Chapter III: Part 3

The man hesitated. “It is just possible that I may be mistaken,” he said. “If you will wait for one minute I will inquire.”

He showed me into a big, over-furnished and over-decorated drawing-room. As I was looking at rather a nice copy of a well-known Rubens, the door opened and Lady Meskell came towards me.

Lady Meskell was anywhere between thirty-five and forty-five. She was still distinctly beautiful. Her eyes and hair were very dark. Her complexion was perhaps a little too pale, but I liked it. Rouge would not have suited her. Her general appearance seemed to suggest a curious association of poetry and commonness. The commonness was not in her dress, which was very quiet, very expensive, and in the fashion of the day after to-morrow. I think it lay in her mouth (she had a brute of a mouth) and in her rather podgy white hands. Her smile of welcome showed perfect teeth--perhaps it was intended to show them. The fat fingers of one hand twisted up my card.

“This is very good of you, Miss Castel,” she said at once. “Do sit down and tell me all about it. And first of all, have you got my pearls?”

“No, Lady Meskell,” I said, “I have not got them.”

Her expression did not change at this. She still listened with an air of polite attention.

“But,” I continued, “I have thought over the case and I have formed a theory. If the theory is correct I can tell you where your pearls are.”

“How interesting! The police, you know, have been no good at all. I shall be so glad to have some fresh light on the subject, even if it does not actually lead to anything.”

I felt convinced that she did not expect me to be able to tell her anything at all, and that, as a kind-hearted woman, she meant to let me babble for a few minutes and then get rid of me.

“On the other hand,” I said, “if my theory should happen to be wrong, you will be exceedingly angry with me.”

Lady Meskell laughed. “Oh, I hope not,” she said. “I am very seldom angry, but when I am I become rather awful.”

“The Spanish are privileged to have passions,” I said, “and you, I think, are partly Spanish. You begin to frighten me.”

Again she laughed. “You needn’t be afraid really. How did you know I was partly Spanish? Oh, yes, it was in the papers, of course. Whatever your theory is, I want to hear it. And I will take all the responsibility of making you tell me it.”

“That’s very kind of you. Your pearl necklace was not lost at all. It was stolen by a man of about forty. He was wearing a dark suit, a dark blue overcoat with a velvet collar, and a hard felt hat. He left the Square garden at five-and-twenty minutes to seven by the gate on the other side of the Square. He was a foreigner and is almost certainly employed in some menial capacity. I cannot tell you his name, but I have no doubt that further information could be obtained at the Spanish Embassy. Although I have brought you here the information which may enable you to recover your necklace, it is information that you had in your possession all along. You know more even than I do, for you know both the names of this man.”

“This is really very interesting,” said Lady Meskell. “You saw this man leave the garden, I suppose?”

“I did.”

“And you have remembered it all this time?”

“I have trained myself to remember.”

“You are right in your description of his appearance. He is a foreigner, and he is--or was--a servant. What made you suggest that anything could be heard of him at the Spanish Embassy?”

“Your mother was Spanish. The Spanish Ambassador attends your receptions. His carriage was pointed out to me.”

“A mistake,” said Lady Meskell bluntly. “He has never been here, and I know no Spaniards. Deduction is a dangerous game, and it seems to me that you’ve been playing it rather freely. You deduced, for instance, that what you said would make me extremely angry. Now, nothing that you have said could possibly make anybody angry. Not even your suggestion of complicity. But I can quite imagine that something which you thought might annoy a woman in my position extremely. Now tell me what you thought.”

“I have made a mistake. I am sorry to have troubled you, and I will go now, please.”

“Please don’t. You won’t tell me?”

I shook my head.

“Then I will tell you,” said Lady Meskell. “I will take a hand at this game of deduction and see if I can play it any better than you do. You knew that my mother was a Spaniard, and you supposed, quite wrongly, that I had some connection with the Spanish Embassy. Why should a woman in my position meet a man in his position secretly, and in the Square garden? How could he get into the Square garden unless I lent him a key? There must be a romance here. Romance fits well with the Spanish blood, doesn’t it? Briefly, you scented a love affair. The man had robbed me, and I wanted to get my pearls back. But I did not want the world to hear that story about me.” She looked a malicious devil as she was saying all this. “You are quite right,” she continued. “I do not want the world to hear any such story. Two hundred and fifty pounds would not be too much to pay for your silence.” She took a step or two towards the writing-table. “Shall I write you a cheque?” she said.

