Madame Querterot nearly wept on Bert’s neck in her joy and emotion.
“You will save us, my dear friend!” she exclaimed, pressing his hand, a demonstration that he resented by snatching it savagely away. “What a mind, what a genius, to think of so splendid, so heaven-given a device! Let it be as you say. I am well assured now that all will go well.”
These last days were a busy time for Madame Querterot, for there were certain personal details, essential to the success of her plan, to be attended to: there were bills to collect, sales to arrange, and purchases to be made. At last all was done, everything ready, and she stood in the hall of No. 13 Scholefield Avenue awaiting, with only the least flicker of the nerves, the sound of wheels before the door.
[CHAPTER XXVI]
Early as it was in the adventure, Bert was already realising the difficulties of the part he had to play. He had induced the gratified—though suspicious and thankless—Ned to accept his services in the matter of the horse; and, having seen him depart with a small brown paper parcel—which furnished the outward evidence of his intention to stay the night with his people—had harnessed the animal again in good time, arrayed himself in the livery belonging to Ned, and adorned his chin with the false beard provided by Madame Querterot, so that no time should be wasted on his return. “I do look a guy,” he said to himself, as he contemplated his reflection in the strip of looking-glass in the harness-room.
Nothing remained but to drive down to Covent Garden, and take his place on the rank of waiting vehicles. This, he was surprised to find, was not so easy as he had expected. He discovered that attempting to control Mrs. Wilkinson’s dun horse, which had a willing spirit and a hard mouth, was a very different affair from driving the old and sluggish beast that used to meander between the shafts of his uncle’s van. Their progress was erratic in the extreme, and he several times narrowly avoided an accident. The Providence which looks after bad drivers did not fail him, however, and at length he found himself, a good deal to his surprise—for at one period of the journey hope had altogether deserted him—forming one of the long string of motors and carriages that had already drawn into line in the vicinity of the opera house.
Now began a time during which the fear that the expected summons would never reach him alternated with something very like hope that it would not. As he sat on the box, while minute after minute passed, and still no voice cried for Mr. Targon’s carriage, he was beset with ever growing misgivings as to the appearance he presented, and felt that his ill-fitting livery and the false beard, which the scarf he had wrapped round his neck and chin only partially concealed, must be riveting upon him the eyes of every beholder; so that not a look was cast in his direction but he read in it distrust and suspicion.
Even the most seemingly interminable suspense comes to an end at last, and he had not endured these torments more than a short half-hour before the words for which he had been waiting fell upon his ear, and making his way out of the line he succeeded in guiding the dun horse beneath the portico of the theatre.