The Admirable Tinker Part 23

"Don't you woman me, Alexander McNeill!" said Selina. "Daft, am I?

Daft to listen to your lies about Jesuits and the young lady! Daft to believe you when you told me not to listen to her, for the Jesuits had got round her, and she didn't know what was good for her! But I've found you out! I'm going to take the young lady straight back to her father, and send the police here for you."

"Woman, you're mad!" said McNeill, rising with a scared face.

"Don't you woman me, you low Scotchman! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, mixing yourself up with these foreign rascals! You that's had a Christian up-bringing!"

"You do what you're paid to do!" roared McNeill.

"Il faut agir!" said the Frenchman, with the true Napoleonic grasp of the situation, and he bounced in a lithe, over-confident manner at Selina.

In a flash she had her left hand well gripped in his abundant hair, and was clawing his face with her right. He screamed and writhed; and the struggle gave Tinker his chance. He slipped the key out of the inside of the door, thrust it into the outside; as the Frenchman tore himself away yelling, he cried, "Outside, Selina!" strengthened the command by a strong drag on her arm; got her outside; slammed to the door, and locked it almost before the kidnappers had realised that he was there.

He wrenched the key out of the lock just as Dorothy had got the front-door open; ran down the hall; caught Elsie's hand, and crying, "Come along! Come along!" ran down the avenue, followed by Dorothy and Selina as fast as they could pelt.

Three minutes brought them to the car; and he bundled his breathless charges into it, drove it out of the clump of trees, and sent it hard down the road. Just before Apricale he bade them crouch down in the car that they might not be seen, and rushed through the ill-lighted street at full speed. A mile beyond the town he lighted the lamp and drove her at full speed again, along the smooth road to Islabona.

Beyond Islabona he was forced to go very slowly down the jolting descent; if he had tried to go at any pace, the car on those loose stones might at any moment have taken its own steering in hand and smashed itself against the rocky banks. Dorothy and Elsie took advantage of the slowness to pour into his ears the tale of how the kidnappers had seized them on the Corniche a mile outside the town, thrust them into the carriage, and kept them quiet by threats. Now and again he hushed them, to listen for pursuing horses. He had not much fear of pursuit. The kidnappers would be some time breaking out of the room in which he had locked them; and when they were out they would scour the neighbourhood on foot. He had kept well out of sight behind Selina; and they would hear nothing of the car before they began to pursue. When they did pursue, it would be on the sure-footed hill horses; they would come three yards to the car's one.

At last they reached Dolceacqua, and pushed steadily and carefully downwards. Half-way between that town and Camporossa, they came round a bend in the road, to see half a mile below them the flaring lamp of a motor-car.

"Here's my father, or the police!" said Tinker with a sigh of relief.

In five minutes Dorothy was kissing her father; and Tinker was presenting the new-found Selina to Sir Tancred with a joyful account of her delinquencies.

It had taken Sir Tancred little more than two and a half hours to get free of the Italian authorities; and as Tinker had expected he had hired a motor-car, and came straight and hard for Genoa, to be turned aside on to the right track by Tinker's shepherdess.

When they had exchanged stories, Mr. Rainer was for going on and taking vengeance on the kidnappers. But Sir Tancred dissuaded him, pointing out that there was no need to have every gossip in Europe talking about Dorothy. If the police, who were in a bustle from Mentone to Genoa, caught them, it must be endured. But Dorothy had escaped unharmed, and the less fuss made about the matter the better.

Mr. Rainer listened to reason; Dorothy got into the car with Sir Tancred and her father; and they continued the descent. Once on the highroad they set out for Monte Carlo as hard as they dared go at night. It was past midnight when they reached the hotel, where Buist was awaiting them in great anxiety. The sight of them set his mind at rest; but to this day he is inclined to believe that Sir Tancred had a hand in the kidnapping of Dorothy, and that Selina was an accomplice.

To his intimates he speaks of him with great respect as "a mastermind of crime."

They were all very hungry and they supped at great length, in very good spirits. As they were going upstairs to bed, Tinker succeeded in keeping Dorothy back.

"It's all very well your being the daughter of a millionaire," he said with some severity. "But an employer has his rights. I can't lose a governess who suits Elsie so well, straight off. I shall expect a month's notice."

"But I've no intention of resigning that excellent post," said Dorothy, smiling.

Tinker looked at her gravely, thinking, and then he said gloomily, "Your father will never let you be a governess. I suppose you expect me to back you up against him."

"That's just what I do expect," said Dorothy.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

TINKER TAKES SEPTIMUS RAINER IN HAND

On awaking next morning Dorothy's first thought was how would her father's coming affect her relations with Sir Tancred; and she at once changed it to how would it affect her relations with the whole of the little circle into which a fortunate whim had led her. She was an honest soul, and now she tried to be as honest with herself as a woman can bring herself to be. She did not hide from herself that of late she and Sir Tancred had been more and more drawn together; she even went to the length of admitting that her feeling for him was something stronger than friendship. Indeed, she was full of pity for him. She had learned from Tinker something of the story of his earlier life, and like a good woman she wished she might give him the happiness he had missed. She did not know how strongly she longed to give him that happiness, much less was she able to distinguish where pity merged into love. Now she was in a great dread of her father's millions. She knew well enough that with many, indeed, with most men of Sir Tancred's cla.s.s they would have been primroses, very large primroses, on the path of love; she feared that if he was the man she thought him, and she would not have him any other, they would prove barriers on that path, hard indeed to surmount. She dressed in no very good spirits, and came downstairs to find her father awaiting her in the hall, ready to stroll out and hear how the world had gone with her.

