The Man Who Drove the Car

by Max Pemberton

I liked her, that goes without saying. A man's a fool who tells you that a pretty woman's charm is less because her bankers are wondering how they shall get the cheque-book back, and the tradesman round the corner is blotting his ledger with tears. In a way I was in love with Miss Dolly, and would have married her myself upon any provocation; but before I could make up my mind to it either way, she'd gone like a flash, and half the bill collectors in London after her. This I learned during the week following the disappearance. She sent for me one day to pick her up at Joran's Hotel, and when I got there, and the hotel porter had handed out two rugs and a Pomeranian, down comes the chambermaid to say madam had not returned since eleven o'clock. And then I knew by some good instinct that the game was up—and, handing the Pomeranian back, I said, "Be good to him, for he's an orphan."

This was a surmise—a surmise and nothing more; and yet how true it proved! I had a 'tec with me on the following afternoon, and a pretty tale he had to tell. Not, mind you, as he himself declared, that Dolly was really dishonest. She had left a few bills behind her; but where is the woman who does not do that, and who would think the better of her if she didn't? Dolly wasn't a thief by a long way—but her shopping mania was wild enough to be written about, and she bought thousands of pounds' worth of goods in London, just for the mere pleasure of ordering them and nothing more.

I often laugh when I think how she fooled the tradesmen in Bond Street and the West End. Just imagine them bowing and scraping when she told 'em to send home a thousand-pound tiara, or a two-hundred-guinea white fox, and promised they should be paid on delivery. Why, they strewed her path with bows and smiles—and when they sent home the goods to a flat by Regent's Park—an address she always gave—they found it empty and no one there to take delivery. No more bows and smiles after that; but what could they do, and what offence had she committed? That was just what the 'tec asked me, and I could not answer.

"We know most of 'em," he said, "but she's a right-down finger-print from the backwoods. Nathaniel St. John cables from New York that he doesn't know her, but will be pleased to make her acquaintance, if we'll frank her over. I tell these people they can sue her—but, man, you might as well sue the statue of Oliver Cromwell——"

"He being stony-broke likewise," said I. "Well, she had a run for her money, and here's good luck to her. I hope that I haven't seen her for the last time."

"If you have," says he, "put me in Madame Tussaud's. When next you hear of Dolly St. John it will be in something big. Remember that when the day comes."

I told him I would not forget it, and we parted upon it. Dolly was a pretty bit of goods for a tea-party, but a driver sees too many faces to keep one over-long in his memory, and I will say straight out, that I had forgotten her very name when next I saw her, and was just about the most astonished man inside the four-mile radius when I picked her up one fine afternoon at a West End hotel, and she told me we were going to drive into the country together.

"But," says I, "this car has been hired by Miss Phyllis More——"

"Oh, you stupid man!" cried she. "Don't you see that I am Miss Phyllis More? I thought you were clever enough to understand that ladies change their names sometimes, Britten. Now, why shouldn't I be Phyllis More if I wish to? Are you going to be unkind enough to tell people about it? I'm sure you are not, for you were so very good to me when last I was in England."

Now all this took place in her private room, to which I had been sent up by the porter. Three months had passed since I drove Dolly and the Honorary John, but not a whit had she changed; and I found her just the same seductive little witch with the dimples and the curly brown hair, who had played the deuce with the West End tradesmen last Christmas-time. Beautifully dressed in green, with a pretty motor veil, she was a picture I must say; and when I looked at her and remembered Hook-Nosed Moss, our traffic manager at the Empire Company, and how he docked me four and nine last Saturday, I swore I'd take her; yes, if she ordered me to drive through to San Francisco.