I was out of a job at the time, and had picked up an endorsement at Hayward's Heath and left a matter of six pounds there for the justices to get busy with. Time is money, they say, and I have found it to be so ... generally five pounds and costs, though more if you take a quantity. It isn't easy for a good man with a road mechanic's knowledge and five years' experience, racing and otherwise, to place himself nowadays, when any groom can get made a slap-bang "shuffer" for five pounds at a murder-shop, and any old coachman is young enough 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."