By this time I had become rather angry myself. “I don’t know,” I said, “whether you mean to admit in this way that I had thought correctly, but if you suggest that I had come here to blackmail you, or that you can offer me money in that way----”

Here Lady Meskell, somewhat to my surprise, burst into peals of laughter. She sat down and rubbed her fat hands together cheerfully. “You are a very good girl,” she said. “I thought you were from the first. But I was just making sure. No, unromantic though it may seem, there is no _liaison_ between myself and the man--he happens to be a cook--whom you saw leaving the garden. But, amid your mistakes, you made one or two very happy guesses. It is true that he took my pearls, and that I knew all along he had taken them, and that I knew his name. The advertisement will keep on appearing for the rest of this week. I have my own reasons for that. But, as a matter of fact, the pearls were returned to me the day before yesterday. I have got them upstairs, and I will show them to you, if you like, before you go.”

“They were returned to you by this cook man?”

“Oh, dear, no! That wouldn’t have done at all. I can’t compound a felony. At any rate, if I do, there must be no evidence of it. My friend the cook quite understood that. A nice, ruddy-faced cabman brought the pearls back and described how his little girl had found them in the gutter, and had supposed them to be beads and had worn them ever since. He knew it was a lie, and I knew it was a lie, and he knew that I knew. But we went through it all with perfect solemnity. My expert went over the pearls to see that they were all right, and the bank-notes were handed to the cabman. But I think that as you’ve been so clever--a little too clever, perhaps--you ought not to be left in the dark as to the rest of the story. I did not want to prosecute, because I did not want to have everybody laughing at me, and they would certainly have laughed. Tell me, did you find out nothing else about me?”

“Two or three other things. You were connected in different ways with several charities. Then again, you----”

“That’ll do. It began with the charities. I came across this good gentleman in hospital. He is an Italian; he has a bright and sunny imagination, and he told me strange stories of streets at the back of Tottenham Court Road. After demanding a pledge of secrecy he confessed himself to be an Anarchist.”

“Then it was romantic, after all?”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t. I am sometimes inclined to think that nothing ever is. But I thought it was romantic. I was as bad in that respect as you are. He had something on his mind, which he wished to tell me. He was to leave the hospital next day--I could not go to see him, nor would it be safe for him to call at my house. I had servants who knew him. He gave me the name of one of them, and quite correctly too. I have no idea how he got hold of it. Would I give him a meeting one evening in the Square garden? What he had to tell me was a matter of life and death. It was a matter, in fact, that concerned the life of the greatest in the land. He was most urgent and most serious. If it were found out that he had betrayed the plot his own life would be forfeited. I told him that luckily I was in the habit of walking in the Square garden on fine summer evenings. I am inclined to think that he knew this already. I would go to the summer-house in the middle of the garden, and half an hour later he might join me there, coming in from the other side of the Square. Well, he came.”

“Wasn’t it very rash of you?”

“Very likely. I may be a lot of other things, but I am not a funk. I carried a useful weapon--it was not a dagger or revolver, but merely a police whistle. I was not in the least afraid of him. He kept it up splendidly to the very end. He told me a long and beautiful story, illustrated by plans of Buckingham Palace. The plans looked quite all right, but no woman can understand plans, and my knowledge of the interior of Buckingham Palace is very limited. He accepted ten sovereigns, under protest, to enable him to get out of the country. As I left the summer-house he helped me on with my cloak. That was his opportunity. I did not discover the loss until I got back to my own house. Even then, when I felt certain that he had stolen my necklace, I could not quite bring myself to disbelieve his story. It was so circumstantial, so full of details, so correct in every point in which I was able to check it. I drove at once to Scotland Yard, and it was not till I was actually there that I made up my mind to say nothing about my Italian friend and his story. I dreaded the courteous smile of an inspector who could put his hand at any time on any Anarchist in London. I merely notified them that I had lost the pearl necklace and gave a description of it. I wished to recover it and to let my cook friend go scot-free--not on his own account, but because I could not bear that my friends should know what an idiot I had made of myself.”

“And what about that servant who knew the Italian?”

“Simplicity itself. He did not know the Italian, nor did the Italian know him. The Italian merely knew that I employed a man of that name. Naturally, one of the first things I did was to satisfy myself on that point. Really, do you know, when I remember how my advertisement was worded, it seems to me that you have earned the reward. Won’t you let me write that cheque?”

“Thanks, very much,” I said, “but I’m afraid I don’t feel as if I’ve earned it myself. And so I can’t take it. I am sorry to have wasted your time with my mistakes.” I held out my hand to say good-bye.

She glanced at the clock nervously. “But you mustn’t go yet--not until you have seen the pearls.” She rang and had the necklace brought to her. It was just an ordinary necklace, and I could not imagine why she had bothered about it. I admired it and again said good-bye.

“But you must stay and have some tea with me. I am quite alone, and it would be so kind of you. I want you to tell me all about this marvellous memory of yours. I would give anything if I could cultivate it in myself.” Once more she glanced at the clock.

