seat, and staring at her tormentors with parted lips and terrified
eyes. For their part, they were enjoying themselves to the full. They
had found a game which afforded them the maximum of pleasure, with the
minimum of effort; and just as Tinker swooped down, a cropped and
bullet-headed boy in blue velvet threw a handful of gravel into her
face. She threw up her hands and burst into tears; the children's
laughter rose to a shrill yell; and with extreme swiftness Tinker
caught the bullet-headed boy a ringing box on the right ear and another
on the left. The boy squealed, turned, clawing and kicking, on Tinker,
and, in ten seconds of crowded life, had learned the true significance
of those cryptic terms an upper-cut on the potato-trap, a hook on the
jaw, a rattler on the conk, and a buster on the mark. He lay down on
the path to digest the lesson, and his little friends fled, squealing,
away.
The little girl slipped off the seat and said "Thank you," between two
sobs.
Tinker's face was one bright, seraphic smile as he took off his hat,
and, with an admirable bow, said, "May I take you to your people?"
The bullet-headed boy rose to his feet and staggered away.
"Uncle's still in that big house," said the little girl, striving
bravely to check her sobs.
"That's a nuisance," said Tinker thoughtfully; "for we can't get at
him."
"I think he's forgotten all about me. He often does," said the little
girl, without any resentment; and she dusted the gravel off her frock.
"I might bolt in and remind him."
"They won't let us in--only grown-ups," said the little girl. "Uncle
tried to get them to let me in; but they wouldn't."
"They're used to letting me in," said Tinker--"and hauling me out
again," he added. "It brightens them up. You tell me what he's like."
Being a girl, the child was able to describe her uncle accurately: but
when she had done, Tinker shook his head:
"He must be just like a dozen other Englishmen in there," he said.
"And they wouldn't give me time to ask each one if he were your uncle."
The little girl sighed, and said, "It doesn't matter, thank you," and,
sitting down again on the seat, resumed her patient waiting, drooping
forward with eyes rather dim.
Tinker studied her face, and his keen eye told him what was wrong.
"Have you had déjeuner?" he said sharply.
"No-o-o," said the little girl reluctantly.
"Then you've had nothing since your coffee this morning?"
"No, but it doesn't matter. Uncle is rather forgetful," said the
little girl, but her lips moved at the thought of food as a hungry
child's will.
"This won't do at all! Come along with me. It's rather late, but
we'll find something."
Her face brightened for a moment; but she shook her head, and said,
"No, I mustn't go away from here. Uncle might come back, and he would
be so angry if he had to look for me."
Tinker shrugged his shoulders, turned on his heel, and was gone. She
looked after him sadly. She would have liked him to stay a little
longer; it was so nice to talk to an English boy after ten days in this
strange land; and he seemed such a nice boy. But she only drooped a
little more, and stared out over the bright sea with misty eyes,
composing herself to endure her hunger.
Tinker went swiftly to the restaurant of the Hôtel des Princes, where
the waiters greeted him with affectionate grins, and, addressing
himself to the manager, set forth his new friend's plight, and his
wishes. The manager fell in with them on the instant, only too pleased
to have the chance of obliging his most popular customer; and, in five
minutes, Tinker left the restaurant followed by a waiter bearing a tray
of dainties, all carefully chosen to tempt the appetite of a child.
They took their way to the gardens, and the little girl brightened up
at the sight of the returning Tinker. But when the waiter set the tray
on the seat, she flushed painfully, and though she could not draw her
hungry eyes away from the food, she stammered, "T-t-thank you very
m-m-much. B-b-but I haven't any money."
Tinker gave the waiter a couple of francs, and bade him come for the
tray in half an hour. Then he said cheerfully, "That's all right. The
food's paid for; and whether you eat it or not makes no difference. In
fact, you may as well."
The child looked from his face to the food and back again, wavering;
then said, with a little gasp, "Oh, I am so hungry."
Tinker took this for a consent, put some aspic of pâté de foie gras on
her plate, and watched her satisfy her hunger with great pleasure,
which was not lessened by the fact that, for all her hunger, she ate
with a delicate niceness. He had feared from her neglected air that
her manners had also been neglected. After the aspic, he carved the
breast of the chicken for her, helped her to salad, and mixed the ice
water with the _sirop_ to exactly the strength he liked himself; after
the chicken, he helped her to meringues, and after the meringues
lighted the kirsch of the _poires au kirsch_, which he had chosen
because it always pleased him to see the kirsch burn, and ate one of
the pears himself, while she ate the others. When she had finished her
little sigh of content warmed his heart.
He put the tray behind the seat, and settled down beside her for a
talk. Now that she was no longer hungry, she was no longer woebegone,
and her laugh, though faint, was so pretty that he found himself making
every effort to set her laughing. They talked about themselves with
the simple egoism of children; and he learned that her name was Elsie
Brand; that she was ten years old--nearly two years younger than
himself--that her mother had died many years ago, and that she had
lived with her father in his Devonshire parsonage by the sea till last
year, when he, too, had died. Then her Uncle Richard had taken her
away to live with him in London. Her story of her life in London
lodgings set Tinker wondering about that Uncle Richard, and piecing
together the details Elsie let fall about his late rising, his late
going to bed, his morning headache and distaste for breakfast, he came
to the conclusion that he was a bad hat who lived by his somewhat
inferior wits.
At the end of her story he tried to persuade her to come to the sea
with him and seek amusement there. But he failed; she would not leave
the seat. He gathered, indeed, from her fear of vexing her uncle that
that bad hat was in the habit of slapping her if she angered him, and,
for a breath, he was filled with a fierce indignation which surprised
him; she looked so frail. But he did not ask her if it were so, for
his delicacy forewarned him that the question would provoke a struggle
between her loyalty and her truthfulness. He entertained her,
therefore, with his reminiscences, and enjoyed to the full the
admiration and wonder which filled her face as he talked. Absorbed in
one another, they paid no heed to the passing of the hours; and the
sudden fall of twilight surprised them.
They began to speculate whether Uncle Richard had had enough of his
gambling, and would come and fetch her. But, even now, Elsie was not
impatient, so inured had she been to neglect. She only looked anxious
again. Tinker, on the other hand, was impatient, very impatient, with
Uncle Richard, whom he was disposed to regard as a gentleman in great
need of a kicking. Moreover, the chill hour after sunset, so dangerous
on that littoral, was upon them, and he considered with disquiet the
thin stuff of the child's frock.
Presently he said abruptly, "I've promised my father to wear an
overcoat during the fever hour. I must be off and get it, and a wrap
for you. You won't be frightened, if I leave you alone?"
"No," Elsie said bravely, but her tone belied the word.
"Well, walk up and down quickly, so that you don't get a chill. If you
keep near the seat, your uncle can't miss you if he comes."
"Very well," said Elsie, rising obediently. "Only--only--if you could
get back soon."
"I will," said Tinker, and he bolted for the hotel.
Elsie walked up and down, trying to feel brave, but the odd shapes
which the bushes assumed in the dim light daunted her not a little, and
she strove to drive away the fancy that she saw people lurking among
them. Tinker was gone a bare seven minutes; but to the timid child it
seemed a very long while, and she welcomed his return with a gasp of
relief.
He wore a smart, close-fitting brown racing overcoat, which reached to
his ankles; and for her he brought his fur-lined ulster.
"Here I am," he said cheerfully. "Get into this," and he held out the
ulster.
She put her arms into the sleeves, and he drew it around her and
buttoned it up.
"You are a kind boy," she said, with a little break in her voice. A
sudden strong but inexplicable impulse moved Tinker; he bent forward
and kissed her on the lips.
While you might count a score the children stood quite still, staring
at one another with eyes luminous in the starlight. Elsie's face was
one pink flush, and Tinker was scarlet.
"That--that was a very funny kiss," she said in a curious voice.
"Oh, what's a kiss?" said Tinker, with forced bravado, consumed with
boyish shame for the lapse.
"I--I--liked it," said Elsie. "No one has kissed me since father
died." And her breath seemed to catch.
"Girls like kissing," said Tinker in a tone of a dispassionate
observer. Then he seemed to thrust the matter away from him with some
eagerness: and, slipping her arm through his, he said, "Come on, let's
walk up and down."
They walked up and down, chattering away, till eight o'clock. Then he
said, "My father will be expecting me; he dines at eight. Won't you
come too?"
"No, no, thank you. I must wait for Uncle Richard; I must really."
But her arm tightened round his involuntarily.
Tinker thought a while. The gardens were brighter now. The stars were
shining with their full radiance, and the lamps were alight, so that
even their retired corner was faintly bright.
"Well, you go on walking up and down. You won't feel so lonely as
sitting still, and I'll be back as soon as I can;" he said, and off he
went.
He found his father and Lord Crosland beginning their soup, and,
sitting down, he told them of Elsie's plight. They were duly
sympathetic; and his father at once gave him leave to take some dinner
to her, and dine with her. Thereupon, after a brief but serious
conference with the manager, Tinker departed, again followed by a
waiter with a tray. Elsie had not looked for his return for a long
while; and she was indeed pleased to be so soon freed from the struggle
against her timidity.
They ate their dinner with great cheerfulness and good appetite, and
for an hour after it they chattered away happily. Then Elsie grew
drowsy, very drowsy, indeed, and presently, nestled against Tinker, she
fell asleep. Fortunately, the southern night was warm, and, in the
fur-lined ulster, she could take no harm. He sat holding her to him,
listening to her breathing, looking out over the sea, and revolving
many memories and more schemes, till, at last, the lights began to
dance before his eyes, and he, too, fell asleep.
He knew no more until he was awakened by someone shaking his arm, and
found his father and Lord Crosland standing over them.
The lamps of the Casino and the gardens were out; only the dim
starlight lighted the scene. The two children sat up and stared about
them--Elsie sleepily, Tinker wide awake.
"We've found you at last. Hasn't your little friend's uncle come for
her?" said Sir Tancred.
"No one has come," said Tinker.
Sir Tancred and Lord Crosland looked at one another.
"Desertion," murmured Lord Crosland softly.
"Well, come along," said Sir Tancred cheerfully. "We must put her up
for to-night."
The children slipped off the seat; Tinker put Elsie's arm through his,
and, holding her up when she stumbled over the long ulster, followed
his father and Lord Crosland.
There were some empty bedrooms in their corridor, and Elsie was settled
for the night in one of them.
Tinker awoke next morning, very cheerful at the thought of having a
companion to join in his amusements. He made haste to knock at Elsie's
door, and bid her come out for a swim before their coffee. She was
soon dressed and found him waiting for her. She flushed a little as
she greeted him, and he greeted her with a seraph's smile.
"I thought you'd like a bathe before our coffee," he said.
"It would be nice," said Elsie wistfully. "But my hair--it is such a
trouble, even without being wetted by sea-water."
