"I don't promise anything. It all depends on how Uncle Evie's working the thing. If he leaves the lugger part of the show in my hands—— Didn't Beth say there was a bishop in it? You can do pretty nearly anything if you're holding hands with a bishop. Nobody ever suspects you. Besides, he might be a sportsman himself—the bishop, I mean. Some are, I'm told. Anyhow, I don't suppose he'd have any objection to a case of champagne. If he didn't care to drink it himself he could give it away to poor parsons in the diocese."
Chapter IX
For the first hundred and thirty miles or so of the journey the Pallas Athene did all that could be expected of an eight-cylinder sports model driven by a young man who did not shrink from paying an occasional fine. The needle of the speedometer often flickered past the sixty miles mark. The average speed fell little short of double that which our legislators—the same people who made the laws about beer—consider sufficient. Ilchester was reached in less than four hours. Jimmy, slowing down slightly through the long narrow street of the village, congratulated himself and his passengers on the achievement.
"I call that a satisfactory record so far," he said, "and we haven't killed or maimed so much as a dog, which just shows the advantage of careful driving."
He congratulated himself too soon. The inhabitants of Ilchester, indeed, escaped with their lives. Three main roads unite to run through their village, so they have learnt to be exceedingly alert and active. Lord Colavon had not so much as a broken collar-bone on his conscience when he pressed his foot on the accelerator at the end of the village. But a few miles along the road the engine began to give trouble. Jimmy was perfectly sure that he knew what was the matter with it. He spent ten minutes in oily work with a spanner. After that, things became rapidly worse. Noises of the most terrifying kind became frequent, and it was no longer possible to persuade the Pallas Athene to do more than thirty miles an hour on a level stretch of road.
Jimmy, less confident than he had been that he knew what was the matter, left his direct road and went to Taunton. There he sought help in a garage while the two girls had tea. The mechanic, an intelligent and competent man, shook his head over the Pallas Athene. He preferred a soberer and more reliable kind of car, even if it could not be driven very fast. In his opinion it would be folly to go on any farther, and he spoke vaguely of telegraphing to the makers of the car for some spare parts.
"Spare parts be damned," said Jimmy. "That means waiting here for the best part of a week."
The mechanic could not deny that the getting of spare parts is often a tedious business, especially—here he glanced with dislike at the Pallas Athene—"from the makers of cars like that."
"Can't you patch her up somehow," said Jimmy, "so that I can push on another forty or fifty miles? I haven't much more than that to do."
"I can patch her up," said the mechanic, "but there's no man living can tell how far she'll run afterwards."