It was quite obvious, for some reason which I could not discover, that she was trying to keep me. I was determined to go. She implored me to wait at any rate until her carriage could be brought round to drive me back. She could not bear to think of the amount of trouble I had taken for her, an entire stranger to me. I might at least let her carriage take me home. But I immediately determined to walk. She still tried one or two frantic excuses for keeping me, but I was firm, and a minute or two later I was outside in the Square. I walked round to the other side of it, and there, in the Square garden, pacing up and down, was a man of about forty, of a foreign appearance, wearing a dark suit, a dark blue overcoat with a velvet collar, and a hard felt hat.

And then I knew what a remarkably clever woman, and, at the same time, what an absolute fool Lady Meskell was.

I was one of the few people in London who were not surprised some few weeks later when her marriage with an Italian cook made paragraphs in the papers. She had met him, it was said, in a hospital, where she was visiting, and the two had fallen violently in love with one another.

As for the necklace, I have not the least doubt that it was really dropped in the street, and really found by the cabman’s child, and that the fortunate chef had nothing whatever to do with it. It is very wrong, of course, but I own that when I thought of the rapidity, the brilliance, and the convincing character of Lady Meskell’s lies to me, I had some feeling of envy. It was only the chance that I decided to go at the time when he was waiting for her in the Square garden that gave her away to me. I could not have done as well for myself in so tight a place.

VII

A QUEER COMMISSION

For a time things went very badly. My luck was right out. A point was reached when I doubted if I could continue to afford four shillings a week for the quite invaluable services of Minnie Saxe. I was determined that this should be almost the last of my economies. I was quite willing to economise on food and firing and--yes, even on dress. But I did not want to make my own bed any more. I had to get the more sordid part of the work of living done for me. Naturally I was not anxious that Minnie Saxe should discover the badness of my luck and the lowness of my exchequer. She accepted without comment my statement that I found tea and bread-and-butter the best breakfast if one were going to work in the morning. She said nothing when I found it was more hygienic to work in a cold room. When she came in unexpectedly one night and caught me in the very act of dining on tea and bread-and-butter she became extremely bad-tempered and was rather rude. Next morning she informed me that her cousin at Yarmouth had sent them a present of a box of kippers, and her father had taken the liberty of asking if I would accept six with his best thanks for all my kindness to her. I went into my own room to cry, and then came back and had a kipper for breakfast. They were remarkably good kippers, fat and well-liking.

An exclusive diet of tea and bread-and-butter would perhaps be good for many people, but it does not act as a stimulus to the imagination. The editors at this time sent my work back with commendable promptitude; but I did get one little story placed in _Tomlinson’s Magazine_, which I had considered to be altogether too high for me and had only attempted in desperation. I had a mutton-chop for dinner the night I received my cheque, and this gross feeding, acting on an already enfeebled constitution, as they say in the obituaries, led me to believe that I could write just the kind of serial that _Tomlinson’s Magazine_ would like. I planned it all out that night. Next morning I took a ’bus to the City to see the editor of _Tomlinson’s Magazine_ and tell him all about my idea.

He consented to see me. He seemed to be a very young man and very tired, and had the fingers of a confirmed cigarette-smoker. An older and a fatter man was standing by his side when I was shown in, and was handing him some proof sheets for inspection.

“Cut out ‘A Mother’s Prayer,’ and fill up with small jokes. Otherwise all right.” The fat man went out and the editor turned to me. I began to tell him my business.

“About a serial story!” he said. “All right, send it in and we’ll read it.” He rose from his chair and glanced at the large, framed notice on the wall. The notice said--

“YOU CAN SAY IT ALL IN FIVE MINUTES.”

I followed the glance and looked back at him. “So I can,” I said, “and I don’t want to waste any time over a long story unless I know that it has, at any rate, a chance.”

“Certainly,” he said. “Quite natural. The first few chapters and a synopsis will be enough.” He was opening the door and shaking hands with me. The fat man was in the passage outside, and he called to him that after all he would let that “Mother’s Prayer” stand. Some people liked a bit of sentimental verse now and then.

I got on a ’bus to go home and felt incompetent and hopeless. I rode on the top, and in front of me sat a well-dressed man, making pencil notes. In Piccadilly he got up, and as he passed me I noticed that he had a strong face, full of character. A moment later I noticed that he had left his pocket-book behind him. I picked it up and dashed after him.

“Pardon,” I said, as I handed the book to him, “but you left this on the ’bus.”

He took off his hat and looked at me keenly with deep-set, blazing eyes.

“Thank you,” he said. “My house is quite near, in the Square here. I should like to speak to you of this, if you can spare a few minutes.”

“I don’t want a reward,” I said bluntly, “and I don’t see what there is to say.”

“I never dreamed of offering you a reward.” He grinned pleasantly. “You really insult me in supposing that I could have made the blunder. But you have done me a very great service, and I wish you to understand how great it is. I shall wish very probably to speak to you on quite a different matter. We cannot talk here. Come, my name is Wentworth Holding, and only respectable people live in Berkeley Square.”