Tinker looked at the fine silky mass of it, and said with sympathetic
seriousness, "I saw it was beyond you; but we'll manage."
He caught her hand, they ran down the stairs, out of the hotel, and
most of the way to the beach. Then he took her to a lady's
bathing-tent, and instructed the attendant to provide Elsie with the
prettiest costume she had; changed himself, and in five minutes they
were in the sea. To his joy, he found that she could swim nearly as
well as he. But he was very careful of her, and the moment she looked
cold he took her ashore.
They came back to the hotel very hungry; and Tinker led the way through
the passages at the back of the hall, down into the hotel kitchen,
where he was welcomed with affectionate joy by the kitchen staff. The
end of a long table had been laid with the finest napery and plate of
the hotel; they sat down at it, and were forthwith served with an
exquisitely cooked dish of fresh mullet, wonderful hot cakes, and
steaming cups of fragrant _café au lait_. As he breakfasted, Tinker
conversed with the chattering staff with a cheerful kindliness and a
thorough knowledge of all their private concerns, keeping Elsie
informed of the matters under discussion by such phrases as "It's
Adolphe's wife; she beats him;" or, "Lucie has consulted a
fortune-teller, who says she is going to marry a millionaire;" or,
"Jean's eldest daughter has just made her first communion; they say she
looked like a pretty little angel." But he did not tell her of the
chaffing congratulations heaped on him on the prospect of his settling
down with his beautiful blonde demoiselle. He accepted them with a
smile of angelic indulgence.
When they had done they went upstairs; and, on the way, Tinker said, "I
must have a shot at that hair of yours; it--it really gets on my
nerves."
"It's no use," said Elsie with her ready flush. "I brush it as well as
I can; but I can't do it very well, there's such a lot of it."
"Well, I'll do what I can," said Tinker, and he measured with
thoughtful eye the silken mass, tangled and matted by the sea-water.
He led the way into his room, and set her in a chair, took off his
coat, turned up his sleeves, took his hair brushes, and began upon it.
It was his first essay as coiffeur, but his natural and trained
deftness stood him in good stead. He kept a watchful eye on her face
in the glass, and whenever it puckered, brushed more gently; but, at
times, in his absorption in his task, he so far forgot himself as to
hiss like a groom cleaning a horse. In the middle of it Sir Tancred
came in, and it was significant that he saw Tinker's occupation without
a smile, made no joke upon it, but seemed to take it as the most
natural thing in the world that his son should be discharging a
function of the lady's maid. He greeted the children gravely, sat
down, and watched the brushing with a respectful attention. Now and
again he asked Elsie a question, which seemed too idle to be
impertinent, but her answers told him all he wished to know; and
presently he felt, with Tinker, that her uncle was a gentleman in great
need of kicking.
[Illustration: It was his first essay as coiffeur.]
At last Tinker had finished; Elsie rose with a luxurious sigh, and he
looked at his work with fond pride. It was very beautiful, fine hair;
and its sheen of changing light well repaid him for his trouble. Sir
Tancred proposed that they should stroll down to the Casino, and find
her uncle. Lord Crosland joined them in the hall and went with them.
When they came to the Casino, they found a little crowd already
gathered about its doors, waiting for them to open.
But Richard Brand was not in it, and at once Elsie's face grew anxious.
As soon as the doors opened, Sir Tancred went in to ask if her uncle
has made any inquiries about Elsie, or left word where she might find
him. In ten minutes he came out again and said, "No; he has made no
inquiries. Suppose you stroll with Elsie along towards the Condamine,
Crosland; that is the way he would come. Tinker and I will wait here."
Lord Crosland looked at his face, said, "Come along, missie," and
strolled off with the anxious child.
When they were out of hearing, Sir Tancred said, "I'm afraid the child
is in a bad mess. This disgusting uncle of hers lost every penny at
roulette last night; and the authorities, with their usual kindness,
took his ticket to London, and put him in the train with twenty-five
francs in his pocket."
"What a cad!" said Tinker shortly.
"Well, she is on our hands, and we must look after her till we can make
arrangements--deposit her in a home or something."
Tinker said nothing for a while; he seemed plunged in profound thought.
He kicked a little stone ten yards away; then raised his eyes to his
father's face and said, in the firm voice of one whose mind is made up,
"I should like to adopt her."
"Adopt her?" said Sir Tancred with some surprise.
"Yes; I should like to, very much."
"Well, thanks to your industry in the matter of flying-machines and
stolen children, you have a nice little income, so we needn't consider
the question of expense. You can afford it. But in what capacity
would you adopt her--as father, uncle, guardian, or what? The
formalities must be observed."
"I think as a brother," said Tinker.
Sir Tancred thought a while, then he said, "You will find it a great
responsibility."
"Yes; but I don't mind. I--I like her, don't you know!"
Sir Tancred's stern face relaxed into one of his rare and charming
smiles. "Very good," he said. "You shall adopt her."
"Thank you, sir," said Tinker, and his smile matched his father's.
"And may I have some money to dress her? Her clothes are dreadful."
"They are," said Sir Tancred; and, taking out his notecase, he gave him
a thousand-franc note.
"Thank you," said Tinker, beaming. "I'll break it to her about her
uncle."
He hurried off towards the Condamine, and overtaking Elsie and Lord
Crosland, told her that it was all right, that they had arranged to
take care of her for a few days, and carried her away to fetch Blazer,
for his morning walk. It is to be feared that he gave her the
impression that her uncle had been a party to the arrangement, but by a
flood of talk he diverted successfully her mind from the matter. From
an unworthy jealousy Blazer was at first disposed to sniff at Elsie,
but when he found that she joined heartily in the few poor amusements
the place afforded an honest dog, he became more gracious. The
children made their déjeuner with Sir Tancred and Lord Crosland, and
after it, having restored the reluctant Blazer to his lodging in the
basement of the hotel, they took the train to Nice.
Tinker hired the largest commissionaire at the station and bought a
small trunk, which he gave him to carry. Then he went straight to
Madame Aline's and, having insisted on seeing Madame herself, explained
that the bright and elaborate fashions affected by the little French
girls would not suit Elsie.
Madame agreed with him, but said, "Simplicity is so expensive."
Tinker waved away the consideration, and showed Madame the
thousand-franc note. At once she fell a victim to his irresistible
charm, and set about meeting his taste with the liveliest energy, with
the result that in less than an hour Elsie was provided with an evening
frock of an exquisite shade of heliotrope, an afternoon frock of no
less exquisite shade of blue, and a hat, stockings, and gloves to
match. They were packed in the trunk, and with them two pairs of
shoes, which Madame sent for from a no less expensive bootmaker, and
various other garments.
When they came out of her shop, Tinker considered for a while the hole
he had made in the thousand-franc note, and said, "The time has come to
be economical."
He examined the shops with a keen eye till he came to one which seemed
more of the popular kind, and there he bought a frock of serge and
three of dark-blue linen, stouter shoes, slippers, and two hats. Here
he waited while Elsie changed, and when she came out, looking another
creature, he said with a sigh of relief, "I knew you'd look all right
if you had a chance."
They had ices at a café, and caught a train back to Monte Carlo. Elsie
seemed dazed with her sudden wealth, while Tinker was full of a quiet,
restful satisfaction. But it was in the evening that the great triumph
came. When she came out of her room in her evening frock, Tinker
regarded her for a moment with a satisfaction that was almost solemn,
then he turned her round and said, "We match."
"Do you really think so?" said Elsie in an awed voice, with humid eyes.
"There's no doubt about it," said Tinker, with calm, dispassionate, and
judicial impartiality.
When they came into the restaurant there was a faint murmur of
delighted surprise from the tables they passed; and one stout, but
sentimental baroness cried, "Violà des séraphin!"
And truly, if you can conceive of a seraph in an Eton suit, a low-cut
white waistcoat, and a white tie, there was something in what she said.
At the sight of them Sir Tancred smiled, and Lord Crosland said, "I
congratulate you on your taste, young people."
"It was Tinker's," said Elsie; and she looked at him with a world of
thankfulness and devotion in her eyes.
After dinner Tinker was uncomfortable. He felt bound to break to Elsie
her uncle's desertion, and he was afraid of tears. With a vague notion
of emphasising the difference between her uncle's _régime_ and his own,
he led the way to the corner of the gardens where they had first met
and, standing before the seat on which she had waited so long and
hungrily, he said, "I say, don't you think we could do without your
uncle?"
"Do without uncle?" said Elsie surprised.
"Yes; suppose, instead of living with your uncle and his looking after
you, you lived with us, and I looked after you? Suppose you were to be
my adopted sister?"
"For good and all?" said Elsie in a hushed voice.
"Yes."
For answer she threw her arms round his neck, kissed him, and cried,
"Oh, I do love you so."
By a splendid effort Tinker repressed a wriggle.
"We'll consider it settled, then," he said.
Elsie loosed him. With a little deprecating cough, and a delicate
tentativeness, he said, "About kissing, of course, now that you're my
sister you have a right to kiss me sometimes; and--and--of course it's
all right. But don't you think you could manage with once a day--when
we say good-night?"
"In the morning, too," said Elsie greedily.
"Well, twice a day," said Tinker with a sigh.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TINKER FROM THE MACHINE
By Elsie's coming into it, Tinker's life was changed. At first she was
not only a companion, she was an occupation. A score of little
arrangements to secure her greater comfort had to be made, each of them
after careful consideration. He was no longer dull: they were together
from morning till night; and he found in her a considerable aptitude
for the post of lieutenant--to a Pirate Captain, a Smuggler, a Brigand
Chief, or a South African Scout. She kept him out of mischief as far
as he could be kept out of mischief: the demands her welfare made upon
his intelligence prevented his devoting it to the elaboration of
ingenious schemes for the discomfiture of his fellow-creatures; and he
had to think twice before he flung himself into any casual piece of
mischief which presented itself, lest he should involve her in
disastrous consequences. On second thoughts he generally refrained
with regret. The one practice he did not suffer to fall into desuetude
was his daily bolt into the Salles de Jeu; of that she could always be
a secure and interested spectator.
For her part, she was entirely happy; she had been so long starved of
care and affection that, now she had them, she wanted nothing more;
they filled her life.
Taking his responsibility thus seriously, Tinker was greatly exercised
in mind whether he should get her a maid or a governess; he could not
afford both. Elsie, with absolute conviction, declared that she needed
neither; that all she wanted was someone to brush her hair, and she was
sure that he did that far better than anyone else would.
Tinker shook his head. "One has to be educated, don't you know?" he
said. "Look at me."
It was one of his weaknesses to cherish the conviction that in the
matter of learning he lacked nothing, though had he been confronted by
even the vulgarest fraction, he would have been quite helpless.
Having at last made up his mind, he sought out Sir Tancred, and said
with a very serious air, "I've been thinking it over, sir, and I've
come to the conclusion that I ought to get Elsie a governess."
