Bertram Atkey

“ By the simple process of engineering a so-called accident outside Weye’s private house when the sole proprietor of the merry little Eaglehawk was away, he had made the acquaintance of the lady who acted as private secretary and house-controller to Oswald—a widower. She was, Brass said, a very charming woman of about thirty, named Violette—Mrs. Violette Lanson-Karr, to be exact.
“H’m! Sounds good-looking—kind of dashing.” said the Colonel.
The Honorable John nodded.
“She is. Violette is a woman with her eyes open, and her mind doesn’t leak. I like her. So will you. She’s wise—and beautiful. ”

“ The Honorable John sent for their butler-retainer Ferdinand Bloom, whose guilty conscience, thirsty nature, ingrained dislike for steady continuous labor, and well-founded fear of the revengeful nature of the Colonel (whom he had foolishly once tried to rob) kept him—with his wife, who acted as the partners’ housekeeper—at Purdston, busily buttling when the partners were “in residence,” and idling when they were not.
“Bring our furs, Bloom, and do up some caviare, and smoked salmon sandwiches and bring the flasks. Tell Sing to have the car ready, and look alive, my man, look alive! ”

“ There isn’t enough real plant or material here to turn out one car a month, much less hundreds.”
The Colonel stared.
“Well, perhaps he intends to import ’em and is keeping the place as a depot.”
“Depot be damned!” responded the Honorable John. “He guarantees ’em to be English cars. No, Squire, the man’s a plain deposit-snatcher; that’s what. He doesn’t intend to make or sell as much as a child’s go-cart. ”

“ The night after he had left Purdston, a car had arrived at Weye’s house just after dark, and the couple—their appearance greatly changed—had traveled to a retired little country place called Groundall, near Winchester, where they had stayed two days. Sing had extracted enough in formation from the local gossips to make quite clear to the Honorable John the Weye plan—which was, as he explained to his partner, so simple that, had it not been for him, the Honorable John Brass, it would probably have succeeded.
“Yes, we’ve got Oswald’s goat, Squire,” said he. ”

“ And he did—with the result that an hour after their return to Purdston, that durable ever-ready Sing, the Chink, was called upon to appear before his owner.
“It’s time the motorcycle had a bit of exercise, Sing, my lad,” said Brass. “Hey?”
“Yes, master—allee same doing nothing velly long time,” grinned the expectant Chink happily.
“That’s right, my son—can’t have a thundering, great nine-horse skid-grid eating its head off like this. Take it out, Sing, ride to the place where we called this afternoon and hang about there, watching Mr. Oswald Weye and his secretary. ”

“ But they all want cars, and as Oswald and his parliamentary pals are running the country on about four times too much currency naturally everybody’s got the money to buy a car at such a figure as one hundred and ninety-nine pounds. Oswald has got wise to this, and he’s been selling paper cars for paper money for the last month. Hundreds of people have sent him a fifty-pound deposit for quick delivery of the pretty little eleven-horse-power fake which he had built for the show, for the agents to inspect and for the pictures of his advertisements. ”

“ It’s a one-man shot—Oswald Weye, M.P., who is transforming the whole of the famous (so-called) truck and barrow works established by his grandfather in 1840 into a ‘vast machine’ for the production of the what he calls the plain man’s car! And that’s the man,” he concluded, dropping the newspaper, “who can’t pay a hotel bill run up in his own constituency!” ”

“ It was dark when they stopped at Groundall and called at the Station Hotel for Bloom. Unfortunately they found Ferdinand very ill. The landlord—a lean and hungry-looking man, with a queer, contemptuous, irritable style of drinking whisky—said that Bloom had been as sober as an undertaker until he went up to the post office in the early afternoon to send a telegram to some friends. ”

“ All he’s after is the deposits from people who do their thinking with their eyes and check-book. England’s crammed just now with people who know as much about motors as you do of Euclid—and that’s nothing. ”

“ It’s easy—robbing a little child of its bun would be a tough job compared with it. I’m sorry for Violette—but after all, money is money, whereas love is only love.”
“Yes—love is,” muttered the Colonel cryptically.
THE minutes stole by; finally their victims arrived.
The partners saw the lights of rather a noisy car swim to a standstill at the front door of the house. ”