The Secret of the Silver Car, Wyndham Martyn [best novels to read to improve english txt] 📗

the Lion was run into its garage Hentzi introduced the new chauffeur to the man with whom he was to live, a man who with his wife had one of the cottages outside the castle wall. Peter Sissek, the man, was unfriendly from the start. He resented the importation of a chauffeur with the new car as a slight to his own skill. But as he spoke only Croatian and Hungarian, and Trent understood neither tongue, his grievances were not voluble. PAULINE

Anthony Trent met Pauline in rather a curious way. He had been a week at Castle Radna and had not been commanded to drive the count. Then Hentzi had informed him Count Michael was sick of a bad cold. Sissek by virtue of being senior in the Temesvar service tried to get the new man to help him with his own cars but Trent absolutely declined.

He had assumed a certain post in order to carry out a design but his duties lay with the Lion car and he left the Croatian grumbling and set out for a tour of inspection. Naturally his steps led him to the little golf course a mile distant. There were no long holes and the course was hardly trapped at all. It was just the kind of place elderly men, who played a weak game, would revel in.

By the first tee was a little rustic pavilion. Through the windows Trent could see three or four golf bags. The temptation was too strong to resist. He picked the locks with the blade of a pocket knife and found himself in a comfortable room. The count’s golf bag contained excellent clubs and plenty of balls. He looked at the balls and knew the count’s game instantly. They were bitten into by the irons of a strong man. Trent shuddered at the gashes and then, selecting a new ball and a putter and driver went out on the nearby green. It was sheltered from all observation and he putted for a few minutes.

In the distance he could see the first green. It looked to be a little under three hundred yards distant ; and it lay beneath, sweetly tempting to a long driver.

Anthony Trent had for some years now lived a .life in which he denied himself nothing. He had reached out for such treasures as only a millionaire may buy. The question of right or wrong in the matter of using his employer’s clubs bothered him little. He did not want to be observed in case the privilege were denied him.

He teed up his ball, made a few preliminary swings and then struck the white sphere with perfectly timed strength. He watched it rise, fall and roll almost to the edge of the green. He would certainly make it in three.

Then he turned round to look into the astonished face of a very beautiful woman. There was something in the general effect, quickly seen, which reminded him of Lady Daphne; but as he looked he saw this girl was older. He doubted the genuineness of the golden hair and he saw that art had aided nature in the facial make-up. But she was no more than eight and twenty and her figure differed from Daphne’s slim, almost boyish slightness. She was dressed in a curious shade of green. It was a tint he thought he had never seen before until he looked into her eyes and saw it there reflected.

Pauline had known the count had engaged a chauffeur from London but she assumed him to be of the usual type. She had no idea that the man who had just made such a superb drive was he. Pauline had been used to much social enjoyment of a sort and while Count Michael had been away she had to behave circumspectly. She was dull and she was bored; and now, as though an answer to prayer, Fate had sent her a handsome young man who stood like a bronze statue as he followed the flight of the ball.

Since the count had given permission for the families of the neighbouring landowners to use his course she imagined it to be one of these or perhaps a guest at some local mansion.

Anthony Trent was never one who made a habit of the pursuit of the fair. His profession had,taught him caution. Almost always the feminine element had brought the great criminals to peril. There had been one or two harmless flirtations but his love for Daphne was the great affair of his life. He groaned when he looked into Pauline’s bold eyes and saw admiration looking from them. Other women had looked at him like that. Pauline was absolute at Castle Radna. Her enmity might be very harmful. Her friendship might be ruinous.

He assumed the bearing of Alfred Anthony which he had abandoned unconsciously. He even touched his cap to the lady as a servant who habitually wears livery should do. She frowned as he did so.

“Who are you?” she Said in German.

“I’m the new chauffeur, miss,” he returned in English.

“What are you doing here, then?”

“Having a bit of a game,” he said with an air of timidity. “I hope you won’t tell the guv’nor.”

“The guv’nor?” she repeated.

“The count,” he said, “the old toff with the beard.”

Trent produced a Woodbine and lighted it luxuriously. He had all the quick nervous gestures of the cockney.

“Where did you learn to play golf like that?” she asked, looking at the white speck almost three hundred yards distant.

“Anyone can make a fluky drive,” he said, “one drive doesn’t make a golfer, Miss. I used to be a caddie at the Royal Surrey Club.”

“Then you can carry my clubs,” she said. She looked at him with a frown. “How is it the door ‘is open?”

“Someone must have forgot to shut it,” Trent said simply. “I just walked in.”