"My dear Tinker," said his father, "if you add to our household at your
present rate, I foresee myself buying a caravan, and traversing Europe
in state."
"Like a circus," said Tinker, brightening. "It would be great fun--for
a while. I think," he added thoughtfully, "that I could brighten
Europe up a bit."
"I do not doubt it," said Sir Tancred politely.
"Well, you see, sir, it's like this," said Tinker. "When I adopted
Elsie you said that I was to take all responsibility; and I think I
ought to look after her education; it's no good adopting sisters by
halves."
"You are right, of course," said Sir Tancred. "But I'm sorry for you.
For a boy of nearly twelve, your knowledge of the things taught by
governesses is small. Your spelling, now, it is--shall we say
phonetic?"
"I don't think a gentleman ought to spell too well any more than he
ought to speak French with too good an accent," said Tinker firmly.
"There's a good deal in what you say," said Sir Tancred. "But I'm
afraid that when Elsie has learnt geography, say, the position of
Schleswig-Holstein and Roumania and Leeds, and other such places to
which we should never dream of going, she might look down on you for
only knowing the towns on the great railways of Europe and America, and
the steamer routes of the world."
"She might. But I don't think she's like that, though, of course, with
a girl you never can tell. I think it's more likely she would want to
teach me where they are. But she ought to be educated, and I must
chance it."
"Well, if you ought, you must," said Sir Tancred. "But one thing I do
beg of you; do not have her taught the piano--the barrel-organ if you
like, but not the piano."
"No; I won't. A piano would be so awkward to move about--it would want
a van to itself."
"I was thinking, rather, of the peculiar noises it makes in the hands
of the inexperienced," said Sir Tancred.
"I know," said Tinker in a tone of genuine sympathy.
Tinker went to Elsie, whom he had left in the gardens of the Casino,
and told her that his father had given him leave to get her a
governess. On hearing that the matter was so near accomplishment, her
face fell, and she said, "Don't--don't you think I ought to help choose
her?"
"It wouldn't be regular," said Tinker firmly.
After déjeuner he caught a train to Nice, and went straight to Madame
Butler, that stay of those who seek maids, companions, nurses, or
governesses on the Riviera. He sent in his card, and was straightway
ushered into the office where she received her clients. She was
sitting at a desk, and by one of the windows sat a very pretty young
lady, who looked as if she were waiting to interview a possible
employee. A certain surprise showed itself on the face of Madame
Butler at the sight of Tinker; she had plainly expected a client of
more mature years.
Tinker bowed, and sat down in the chair by the desk in which clients
sat and set forth their needs.
"You wished to see me--on business?" said Madame Butler with some
hesitation.
"Yes," said Tinker. "I want a governess for my sister--my adopted
sister. I'm responsible for her, and I've decided that she must be
educated. I told my father, Sir Tancred Beauleigh, and he gave me
leave to get her a governess. So I came to you."
"Yes," said Madame Butler, smiling, "and what kind of a governess do
you want?"
The pretty young lady, who had been regarding Tinker with smiling
interest, turned away with the proper delicacy, and looked out of the
window.
Tinker's face wore a very serious, almost anxious, air. "I've worked
it out carefully," he said. "Elsie's ten years old, two years younger
than I am, and there is no need for her governess to have degrees or
certificates or that kind of thing. She will only have to teach her to
write nicely and do sums--not fractions, of course--useful sums, and
some needlework, and look after her when I'm not about. So I want a
lady, young, and English; and I should like her to be a bit of a
sportswoman, don't you know. I mean," he added in careful explanation,
"I should like her to be cheerful and good-natured, and not fussy about
the things that really don't matter."
"I think I know the kind of governess you want," said Madame Butler.
She ran her eye over two or three pages of her ledger and added, "But
I'm very much afraid that I haven't one of that kind on my books at
present."
"That's a pity," said Tinker. "Should I have long to wait?"
"I'm afraid you might. People chiefly want ladles with certificates
and degrees, so the others don't offer themselves."
The pretty young lady turned from the window with the quickness of one
suddenly making up her mind.
"How should I do?" she said in a charming voice.
Madame Butler turned towards her quickly with raised eyebrows, but said
nothing. Tinker turned, too, and his face lighted up with an angelic
smile. He looked at the pretty young lady carefully, and then at the
pretty young lady's tailor-made gown, and the smile faded out of his
face.
"I'm afraid," he said sorrowfully, "you would be too expensive."
"What salary were you thinking of giving?" she said with a brisk,
businesslike directness.
"Thirty pounds a year," said Tinker; and then he added hastily, "Of
course it's very little; but really the work would be quite light, and
we should try and make things pleasant for her."
"But surely, for a governess without certificates, that is a very good
salary; isn't it, Madame Butler?"
"It is, indeed," said Madame Butler.
"It can't be, really," said Tinker. "But I suppose people are mean."
"Well, it would satisfy me," said the pretty young lady. "But
unfortunately I am an American, and you want an Englishwoman."
"I only don't want a foreigner," said Tinker. "I should be awfully
pleased if you would take the post."
"The pleasure will be mine," said the pretty young lady. "And about
references? I'm afraid I cannot get them in less than ten days."
"Pardon," said Tinker. "Your face, if you will excuse my saying so, is
reference enough."
The pretty young lady flushed with pleasure, and said, "That is very
nice of you, but your father might think them necessary."
"This is my show--I mean, this matter is entirely in my hands; I look
after Elsie altogether. And I think we might consider it settled. My
name is Hildebrand Anne Beauleigh."
"Oh, you are the boy who borrowed the flying-machine!"
Tinker was charmed that she should take the right view of the matter;
he found that so many people, including the bulk of the English,
American, and Continental Press, were disposed, in an unintelligent
way, to regard him as having stolen it.
"Yes," he said.
"My name is Dorothy Rayner."
"Rayner," said Tinker with sudden alertness. "There is an American
millionaire called Rainer."
"I spell my name with a _y_," said Dorothy quickly.
Madame Butler once more raised her eyebrows.
"Well, when will you come to us? We are staying at the Hôtel des
Princes at Monte Carlo."
"To-day is Wednesday. Shall we say Saturday morning?"
"Yes, that will do very well. Oh, by the way, I was quite
forgetting--about music."
"I'm afraid," said Dorothy, and her face fell, "I can't teach music."
"That's all right," said Tinker cheerfully. "My father was terribly
afraid that anyone I got would want to."
He explained to Dorothy their nomadic fashion of life, paid Madame
Butler her fee, bade them good-bye, and went his way.
On his return he found Elsie full of anxious curiosity, but his account
of his find set her mind at rest. He ended by saying, "It will be
awfully nice for you, don't you know? She looked as though she would
let you kiss her as often as you wanted to."
"But I shall kiss you just the same, night and morning," said Elsie
firmly.
"Of course, of course," said Tinker quickly, and by a manful effort he
kept the brightness in his face.
He told his father that he had found a governess.
"References all right?" said Sir Tancred.
"Yes, she carries them about with her," said Tinker diplomatically.
"I suppose I ought to see them, don't you think?"
"You will," said Tinker.
On her arrival on Saturday morning Dorothy found the children awaiting
her on the steps of the hotel; and to Tinker's extreme satisfaction,
she at once kissed Elsie. When she had been taken to her room, which
was next to Elsie's, and her trunks had been brought up, it was time to
go to déjeuner, and Tinker conducted her to the restaurant. They found
Sir Tancred and Lord Crosland already at table; they rose at the sight
of Dorothy, and Tinker introduced them to her gravely. Sir Tancred was
naturally surprised at being suddenly confronted by a startling vision
of beauty, when he had expected an ordinary young fresh-coloured,
good-natured Englishwoman. But for all the change worked in his face
by that surprise he might have been confronted by a vision of corkscrew
curls. Lord Crosland, however, so far forgot the proper dignity of a
peer as to kick Tinker gently under the table. Tinker looked at him
with a pained and disapproving air.
Dorothy was even more surprised by the sight of Sir Tancred. She had
given the matter little thought, but had supposed that she would find
Tinker's father a sedate man of some fifty summers. When she found him
a young man of thirty, and exceedingly handsome and distinguished at
that, she was invaded by no slight doubt as to the wisdom of indulging
the spirit of whim which had led her to take the post of Tinker's
governess, without going a little more into the matter. This
uneasiness made her at first somewhat constrained; but Sir Tancred and
Lord Crosland contrived soon to put her at her ease, and presently she
was taking her part in the talk without an effort.
When she went away with the children, Lord Crosland lighted a
cigarette, and said thoughtfully, "Well, Tinker has made a find. She
is a lady."
"I should be inclined to say gentlewoman," said Sir Tancred. "Lady is
a word a trifle in disrepute; there are so many of them, and so
various, don't you know."
"Gentlewoman be it," said Lord Crosland. "But he's a wonderful young
beggar for getting hold of the right thing. What a beautiful creature
she is!"
"She is beautiful," said Sir Tancred grudgingly.
"Woman-hater! Va!" said Lord Crosland.
Dorothy found herself admitted to a frank intimacy in this little
circle into which whim had led her. She spent most of her time with
the children. She gave Elsie two hours' lessons a day, and, since she
had a knack of making them interesting, Tinker often enjoyed the
benefit of her teaching. After lessons she shared most of their
amusements, and learned to be a pirate, a brigand, an English sailor, a
Boer, and every kind of captive and conspirator. Since she occupied
some of Elsie's time, Tinker had once more leisure for mischief; and
Dorothy rarely tried to restrain his fondness for pulling the legs of
his fellow-creatures, for she found that he had the happiest knack of
choosing such fellow-creatures as would be benefited, morally, by the
operation. But she was a check upon his more reckless moods, and kept
him from one or two outrageous pranks.
For his part, he found the responsibility of looking after her and
Elsie not a little sobering; and he was quite alive to the fact that at
Monte Carlo, that place of call of the adventurers of the world, one's
womankind need a protecting male presence. Quietly and unobtrusively
Sir Tancred seconded him in this matter; if Dorothy had the fancy to
take the air in the gardens after dinner, she found that he or Lord
Crosland, or both of them, deserted the tables till she went back to
the hotel, and strolled with her and the children. She was growing
very friendly with the two men, and beginning to take a far deeper
interest in Sir Tancred than she would have cared to admit even to
herself. His face of Lucifer, Son of the Morning, his perfect
thoughtfulness, his unfailing gentle politeness, his melancholy and his
very coldness, attracted her; and always watching him, she had now and
again a glimpse of the possibilities of energy and passion which
underlay the mask of his languor. At times, too, her woman's intuition
assured her that, for all his dislike, or rather distaste, of women,
she attracted him.
