A Knight on Wheels Part 31

"Brand is a great orator, Miss Jennings," he remarked, as he sat down to the telephone.

Miss Jennings sniffed.

"That hot-air artist?" she replied witheringly. "He's the laughing-stock of the place. Not that I know him. We on the office-staff keep ourselves to ourselves. We don't--"

At this moment the trunk-call came through, and the conversation terminated.

When Philip returned to the show-room, Mr. Brand had completed his task and departed to his own place.

"Our chatty friend," announced Timothy, "has put me up to most of the tips. I shall be a prize chauffeur in no time." He surveyed the gleaming car admiringly. "She's a beauty. What should I be able to knock out of her? Sixty?"

"Quite that."

"Wow-_wow_!" observed Mr. Rendle contentedly. "I don't mind laying a thousand to thirty that I get my licence endorsed inside three weeks."

Philip, who regarded new machinery much as a young mother regards a new baby, turned appealingly to the cheerful young savage beside him.

"Don't push her too much at first," he said. "Give the bearings a chance for a hundred miles or two. And--I wouldn't go road-hogging if I were you."

Timothy turned to him in simple wonder.

"But what on earth is the use of my getting a forty-horse-power car," he enquired almost pathetically, "if I can't let her rip?"

"There are too many towns and villages round London to give you much of a chance," said Philip tactfully. "You will be able to find some good open stretches, though, if you get right out west or north," he added, as Timothy's face continued to express disappointment. "Or, I'll tell you what. Take the car to Brooklands, and see what she can do in the level hour."

The face of the car's owner--whose conscience upon the subject of road-racing was evidently at war with his instincts--brightened wonderfully.

"That is some notion," he cried. "You're right. Road-hogging is rotten bad form. We'll run this little lad down to Brooklands--oh, so gently!--and then go round the track all out. Will you come with me?"

"Rather," replied the primeval Philip with great heartiness.

"And come and dine at the Club afterwards," added Timothy, in a final burst of friendliness.

Within the exaggerated saucer constructed for the purpose at Brooklands they succeeded in covering seventy-three miles in sixty minutes, Timothy deliriously clinging to the wheel and Philip sitting watchfully beside him to see that centrifugal force did not send the new car flying over the rim into the conveniently adjacent cemetery of Brookwood.

Thereafter they dined together at the Royal Automobile Club, which seemed to Philip to contain several thousand members. Members swarmed in the great central hall, upon the staircase, and in all the lofty apartments opening therefrom. There appeared to be at least six hall-porters, and there were page-boys innumerable, who drifted about in all directions wearing worried expressions and chanting a mysterious dirge which sounded like "Mr. Hah-Hah, please!" There was a real post-office in one corner, and a theatre ticket-office in another. There were racquet courts, and a swimming-bath, and a shooting-gallery, and a gymnasium, and a bowling-alley, and a fencing-school. Timothy confidently announced that there was a golf links somewhere, but that he had not yet found time to play a round owing to the excessive length of the holes.

Eschewing what Philip's host described as the "c.o.c.k-and-hen" dining-room (where the two s.e.xes could be seen convivially intermingled, partaking of nourishment to the sound of music), they ascended in a lift to the first floor, where they sat down in a vast refectory of a more monastic type. Here one gentleman greeted them at the door, while a second took Timothy's order for dinner, and pa.s.sed it on to a third. The dishes were served by a fourth and cleared away by a fifth. The same ceremony was observed in the ordering of wine.

"Less fuss up here than downstairs," explained Timothy.

Philip enjoyed his meal immensely, though he wondered, characteristically, if all these ministers to his comfort--especially the page-boys--had partaken, or would partake, of an adequate meal themselves. Timothy, who contracted friends.h.i.+ps almost as impulsively as he purchased motors, chattered to him with all the splendid buoyancy and frankness of youth. His vocation in life, it appeared, was that of a.s.sistant Private Secretary to a prominent member of His Majesty's Opposition. The post was unpaid, and the duties apparently nominal. But Timothy was quite a mine of totally unreliable information upon the secret political history of the day. He told Philip some surprising stories of the private lives of Cabinet Ministers, and foretold the date of the next general election with great a.s.surance and exact.i.tude.

