to
put his guv'nor in the ditch. My knowledge and my experience had gone
begging for exactly three months when I heard of Benny, and hurried
round to his flat off Russell Square, "just the chap for you," they
said at the garage. I thought so, too, when I saw him.

It was a fine flat, upon my word, and filled up with enough fal-de-lals
to please a duchess from the Gaiety. Benny himself, his red hair
combed flat on his head and oiled like a missing commutator, wore a
Japanese silk dressing-gown which would have fired a steam car. His
breakfast, I observed, consisted of one brandy-and-soda and a bunch of
grapes; but the cigar he offered me was as long as a policeman's boot,
and the fellow to it stuck out of a mouth as full of fine white teeth
as a pod of peas.

"Good-morning," says he, nodding affably enough; and then, "You are
Lionel Britten, I suppose?"

"Yes," says I--for no road mechanic who respects himself is going to
"sir" such as Benny Colmacher to begin with--"that's my name, though my
friends call me Lal for short. You're wanting a driver, I hear."

He sat himself in a great armchair and looked me up and down as a vet
looks at a horse.

"I do want a driver," says he, "though how you got to know it, the Lord
knows."

"Why," says I, "that's funny, isn't it? We're both wanting the same
thing, for I can see you're just the gentleman I would like to take on
with."

He smiled at this, and seemed to be thinking about it. Presently he
asked a plain question. I answered him as shortly.

"Where did you hear of me?" he asked.

"At Blundell's garage," I answered.

"And I was buying a car?"

"Yes, a fifty-seven Daimler ... that was the talk."

"Could you drive a car like that?"

"Could I--oh, my godfathers----"

"Then you have handled fast cars?"

"I drove with Fournier in the Paris-Bordeaux, was through the Florio
for the Fiat people, and have driven the big Delahaye just upon a
hundred and three miles an hour. Read my papers, sir ... they'll show
you what I've done."

I put a bundle into his hand, and he read a few words of them. When
next he looked at me, there was something in his eyes which surprised
me considerably. Some would have called it cunning, some curiosity; I
didn't know what to make of it.

"Why would you like to drive for me?" he asked presently.

"Because," said I, quickly enough, "it's plain that you're a gentleman
anybody would like to drive for."

"But you don't know