Unfortunately, but naturally, Sir Tancred and Lord Crosland were not
the only men who found her beautiful. Monsieur le Comte Sigismond de
Puy-de-Dôme, hero of many duels and more scandals, and darling of the
Nationalist Press, also saw her beauty. With him to see was to act,
and he never passed her without a conquering twirl of his waxed
moustache, and a staring leer which he fondly believed to be a glance
teeming with passion. Since even he, conscious as he was of his
extraordinary fascination, could hardly mistake her look of annoyance
for the glow of responsive passion, he resolved on more masterly
action. He kept a careful watch, and one afternoon followed her and
Tinker and Elsie on one of their walks. They went briskly, and at the
end of a mile he was maintaining a continuous, passionate monologue in
tones charged with heartfelt emotion on the subject of his tight but
patent-leather boots.
A mile and a half on the way to Mentone they turned aside down a road
into the hills. He followed them for a while over the loose stones and
along the ruts of the roadway with considerable pain, and was on the
very point of abandoning the pursuit when he came on Dorothy and Elsie
sitting in a shady dell by the roadside, from which the wooded slopes
of the hills rose steeply. Careless of his boots and of the fact that
they had suffused his face with an unbecoming purple, he strode
gallantly up to them, and set about making Dorothy's acquaintance. He
began by talking, with an airy graciousness, of the charm of the spot
in which he had found her, and of how greatly that charm was enhanced
by her presence. But soon, seeing that she took not the slightest
notice of him, that her eyes, to all seeming, looked through him at the
trees on the further side of the dell, he lost his gracious air, and
began to halt and stumble in his speech. Then he lost his head and
plunged into a detailed account of the passion with which Dorothy's
beauty had inflamed his heart, wearing the while his finest air of a
conqueror dictating terms.
Dorothy surveyed him with a contemptuous wonder, over which her sense
of the ludicrous was slowly gaining the mastery; Elsie stared at him.
At last he ended the impassioned description of his emotions with a yet
more impassioned appeal to Dorothy to fly with him to a far-off shore
forever shining with the golden light of love; and Dorothy laughed a
gentle laugh of pure amusement.
Count Sigismond flushed purpler; his eyes stood well out of his head;
he drew himself up with a superb air--a little spoiled by a wince as
his left boot deftly reminded him that he was wearing it, and cried,
"Ha! You laugh! You laugh at Sigismond de Puy-de-Dôme! Mon Dieu!
You shall learn!" And with a sudden spring he grabbed at her.
She jerked aside, sprang up, and away from him. But he was between her
and the exit from the dell; he crouched with the impressive
deliberation of a villain in a melodrama for another spring, and Elsie
screamed, "Tinker! Tinker!"
Count Sigismond heard a rustling in the bushes above, and looked up to
see them parted by an angel child, in white ducks, bearing a bunch of
lilies in his hand, who gazed at him with a serious, almost pained
face, and leapt lightly down.
With a "Pah! Imbecile!" addressed to himself for delaying, the Count
sprang towards Dorothy, was conscious of a swift white streak, and the
head of the angel child, impelled by wiry muscles and a weight of
seventy-six pounds, smote as a battering ram upon the first and second
buttons of his waistcoat. He doubled up and sat down hard in one
movement; then turned on his side, and gasped and gasped.
[Illustration: As a battering ram upon the first and second buttons of
his waistcoat.]
"Come along!" cried Tinker in a most imperative tone. "A row is a
horrid nuisance when there are women in it!" And he caught his
charges, either by an arm, and bustled them out of the dell and down
the road.
Dorothy laughed as she ran; never before had she seen vaunting
arrogance brought low in so sudden and signal a fashion. At last she
stopped, dabbed away the tears of mirth, and said, "Oh, Tinker, I am so
much obliged to you! It's all very well to laugh now; but it might
have been horrid!"
"It was the simplest thing in the world," said Tinker. Then, rubbing
his head ruefully, he added, "I wish those foreigners would not wear
gold buttons on their white waistcoats in the daytime. They have no
more notion of how to dress than a cat--the men haven't."
They hurried along, looking back now and again to see if they were
followed. They were not, for Count Sigismond was now sitting up in the
shady dell, staring round it with fishy eyes, and wondering dully
whether he owed his disaster entirely to an angel child, or whether
Mont Pelée had affected the neighbourhood. He gasped still.
As they drew near the town, Tinker grew thoughtful. Suddenly he
stopped, and said seriously, "Now, look here, both of you, we mustn't
let my father know about this, or he'll certainly thrash that bounding
Frenchman; and that wouldn't be good enough, don't you know."
"It would be very good for him," said Dorothy with some vindictiveness.
"Yes, but not for my father," said Tinker very earnestly, indeed. "For
all that he looks like a swollen frog, Le Comte de Puy-de-Dôme is
awfully dangerous with the pistol. He's hurt two men badly in duels
already."
"Has he?" said Dorothy quickly, and the colour faded in her cheeks.
"Then we must, indeed, say nothing about it."
"Swear," said Tinker, raising his right hand.
"We swear," said Dorothy and Elsie in one voice, raising their right
hands. It was a formality which had to be gone through many times when
they played at being conspirators; their words and action were
mechanical.
"That's all right," said Tinker with a sigh of relief.
Count Sigismond returned to his hotel in a very hot fury. His outraged
pride clamoured for vengeance, and he sought for someone on whom to be
revenged. He was surprised at the end of two days to hear nothing of
his discomfiture; but his fury lost nothing by growing cool, and on the
third night he picked a quarrel with Sir Tancred.
Next morning Sir Tancred asked Dorothy to take the children to Nice for
a few days, since he had heard that there was some fever at one of the
smaller hotels. He watched over their departure himself, and Tinker
was aware of an indefinable something in his manner which puzzled him.
It was, perhaps, that something which gave him a curious, unsettled
feeling, as if they were going on a much longer journey. As they left
the hotel, Lord Crosland came up from the Condamine carrying a square
case under his arm; it did not escape Tinker's observant eye; but in
the bustle of their removal he gave it but scant attention. In the
evening Dorothy noticed that he was restless and absent-minded, and
asked him what was the matter.
"I don't know," he said; "I have a funny feeling as though something
was going to happen, and I can't think of anything. It's just as if
I'd missed something I ought to have noticed. It always makes me
uncomfortable. Yet I can't think what it can be."
She made many suggestions, but to no purpose, and he went to bed
dissatisfied. He awoke once or twice in the night--a very rare thing
with him; possibly, so close was their kinship, his father's disturbed
spirit in some obscure and mysterious fashion was striving to warn him,
or prepare him for calamitous tidings. In the early morning he slept
soundly, and awoke rather later than was his wont; and, even as he
awoke, the square case which Lord Crosland had carried sprang into his
mind, and he knew it to be a case of pistols. In a flash everything
was clear to him; his father was going to fight Count Sigismond, and
had sent him to Nice to be out of the way.
He sprang out of bed, and dashed for his watch; it was two minutes past
seven. They would fight at eight; he had nearly an hour. In three
minutes he was dressed, and racing down the stairs. He met Dorothy
coming up.
"What's the matter?" she cried at the sight of his white face.
"My father--he's fighting Le Comte de Puy-de-Dôme, and he's got us out
of the way!"
He did not see her turn pale, and clutch the banisters; he was racing
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.
He stopped before the little Inn, and was served with milk and bread
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."
"No: of course not," said Septimus Rainer quickly.
But it was not till they came to the tailor's that he realised the full
seriousness of the business before them. At first he supposed that he
was to have his say in the matter; but at the end of ten minutes, with a
half-humorous abandonment, he put himself entirely in the hands of the
conscientious Tinker, and indeed had he not done so, there is no saying
that he might not have gone about the world parading a velvet collar on a
grey frock coat. It was Tinker who decided, after weighty consideration,
upon the colour and texture of the stuff of each suit, chose the very
buttons for it, and forced upon the reluctant Niçois his ideas of the way
each separate garment should be cut. Septimus Rainer was frankly
bewildered at the end of half an hour; he was used, in the way of
business, to carrying a multiplicity of details in his head, but these
details it could not carry. When he found that Tinker had them at his
finger ends, he was filled with admiration and respect.
From the tailor's they went to the hatter's; and there Septimus Rainer
found himself trying on hats by the score. But, strangely enough, he did
not grow weary: Tinker's absorbed interest in his task was catching to
the point that at the hosier's the millionaire found himself discussing
the shade of his socks with real enthusiasm.
When they came out of the last shop Tinker said, with the deep breath of
one relieved of a heavy responsibility, "There--I think you'll look all
right--as far as a French tailor can do it."
"I ought to, after all the trouble you've taken, sonny," said Septimus
Rainer, smiling.
"You have to take trouble about dressing a man. A woman is easy enough.
I got Elsie her clothes in about an hour. But a man is much more
difficult. And clothes are so important," said Tinker gravely.
"I suppose they are--over here," said Septimus Rainer.
"I'm glad you don't take them really seriously," said Tinker, approving
his tone, "because you'll soon get into the way of wearing them when
you've got them. It's very funny, but well-dressed Americans--men, I
mean--don't often wear their clothes properly; they look as if they felt
so awfully well-dressed. I don't think you will."
"Now you've told me about it, I'll try not to."
"I think you'll want a good man, though, to keep you up to the mark. You
might get slack, don't you know?"
"No, no; I can't have a valet, and I won't," said Septimus Rainer firmly.
"Ah, we shall have to see what Dorothy says about that," said Tinker with
a smile of doubtful meaning.
"That's playing it rather low down on me, isn't it?" said Septimus Rainer
reproachfully. "It's--it's coercion."
"Oh, if you have to wear clothes, you may as well do it thoroughly. You
see, it's been put into my hands, and I must go through with it," said
Tinker apologetically.
The millionaire gazed at him ruefully.
"And now," Tinker went on, regarding him with another cold, calculating
air, that of a proprietor, "I think I'll take you to a hair-dresser, and
have your hair and beard dealt with."
"Crop away! crop away!" said the millionaire.
Tinker took him to a hair-dresser, and told the man exactly how he wanted
the hair and beard cut. "He'd make you a French American, too, if I let
him," he said to Septimus Rainer.
When the hair-dresser had done, the millionaire looked at himself in the
glass with approval, and said, "Well, I do look spick and span, though
gritty; yes--sir."
"You'll look better when you have your clothes," said Tinker. "And, now,
I think you must want a drink."
"That is so, sonny. This is dry work, this getting clothes."
Tinker took him to a café, adorned with an American bar. Septimus Rainer
lighted a cigar and refreshed himself with the whiskey sour of his native
land; Tinker ate ices. Over these agreeable occupations they talked; and
the millionaire derived considerable entertainment and no little
instruction from his young companion's views of life on the Mediterranean
littoral, illustrated from the passing pleasure-seekers.
[Illustration: Over these agreeable occupations they talked.]
When they got into the railway carriage on their return, he lighted
another cigar, and lay back in the seat with the content of a man who had
done a hard day's work. But presently he roused himself and said, "I've
been thinking about those kidnapping scum. They were going to ransom
Dorothy for three hundred thousand dollars, you said."