“Very well,” I said. “My time, unfortunately, is not valuable. I will come. I know your name, of course. In fact, I once met an agent of yours, a Dr. Morning.”

He looked at me sharply. “Were you the honest medium?” he said.

“I was.”

“You impressed Dr. Morning and his wife very favourably, especially his wife.” I certainly had not thought so at the time. “He couldn’t make out how you got mixed up with that crew. You will have to tell me that, for I can’t make it out either, and I hate puzzles.”

I laughed. “Oh, I’ll tell you anything you like about that,” I said.

The library of his house was on the ground floor. Every available inch of wall space was covered with book-shelves, and when I sat down I noticed that the books near me dealt principally with Satanism. He remained standing, opened the pocket-book, and showed me that it contained twenty bank-notes of fifty pounds each.

“These,” he said, “are of comparatively little importance. These pages of memoranda are worth more. At any rate there are people in the City who would have given you a good deal more for them. If you had read them you would have had very little difficulty in finding your market. Don’t you think you had better have slipped the book into your pocket and said nothing?”

I hated this kind of thing. “No,” I said bluntly. “Why say these things?”

He looked at me long and seriously. “You are,” he said, “in many respects exactly like Charles. Charles,” he added, “is my son. He is a singularly quixotic young man, and at present he’s in the deuce of a mess.”

What on earth was I to say to that? As I did not know, I said nothing.

“May I ask,” he said, “if you have any occupation or profession?”

“I write stories which are not accepted. I have tried other things--taking good ideas to a business man, for instance. But I could do nothing with it. My time is my own.”

“You live alone?”

“Quite alone.”

He walked up and down the room once or twice and then sat down in a chair opposite to me. “Would you have any objection,” he said, “to telling me rather more about yourself? I can assure you that I do not ask from idle curiosity, and if you wish it, nothing that you say will be repeated.”

“I don’t think,” I said, “that there are any dark secrets in my life. At the same time I don’t know why I should tell you anything.”

“No more do I,” he repeated. “Except that I have some delicate work that I want done and that I think you are one of the few people who could do it for me properly.”

“That’s all right,” I said, “I want work. I’ll tell you.”

I gave him a rapid sketch of what I had done. I noticed at the time that it was still more a sketch of what I had failed to do. He put in a keen question here and there. At the end he turned to me with a smile.

“Now,” he said, “I am going to speak to you plainly, Miss Castel. I should imagine that your father was a clever fool.”

“He was--but I don’t let you say so. You can speak quite plainly about myself.”

“Certainly,” he said. “We will begin then with you. You have a decided taint of the clever fool in your disposition. For the rest, you are a singularly honest lady; you look pretty; you inspire confidence, and you have tact. You are not, perhaps, the most perfect person I could find for the work I wish to have done, but the work presses, and it might take me months to find anyone better. The work concerns my son Charles. Do you know him?”

“No,” I said.

“He is, I am sorry to say, a very good young man. He is quixotically good. I get very little amusement out of spending money myself, but I had hoped that my only son would have some gift for it. He has none. He has never from childhood done an extravagant thing. He buys cheap clothes, and when I get angry in consequence he tells me that these are not the things which matter. He might marry brilliantly, but he will not. He has decided to marry a poor girl who has worked for her living. I don’t mind that in the least, but, if you will pardon me the expression, I am damned if he is going to marry Miss Sibyl Norton.”

“What’s the matter with her?”

“Matter with her? Haven’t I said the name?--Sibyl Norton.”

“Yes, but I don’t know it.”

“You don’t want to know it. It’s a name that gives itself away. It’s obviously not a real name. It’s dishonest; it’s stagey; it makes the whole room smell of patchouli.”

I laughed. “Really,” I said, “this is very extravagant. Is that all you’ve got against her?”

“No. I dislike her type of mind and her personal appearance. She is quite respectable, has failed on the stage, and is as cunning as a cartload of monkeys. She talks of virtue and she thinks of the main chance. She lives with a tow-coloured aunt, who has less individuality than I ever met in anybody in my life. It is with the greatest possible difficulty in conversation with her that one can manage to remember that she is there at all. To come to business, the work I want you to do is to prevent my son from marrying Miss Sibyl Norton.”

“How?”

“Any way you like. That’s your affair. When I tell a clerk to get me out a statement he does not say ‘how?’ He knows how to do it, and he knows that I don’t.”

I got up to go. “Thanks,” I said. “But I don’t think I care about this kind of thing.”

