The Lady in the Car. Le Queux William

Four

      The Man with the Red Circle

      Another story related by Garrett, the chauffeur, is worth telling, for it is not without its humorous side.

      It occurred about six weeks after the return of the party from San Remo.

      It was dismal and wet in London, one of those damp yellow days with which we, alas I are too well acquainted.

      About two o’clock in the afternoon, attired in yellow fishermen’s oil-skins instead of his showy grey livery, Garrett sat at the wheel of the new “sixty” six-cylinder car of Finch Grey’s outside the Royal Automobile Club, in Piccadilly, bade adieu to the exemplary Bayswater parson, who stood upon the steps, and drew along to the corner of Park Lane, afterwards turning towards the Marble Arch, upon the first stage of a long and mysterious journey.

      When it is said that the journey was a mysterious one Garrett was compelled to admit that, ever since he had been in the service of Prince Albert of Hesse-Holstein his journeys had been made for the most part with a motive that, until the moment of their accomplishment, remained to him a mystery. His employer gave him orders, but he never allowed him to know his plans. He was paid to hold his tongue and obey. What mattered if his Highness, who was such a well-known figure in the world of automobilism was not a Highness at all; or whether the Rev. Thomas Clayton held no clerical charge in Bayswater. He, Garrett, was the Prince’s chauffeur, paid to close his ears and his eyes to everything around him, and to drive whatever lady who might be in the car hither and thither, just as his employer or his audacious friends required.