William Le Queux - The Lady in the Car

The Mysterious Sixty

When the smart chauffeur, Garrett, entered the cosy chambers of his Highness Prince Albert of Hesse-Holstein, alias Charles Fotheringham, alias Henry Tremlett, in Dover Street, Piccadilly, he found him stretched lazily on the couch before the fire. He had exchanged his dinner jacket for an easy coat of brown velvet; between his lips was a Russian cigarette of his pet brand, and at his elbow a brandy and soda.

“Ah! Garrett,” he exclaimed as the chauffeur entered. “Come here, and sit down. Shut the door first. I want to talk to you.”

As chauffeur to the Prince and his ingenious companions, Garrett had met with many queer adventures and been in many a tight corner. To this day he wonders he was not “pinched” by the police a dozen times, and certainly would have been if it were not that the gay, good-looking, devil-may-care Prince Albert never left anything to chance. When a coup was to be made he thought out every minute detail, and took precaution against every risk of detection. To his marvellous ingenuity and wonderful foresight Garrett, with his friends, owed his liberty.

During the three years through which he had thrown in his lot with that select little circle of “crooks,” he had really had a very interesting time, and had driven them thousands of miles, mostly on the Continent, in the big “Mercédès” or the “sixty” six-cylinder “Minerva.”

His Highness’s share in the plunder had been very considerable. At his bankers he possessed quite a respectable balance, and he lived in easy affluence the life of a prince. In the drawing-rooms of London and Paris he was known as essentially a ladies’ man; while in Italy he was usually Henry Tremlett, of London, and in France he was Charles Fotheringham, an Anglo-Frenchman and Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur.

“Look here, Garrett,” he said, raising himself on his elbow and looking the man in the face as he tossed his cigarette in the grate. “To-day, let’s see, is December 16. You must start in the car to-morrow for San Remo. We shall spend a week or two there.”

“To-morrow!” the chauffeur echoed. “The roads from Paris down to the Riviera are pretty bad just now. I saw in the paper yesterday that there’s heavy snow around Valence.”

“Snow, or no snow, we must go,” the Prince said decisively. “We have a little matter in hand down there – you understand?” he remarked, his dark eyes still fixed upon the chauffeur.

The man wondered what was the nature of the coup intended.

“And now,” he went on, “let me explain something else. There may be some funny proceedings down at San Remo. But just disregard everything you see, and don’t trouble your head about the why, or wherefore. You’re paid to be chauffeur, Garrett – and paid well, too, by your share of the profits – so nothing else concerns you. It isn’t, sparklers we’re after this time – it’s something else.”

The Prince who, speaking English so well, turned his birth and standing to such good account, never told the chauffeur of his plans. His confederates, indeed, were generally kept completely in the dark until the very last moment. Therefore, they were all very frequently puzzled by what seemed to be extraordinary and motiveless actions by the leader of the party of adventurers.

The last coup made was in the previous month, at Aix-les-Bains, the proceeds being sold to the old Jew in Amsterdam for four thousand pounds sterling, this sum being divided up between the Prince, the Parson, a neat-ankled little Parisienne named Valentine Déjardin, and Garrett. And they were now going to spend a week or two in that rather dull and much over-rated little Italian seaside town, where the sharper and crook flourish to such a great extent in spring – San Remo.

They were evidently about to change their tactics, for it was not diamonds they were after, but something else. Garrett wondered as the Count told him to help himself to a whisky and soda what that “something else” would turn out to be.

“I daresay you’ll be a bit puzzled,” he said, lazily lighting a fresh cigarette, “but don’t trouble your head about the why or wherefore. Leave that to me. Stay at the Hotel Regina at San Remo – that big place up on the hill – you know it. You’ll find the Parson there. Let’s see, when we were there a year ago I was Tremlett, wasn’t I? – so I must be that again, I suppose.”

He rose from his couch, stretched himself, and pulling a bookcase from the high old-fashioned wainscoting slid back one of the white enamelled panels disclosing a secret cavity wherein, Garrett knew, reposed a quantity of stolen jewels that he had failed to get rid of to the Jew diamond dealer in Amsterdam, who acted in most cases as receiver.

The chauffeur saw within that small cavity, of about a foot square, a number of little parcels each wrapped in tissue paper – jewels for which the police of Europe for a year or so had been hunting high and low. Putting his hand into the back the Prince produced a bundle of banknotes, from which he counted one “fifty” and ten fivers, and handed them to his man.

“They’re all right. You’ll want money, for I think that, after all, you’d better go to San Remo as a gentleman and owner of the car. Both the Parson and I will be perfect strangers to you – you understand?”

“Perfectly,” was Garrett’s reply, as he watched him replace the notes, push back the panel into its place, and move the bookcase into its original position.

“Then get away to-morrow night by Newhaven and Dieppe,” he said. “If I were you I’d go by Valence and Die, instead of by Grenoble. There’s sure to be less snow there. Wire me when you get down to Cannes.” And he pushed across his big silver box of cigarettes, one of which the chauffeur took, and seating himself, listened to his further instructions. They, however, gave no insight into the adventure which was about to be undertaken.

At half-past seven on the following night, with his smartly-cut clothes packed in two suit-cases, his chauffeur’s dress discarded for a big leather-lined coat of dark-green frieze and motor-cap and goggles, and a false number-plate concealed beneath the cushion, Garrett drew the car out of the garage in Oxford Street, and sped along the Embankment and over Westminster Bridge on the first stage of his long and lonely journey.

The night was dark, with threatening rain, but out in the country the big searchlight shone brilliantly, and he tore along the Brighton road while the rhythmic splutter of his open exhaust awakened the echoes of the country-side. With a loud shriek of the siren he passed village after village until at Brighton he turned to the left along that very dangerous switchback road that leads to Newhaven.

How he shipped the car, or how for four weary days – such was the hopeless state of the roads – he journeyed due south, has no bearing upon this narrative of an adventurer’s adventure. Fortunately the car ran magnificently, the engines beating in perfect time against rain and blizzard, and tyre-troubles were few. The road – known well to him, for he had traversed it with the Prince at least a dozen times to and from Monte Carlo – was snow-covered right from Lyons down to Aix in Provence, making progress difficult, and causing him constant fear lest he should run into some deep drift.

At last, however, in the bright Riviera sunshine, so different to the London weather he had left behind five days ago, and with the turquoise Mediterranean lying calm and picturesque on his right, he found himself passing along the Lower Corniche from Nice through Beaulieu, Monaco, and Mentone to Ventimiglia, the Italian frontier. Arrived there, he paid the Customs deposit at the little roadside bureau of the Italian dogana, got a leaden seal impressed upon the front of the chassis, and drew away up the hill again for a few short miles through Bordighera and Ospedaletti to the picturesque little town of San Remo, which so bravely but vainly endeavours to place itself forward as the Nice of the Italian Riviera.