“Do, for Heaven’s sake, sit down! I am quite serious about this. Look here, I’ll give you all the help I can. Why do you suppose I had a thousand pounds in my pocket this morning? It is not like a millionaire; it is especially not like me. Often and often I have had to borrow my ’bus fare from the conductor, who knows me, because I have no money whatever in my pocket. I had that money with me this morning because I wanted an argument. A thousand pounds is as good an argument as I know, except more thousands. I had been down to Dingleton’s, the private detective’s. I meant to go in there and tell them to buy this girl off. A thousand pounds was to be the first instalment of her price. When I came there I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go inside their beastly office. It was too low down on Charles. Their underbred and under-educated agents would have made some blunder or other, and Charles would never have forgiven me. But I expect the woman is to be bought, and that you will be able to buy her. A discreditable past would be of very little assistance, because Charles is a quixotic fool. The more he learned that she was the last kind of woman a man ought to marry, the more his insensate chivalry would drive him to marry her.”

“Why should one be able to buy her off? I presume your only son is your heir?”

“He is, at present. But I can disinherit him to-morrow. That point might be made clear to Miss Norton. I think a woman of her astuteness will find the simplest little sparrow in the hand worth more than an entire aviary of humming-birds in their native freedom.”

“I don’t know your son, and I don’t know her.”

“You will meet my son at lunch here to-day. You can meet Miss Sibyl Norton whenever you like. For, at present, she is getting a precarious existence as a palmist and manicurist. Pretty combination, isn’t it? Takes the mystery out of your hand first, and then cuts your nails.”

“Very well,” I said. “I am going to see these two people. Afterwards, I will tell you if I can do anything.”

I lunched at the house that day. There were about twenty at the luncheon-party, and my clothes were all wrong for it, and I did not care a bit. I had some talk with Mr. Charles Holding, and found that he answered fairly well to his father’s description. He was noble, but vacuous. A weak chin spoilt a face that would otherwise have been good-looking. I would have trusted him better in temptation than in a street riot. He had a great admiration for Lovelace, and was horrified that I did not even possess a copy of his favourite poems. Would I permit him to send me one? I would. He scribbled my address on his shirt-cuff.

I got away from the house about three in the afternoon. Mr. Wentworth Holding himself came down the steps with me, apologising for not being able to let me have his carriage. “You see,” he said, “you must, of course, go on to Miss Sibyl Norton at once, and she knows my horses and liveries.”

I had not intended to go at once. I wanted to get home and think over this extraordinary commission more at my leisure. But, after all, it did not much matter. A hansom took me to Miss Norton’s dingy lodgings in Northumberland Street. The tow-coloured aunt received me in a dusty room and asked whether it was manicure or palmistry.

“Both,” I said.

“Miss Norton’s fee is one guinea, payable in advance, please. I will give you a receipt.” Then she faded out of the room, saying that Miss Norton would be down in a minute.

Miss Norton was down in a minute. She wore a theatrical tea-gown, had a certain amount of pinched prettiness in her face, and seemed to be a fairly hard case. I talked to her the whole time that she was polishing my nails. When it came to the other section of her weird business I asked her if she could tell me anything of the future.

“The law does not permit me to do that,” she said. “But I can tell you two things about the present which may rather surprise you.”

“What are they?” I asked.

“The first is,” she said, as she peered more closely into the lines of my hand, “that you have come here with the intention, sooner or later, of bribing me to give up the man to whom I am at present engaged. The second is, that you will have no success whatever in the attempt.” She broke off laughing. “I did not read that in your hand, of course. I saw you in Berkeley Square conversing earnestly with Mr. Wentworth Holding this morning. The rest was easy enough to guess. Charles told me I might expect something of the kind.”

I tried to keep my composure and my dignity, but I do not think I made a very fine figure. “Perhaps you will tell me,” I said quietly, “why you would refuse?”

“I will tell you, but you won’t believe it. Money has nothing whatever to do with the matter. If Mr. Charles Holding were a pauper it would be all the same to me. If it were necessary, I could earn enough by this nonsense to keep us both.”

“Well,” I said, “let us get on to something more interesting to me personally. Will you go on reading my hand, please?”

She took her revenge by giving me a remarkably bad character.

I took a hansom back to my rooms. “Take cabs everywhere when you are on my business,” Mr. Holding had said, though he seemed to prefer the ’bus himself. The bothering thing was that everybody was quite right. Mr. Holding had not exaggerated the bad points of Miss Norton’s character or the weakness of his son. But Miss Norton, dishonest money-grubber though she was, was perfectly sincere in her attachment to Charles Holding and was not to be influenced by money in that particular. The position was impossible of solution, and I decided that I had nothing to do but to call on Mr. Wentworth Holding on the following day and tell him so.

I did not find the volume of poems awaiting me, and had not expected to find it, but there was a letter in my letter-box, which began by explaining why it had not arrived. Mr. Charles Holding had wished to have it put into a rather more suitable dress before it was presented to me. His letter went on to say that his meeting with me had been a revelation to him. It had compelled him to break off his engagement. It was not a time to hesitate. Whatever might be the attractions of the woman whom he had once meant to marry, she had not the high ideals, the quixotic spirit, the chivalrous devotion to all that is best which he had found in me. (Naturally, in talking to him I had humoured him a little in what I knew to be his bent. I even saw that I had made some impression on him, but this was too astounding.) The letter went on in rather enraptured terms to speak of the loveliness of my hair and to propose marriage to me.

