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"But I was engaged to drive her " "You will drive Mr. Colmacher when he returns." "And my wages ?" "Oh, those will be paid. This is a place where they know what is due to us." "And I am to do nothing meanwhile?" "If you have nothing to do, by all means."
That was Benjamin Colmacher "Benny" for short that was the master I want to tell you about. 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.
Such a "don't-touch-me-or-I-shall-vanish" manner you don't come across often even in Park Lane, and I soon saw that whatever else happened, Joseph, the valet, as they called him, and Lal Britten, the "shuffer," were never going to the North Pole together. "If it's doing nothing," said I at last, "Mr. Colmacher won't have cause to complain of his driver. Am I to call again, or will he send for me?"
He was a playful little cuss to be sure, one of those "ne'er-grow-ups" you meet about stables, and ready enough to gossip when I gave him the chance. "He's a wonder, is Colmacher," he remarked as he splashed and hissed about the wheels. "Takes his car out half a dozen times in as many hours, and then never rides in her for three months. You would be engaged in place of Mr. Walter, I suppose.
"Better have held your tongue, Lal, my boy," said I to myself; and resolving to hold it for the future, I went to my own diggings and heard no more of the Colmachers, father or son, for exactly twenty-one days. The morning of the twenty-second found me at the flat again. "Benny" Colmacher had returned, and remembered that he had paid me three weeks' wages.
If I had been surprised at my good luck yesterday, surprise was no word for what I felt when the valet opened the door to me and told me that Mr. Colmacher was in the country and wouldn't be back for a month.
"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.
A few more questions put and answered found me with that job right enough ... and a right good job, too, as things are nowadays. I was to have four pounds a week and liveries. Such a mug as "Benny" Colmacher would not be the man to ask about tyres and petrol, and if he did, I knew how to fill up his tanks for him.
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