The Man Who Drove the Car

by Max Pemberton

I am not going to state here precisely what I thought or did when I made that astonishing discovery, or just what I felt at the moment when I tried to understand its significance. Perhaps I could not remember half that happened even if I tried to do so. My clearest memory is of a dark, silent street, and of me standing there, bare-headed, with a fainting girl in my arms, and a civil old chap with white whiskers asking again and again, "My good fellow, whatever is the matter and what on earth are you doing here?" When I answered him it was to beg him for God's sake to tell me the name of the nearest doctor—and at that I remember he simply pointed to the house opposite and to a brass plate upon its door.

"I am Mr. Harrison, the surgeon," he said quickly; "I am just buying a motor, and so I crossed the road to look at yours. Tell me what has happened and what is the matter with the woman."

I told him as quietly as I could.

"God knows what it is—perhaps murder. The girl heard it and fainted. She'll be all right in a minute if I can lay her down. I never thought any woman weighed half as much. Anyway, she's coming to and that's something—if you could call a policeman, sir."

He was a self-possessed gentleman, I must say, and, looking up and down the street, while I set the girl down on the footboard of the car, he espied the little messenger boy who had helped us to carry the basket into the house and sent him for a policeman. Betsy had opened her eyes by this time, but all she could say had no meaning for me, nor was it any clearer to him. When we had got her across to his surgery and left her there, we returned to the house together, and as we went I tried to tell him just what had happened and how I came to be mixed up in such a strange affair. The story was still half told when we mounted the steps of Bredfield and walked straight up to the basket which had scared the girl out of her wits and left me wondering whether I was awake or dreaming. Now, however, I had no doubt at all about the matter, for whoever was under that lid was struggling pretty wildly to get free, and would have broken the cords in another minute if the doctor had not cut them.

A couple of slashes with a lancet severed the stout rope with which my "bundle" had been tied, and a third cut the bit of string which bound the hasp to the wickerwork. I stepped back instinctively as the gentleman raised the lid, and so, to be honest, did he—the same thought, I am sure, being in both our heads and the belief that our own lives might be in danger. When the truth was revealed, my first impulse was to laugh aloud, my second to set off in my car without a moment's loss of time, and try to lay by the heels the pair of villains who had done this thing.

In a word, I may tell you that the basket contained a young girl, apparently not more than fifteen years of age; that she was dressed in rags, though apparently a lady of condition, and that when we lifted her out it appeared that her reason had gone and that her young life might shortly follow it.

I've been through some strange times in my life; had many a peep into the next world, so to speak; seen men die quick and die slow—but for real right-down astonishment and pity I shall never better that scene in the Boundary Road, St. John's Wood, if I live as long as the patriarchs.

Just picture the brightly lighted hall and the open basket, and this pretty little thing with yellow hair streaming over her shoulders and her bare arms extended as though in entreaty toward the doctor and me, and such cries upon her lips as though we, and not the men who had sent her here, had been her would-be murderers. I tell you that I would have sold my home to save her, and that's no idle word. Unhappily, I could do nothing, and what I would have done the police forbade me to do, for there were three of them in the room before five minutes had passed; and I might be forgiven for saying that half the local force was present inside half an hour.

Well, you know what a policeman is when anything big turns up; how there's a mighty fine note-book about two foot long to be produced, and perhaps a drop of whisky and soda to whet his pencil, and then the questions and the answers and what not—all the time the thief is running hard down the back street and the gold watch is sticking out of his boot.