"Yes, a million and a half francs," said Tinker.
"Well, sonny, I've been thinking I must pay you fifty thousand dollars
over that business. You took a big risk holding up a gang like that."
"It wasn't me: Selina held them up," said Tinker quickly.
"Selina did her share, and I shan't forget it. But it was your show. I
think fifty thousand dollars would be fair."
Tinker's face went very grave. "Thank you very much," he said slowly,
"but I couldn't take any money for helping Dorothy out of a mess. When
I've taken money for helping people, they've been strangers--like the
Kernabies and Blumenruth. But Dorothy is different--quite different."
Septimus Rainer pulled at his beard, and said in a grumbling voice,
"That's all very well, sonny; but where do I come in? You get my little
girl out of a tight place--a very tight place--and you save me three
hundred thousand dollars. Business is business, and I ought to pay."
"It is rather awkward for you," said Tinker, looking at him with a
puzzled face and knitted brow. "But I think the thing is that it wasn't
business. I like Dorothy--I like her very much. She's a friend. And
there can't be any business between friends, don't you know?"
"Shake, sonny," said the millionaire, holding out his hand. "I'm glad
you and she are friends."
Tinker shook his hand gravely.
When they came back to the hotel, at the sight of her father, Dorothy
cried, "Oh, papa, what have you been doing? You look ten years younger.
And what a nice shape your head is!"
"Yes," said Septimus Rainer, "I pride myself on the shape of my head.
But it's all your young friend's doing."
"Wait till his clothes come," said Tinker with modest pride.
"I shall look fine in those clothes, I tell you--fine," said Septimus
Rainer, and his air was almost fatuous.
"I think he ought to have a valet," said Tinker. "You can't learn about
clothes all out of your own head. Either you must have always worn the
right clothes, or you want someone to teach you."
"Of course, you must have a valet, papa," said Dorothy.
"I can't--I can't have a man messing about me," said Septimus Rainer in a
tone of almost pathetic pleading.
"I'm afraid there's no way out of it," said Tinker firmly.
"I'm sure there isn't if Tinker says so. He knows all about these
things," said Dorothy. "You must be brave, papa: you really must."
"I'll find him one," said Tinker.
Septimus Rainer yielded with a gesture of hopeless resignation.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TINKER ASSERTS THE RIGHTS OF THE EMPLOYER
Septimus Rainer was very soon admitted to the frankest intimacy of the
little circle. An American of the best type, he had enjoyed the
advantage in his childhood of the stern and hardening training of life
on a little farm, and the supreme advantage of a good mother. He had
fought his way to fortune with clean hands, winning always his battles
by sheer superiority of brain, never by laxity of principle; no man
could lay to his charge that he had dealt him a foul blow. He had
come, therefore, through that demoralising fight with a clean heart,
his native shrewdness increased a thousand-fold, his native simplicity
unabated. It was this combination of shrewdness and simplicity which
had caused him to send Dorothy, bitter as it had been to part with her,
to Europe to finish her education. His gorge had risen at the
intolerable snobbishness which is corroding the wealthy sections of
American society; he had made up his mind that she had a better chance
of obtaining the necessary social acquirements, while remaining a
gentlewoman, in Europe; and had acted with great success on the
conviction.
After a few days' natural restlessness he found himself developing an
admirable capacity, very rare in millionaires, of being for a while
idle. This agreeable circumstance was the natural effect of the
surroundings in which he found himself; not so much of the place, for
at Monte Carlo pleasure is a somewhat strenuous affair, but of the fact
that his new friends had a trained power of taking life easily.
Tinker, Sir Tancred, and Lord Crosland would have admitted him to their
intimacy for the sake of Dorothy; but simple souls themselves, they
recognised in him a kindred simplicity, and admitted him to their
friendship. He possessed, to a great degree, the American
adaptability; and it is not surprising that he fell into their way of
taking life easily. It was only for the time being. The millionaire
is a good deal of the Sindbad, and he must bear the burden and go the
way of the golden Old Man of the Sea he has made for himself. But
Septimus Rainer enjoyed this respite from the tyranny of his millions
with the whole-hearted pleasure of a child. He enjoyed the brightness
and glitter of the place; he enjoyed the pleasant meals and pleasant
talks with pleasant companions; he enjoyed a little gambling at the
tables; and he enjoyed with a childlike zest playing with Dorothy and
the children, displaying latent and unsuspected talents for piracy,
brigandage, and conspiracy, which were no less a glory than a surprise
to him. Indeed, at times he was very like a young schoolboy let loose
after many hours' school.
Tinker was of perpetual interest to him, and he listened with greedy
ears to the wisdom of the world of that sage, on the rare occasions
when some matter or other set it flowing from his lips. On the other
hand, he found in him an absorbed listener to the stories of his less
involved financial battles, and spared no pains to make them clear to
him. Sir Tancred interested him little less, and he was always
deploring the loss the splendid army of millionaires had suffered by
his excellent abilities not having been forced to flow in a business
channel.
He was distressed, too, about the waste of Tinker, and adjured his
father to hand him over to him to be made a millionaire of.
But Sir Tancred turned a deaf ear to his petition, and said, "Of
course, if Tinker went into business he would become a millionaire.
And it's a fashionable occupation, and I've nothing to say against it.
But over here, with some of us, there are still other things besides
money--not that there will be long--and for my part I shall be content
if he grows up a gentleman, as he will. Business might spoil that; and
at any rate I won't chance it. And, after all, my step-mother won't
live to much more than eighty, so that he will have thirty thousand a
year before he's forty-five."
"That's a hundred and fifty thousand dollars," said Septimus Rainer
thoughtfully, and he pressed the point no more.
He was far too shrewd not to perceive the attraction Sir Tancred and
Dorothy had for one another, and he regarded it with entire content.
Whatever he might have said against Sir Tancred's manner of life, he
had a genuine respect for his qualities; and he had learned from
Dorothy something of the causes of his falling into that manner of
life. He had a strong belief that once married to her he would change;
he thought it likely that he might even embark on the career of
politics, which he understood to be, in England, a quite respectable
pursuit. He was aware, of course, that he could easily buy her an
English peer or a foreign Prince for husband. But Sir Tancred's rank
and birth satisfied his simple tastes; and he was quite sure that he
might ransack the English peerage and the Courts of Europe without
finding her as good a husband. He did not perceive that his millions
barred Sir Tancred's path.
Dorothy perceived it only too soon. She found the growth of her
intimacy with Sir Tancred checked; it did not lessen, indeed, but it
did not increase. A shadow had fallen across it, and he no longer
talked to her in the tone of half-affectionate familiarity he had grown
to use with her, he was more reserved. She chafed at it, but she was
not greatly downcast; she only wished that the kidnappers had had the
grace to leave her in her part of the penniless governess, a few weeks
longer. She felt that, then, all the millions in the world would not
have barred Sir Tancred's way. Indeed, she had no reason to be greatly
downcast. This sudden setting of her out of his reach had inevitably
increased her attraction for Sir Tancred; it had deepened his liking to
a far stronger feeling. He cursed the unkindly Fates, and told himself
that his only course was to fly; that the more he saw of her, the more
painful would that flight be. But he could by no means constrain
himself to forego the delight of her presence; and, though he never let
a word of his love escape his lips, his eyes and the tones of his voice
told her of it often enough.
Tinker was not long providing Septimus Rainer with a carefully chosen
English valet, whom he found a pleasant, unassuming fellow, very easy
to get on with. Then the millionaire began to talk of engaging a
secretary, for his millions were beginning to make themselves
troublesome; and he begged Tinker, since he had found him so
unembarrassing a valet, to keep his eyes about him for a secretary
also; but Tinker said that Monte Carlo was no place to find secretaries
who understood business.
One morning he saw Madame Séraphine de Belle-Île drive up to the hotel.
She wore a mournful air; and he perceived at once that she was no
longer clad in a bright scarlet costume, but in one of a dull crimson,
more in keeping with her air of mournfulness. She cut him deliberately
as she passed into the hotel.
He was exceedingly angry; no human being had ever cut him before, and
he flushed with mortification. He walked down to the gardens pondering
the affront; and his anger grew. Then of a sudden it flashed on him
that she had found out Mr. Arthur Courtnay, and that the warning he had
given her had had something to do with that discovery. She had cut him
by way of showing her gratitude in a truly womanly fashion. With the
smile of an angel indulgent to human frailty he forgave her, and thrust
the matter out of his mind.
That night at dinner, or rather at dessert, Lord Crosland informed them
that he was engaged to Claire Wigram; and when they had done
congratulating him, he told them that in a few days he would be leaving
for England with the Wigrams.
"Well," said Sir Tancred, "the season here is coming to an end; and, at
any rate, the weather for the last few days has been too hot to do
these children any good. I think we will move northward, too."
"It will be the break-up of a very pleasant party," said Septimus
Rainer with a sigh, and Dorothy's face fell.
"Why should it break up?" said Lord Crosland. "You'd better all come."
"No; I'm not coming to England, yet," said Sir Tancred. "After all
this heat it would be too great a risk to face straight away the bitter
English summer. I thought of moving northward gently to Biarritz, or I
have a fancy for Arcachon. Wednesday would be as good a day as any."
There was a pause; then Tinker said thoughtfully, "Wednesday is rather
soon, sir." And, turning to Dorothy, he said, "Do you think that you
could pack by Wednesday? Of course, it doesn't really matter, for you
could come on after us; but I don't want Elsie to lose a day's work."
Septimus Rainer, Sir Tancred, and Lord Crosland looked a little taken
aback; it struck them all three with the same sense of oddness that a
small boy should direct the movements of the daughter of a millionaire.
"Oh, I can easily pack up by Wednesday," said Dorothy, as if it were a
matter of course that he should direct her movements.
"That's all right," said Tinker.
"But I don't understand," said Septimus Rainer. "Has Dorothy bound
herself to do as you tell her?"
"Well, I suppose she has, as far as teaching Elsie goes. And I
explained when she took the post that we travelled about a good deal,"
said Tinker carelessly.
"But I can't have this," said Septimus Rainer.
"Well, she can always give me a month's notice, and then the engagement
ends," said Tinker. He was prepared for the discussion, and resolved
that his father and Dorothy should not be separated as long as he could
prevent it.
"Do you mean she isn't free for a month from now? But--but it's
absurd!" said Septimus Rainer.
"That's what the papers call the rights of the employer," said Tinker
with a singularly sad sweetness.
"Oh, you wouldn't insist on that right, not if you were asked nicely,
would you?" said Lord Crosland.
"Oh, yes, I should!" said Tinker cheerfully. "You see, I'm responsible
for Elsie, and she will never get such a good governess as Dorothy
again. So she must have as much of her as possible."
"Thank you; it's nice to be appreciated," said Dorothy, smiling at him.
