The Lady in the Car

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why are you so anxious to have one?”

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

“Men friends are sometimes dangerous, you know,” he laughed.

“Not if the man is a true gentleman,” was her rather disconcerting answer. Then, raising her eyes again, and gazing straight into his face she asked, “Will you really be my friend?”

“As I’ve already said, I’d only be too delighted. What do you want me to do?”

“I – I want you to help me, and – and to preserve my secret.”

“What secret?” he inquired, surprised that a girl of her age should possess a secret.

He saw the sudden change in her countenance. Her lips were trembling, the corners of her mouth hardened, and, without warning, she buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

“Oh! come, come, Elfrida!” he exclaimed quickly, placing his hand tenderly upon her shoulder. “No, don’t give way like this! I am your friend, and will help you in what ever way you desire, if you will tell me all about it. You are in distress. Why? Confide in me now that I have promised to stand your friend.”

“And – and you promise,” she sobbed. “You promise to be my friend – whatever happens.”

“I promise,” he said, perhaps foolishly. “Whatever happens you may rely upon my friendship.”

Then, next instant, his instructions from his Highness flashed across his mind. He was there for some secret reason to play a treacherous part – that of the faithless lover.

She stood immovable, dabbing her eyes with a little wisp of lace. He was waiting for her to reveal the reason of her unhappiness. But she suddenly walked on mechanically, in her eyes a strange look of terror, nay of despair.

He strode beside her, much puzzled at her demeanour. She wished to tell him something of which she was ashamed. Only the desperation of her position prompted her to make the admission, and seek his advice.

They had gone, perhaps, three hundred yards still in the wood. The crimson light had faded, and the December dusk was quickly darkening, as it does in Scotland, when again she halted and faced him, saying in a faltering tone:

“Mr Hebberdine, I – I do hope you will not think any the worse of me – I mean, I hope you won’t think me fast, when I tell you that I – well, somehow, I don’t know how it is – but I feel that Fate has brought you here purposely to be my friend —and to save me!”

“To save you!” he echoed. “What do you mean? Be more explicit.”

“I know my words must sound very strange to you. But it is the truth! Ah!” she cried, “you cannot know all that I am suffering – or of the deadly peril in which I find myself. It is because of that, I ask the assistance of you – an honest man.”

Honest! Save the mark! He foresaw himself falling into some horrible complication, but the romance of the situation, together with the extreme beauty of his newly found little friend held the young man fascinated.

“I cannot be of assistance, Miss Elfrida, until I know the truth.”

“If we are to be friends you must call me Elfrida,” she said in her girlish way, “but in private only.”

“You are right. Other people might suspect, and misconstrue what is a platonic friendship,” he said, and he took her hand in order to seal their compact.

For a long time he held it, his gaze fixed upon her pale, agitated countenance. Why was she in peril? Of what?

He asked her to tell him. A slight shudder ran through her, and she shook her head mournfully, no word escaping her lips. She sighed, the sigh of a young girl who had a burden of apprehension upon her sorely troubled mind. He could scarcely believe that this was the bright, happy, laughing girl who, half an hour ago, had been putting her stones along the ice, wielding her besom with all her might, and clapping her dainty little hands with delight when any of her own side knocked an opponent off “the pot lid.”

At last, after long persuasion, during which time dusk had almost deepened into darkness in that silent snow-covered wood, she, in a faltering voice, and with many sentences broken by her emotion, which she vainly strived to suppress, told him a most curious and startling story to which he listened with breathless interest.

The first of the series of remarkable incidents had occurred about two years ago, while she was at school in Versailles. She, with a number of other elder girls, had gone to spend the summer at a branch of the college close to Fontainebleau, and they often succeeded, when cycling, in getting away unobserved and enjoying long runs in the forest alone. One summer’s evening she was riding alone along a leafy by-way of the great forest when, by some means, her skirt got entangled in the machine and she was thrown and hurt her ankle. A rather well-dressed Frenchman who was coming along assisted her. He appeared to be very kind, gave her a card, with the name “Paul Berton” upon it, was told her name in response, and very quickly a friendship sprang up between them. He was an engineer, and staying at the Lion d’Or, in Fontainebleau, he said, and having wheeled her machine several miles to a spot quite near the college, suggested another meeting. She, with the school-girl’s adventurous spirit, consented, and that proved to be the first of many clandestine rendezvous. She was not quite seventeen while he was, she thought, about twenty-six.

She kept her secret from all, even from her most intimate schoolmate, fearing to be betrayed to the head governess, so all the summer these secret meetings went on, she becoming more and more infatuated on every occasion, while he, with apparent carelessness, learned from her the history of her family, who they were, and where they resided.