Later in the evening, as they drank coffee and liqueurs in an apartment which reminded Philip of Victoria Station (as recently rebuilt), Mr. Rendle conducted his guest through a resume of several love-affairs--highly innocuous intrigues, most of them--and added the information that "that sort of thing" was now "cut out" owing to the gracious and elevating influence of a being only recently encountered, whom he described as "the best little girl that ever stepped."

"I don't know her very well yet," he concluded, in a burst of candour.

"In fact, I don't even know what her name is. I met her at a dance. All I could find on my programme next morning was 'tight pink head-band.'

But I will find her again."

"I am sure you will," said Philip, who had yet to learn that these final reformations of Timothy's were of a recurrent character.

"Thanks, old friend, for your kind words," replied the love-lorn youth.

"Tell me, how much does a man require to marry on?"

"Thirty-five s.h.i.+llings a week," said Philip. "At least, so some of my colleagues tell me."

"I have two thousand a year," said Timothy doubtfully. "I don't know how much that is a week, but I'll work it out some day in s.h.i.+llings and see.

Anyhow, when I meet her, I shall take her out in the new car. Are you married?"

"No," said Philip.

"That's a pity. If you had been, your wife might have chaperoned us. But if you get married, let me know."

He looked at his watch.

"Ten o'clock," he announced. "Now, what shall we do next? The resources of the Club are at your entire disposal. Would you like to have a dry shampoo, or fight a duel, or buy a postal order, or what? Or shall we go to a theatre?"

Philip mildly pointed out that most of the theatres opened at eight.

"Then we will go to a music-hall," said the resourceful Timothy.

"Waiter, is there a Tube Station in the Club? I always forget."

"No, sir," said the waiter compa.s.sionately. "But there is a cold plunge-bath," he suggested.

"No good, I'm afraid; but thanks all the same," said the polite Timothy.

"Get a taxi."

CHAPTER XIX

PLAIN MEN AND FAIR WOMEN

A FORTNIGHT later Philip filled the vacancy which had been caused two years previously by the removal of Mr. Atherton by offering the post to Tim Rendle--an offer which was accepted by that ornament of the leisured cla.s.ses with an enthusiasm which would have surprised the h.o.r.n.y-handed Brand.

The experiment turned out a complete success. It provided Master Timothy with some much-needed employment, the Britannia Motor Company with an admirable addition to its staff, and Philip with a companion. Tim was a capital salesman. He soon became a brilliant, if slightly reckless driver; and in time he absorbed a fair working knowledge of the mechanics of the automobile. He possessed a charm of manner of which he was quite unconscious, and a unique capacity for getting himself liked.

He fell in and out of love on the slightest provocation, and rarely failed to keep Philip informed of his latest entanglement.

Once he offered, as a supreme favour, to introduce Philip to one "Baby,"

who presided over a small tobacconist's establishment in Wardour Street.

The interview was an entire failure. The siren greeted Timothy and his abashed companion most graciously, and was on the point, doubtless, of making some witty and appropriate remarks, when a piano-organ came heavily to anchor just outside the door, and its unwashed custodians proceeded to drown all attempts at conversation with the reverberating strains of "Alexander's Rag-Time Band." Under such circ.u.mstances it was impossible to look either affectionate or rakish. A conversation conducted entirely by means of smiles, however affable, and nods, however knowing, rarely leads anywhere; and, Timothy having intimated by a tender glance in the direction of Baby and a despairing gesture towards the door, that his heart was forever hers, but that for the present they must part, the deputation filed ignominiously out, one half of it feeling uncommonly foolish.

Tim was fond of engaging in controversy with Brand, and Philip frequently overheard such epithets as "gilded popinjay," and "grinder of the faces of the poor," exchanged for "dear old soul," and "esteemed citizen," on the occasions when argument and chaff clashed together in the garage or show-room.

Tim created an impression in another quarter, too, as a brief sc.r.a.p of conversation will show.