"Ah," said Septimus Rainer with the air of one who has found a solution
of the problem, "but Dorothy can always forfeit a month's salary in
lieu of notice."
"Oh, I couldn't think of it, papa!" cried Dorothy. "I should lose--I
should lose five pounds!"
"This beats the Dutch! This is avarice! I allow you four thousand
dollars a month!" said Septimus Rainer.
"Ah, but this is my own earned money!" Dorothy protested, flushing and
smiling.
Suddenly there came a twinkle into Septimus Rainer's eye. "Well," he
said, "if you're ground down under the heel of a grasping employer,
you're ground down, and you must go to Arcachon. But I shall come,
too."
"Of course," said Tinker. "You're--you're one of the family."
"Thank you," said Septimus Rainer. "I'm told that you English are slow
about it. But when you make a man at home, you do make him at home.
And I've always wanted to be adopted."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
TINKER DISOWNS HIS GRANDMOTHER
On the eve of their departure for Arcachon, Tinker and Elsie were
sitting in the gardens of the Temple of Fortune, taking a well-earned
rest after a farewell bolt into the Salles de Jeu, in which Elsie also
had played a gallant and successful part, for the somewhat obscure
reason that it was the last bolt: so strengthening to her character had
been companionship with Tinker. She was receiving, with modest pride,
his congratulations on having penetrated deeper than himself, to the
innermost shrine, the Trente et Quarante table, in fact, when they saw
coming towards them a large, majestic, white-haired lady, a small,
subdued, mouse-haired lady, and a man of doubtful appearance.
Without causing him to pause in his congratulations, Tinker's active
mind had placed the two women as a wealthy Englishwoman and her
companion, and was hesitating whether to place the man in the class of
Continental Guides or private detectives, when he pointed to the two
children, and said something to the majestic lady.
"That's the little boy, is it? Then you two go and sit on the next
seat while I talk to him," said the majestic lady in a voice which lost
in pleasantness what it gained in loudness; and she came to the seat on
which Tinker and Elsie sat, while her attendants walked on.
Now to call him a little boy was by no means the quickest way to
Tinker's heart, and he watched her draw near with a cold eye. But all
the same when she made as if to sit down, he rose and raised his hat
with a charming smile. She sat down and looked him over with a cool
consideration which provoked his fastidiousness to no admiration of her
breeding. Then she said:
"Are you Sir Tancred Beauleigh's little boy?"
"I am Hildebrand Anne Beauleigh," said Tinker in a faintly corrective
tone quite lost on her complacent mind.
"Hildebrand Anne! Hildebrand Anne! She called you Hildebrand Anne,
did she? The impudence of these minxes!" said the majestic lady, and
she sniffed like a lady of the lower-middle classes.
At once Tinker knew that she was Lady Beauleigh, and that she was
speaking of his mother. But his face never changed; only the pupils of
his eyes contracted a little; and he drew a quiet, deep breath of
satisfaction. He had always hoped for an interview with her, his
father's step-mother, and he knew that he had the advantage; for he was
armed with a very fair knowledge of her, imparted to him by his father,
who thought it well to put him on his guard; and of him she knew
nothing.
"Who's this little girl?" said Lady Beauleigh, surveying Elsie with her
insolent stare. "Send her away. I want to talk to you alone."
"This is my adopted sister, Elsie. You may talk before her; it doesn't
matter how confidential it is. I always tell her everything," said
Tinker in a tone of kindly but exasperating patronage.
"I don't care! Go away, little girl!" said Lady Beauleigh, and Tinker
was pleased to see the colour rise in her cheeks.
He stayed Elsie, who was rising to go, with a wave of his hand and said
gently, "Is it important talk?"
"Yes; it is!" snapped Lady Beauleigh.
"Then I'd rather she stopped. My father says you should always have a
witness to important talk," said Tinker, and he smiled at her.
"Stuff and nonsense! I'm your grandmother!" cried Lady Beauleigh
angrily.
"Ah, then your name is Vane," said Tinker sweetly.
"Vane! Vane!" Lady Beauleigh gasped rather than spoke the hated name.
"It's nothing of the kind! It's Beauleigh! I'm Lady Beauleigh!"
"I'm afraid there must be some mistake. You can't be my grandmother on
my father's side. My father's mother is dead," said Tinker in a tone
which almost seemed to apologise for her error.
"You must be very stupid, or very ignorant!" cried Lady Beauleigh.
"I'm your grandfather's second wife, as you ought to know!"
"Oh, I know, now," said Tinker; and his face shone with his sudden
enlightenment. "You keep a bank."
"I--keep--a--bank?" said Lady Beauleigh in a dreadful voice.
"Oh, not a roulette bank or baccarat bank," said Tinker with
well-affected hastiness. "One of the shop kind--where they sell
money--with glass doors."
"My father was a banker, if that's what you mean," said Lady Beauleigh.
"But a bank isn't a shop."
"Oh, I always think it a kind of shop," said Tinker with the
dispassionate air of a professor discussing a problem in the Higher
Mathematics. "It's as well to lump all these--these commercial things
together, isn't it?" And he was very pleased with the word commercial.
"No: it isn't! A bank isn't a shop, you stupid little boy!" cried Lady
Beauleigh hotly.
"Well, just as you like," said Tinker with graceful surrender. "I only
call it a shop because it's convenient."
"A boy of your age ought not to think about convenience. You ought to
have been taught to keep things clear and distinct," said Lady
Beauleigh in a heavy, didactic voice.
"Oh, it's quite clear to me, really, that a bank's a shop; but we won't
talk about it, if you're ashamed of it. After all, one doesn't talk
about trade, does one?" said Tinker with a return to his kindly but
exasperating patronage.
"Ashamed of it? I'm not ashamed of it!" said Lady Beauleigh in the
roar of a wounded lioness.
"No, no; of course not! I only thought you were! I made a mistake!"
said Tinker quickly, with an infuriating show of humouring her.
"I'm proud of it! Proud of it!" said Lady Beauleigh thickly. "And
when you grow up and understand things, you'll wish your father had
been a banker, too!"
"I don't think so," said Tinker; and he smiled at her very pleasantly.
"I'm quite satisfied with my father as he is. I'd really rather that
he was a gentleman."
"A banker is a gentleman!" cried Lady Beauleigh.
"Yes, yes, of course," said Tinker, humouring her again. "He's--he's a
commercial gentleman."
Lady Beauleigh could find no words. Never in the course of her
domineering life had she been raised to such an exaltation of
whole-souled exasperation. She could only glare at the suave disposer
of her long-cherished, long-asserted pretensions; and she glared with a
fury which made Elsie, who had edged little by little to the extreme
edge of the seat, rise softly and take up a safer position, standing
three yards away.
Tinker took advantage of Lady Beauleigh's helpless speechlessness to
say thoughtfully, "But about your being my grandmother? If you're not
my father's mother or my mother's mother, you can't really be my
grandmother. You must be my step-grandmother.
"I should think," Tinker went on, and his thoughtfulness became a
thoughtful earnestness, "that you must be what people call a connection
by marriage; not quite one of the family."
The thoughtfulness cleared from Tinker's brow, and he said with a
pleasant smile, "But that's got nothing to do with what you came to
talk about. You said it was important. What did you want to say?"
Lady Beauleigh remembered suddenly that she had come on an errand
connected with her promotion of the glory of the Beauleighs. She
swallowed down her fury, wiped her face with her handkerchief, and said
in a hoarse and somewhat shaky voice, "I came to make you an offer."
Tinker beamed on her.
"You must be tired of this beggarly life, going about from pillar to
post, living in wretched Continental hotels, with no pocket money."
Tinker raised his eyebrows.
"I know what your father's life is, just a mere penniless adventurer's."
Tinker beamed no more.
"And I came to offer to take you to live with me at Beauleigh Court.
It's a beautiful big house in the country with woods all around it, and
hunting and fishing and shooting and tennis-courts and fruit-gardens,
and a cricket-ground, everything that a boy could want."
"And you," said Tinker in the expressionless tone of one adding an item
to a catalogue.
"Yes; and me to look after you. You should have a bicycle." And she
paused to let the splendour of the gift sink in.
[Illustration: And she paused to let the splendour of the gift sink in.]
"I have a bicycle," said Tinker.
"Well--two bicycles--and a pony----"
"I don't like ponies--they're too slow," said Tinker in a weary voice.
"I always ride a horse."
"Well, you should have a horse--a horse of your own."
"What's the hunting like? But, there, I know; it can't be up to much;
it never is in those southern counties. I always hunt in
Leicestershire. I've got used to it."
"You hunt in Leicestershire?" said Lady Beauleigh with some surprise.
"Oh course. Where does one hunt?" said Tinker, echoing her surprise.
"But--but--where does your horse come from? I know your father can't
afford to keep horses!"
"Sometimes he can," said Tinker. "And if he has had to sell them, a
dozen people will always mount us."
Lady Beauleigh paused; and then she made the last, lavish bid. "And I
would allow you a hundred a year pocket-money. Why--why, you would be
a little Prince!"
"A little Prince! And learn geography! No, thank you!" said Tinker,
startled out of his calm. "Besides," he added carelessly, "I've made
five thousand in the last year."
"Five thousand what?"
"Pounds."
"Come, come," said Lady Beauleigh, shaking her head, "you mustn't tell
me lies."
"It isn't a lie! Tinker never tells lies," broke in Elsie hotly.
"Hold your tongue, you impertinent little minx!" said Lady Beauleigh
sharply. "Who asked you to speak?"
"I think you're a horrid----" said Elsie, and was checked by Tinker's
upraised hand.
"And when I died," Lady Beauleigh went on, turning again to Tinker, "I
should leave you thirty thousand a year--think of it--thirty thousand a
year!"
"It all sounds very nice," said Tinker in a painfully indifferent tone.
"But I'm afraid it wouldn't do."
"Wouldn't do? Why wouldn't it do? To live in a beautiful big house in
the country, and have everything a boy could want! Why wouldn't it
do?" cried Lady Beauleigh, excited by opposition to a feverish desire
to compass the end on which her heart had been set for many months.
"Do you really want to know," said Tinker very gently, but with a
dangerous gleam in his eyes.
"Yes; I insist on knowing!" cried Lady Beauleigh.
"Well," said Tinker slowly, pronouncing every word with a very
deliberate distinctness, "we shouldn't get on, you and I. I don't know
how it is; but I never get on with people who keep shops or banks. I'm
afraid you're not quite--well-bred."
Stout Lady Beauleigh sprang to her feet.
"Ah, well," said Tinker quietly, "you treated my father and mother very
cruelly, you've just said rude things about both of them, and you've
been rude to Elsie. The fact is, I don't see that I want a
step-grandmother at all; and I can't be expected to want an ill-bred
one anyway. So--so--I disown you."