“One thing about Paul puzzled me from the very first evening we met,” she said reflectively as she was describing those halcyon days of forbidden love. “It was that I noticed, high upon his left wrist, about four inches from the base of the hand, a scarlet mark, encircling the whole arm. It looked as though he had worn a bracelet that had chafed him, or perhaps it had been tattooed there. Several times I referred to it, but he always evaded my question, and seemed to grow uneasy because I noticed it. Indeed, after a few meetings I noticed that he wore shirts with the cuffs buttoned over with solitaires, instead of open links. Well – ” she went on slowly with a strange, far-away look in her face. “I – I hardly like to tell you further.”

“Go on, little friend,” he urged, “your secret is in safe keeping with me – whatever it may be. You loved the man, eh?”

“Ah! yes!” she cried. “You are right. I – I loved him – and I did not know. We met again in Paris – many times. All sorts of ruses I resorted to, in order to get out, if only for half an hour. He followed me to London – when I left school – and he came up here.”

“Up here!” he gasped. “He loved you, then?”

“Yes. And when I went to Dresden he went there also.”

“Why?”

She held her breath. Her eyes looked straight into his, and then were downcast.

“Because – because,” she faltered hoarsely, “because he is my husband!”

“Your husband. Great heavens!”

“Yes. I married him six months ago at the registry office in the Blackfriars Road, in London,” she said in a strangely blank voice. “I am Madame Berton.”

He stood utterly dumbfounded. The sweet, refined face of the child-wife was ashen pale, her white lips were trembling, and tears were welling in her eyes. He could see she wished to confide further in him.

“Well?” he asked. It was the only word he could utter.

“We parted half an hour after our marriage, and I have only seen him six times since. He comes here surreptitiously,” she said in a low voice of despair.

“Why?”

“Because evil fortune has pursued him. He – he confessed to me a few weeks ago that he was not so rich as he had been. He will be rich some day, but now he is horribly poor. He being my husband, it is my duty to help him – is it not?”

Garrett’s heart rose against this cowardly foreigner, who had inveigled her into a secret marriage, whoever he might be, for, according to French law, he might at once repudiate her. Poor child! She was evidently devoted to him.

“Well,” he said, “that depends upon circumstances. In what manner is he seeking your assistance?”

She hesitated. At last she said:

“Well – I give him a little money sometimes. But I never have enough. All the trinkets I dare spare are gone.”

“You love him – eh?” asked the young man seriously.

“Yes,” was her frank reply. “I am looking forward to the day when he can acknowledge me as his wife. Being an engineer he has a brilliant idea, namely, to perform a great service to my father in furthering his business aims, so that it will be impossible for him to denounce our marriage. Towards this end I am helping him. Ah! Mr Hebberdine, you don’t know what a dear, good fellow Paul is.”

The young man sniffed suspiciously.

“He has invented a new submarine boat which will revolutionise the naval warfare of the future. Father, in secret, builds submarine boats, you know. But Paul is anxious to ascertain what difference there is between those now secretly building and his own invention, prior to placing it before dear old dad.”

“Well?”

She hesitated.

“I wanted to ask you, Mr Hebberdine, if you will do me a favour to-night,” she said presently. “Paul is staying at the ‘Star,’ down in the village, in the name of Mr James. I dare not go there, and he dare not approach me. There have been thieves about in this neighbourhood lately, and dad is having the castle watched at night by detectives.”

At this Garrett pricked up his ears. Glenblair was, in those circumstances, no place for his Highness and his clerical companion.

“I wonder,” she suggested, “whether you would do me a great favour and go down to the village to-night about ten and – and give him this.”

From within her fur bolero she produced an envelope containing what seemed to be a little jewellery box about two inches long by an inch and a half broad. This she handed to him saying, “Give it into the hand of nobody except Paul personally. Tell him that you are my friend – and his.”

So devoted was the girl-wife to her husband, and so unhappy did she seem that Garrett, filled with the romance of the affair, at once agreed to carry out his promise. Her remarkable story had amazed him. He alone knew her secret.

As they sat at dinner that night, her eyes met his once or twice, and the look they exchanged was full of meaning. He was the bearer of some secret message to her husband.

At half-past nine when the men had gone to the billiard-room, Garrett slipped upstairs to his room to put on a pair of thick boots, for he had a walk through the snow a good couple of miles to the village.

Scarcely had he closed the door when it opened again, and the Prince, his finger raised in silence, entered, and in a low excited whisper exclaimed:

“It’s all up! We must get away on the car as soon as possible. Every moment’s delay means increased peril. How have you got on with Elfrida?”

The chauffeur stared at him without uttering a word.

“Elfrida!” he echoed at last. “Well, she’s told me a most remarkable story, and made me her confidante.” Then, as briefly as possible, he told him everything. How her husband was staying in Glenblair village as Mr James; and how he had promised to convey the little packet to him.