So the game had, of its own accord, dropped neatly into my hand. I refused Mr. Charles Holding in writing and immediately, and the same post transmitted to his father Charles Holding’s letter to me. The queer thing about the whole business, in the eyes of Mr. Wentworth Holding, was that Miss Sibyl Norton did not bring an action for breach of promise and scornfully refused the extremely handsome solatium which was suggested to her. But this did not surprise me.

I had to show a certain amount of conscience myself, or I should have been made rich and unhappy, for Mr. Wentworth Holding’s gratitude was extreme. Even as it was I was enabled to feel myself out of all danger of such privations as I had recently suffered for the next year or two.

VIII

THE PEGASUS CAR

Extreme poverty and a low diet are not in themselves attractive, but in some ways I was happier in my low-water period than I was now with enough money banked to keep me in moderate comfort for a couple of years. I might be more satisfied with my circumstances, but I now had leisure to become profoundly dissatisfied with myself. I had come to London to play a lone hand and do well by it. I was not going into any of the ruts. I would not become a governess. I had brilliant ideas and enterprise and all the rest of the bag of tricks to make a millionairess of me, yet I had only made few and comparatively small sums by my wits; the rest had been pure luck or--and this seemed more degrading still--had come to me more because of the outside of my head than of the inside. On my arrival in London I did extremely well, merely from the fact that there was a chance resemblance between a girl who was dead and myself. My success in the strange commission that Mr. Wentworth Holding gave me had not been due in the least to my cleverness but to the fact that I was pretty. I had been outwitted by a fraudulent spiritualist and by a romantic lady of title. My attempts at literature had been practically a failure. When I had taken my bright ideas to business men they had either ridiculed me or robbed me. So, on a general review of the case, I did not think as well of myself as I had done. Self-disapproval is not only very unpleasant but it is positively bad for one. It takes away one’s spirit; it checks one’s invention. I determined to make a serious and sober effort to recover my own esteem and incidentally to make a little money.

I looked round for a point from which to start, and after a great deal of consideration I noted as a very useful fact that new motor cars sold for very high prices. A person who could influence the sale of motor cars would be likely to make a good commission. In the old days, after this brief reflection, I should have put on a cheerful smile and my best hat and gone round to one of the big places in Long Acre to explain that I should like to sell cars for them, and the manager of that place, having discovered in twenty seconds that I knew nothing whatever about motor cars, had no influential connection, and was about as likely to sell a motor car as I was to sell the moon, would have shown me out--quite politely, because I happened to be pretty.

So I began in a different way. I went out and bought dark blue linen--many yards of it--and came back and consulted with Minnie Saxe on the manufacture of a garment. Ultimately it was manufactured, and I have seldom seen anyone look more pained and distressed than Minnie Saxe did when I put the abomination on.

“I can’t let you go out in that, miss,” she said. “You’d ’ave all the boys in the place callin’ after you, and that brings disgrice on me, it being known as I work for you.”

“That’s all right, Minnie,” I said. “I’m not going to wear it in the street.”

So far I had not gone outside my own province, and had moved with comparative ease. My next step had to be more circumspect, for I was about to attack the business man once more.

There are many cars, and at that time they were all the same to me. I read the motoring news in the daily papers assiduously for a week, and then I thought that I would try the Pegasus people. The Pegasus car had just done some remarkable trials; it had one or two novelties in construction; it had not an immense reputation already, but it seemed to have a chance of making one.

So one afternoon I put on gorgeous apparel and walked into the show-room of the Pegasus people looking exactly as if I were about to buy a car. I even felt a little like it too. A tall, handsome man in a frock coat and a powerful little fellow in a dirty overall removed their attention from a car’s duodenum as I approached. The handsome man came forward. The powerful, squat man remained by the car; he still seemed busy with its vermiform appendix, but he was listening all the time.

“I want,” I said, “to learn how to drive the Pegasus car. I want also to learn a good deal about the interior of the car so that I can do adjustments and slight repairs. And I want to learn everything about tyres.”

There was just the flicker of a smile over the handsome man’s face, but in a moment he had stowed it away at the back of his head and was asking me suavely if I wished to buy a car.

“No,” I said boldly. “Not at all. I could not afford it. I have not the money. Buy a car? I’m more likely to sell one. All I want at present is to understand the car thoroughly, and to know how to drive it.”

The handsome man hesitated. The man in the dirty overall lifted up a bit of the car’s femoral artery, looked at it, and then gave his undivided attention to the handsome man and myself.

“I should, of course, be prepared to pay,” I added.