Lady Beauleigh's face quivered with rage; she gathered herself together
as if to box Tinker's ears; thought better of it, and hurried away.
Tinker and Elsie looked at one another, and laughed softly.
"Horrid old woman," said Elsie.
"A dreadful person," said Tinker.
As Lady Beauleigh strode out of the gardens, she came full upon Sir
Tancred and Dorothy. He raised his hat, she tried to glare through
him, and glared at him.
"That's my step-mother," said Sir Tancred. "I wonder what's the matter
with her. She looks upset."
"Upset! Why, she looked furious--malignant!" said Dorothy.
Then they saw Tinker and Elsie coming towards them.
"I see," said Sir Tancred softly.
"Oh, if she's met my young charges!" said Dorothy, and she threw out
her hands.
"Have you been doing anything to your grandmother, Tinker?" cried Sir
Tancred.
"Well--I disowned her," said Tinker.
"Disowned her!"
"Yes; I had to," said Tinker with a faint regret. "She was rude, and
she was wearing a gown which would have stood up by itself if she had
got out of it--at Monte Carlo--in April--it's impossible!"
He shrugged his shoulders.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TINKER AND THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE
Dorothy sat gazing over that charming gulf, charming alike for its
scenery and its oysters, the Gulf of Arcachon. She gazed on it without
seeing it; her beautiful face was clouded, and her brow was puckered in
a wondering perplexity.
Tinker sat on the ground near her, his chin on his knees, observing her
with a sympathetic understanding which would have disquieted her not a
little, had she not been too busy with her thoughts to notice it.
They were still and silent for a long while, until she sighed; then he
said, with unfeigned sadness, "I'm beginning to think he never will."
"Who never will what?" said Dorothy, awaking from her reflections, and
extremely disconcerted by the exactness with which Tinker's remark
echoed them.
"My father--ask you to marry him," said Tinker succinctly.
"Tinker!" cried Dorothy faintly, and she flushed a very fine red.
"It's all very well to say 'Tinker!' like that," he said, shaking his
head very wisely. "But it's much better to look at things straight,
don't you know? You often get a little forrarder that way."
"You are a dreadful little boy," said Dorothy with conviction.
"Yes, yes; I'm not blind," said Tinker patiently. "But the point is,
that my father is ever so much in love with you, and he'll never ask
you to marry him, because you're too rich. I'm sure I've given you
every chance," he added with a sigh.
"You have?" said Dorothy, gasping.
"Yes; I'm always seeing that no one makes a third when you and he are
together--on moonlit nights and picnics, and so on, don't you know?"
Dorothy laughed, in spite of her discomfort, at this frank discussion
of her secret. "But this is inveterate match-making," she said. "Why
do you do it?"
"Oh, I think it would be a good thing. You both want it badly, and
you'd get on awfully well together. Besides, you're neither of you as
cheerful as you used to be, and I don't like it; it bothers me."
"It's very good of you to let it," said Dorothy, smiling.
"Not at all. And Elsie and I would have a settled home, too. It's
very funny; but sometimes I get tired of living in hotels."
"I'm sure you do," said Dorothy with sympathy.
"Well, have you got any idea how it can be worked?"
"No!" cried Dorothy, shocked, and flushing again; "I haven't! I
wouldn't have!"
"That's silly, when it would be such a good thing," said Tinker with a
disapproving air. "However, I suppose I can work it myself. I
generally have to when I want anything done."
"What are you going to do?" cried Dorothy in great alarm. "Oh, I do
wish I hadn't said anything, or listened to you!"
"I don't know what I'm going to do. These affairs of the heart are
always difficult," said Tinker with the air of a sage who has observed
many generations of unfortunate lovers.
"I won't have you do anything; I forbid it!" cried Dorothy.
"You shouldn't order your employer about," said Tinker with a smile
which, on any face less angelic, would have been a grin. "Besides, I'm
responsible, and I must do what's good for you. And, after all, I
shan't give you away, don't you know?"
"Oh, do be careful!" said Dorothy plaintively.
"I will," said Tinker; and he rose and sauntered off along the
promenade.
Dorothy looked after him with mingled feelings, dread of what he might
do, vexation, and a little shame that he should have so easily
surprised her secret; though, indeed, she preferred that Tinker should
have discovered it rather than anyone else in the world. Then her sure
knowledge of his discretion eased her anxiety, and the consideration of
his able imagination and versatile ingenuity set a new and strong hope
springing up in her.
Tinker strolled along to the Café du Printemps, and found his father
sitting before it on the usual uncomfortable little chair before the
usual white-topped table. He saw that his father's face wore the same
expression as Dorothy's had worn before he had insisted on coming to
her aid. Then he saw, with something of a shock, that a glass of
absinthe stood on the table. Things must, indeed, be in a bad way if
his father drank absinthe at half-past ten in the morning.
However, he hid his disapproval, and sitting down on another
uncomfortable chair, he said gently, "What does it mean when a lady is
compromised, sir?"
"It means that some accident or other has given malignant fools a
chance of gossipping about her," said Sir Tancred in an unamiable tone.
"And the man has to marry her?"
"Of course he has," snapped Sir Tancred.
"Ah!" said Tinker with supreme thoughtful satisfaction.
His father looked at him for a good minute with considerable suspicion,
wondering what new mischief he was hatching. But Tinker looked like a
guileless seraph pondering the innocent joys of the Islands of the
Blessed, to a degree which made such a suspicion a very shameful thing
indeed. Partly reassured, Sir Tancred returned to his brooding: he was
angry with himself because he felt helpless in an _impasse_. On the
one hand, he could not bring himself to fly from Dorothy; on the other,
he could not bring himself to abate his pride, and ask her to marry
him. She was so rich; Septimus Rainer had talked of settling five
million dollars on her. He looked again at the pondering Tinker; and
his helpless irritation found the natural English vent in grumbling.
"Look here," he said, half querulously, half whimsically, "I told you
that if you went on adding to our household, I should be travelling
about Europe with a caravan. You began by adopting Elsie as a sister,
and I said nothing. Then you added Miss Rainer as her governess, and I
warned you. Miss Rainer added her father, a millionaire, and he added
a maid, a valet, two secretaries, a courier, and a private detective.
All these people, I know them well, will marry; and I shall be a
patriarch travelling with my tribe. It must stop."
Tinker sighed. "We are a large household--twelve of us, with Selina,"
he said thoughtfully. "But you might make it more compact, sir."
"More compact--how?"
"You might marry Dorothy; and then you and she could count as one."
A sudden light of exasperation brightened Sir Tancred's eyes, and he
made a grab at Tinker's arm. His hand closed on empty air; Tinker was
flying like the wind along the promenade.
"Tinker!" roared Sir Tancred; but Tinker went round a corner at the
moment at which only the T of his name could fairly be expected to have
reached him. Sir Tancred ground his teeth, and then he laughed.
Tinker made a circuit, and came down to the sea, where he found Elsie
playing with two little English girls staying at Arcachon with their
mother. At once she deserted them for him, and when he had withdrawn
her to a distance, he said, "I've hit on a way of getting them married."
"No! Have you? You are clever!" she cried with the ungrudging
admiration she always accorded him.
"Clever? It only wants a little common-sense," said Tinker with some
disdain.
"I shall be glad."
"So shall I. It'll be a weight off my mind, don't you know?" said
Tinker with a sigh.
"I'm sure it will," said the sympathetic Elsie.
"It must be awfully nice to be in love," she added with conviction.
"Now, look here," said Tinker in a terrible voice, "if I catch you
falling in love, I'll--I'll shake you!"
"But--but, I may be in love--ever so much, for anything you know," said
Elsie somewhat haughtily.
"You are not," said Tinker sternly. "Your appetite is all right.
Don't talk any more nonsense, but come along, we've got to get ready
for the picnic."
At half-past eleven the two children went on board the _Petrel_, a
little steam yacht of a shallow draught adapted to the shoals of the
Gulf, which Septimus Rainer had hired from a member of the Bordeaux
Yacht Club. They found Dorothy and Sir Tancred already on board, and
were told that a cablegram from New York had given her father, his
secretaries, and the telegraph office of Arcachon a day's work, and
prevented him from coming with them. Tinker had known this fact all
the morning, but he did not say so. His manner to his father showed a
serene unconsciousness of any cloud upon their relations.
The _Petrel_ was soon crossing the Gulf in an immensely important way,
at her full speed of eight knots an hour. In pursuance of his policy
Tinker took Elsie forward, and left Dorothy and his father to entertain
one another on the quarter-deck. The two children amused themselves
very well talking to Alphonse, the steersman, and Adolphe, the
engineer, thick-set, thick-witted men, who combined the picturesqueness
of organ-grinders with the stolidity of agriculturalists; Nature had
plainly intended them for the plough, and Circumstance had pitched them
into seafaring.
An hour's steering brought them across the Gulf. They landed, and made
their déjeuner at a little auberge, or rather cabaret, affected by
fishermen, and the folk of the _Landes_, off grey mullet, fresh from
the Bay of Biscay, grilled over a fire of pine-cones, with a second
course of ring-doves roasted before it.
After their coffee Tinker suggested that they should cross over to the
strip of sand which at that point separates the Gulf from the Bay, and
the others fell in with his humour. They crossed over and landed in
the yacht's dinghy. Tinker insisted on taking two rugs, though both
Dorothy and his father objected that the sand was quite dry enough to
sit on. However, when they came to the beach of the Bay, Sir Tancred
spread them out, and he and Dorothy sat on them. The two children
wandered away, and presently Elsie found herself holding Tinker's hand,
and running hard through the pines towards the landing-place.
In answer to Tinker's hail, Alphonse fetched them aboard in the dingey,
and the honest, unsuspecting mariners accepted his instructions to take
them for a cruise, and come back later for his father and the lady,
without a murmur. But no sooner was the _Petrel_ under weigh, than he
strode to the middle of the quarter-deck, folded his arms, scowled
darkly in the direction of his father and Dorothy, so heedless of their
plight, and growled in his hoarsest, most piratical voice:
"Marooned! Marooned!"
Slowly he paced the deck, with arms still folded, casting the piercing
glances of a bird of prey across the waters; then of a sudden he roared
once more with the true piratical hoarseness, "All hands on deck to
splice the main brace!"
Alphonse and Adolphe did not understand his nautical English; but when
Elsie came from the cabin with a bottle of cognac and two glasses,
their slow, wide grins showed a perfect comprehension. Tinker gave
them the cognac, and took the wheel. Then he became absorbed in
steering, and sternly rejected all further consideration of his gift;
he would have neither hand nor part in hocussing French
agriculturalists posing as mariners.
But for all his absorption in his steering, and his care to look past
them as they sat in more than fraternal affection on the deck, with the
bottle between them, it was somehow forced on him, probably by the
noise they made, that they proceeded from a gentle cheerfulness through
a wild and songful hilarity, broken by interludes in which either
described to the other with eloquent enthusiasm the charms of the lass
who loved him best, to a tearful melancholy, from which they were rapt
away into a sodden and stertorous slumber.
