In the roped garage they found their car, and, more remarkable, their chauffeur.
The first flicker of blue lightning had stabbed twice to the Downs, and the heralding crash of thunder had reverberated through the charged air, when the car began to thread the traffic toward London. The storm, which had been brewing all the afternoon, broke with terrific fury over Epsom. The lightning was incessant, the rain streamed down in an almost solid wall of water, crash after crash of thunder deafened them.
The great throng upon the hill was dissolving as though it was something soluble; its edges frayed into long black streamers of hurrying people moving toward the three railway stations. It required more than ordinary agility to extricate the car from the chaos of charabancs and motor-cabs in which it found itself.
Standerton had taken his seat by the driver’s side, though the car was a closed one. He was a man quick to observe, and on the second flash he had seen the chauffeur’s face grow white and his lips twitching. A darkness almost as of night covered the heavens. The horizon about was rimmed with a dull, angry orange haze; so terrifying a storm had not been witnessed in England for many years.
The rain was coming down in sheets, but the young man by the chauffeur’s side paid no heed. He was watching the nervous hands of the man twist this way and that as the car made detour after detour to avoid the congested road.
Suddenly a jagged streak of light flicked before the car, and Standerton was deafened by an explosion more terrifying than any of the previous peals.
The chauffeur instinctively shrank back, his face white and drawn; his trembling hands left the wheel, and his foot released the pedal. The car would have come to a standstill, but for the fact that they were at the top of a declivity.
“My God!” he whimpered, “it’s awful. I can’t go on, sir.”
Gilbert Standerton’s hand was on the wheel, his neatly-booted foot had closed on the brake pedal.
“Get out of it!” he muttered. “Get over here, quick!”
The man obeyed. He moved shivering to his master’s place, his hands before his face, and Standerton slipped into the driver’s seat and threw in the clutch.
It was fortunate that he was a driver of extraordinary ability, but he needed every scrap of knowledge as he put the car to the slope which led to the lumpy Downs. As they jolted forward the downpour increased, the ground was running with water as though it had been recently flooded. The wheels of the car slipped and skidded over the greasy surface, but the man at the steering-wheel kept his head, and by and by he brought the big car slithering down a little slope on to the main way again. The road was sprinkled with hurrying, tramping people. He moved forward slowly, his horn sounding all the time, and then of a sudden the car stopped with a jerk.
“What is it?”
Leslie Frankfort had opened the window which separated the driver’s seat from the occupants of the car.
“There’s an old chap there,” said Gilbert, speaking over his shoulder, “would you mind taking him into the car? I’ll tell you why after.”
He pointed to two woebegone figures that stood on the side of the road. They were of an old man and a girl; Leslie could not see their faces distinctly. They stood with their backs to the storm, one thin coat spread about them both.
Gilbert shouted something, and at his voice the old man turned. He had a beautiful face, thin, refined, intellectual; it was the face of an artist. His grey hair straggled over his collar, and under the cloak he clutched something, the care of which seemed to concern him more than his protection from the merciless downpour.
The girl at his side might have been seventeen, a solemn child, with great fearless eyes that surveyed the occupants of the car gravely. The old man hesitated at Gilbert’s invitation, but as he beckoned impatiently he brought the girl down to the road and Leslie opened the door.
“Jump in quickly,” he said. “My word, you’re wet!”
He slammed the door behind them, and they seated themselves facing him.
They were in a pitiable condition; the girl’s dress was soaked, her face was wet as though she had come straight from a bath.
“Take that cloak off,” said Leslie brusquely. “I’ve a couple of dry handkerchiefs, though I’m afraid you’ll want a bath towel.”
She smiled.
“It’s very kind of you,” she said. “We shall ruin your car.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Leslie cheerfully. “It’s not my car. Anyway,” he added, “when Mr. Standerton comes in he will make it much worse.”
He was wondering in his mind by what freakish inclination Standerton had called these two people to the refuge of his Limousine.
The old man smiled as he spoke, and his first words were an explanation.
“Mr. Standerton has always been very good to me,” he said gently, almost humbly.
He had a soft, well-modulated voice. Leslie Frankfort recognised that it was the voice of an educated man. He smiled. He was too used to meeting Standerton’s friends to be surprised at this storm-soddened street musician, for such he judged him to be by the neck of the violin which protruded from the soaked coat.
“You know him, do you?”
The old man nodded.
“I know him very well,” he said.
He took from under his coat the thing he had been carrying, and Leslie Frankfort saw that it was an old violin. The old man examined it anxiously, then with a sigh of relief he laid it across his knees.
“It’s not damaged, I hope?” asked Leslie.
“No, sir,” said the other; “I was greatly afraid that it was going to be an unfortunate ending to what has been a prosperous day.”
They had been playing on the