“Yes, of course, miss,” said the handsome man, “but you see--well, so much of the work is hardly suited for a lady. Some of it requires a good deal of muscular strength. Then, if I may mention it, you would spoil your hands. Then, again, you would hardly like to work in our repairing shop among the ordinary workmen who are there. There really are many difficulties. Hadn’t you better think it over, perhaps?”

“Marshall.” It was the voice of the powerful man in the dirty overall. It was a loud voice, and packed full of authority.

“Yes, sir,” said the handsome man in the frock coat.

“You will arrange that. See? Do the best you can for the lady.”

Then he wandered away through a glazed door which seemed to lead to outer darkness, carrying tenderly in one hand one of the car’s vertebræ.

I had been imagining all this time that the frock coat was the supreme manager and general god of the place, and that dirty overall was a mere workman. I now saw that this was not the case.

“Well, miss,” said Mr. Marshall, “we can but try it, as Mr. James says so. You will have to get something to cover up your clothes if you don’t want to spoil them.”

“I have got that already,” I said. “I don’t want to work many hours a day. Two or three in the morning would be quite enough. I suppose I could not begin by driving?”

“No,” said Mr. Marshall. “You would begin by trying to understand the car; then, of course, the rest would depend upon how you get on.” There was no hope in his face whatever.

Nothing remained but to settle the terms, and here it seemed to me that Mr. Marshall was very reasonable and lenient. But the man to whom I should have liked to talk was Mr. James, and he did not appear again that morning.

A very few days were enough to show me that there was a good deal to be said for Mr. Marshall’s point of view. I had expected to get my hands covered with black oil, and I was not in the least disappointed. I did not like breaking my nails, but that happened also. It takes more force than a woman generally uses to take a tyre off or to screw a thing up really tight. The workmen in the place were all decent, intelligent mechanics, a little inclined to be amused at me at first, but concealing their amusement, and having the fear of Mr. James before their eyes. I saw him several times in the course of my lessons. He could do anything that had to be done in the shop rather better than anybody else in it.

At the end of a month I was still learning my business. One morning as I was leaving Mr. James stood outside with one of the big Pegasus cars in waiting. The overall had vanished. He looked smart, clean, and indefinitely connected with His Majesty’s navy.

“If you have an hour to spare, Miss Castel, I want you to begin to learn how to drive these cars.”

“Thanks very much,” I said. “I should like it. Who’ll teach me?”

“I shall,” said Mr. James. “Now, if you’ll get in, please----”

I rather despised his style of driving then. He was particularly careful; slowed down round every corner, did not exceed the speed limit, did not take narrow shaves. He made the car go fast up hill, and steadied her coming down. He was an excellent driver really; a driver with great knowledge and good nerve, and without any of the vain idiot’s desire to show off.

Some weeks afterwards, when my motor education was nearing its completion, Mr. James asked me suddenly one day what I was doing it for. “Do you mean to get a post as driver?” he asked. “You could, you know. We could fairly recommend you, and I daresay some ladies would prefer to have a lady driver.”

“No,” I said, “that was not my idea. My idea was to work for your firm when you think I am good enough.”

“You drive all right. I’ll guarantee you know a lot more about the car than a good many men do who are driving it about the country at present. But what was it that you are proposing to do for us?”

“I am proposing to show cars for you. The fact is that your car looks a little bit complicated at first. If an intending purchaser found that a young girl understood it and drove it easily he would be reassured.”

“Yes,” said Mr. James reflectively. “I’d thought of that. There’s something in it, perhaps.”

He seemed to be debating the matter with himself in silence for a few moments, then he said, “Look here. I’ve got a man coming up to-morrow. He may buy a Pegasus, or he may buy some other car. Anyhow, he’s going to buy a car, and we should prefer that he bought a Pegasus. He’s a nervous kind of man, and my first idea was that in order to make him feel quite secure I would drive him myself. Now I’ll change my mind. He’d be more impressed if I sent the car out with a girl. If you sell the car to him we will pay you a small commission. Remember, he’s a nervous man. You don’t want to show him how fast the car can go. Show him how handy it is in a block or very slow traffic; the ease with which it is steered; the quietness of the engines; the impossibility of a skid.”

“Yes, yes,” I said. “I see all that. I shall sell him that car.”

I was round next morning at eleven. The possible purchaser was an elderly solicitor, retired from practice, who after long searchings of heart had decided that he would have a motor car. He looked dubiously at the big Pegasus waiting to take him his trial trip as if he expected that it might go off any moment. He was a good deal startled when he was told that I should drive him.

“Is that all right?” I heard him ask Mr. James.

“I am sending you out,” said Mr. James, “with one of the best drivers we’ve got.”

I got up, switched on the spark, and the engines started.

“Dear me,” said Mr. Hoskins, “I was always under the impression that it was necessary to wind it up--to turn a handle.”

“So it would be,” I said, “if the car had been standing for a long time, or on a very cold day, but a good four-cylinder car will generally start with switching on the spark.”