Sir Tancred also awoke with the sense of something unpleasant having happened. But at first he could not for the life of him remember what it was. Then he began to consider the change which would be brought about by the irruption of the millionaire. He resented it. He found the prospect of Tinker's losing Dorothy's services exceedingly disagreeable.

For a while he ascribed that resentment to the fact that she would cease to be the excellent influence with Tinker she certainly was; and then he grew resentful on his own account. It was hard, indeed, that he should suddenly be deprived of the presence of so charming a creature at his table, of so delightful a companion of his evening stroll in the gardens of the Casino. If it hadn't been for those confounded millions--there he checked himself sternly; the millions were there, and there was no more to be said, or thought. But his temper was none the better for the constraint.

After his late hours the night before, Tinker did not get up as early as usual, and he and Elsie decided to forego their bathe in the sea, but went straight to breakfast in the kitchen of the hotel. He found the staff greatly concerned about the trouble which was likely to befall him for borrowing the motor-car. It seemed that on finding it gone, its owner, a M. Cognier, had displayed a wrath of the most terrible. Of course an Argus-eyed busy-body had seen Tinker depart in it; and M.

Cognier, an Anglophobe, had declared his intention of punishing this insolence of Perfidious Albion by handing him over to the police. Tinker heard all their prophecies of evil with his wonted tranquillity; but he had no little difficulty in setting their minds at rest.

M. Cognier had been impressive.

The two children had finished their breakfast, and were about to set out in search of adventure, when Selina found them and began to set forth a pet.i.tion. She wished to be allowed to enter Tinker's service again. She was, she said, alone in the world once more, for her husband, having spent all her savings, had with determined Scotch thriftiness incontinently died, and left her to shift for herself. She had been making a mean living as an ironer in a Parisian laundry, when Alexander McNeill had sent for her to Apricale to help him deliver a young lady from the Jesuits; and she saw in her curious meeting with Tinker, at the country seat of the young Monteleone, the finger of Providence pointing the way back to her old situation. Would he lay the matter before his father, and support her pet.i.tion?

Tinker was somewhat taken aback, and said, "But I'm too old for a nurse."

"Oh, there are lots of things I could do, Master Tinker. There are really," said Selina. "You want a housekeeper when you're at the Refuge, a housekeeper who could get up your linen and Sir Tancred's as they can't do it at Farndon-Pryze. You want someone to look after you, when you've got a cold. You never did take any care of yourself." She was wringing her hands in her earnestness.

"You'd be a sort of valet-housekeeper then," said Tinker, pondering the matter.

"Yes, and I should want very little wages. All I want is to be in your service again. I never ought to have left it. I never had no real peace all the time I was married, what with wondering how you were being looked after, and whether you was ill or not. I always took in _The Morning Post_, though Angus did grumble at the expense, all the time I was in Paris, on purpose to see where you was; and every day I looked at the Births, Deaths, and Marriages first, to see if anything had happened to you."

She stopped; and Tinker was silent a while, thinking; then he said, "Do you think you could act as maid to Elsie?"

"Why, of course I could, Master Tinker!"

"She wants someone to brush her hair most," said Tinker thoughtfully.

"I don't want a maid. And I don't want anyone to brush my hair but you,"

said Elsie firmly. "No one could do it so well."

"Oh, you'll soon get used to Selina's doing it," said Tinker cheerfully.

"And you'll find it so much more--so much more important having a maid of your own. You'll feel so grown-up, don't you know? I tell you what, we'll go upstairs, and Selina can have a try at it, while I talk to my father."

Elsie shook her head doubtfully; but she came. Tinker left them at the door of Elsie's room, and went to his father. He found him dressing, and after bidding him good-morning, came at once to the matter in hand.

"Selina wants to come back to us," he said. "She thinks she could be useful as valet-housekeeper and maid to Elsie. She's awfully keen on it."

"If she wants to come back, she most certainly can," said Sir Tancred.

"I owe Selina a debt I can never pay--and so do you, for that matter. I don't pretend to know what the functions of a valet-housekeeper are, but doubtless Selina knows her own capabilities best. Besides, as you are losing your governess, you will want some woman about Elsie."

"But I don't intend to lose my governess!" cried Tinker.

Sir Tancred looked at him with unaffected interest. "Am I to understand that you propose to retain the daughter of a millionaire as your adopted sister's governess?" he said.

"Yes," said Tinker firmly. "Dorothy's a very good governess: she suits Elsie and she suits me."

"That sounds like a reason," said Sir Tancred. "But I shall be interested to see if Mr. Rainer listens to it."

"I think," said Tinker thoughtfully, "we shan't have much trouble with Mr. Rainer."

"Of course, if you've made up your mind--but millionaires are kittle cattle."

Tinker went to Selina and Elsie, looked carefully into the matter of hair-brushing; gave Selina a few hints on the process, and then told her that her request was granted. He fled from the room to escape her joyful grat.i.tude; and went down into the hall to await the conclusion of the process, and Elsie's coming.