My Friend the Chauffeur

Part V--Told by Terence Barrymore

XXV A CHAPTER OF CHASING 303 XXVI A CHAPTER OF HIGH DIPLOMACY 316

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE

She was only a tall white girl simply dressed Frontispiece

As he spoke a douanier lounged out of his little (After) 62 whitewashed lair

Two or three men were moving about the place (After) 148

A great white light pounced upon us like a hawk on a chicken (After) 200

MY FRIEND THE CHAUFFEUR

PART I. Told by Ralph Moray

TOLD BY RALPH MORAY

A CHAPTER OF SURPRISES

"WANTED, LADIES, TO CONDUCT. An amateur automobilist (English, titled) who drives his own motor-car accommodating five persons, offers to conduct two or three ladies, Americans preferred, to any picturesque centres in Europe which they may desire to visit. Car has capacity for carrying small luggage, and is of best type. Journeys of about 100 miles a day. Novel and delightful way of travelling; owner of car well up in history, art, and architecture of different countries. Inclusive terms five guineas a day each, or slight reduction made for extensive trip. Address--"

When Terry had read aloud thus far, I hastily interrupted him. I wasn't quite ready yet for him to see that address. The thing needed a little leading up to; and by way of getting him quickly and safely on to a side rack I burst into a shout of laughter, so loud and so sudden that he looked up from the little pink Riviera newspaper of which I was the proud proprietor, to stare at me.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

I subsided. "The idea struck me so forcibly," said I. "Jolly clever, isn't it?"

"It's a fake, of course," said Terry. "No fellow would be ass enough to advertise himself like that in earnest. Probably the thing's been put in for a bet, or else it's a practical joke."

I had been aware that this, or something like it, would come, but now that the crisis was at hand I felt qualmish. Terry--known to strangers as Lord Terence Barrymore--is the best and most delightful chap in the world, as well as one of the best looking, but like several other Irishmen he is, to put it mildly, rather hard to manage, especially when you want to do him a good turn. I had been trying to do him one without his knowing it, and in such a way that he couldn't escape when he did know. But the success of my scheme was now being dandled on the knees of the gods, and at any instant it might fall off to break like an egg.

"I believe it's genuine," I began gingerly, almost wishing that I hadn't purposely put the pink paper where Terry would be sure to pick it up. "And I don't see why you should call the advertiser in my paper an ass. If you were hard up, and had a motor-car--"

"I am hard up, and I have a motor-car."

"What I was going to say is this: wouldn't it be much better to turn your car into the means of making an honest living, and at the same time having some rattling good fun, rather than sell the thing for less than half cost, and not only get no fun at all, but not know how to get out of the scrape in which you've landed yourself?"

It was Terry's turn to laugh now, which he did, though not uproariously, as I had. "One would think the ass was a friend of yours, by your enthusiasm in defending him," said he.

"I'm only putting the case to you in the way I thought you'd see it most clearly," I persisted mildly. "But, as a matter of fact, the 'ass' as you call him, is my friend, a very intimate friend indeed."

"Didn't know you had any intimate friends but me, anyhow owners of motor-cars, you old owl," remarked Terry. "I must say in your defence, though, it isn't like you to have friends who advertise themselves as titled couriers."

"If you're obliged to start a shop I suppose it's legitimate to put your best goods in the windows, and arrange them as attractively as you can to appeal to the public," I argued. "This is the same thing. Besides, my friend isn't advertising himself. Somebody is 'running him'--doing it for him; wants him to get on, you know--just as I do you."

Terry gave me a quick glance; but my face (which is blond and said to be singularly youthful for a man of twenty-nine) was, I flatter myself, as innocent as that of a choir-boy who has just delivered himself of a high soprano note. Nevertheless, the end was coming. I felt it in the electric tingle of the air.

"Do you mind telling me your friend's name, or is he a secret?"

"Perhaps the address at the end of the advertisement will be enlightening."

Terry had dropped the paper on the grass by the side of his chaise longue, but now he picked it up again, and began searching for the place which he had lost. I, in my chaise longue under the same magnolia tree, gazed at him from under my tilted Panama. Terry is tall and dark. Stretched out in the basket chair, he looked very big and rather formidable. Beside him, I felt a small and reedy person. I really hoped he would not give me much trouble. The day was too hot to cope with troublesome people, especially if you were fond of them, for then you were the more likely to lose your head.

But the beginning was not encouraging. Terry proceeded to read the end of the advertisement aloud. "Address X. Y. Z., Chalet des Pins, Cap Martin." Then he said something which did not go at all with the weather. Why is it that so many bad words begin with D or H? One almost gets to think that they are letters for respectable people to avoid.

"Hang it all, Ralph," he went on, after the explosion, "I must say I don't like your taste in jokes. This is a bit too steep."

I sat up straight, with a leg on each side of the chair, and looked reproaches. "I thought," I said slowly, "that when your brother behaved like such a--well, we won't specify what--you asked, I might even say begged, for my advice, and promised in a midnight conversation under this very tree to take it, no matter how disagreeable it might prove."

"I did; but--"

"There's no such word as 'but.' Last year I advised you not to put your money into West Africans. You put it in. What was the consequence? You regretted it, and as your brother showed no very keen interest in your career, you decided that you couldn't afford to stop in the Guards, so you cut the Army. This year I advised you not to play that system of yours and Raleigh's at Monte Carlo, or if you must have a go at it, to stick to roulette and five franc stakes. Instead of listening to me, you listened to him. What were the consequences?"

"For goodness sake don't moralize. I know well enough what they were. Ruin. And it doesn't gild the pill to remember that I deserved to swallow it."

"If only you'd swallowed the advice instead! It would have slipped down more easily, poor old boy. But you swore to bolt the next dose without a groan. I said I'd try and think of a better plan than selling your Panhard, and going out to help work an African farm on the proceeds. Well, I have thought of a plan, and there you have the proof of my combined solicitude and ingenuity, in my own paper."

"Don't shoot off big words at me."

"I'm a journalist; my father before me was a journalist, and got his silly old baronetcy by being a journalist. I'm one still, and have saved up quite a little competency on big words and potted phrases. I've collected a great many practical ideas in my experience. I want to make you a present of some of them, if only you'll have them."

"Do you call this advertisement a practical idea? You can't for a minute suppose that I'd be found dead carting a lot of American or other women whom I don't know about Europe in my car, and taking their beastly money?"

"If you drove properly, you wouldn't be found dead; and you would know them," I had begun, when there was a ring at the gate bell, and the high wall of the garden abruptly opened to admit a tidal wave of chiffon and muslin.

Terry and I were both so taken aback at this unexpected inundation that for a moment we lay still in our chairs and stared, with our hats tipped over our eyes and our pipes in our mouths. We were not accustomed to afternoon calls or any other time-of-day calls from chiffon and muslin at the Chalet des Pins, therefore our first impression was that the tidal wave had overflowed through my gate by mistake, and would promptly retire in disorder at sight of us. But not at all. It swept up the path, in pink, pale green, and white billows, frothing at the edges with lace.

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