At the third snore Tinker turned to Elsie, who sat by him looking
rather scared by the changing humours of the agricultural mariners, and
said with a sardonic and ferocious smile, "The ship is ours."
At once they divested themselves of the hats of civilisation, and tied
round their heads the red handkerchiefs proper to their profession;
then he gave her the wheel, and going to the cabin, came back with a
black flag neatly embroidered in white with a skull and crossbones,
Dorothy's work, and sternly bade an imaginary quartermaster run up the
Jolly Roger. Then, as quartermaster, he ran up that emblem of his
dreadful trade himself; became captain once more, and, with folded arms
and corrugated brow surveyed it gloomily. Then he went down to the
engine-room, put the yacht on half-speed, and, as well as he could,
stoked the fires.
For the next three hours the _Petrel_ forgot all the innocent
traditions of her youth as a pleasure boat, and traversed the Gulf of
Arcachon a shameless, ravening pirate, while Captain Hildebrand, the
Scourge of the Spanish Main, issued curt, sanguinary orders to an
imaginary but as blood-dyed a gang of villains as ever scuttled an
Indiaman. The Jolly Roger and three or four blank shots from the
little signal gun drove three panic-stricken fishing boats from their
fishing-ground as fast as oars and sails could carry them, to spread
abroad a legend of piracy in the Gulf which would last a generation.
It was nearly sunset before Captain Hildebrand returned to the serious
consideration of his business as Cupid's ally. Then he set the
_Petrel_ going dead slow, ran her gently on to a sandbank, and let fall
the anchor, which was hanging from her bows. This done, again a
pirate, he looked at the recumbent and still stertorous Alphonse and
Adolphe with cold, cruel eyes, and said, "It's time these lubbers
walked the plank."
[Illustration: It's time these lubbers walked the plank.]
"Ay, ay, sir!" said Elsie cheerfully; and then she added, in a doubtful
voice, "But won't the poor men get drowned?"
"Not in four feet of water," said Captain Hildebrand; and he set
briskly about the preparations for the fell deed. With Elsie's help he
brought a plank to the gangway; and then, either taking him by an arm,
they dragged the grunting Adolphe slowly down the deck, and arranged
him on the plank. With a capstan bar, and many a hearty "Yo, heave
ho!" they levered the plank out over the side till Adolphe's weight
tilted it up, and he soused into the water.
For a moment he disappeared, then he rose spluttering and choking, sank
again, found his footing, and stood up, roaring like a flabbergasted
bull. Captain Hildebrand lay quietly down on the deck, and writhed and
kicked in spasms of racking mirth; but his trusty lieutenant, after
laughing a while, looked grave, and said, "The poor man will take cold."
"I have no sympathy with drunkards," said Captain Hildebrand with cold
severity; but he rose, and, going forward, by kicking Alphonse hard and
freely in the ribs, roused him from his dream of the lass who loved a
sailor, and said, "Adolphe has fallen overboard."
It took some time for the information to penetrate Alphonse's skull.
When it did, he was all vivid alertness, staggered swiftly aft to the
gangway, and in rather less than five seconds, with no conspicuous
agility, had precipitated himself into Adolphe's arms. They rose,
clinging to one another, and both roared like bulls, while the
shrieking Tinker danced lightly round the deck.
Presently he recovered enough to throw them a rope, and they climbed on
board: no difficult feat, seeing that the deck was not two feet above
their heads. Before they thought of the yacht they went to the
forecastle and changed their wet clothes, while the dusk deepened.
Tinker went to the galley, and made tea. He had brought it to the
cabin, and he and Elsie were making a well-earned and hearty meal, and
discoursing with gusto of their blood-dyed career during the afternoon,
when Alphonse, very sad and glum, came and told them that the yacht was
aground, and Adolphe was getting up full steam to get her off. Tinker
with great readiness said he would come up and help.
In half an hour he heard the rattle of the propeller, and, coming on
deck, said he would go to the bows while Alphonse took the wheel, and
Adolphe worked the engines.
He went right forward, and peered into the darkness. Adolphe set the
engines going full speed, reversed, and Tinker cried, "She's moving!"
He saw the anchor chain slowly tauten, then the _Petrel_ moved no more.
The propeller thrashed away, but to no purpose, and to his great joy he
was sure that the anchor held her. However, he cheered them on to
persevere, and for nearly half an hour the propeller thrashed away.
Then they gave it up, sat down gloomily on the hatch of the engine
room, and lighted their pipes. Tinker and Elsie went back to the
cabin, rolled themselves in rugs, and were soon enjoying the innocent
sleep of childhood.
It was twelve o'clock when Tinker awoke, and at once he went on deck
and found that Alphonse, by way of keeping watch, had gone comfortably
asleep in the bows, while Adolphe snored from the forecastle. He
kicked Alphonse awake, and said, "Don't you think you could get her off
if you hauled up the anchor?"
For a minute or two Alphonse turned the idea hazily over in his apology
for a mind; then, with a hasty exclamation, he ran to the side, and saw
dimly the taut anchor chain. He blundered below, lugged Adolphe out of
his berth and on deck, and for five excited minutes they explained to
one another that the anchor was embedded in the sandbank, and that it
held the _Petrel_ on it. Then soberly and slowly they got to work on
the capstan, and hauled up the anchor. A dozen turns of the propeller
drew the _Petrel_ off the bank and into deep water. In three minutes
they had her about and steamed off towards the marooned, while Tinker
in the galley was heating water for coffee and making soup.
In the meanwhile Dorothy and Sir Tancred, ignorant of their plight, had
spent a delightful afternoon exploring with a never-tiring interest one
another's souls. For a long time she chided him gently for his aimless
manner of living; and he defended himself with a half-mocking sadness.
At about sunset they rose reluctantly, sighed with one accord that the
pleasant hours were over, looked at one another with sudden questioning
eyes at the sound of the sighs, and looked quickly away. They walked
slowly, on feet reluctant to leave pleasant places, through the pines,
silent, save that twice Sir Tancred sent his voice ringing among the
trees in a call to Tinker. They came to the landing-place, to find an
empty sea, and looked at one another blankly.
"The children must have persuaded the men to take them for a cruise,"
said Sir Tancred.
"But they're late coming back," said Dorothy.
For a while their eyes explored the corners and recesses of the Gulf
within sight, but found no _Petrel_. Then Sir Tancred said, "Well, we
must wait"; and spread a rug for her at the foot of a tree. He paced
up and down before her, keeping an eye over the water and talking to
her.
The dusk deepened and deepened, and at last it was quite dark.
"We're in a fix," said Sir Tancred uneasily. "Of course, if we stay
here they will come for us sooner or later, but goodness knows when.
If we set out to walk to civilisation we shall doubtless in time strike
it somewhere, but goodness knows where."
"If we went along this strip and turned eastward at the end of it
shouldn't we come to the railway?" said Dorothy.
"I don't know that we should. We should get into the _Landes_, and
they're by way of being trackless. Anyhow it would mean walking for
hours; and it is less exhausting for you to sit here. The _Petrel_
must turn up sooner or later."
Remembering her talk with Tinker in the morning, Dorothy believed that
it would be later--much later; but as she could hardly unfold her
reasons for the belief, she said nothing.
For a long time they were silent. Listening to the faint thunder of
the Bay behind them, the lapping of the water at their feet, and the
stirring of the pines, she filled slowly with a sense of their
aloofness from the world, and a perfect content in being out of it
alone with him. For his part, Sir Tancred was ill at ease; he foresaw
that unless the _Petrel_ came soon a lot of annoying gossip might
spring from their accident, and he was distressed on her account. On
the other hand, he, too, found himself enjoying being alone with her
out of the world.
At last she said softly, "I feel as though we were on a desolate,
far-away island."
"I wish to goodness we were!" he cried, with a fervour which thrilled
her.
"You'd find it very dull," she said, with a faint, uncertain laugh.
"Not with you," he said quietly.
She was silent; and he took another turn up and down before he said,
half to himself, "It would simplify things so, we should be equal."
"Equal?"
"Oh, not from the personal point of view!" he said quickly. "You'd
always be worth a hundred of me. But on a desolate island money
wouldn't count."
"Oh, money!" she said with a faint disdain. "What has money to do with
anything?"
He sighed, and continued his pacing.
"Money is always an obstacle," he said presently. "Either there is too
little of it, and that's an obstacle; or there is too much of it, and
that's an obstacle."
"I don't think papa would agree with you about too much money," said
Dorothy.
"I'm wondering what he will say if we don't turn up before morning,"
said Sir Tancred gloomily.
"I suppose he'll say that it was an unfortunate accident."
"Yes; but then, I ought to have protected you against unfortunate
accidents. I'm afraid there'll be a lot of gossip."
"Well, it wasn't your fault," said Dorothy carelessly.
Sir Tancred grew more and more unhappy. His watch told him that it was
nearly ten o'clock, and there was no sign of the _Petrel_. Moreover,
the sense of their aloofness from the world had taken a firmer hold on
him, and it drew him and Dorothy nearer and nearer together. The
feeling that the world, of which her money had grown the symbol, would
again come between them, grew more and more intolerable.
At last it grew too strong for him, and he stopped before her and said,
in a voice he could not keep firm, "About that wasted life of mine,
Dorothy. Do you think you could do anything with it?"
Dorothy gasped. "I might--I might try," she said in a whisper.
He stooped down, picked her up, and kissed her. Then, with a profound
sigh of relief and content, he sat down beside her, drew her to him,
and leaned back against the tree; she was crying softly.
They were far away from the world, and for them time stood still. They
did not see the approaching lights of the _Petrel_, or hear the throb
of her screw; only the roaring hail of Alphonse awoke them from their
dream.
When they came on board, the observant Tinker saw the flush which came
and went in Dorothy's cheeks, and the new light in his father's eyes;
he saw her genuine surprise at finding herself so hungry. He observed
that his father was quite careless about the cause of the _Petrel's_
long absence, and his angel face was wreathed with the contented smile
of the truly meritorious.
After supper his father went on deck to watch the steering of the
yacht; Elsie fell asleep; and Dorothy sat, lost in a dream.
"Is it all right?" said Tinker softly.
"I don't know what you mean. You're a horrid scheming little boy,"
said Dorothy with shameless ingratitude.
"Yes; but _is_ it all right?" said Tinker.
"I shan't let you scheme like that when--when I'm your mother," said
Dorothy with virtuous severity, and she blushed.
"So it _is_ all right," said Tinker, and he chuckled.
THE END
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Admirable Tinker, by Edgar Jepson
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ADMIRABLE TINKER ***
***** This file should be named 19010-8.txt or 19010-8.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/0/1/19010/
Produced by Al Haines
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at http://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
http://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
