Impostors and imposture -- Fiction; Short stories; Swindlers and swindling -- Fiction; Thieves -- Fiction
"Well, we let him get half way to Oneglia, when we just slipped a
handkerchief with a little perfume upon it, over his nose and mouth, and
a few minutes later we laid him quietly down behind a wall. Then I
turned the car back to where we had previously stored some pots of white
paint and a couple of big brushes, and in an hour had transformed the
colour of the car and changed its identification-plates. Imagine our
joy when we found the back locker where the tools should have been
crammed with bags of gold twenty lire pieces, while under the inside
seat we found a number of neat packets of fifty and one-hundred and
five-hundred lire notes. Just after midnight we slipped back through
San Remo, and two days ago arrived safely in Paris with our valuable
freight. Like to see some of it?" he added, and rising he pushed back
the bookcase, opened the panel and took out several bundles of Italian
notes. I saw also within a number of small canvas bags of gold.
"By this time, Garrett," he added, laughing and pouring me out a drink,
"old Finch Grey is gnashing his teeth, for he cannot invoke the aid of
the police, and the women who intended to be avenged upon us for our
daring are, no doubt, very sorry they ran away with our car, which,
after all, was not nearly such a good one as the mysterious `sixty.'
Theirs wasn't a particularly cheery journey, was it?" and lifting his
glass he added, "So let's wish them very good luck!"
CHAPTER 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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