Impostors and imposture -- Fiction; Short stories; Swindlers and swindling -- Fiction; Thieves -- Fiction
When it is said that the journey was a mysterious one Garrett was
compelled to admit that, ever since he had been in the service of Prince
Albert of Hesse-Holstein his journeys had been made for the most part
with a motive that, until the moment of their accomplishment, remained
to him a mystery. His employer gave him orders, but he never allowed
him to know his plans. He was paid to hold his tongue and obey. What
mattered if his Highness, who was such a well-known figure in the world
of automobilism was not a Highness at all; or whether the Rev Thomas
Clayton held no clerical charge in Bayswater. He, Garrett, was the
Prince's chauffeur, paid to close his ears and his eyes to everything
around him, and to drive whatever lady who might be in the car hither
and thither, just as his employer or his audacious friends required.
For two years his life had been one of constant change, as these secret
records show. In scarcely a country in Europe he had not driven, while
fully half a dozen times he had driven between Boulogne and the "Place"
at Monte Carlo, four times from Calais due east to Berlin, as well as
some highly exciting runs over certain frontiers when compelled to evade
the officers of the law.
The good-looking Prince Albert, whose real name was hidden in obscurity,
but who was best known as Tremlett, Burchell-Laing, Drummond, Lord
Nassington, and half a dozen other aliases, constantly amazed and
puzzled the police. Leader of that small circle of bold and ingenious
men, he provided the newspapers with sensational gossip from time to
time, exploits in which he usually made use of one or other of his
high-power cars, and in which there was invariably a lady in the car.
Prince Albert was nothing if not a ladies' man, and in two years had
owned quite a dozen cars of different makes with identification plates
innumerable, most of them false.
His Highness, who always found snobs to bow and dust his boots, and who
took good care to prey upon their snobbishness, was a perfect marvel of
cunning. His cool audacity was unequalled. The times which he passed
unsuspected and unidentified beneath the very noses of the police were
innumerable, while the times in which Garrett had been in imminent peril
of arrest were not a few.
The present journey was, however, to say the least, a very mysterious
one.
That morning at ten o'clock he had sat, as usual, in the cosy chambers
in Dover Street. His Highness had given him a cigar, and treated him as
an equal, as he did always when they were alone.
"You must start directly after lunch for the Highlands, Garrett," he had
said suddenly, his dark, clearly defined brows slightly knit. He was
still in his velvet smoking-jacket, and smoked incessantly his brown
"Petroffs."
"I know," he went on, "that the weather is wretched--but it is
imperative. We must have the car up there."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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