A man just like his lordship, dressed in a tweed suit and with a thick stick in his hand—a man with a bushy black beard, a full round forehead, and the very walk and movement of the man I carried. What was I to make of him, what to think of it? Well, I can hardly tell you that, for, no sooner did we catch sight of the man than my passenger roared to me to go straight on, and, ducking down inside the landaulette, he hid himself as completely from sight as though he had been in the tool-box. For my part, remembering the old adage about "In for a penny in for a pound," I just let the Daimler fly, and we went down the drive and up to the lodge as fast as car ever travelled that particular road or will travel it whatever the circumstances.
"Gate," I roared, "gate, gate!" for the padlock was plain enough and a good stout chain about it. No one answered me for more than five minutes, I suppose, and no sooner did an old man appear, than I saw the stranger with his bushy black beard, his lordship's double, running down the drive for all he was worth, and bawling to the gate-keeper not to open.
A critical moment this, upon my word, and one to bring a man's heart into his mouth—the doddering old man tottering to the gate; the stranger running like a prize-winner; Lord Crossborough himself, doubled up in the bottom of the landaulette, and me sitting there with my foot on the clutch, my hand on the throttle, and my pulse going like one o'clock. Should we do it or should we not? Would it be shut or open? The question answered itself a moment later, when the lodge-keeper, not seeing the other fellow, half opened the iron gates and let my bonnet in between them. The car almost knocked him down as we raced through—I could hear him bawling "Stop!" even above the hum of the engine.
You will not have forgotten that his lordship had told me to go, hell for leather, directly I was through the gate, and right well I obeyed him. The lanes were narrow and twisty; there were morning mists blowing up from the fields; we passed more than one market cart, and nearly lost our wings. But I was out to earn fifteen of the best, and right well I worked for them. Slap bang into Potter's Bar, slap bang out of it and round the bend towards Prickly Hill. I couldn't have driven faster if I had had the whole county police at my heels—and the Lord knows whether I had or not.
This brought us to Barnet in next to no time. We were still doing forty as we entered the town, and would have run out of it at twenty-five after we'd passed the church and the police station—would have, I say, but for one little fact, and that was a fat sergeant of police right in the middle of the road, with his hand held up like a leg of mutton, and a voice that might have been hailing a burglar.
"Here, you," he cried, as I drew up, "who have you got in that car?"
"Why," says I, "who should I have but somebody who has a right to be there? Ask his lordship for himself."
"His lordship—do you mean Lord Crossborough?"
I went to say "Yes," just as he opened the door. You shall judge what I thought of it when a glance behind me showed that the landaulette was empty.
"Now, who are you making game of?" cried the sergeant, throwing the door wide open. "There ain't no lordship in here. What do you mean by saying there was?"