“You are a careful driver, I hope,” he said, as I took him through Piccadilly Circus.

“Yes, I think so,” I said, “but then this car is particularly easy to manage.”

His nervousness wore off as we got further away from London. He desired me ardently to show him the utmost the car could do. As it could do fifty miles an hour and we were in a police-trapped country at the time I refrained, but I showed him what it was to have plenty of power in going up steep hills. The car made nothing of them. He became silent as we drove back, and I did not bother him by chattering. Just as we were nearing home he said, “I like this car. It goes well, and there can be no great difficulty about it if a girl can drive it. I shall buy it.”

He did not buy that particular car. He got one like it, and we tuned it up for him and found him a driver. He was in great trouble about myself. If one of the ordinary drivers had taken him he would have tipped the man, but he felt that he could not tip me although he could see that I was an employed person. He sent me a charming letter of thanks and a very good motor rug. And I got my commission. Better still, I had now got back my self-respect.

After this I often drove for Mr. James when he wanted to show a car. Naturally I did not always find a purchaser, but on the whole I was fairly successful. Mr. James himself seemed to think that I had unusually good luck. I did not in the least mind what work I did. I was there one morning when Mr. Marshall had just opened a telegram. It was from a young man living in Bedford who had bought one of the cars, and it had been delivered the day before. The car had been driven to Bedford by one of Mr. James’s mechanics. It had already been run for a hundred miles and properly tuned up, and the mechanic had had no trouble of any sort with it. The telegram said, “Engines will not start. Please send man.”

“We can’t,” said Marshall.

Mr. James reflected. It was a very busy time, and everybody on the place was fully engaged. “It can’t be anything serious,” said Mr. James. “It’s some fool thing or other that he’s done.”

Then I volunteered. “I’ll go, if you like,” I said.

“Really?” said Mr. James. “It would be awfully good of you if you would. Will you go by train or drive yourself down?”

I decided to go by train. At Bedford I took a cab to the house, and told the butler who answered the door that I had called about the car. He looked a little puzzled, and showed me into the drawing-room. I was wearing my most enchanting clothes. I had put them on with intent for the fun of the thing, but I had brought my overall with me in case of need. A puzzled and sweet-looking young lady came into the room, said “Good-morning,” and shook hands, and then, “Am I right? I understand you have called about my husband’s car?”

“Yes,” I said. “He wired to the Pegasus people for an engineer to be sent. I am the engineer.”

She seemed considerably staggered. “Do you mean this? Really? You an engineer?”

“Yes,” I said. “Do you mind?” It was rather cheeky.

Then she found her husband for me, a fluffy, enthusiastic young man, weary and dirty with long wrestling with that car’s interior. I went with him to the shed and looked it over.

There was perhaps one teaspoonful of petrol in the tank. I pointed out to him that petrol cars went better when petrol was used. We then filled up the tank and started. I think I never saw anyone so absolutely abject. What he wanted to do, and did not dare to do, was to ask me not to reveal the nature of the trouble to the firm when I got back. He needn’t have minded. To the firm it was all in the day’s work. And the curious thing was that the young man was by no means a fool in mechanical matters; it was simply that he had not happened to think of the petrol.

I got along very well now. I might have saved myself a good deal of trouble if I had started on this business at once. I was now making an income which justified me, I thought, in removing from my little flat to something better and nearer to the middle of civilisation. It was Minnie Saxe who decided it for me. She lingered one morning after she had brought my breakfast; not lachrymose--for she never wept--but stern and depressed.

“I am afraid I shall have to leave you, miss,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Why?”

“Well, father’s broken down again. These last three weeks he’s brought back his money a shilling short, and great paper bags of almond-rock in his pocket. Nothing I can say seems to be able to save him.”

I did not smile outwardly. “Well, what are you going to do about it, Minnie?”

“I am going to do what I ought to have done long ago. He’s got a bit of money put by, and I know where there’s a good opening. I’m going into the sweets and general.”

“What!” I said. “Going to sell sweets? But your father will eat the stock.”

“That’s just it,” said Minnie. “What’s more, he’ll be encouraged to eat it. What’s more, when he’s finished he’ll be made to go on again. He’ll get that and nothing else for a week, and if he can look sugar in the face at the end of it I’m a Dutchman. Him a grown man too! I could find another girl to do you, miss, I think, though I won’t say that she’d be quite my class. Still, I would have her here the week before I left, and if anybody can knock a thing into a girl’s head I think I can.”

I explained to Minnie that she need not trouble, and that I should move from the neighbourhood.

Some time later I made a point of visiting Miss Saxe’s emporium. I was served by her father, who looked distinctly chastened and rather thinner. He told me that his daughter was a wonderful girl, and I believed him. He waved one hand over the assorted boxes on the counter. “I never touch anything of this kind now,” he said. “One loses one’s taste for it as one gets older.” So Mr. Saxe was happily reclaimed.