It occurred about a month after my return from Germany. A strange affair, assuredly; and stranger still that my life should have been spared to relate it.
After luncheon at the Trocadero I mounted into the car, a new forty six-cylinder “Napier” that we had purchased only a week before, to drive to Barnack, an old-world Northamptonshire village near Stamford, where I had to meet the audacious rascal Count Bindo. From Piccadilly Circus, I started forth upon my hundred-mile run with a light heart, in keen anticipation of a merry time. The Houghs, with whom Bindo was staying, always had gay house-parties, for the Major, his wife, and Marigold, his daughter, were keen on hunting, and we usually went to the meets of the Fitzwilliam, and got good runs across the park, Castor Hanglands, and the neighbourhood.
Through the grey, damp afternoon I drove on up the Great North Road, that straight, broad highway which you who motor know so well. Simmons, Bindo’s new valet, was suffering from neuralgia; therefore I had left him in London, and, sitting alone, had ample time for reflection.
The road surface was good, the car running like a clock, and on the level, open highway out of Biggleswade through Tempsford and Eaton Socon along to Buckden the speed-indicator was registering thirty-five and even forty miles an hour. I was anxious to get to Barnack before dark; therefore, regardless of any police-traps that might be set, I “let her rip.”
The cheerless afternoon had drawn to a close, and rain had begun to fall. In a week or ten days we should be on the Riviera again, amid the sunshine and the flowers; and as I drew on my mackintosh I pitied those compelled to bear the unequal rigour of the English winter. I was rushing up Alconbury Hill on my “second,” having done seventy miles without stopping, when of a sudden I felt that drag on the steering-wheel that every motorist knows and dreads. The car refused to answer to the wheel—there was a puncture in the near hind tyre.
For nearly three-quarters of an hour I worked away by the light of one of the acetylene head-lamps, for darkness had now fallen, and at last I recommenced to climb the hill and drop down into Sawtry, the big French lamps illuminating the dark, wet road.
About two miles beyond Sawtry, when, by reason of the winding of the road, I had slackened down to about fifteen miles an hour, I came to cross-roads and a sign-post, against which something white shone in the darkness. At first I believed it to be a white dog, but next moment I heard a woman’s voice hailing me, and turning, saw in the lamp-light as I flashed past, a tall, handsome figure, with a long dark cloak over a light dress. She raised her arms frantically, calling to me. Therefore I put down the brakes hard, stopped, and then reversed the car, until I came back to where she stood in the muddy road.
The moment she opened her mouth I recognised that she was a lady.
“Excuse me,” she exclaimed breathlessly, “but would you do me a great favour—and take us on to Wansford—to the railway?” And looking, I made out that she held by the hand a fair-haired little lad about seven years of age, well dressed in a thick overcoat and knitted woollen cap and gloves. “You will not refuse, will you?” she implored. “The life of a person very dear to me depends upon it.” And in her voice I detected an accent by which I knew she was not English.