All his excuses to get back to his garage were ineffectual.

“You will understand later,” she said imperiously, “that if I order a servant to obey me he must do so. I wish you to teach me to play better golf. I shall pay you.”

“I’ll be glad to have a little extra money to send the mis’sus,” said Trent cheerfully.

“That means you are married, eh?” she said.

“You’ve ‘it it,” he smiled.

He misjudged Pauline if he thought this would have any effect upon her. She was a specialist in husbands, an expert in emotional reactions.

Pauline played a very fair game. She had not been properly taught. But she was strong and lithe and although she had begun the game in order to keep her figure she played it now because she liked it. When she had performed professionally in London and big provincial cities she had seen that efficiency in some sport or another was de rigueur among women of importance and she hankered after the social recognition that unusual skill at sports often brought with it.

“Make another such drive,” she commanded after she had driven only a hundred yards. “Not like mine, but like your first.”

Trent having committed himself to a term of caddie-dom at a great club where caddies have risen to the heights as professionals, he was not compelled to play a bad game. Pauline had never seen such golf and she worshipped bodily skill at games or sports more than any mental attainments. His short approaches amazed her. The skill with which at a hundred yards he could drop on a green and remain there with the back spin on the ball seemed miraculous.

“I shall play every day,” she decided, “and you shall tell me how to become a great player.”

“What about me and my motor?” he objected, “I came to drive a car and not a golf ball.”

“I shall arrange it,” she said, “Peter Sissek can drive.”

“Not my car,” he cried, “I’m not going to have no blooming mucker like him drive my Lion.”

Her green eyes were narrowed when she looked at him.

“There are a hundred men who would give all they had for such an opportunity,” she said slowly.

“Let ‘em,” he said quickly, “I’m a chauffeur and mechanic.”

At the last hole she made a poor topped drive and the ball landed in a bad lie. It was an awkward stroke and he corrected her stance and even showed her how to grip the club when suddenly he was struck a tremendous blow on the back of the head. He was thrown off his balance but was up like a cat, dazed a little but anxious to see what had hit him. He thought it was a golf ball. It was Count Michael instead. He looked more like Francis the First than ever. His eyes were blazing with anger. He had stolen upon them unaware at a moment when Trent’s hand was holding the white hand of Pauline as he tried to explain the grip.

The count was too angry to understand the look that Trent threw at him or to realize how nearly the pseudo-chauffeur lost control of himself. But Trent pulled himself together, dissembled his wrath, remembered his mission, and even presented a rueful but free from resentment appearance.

“‘Ere guv’nor,” he cried, “steady on! I ‘aven’t done anythink.”

“It is you I blame,” the count said to Pauline. He spoke in German and ignored Alfred Anthony. “Why is it unknown to me you bring my servant to play with you?”

Certainly Pauline had no fear of the magnate.

“Because he has been a professional caddie and plays so well I can learn the game. Since your game is contemptible with whom can I play here?”

“I beat Hentzi every time,” stormed the Count.

“Hentzi,” she laughed, “he is afraid of you. I am not. This man is useful. I have told him he is to carry my clubs when I play. Do you object to that?”

“By no means,” the count said becoming more amiable. “I see no objection; but as he has two arms he can carry mine also. He is a beau gargon Pauline and I do not permit his filthy fingers to touch the hand I kiss.” He turned to Trent. “How is it you are here and not at your work?”

“I took a bit of a walk,” Trent answered.

“And finding him near the pavilion I told him to carry my clubs,” Pauline added in English. “What is strange in that?”

Sissek with a Fiat car was waiting by the pavilion. He had driven his master down and took Pauline back as well. He did not understand why the new man was carrying golf clubs. He brightened when the count spoke to him in rapid Croatian.

“I am telling him,” the count said, “that there is plenty of work for you to do. He will find it if you cannot. And as Peter is very strong and as short tempered as his lord I bid you be careful.”

Trent’s temper was not sufficiently under control to keep a sneer from his face.

His grin was superbly insolent. He forgot his cockney accent and his acquired vocabulary.

“I’m afraid/’ he said, “you are not as good a judge of men as you are of women.”

“What is this you say?” the count demanded frowning.

“I mean that if your fool-faced Peter there can make me do anything against my will he shall have my salary as well as his own. You came behind me when I wasn’t looking and hit me. I can’t resent that—yet, but warn him if he tries anything on me like that I’ll-” He paused conscious of having said too much and aware that Pauline was gazing at him with vivid interest. “I’ll make him sorry.” Trent felt it was a weak ending.