The Admirable Tinker / Child of the World

by Edgar Jepson

[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.