A Knight on Wheels Part 36

Philip eased his collar.

"Timothy, my son," he observed, "I fear I must give up all thoughts of becoming a social success. I am only a Cave Man."

CHAPTER XX

THE PROVING OF THE BRAKE

ON Monday morning Philip rose early. He had a hard week before him, for besides performing his usual duties--and their name was legion at this busy season of the year--he hoped to devote an afternoon to an exhaustive trial of the Meldrum Automatic Electro-Magnetic (described by the ribald Timothy as the Ought-to-Sc.r.a.p-It, Don't You-Forget-It) Brake.

He was anxious, later in the week, to run down to Coventry and persuade the conservative Bilston to extend official recognition to his offspring.

He devoted two hours before breakfast to the more tender adjustment of the mechanism of the brake, which he had attached to the service-car provided for his use by the Company. The car consisted mainly of a long, lean, powerful cha.s.sis, dest.i.tute of ornament and fitted with a skimpy and attenuated body of home manufacture. He was a.s.sisted in his operations by Mr. Brand, once more unclothed and in his right mind.

Brand had taken a reluctant but irresistible interest in the evolution of the Brake. Indeed, one or two practical suggestions of his had been incorporated in the final design.

At last the work was completed. Philip climbed out of the pit and disconnected the inspection lamp.

"That's great, Brand," he said. "Thank you for all your help. If the Company takes the invention up I hope you will accept five per cent of the first year's royalties as your just commission."

It was an unnecessarily handsome offer, but Mr. Brand was not particularly cordial in his thanks. He would have preferred, on the whole, to receive nothing whatever for his a.s.sistance, and so be able to announce that Labour (himself) had done the work, while Capital (Philip) drew the profits.

Early in the afternoon, after a crowded morning in the office, Philip ordered round the service-car and set off upon his trial trip. First of all he tested his Brake in the surging torrent of Oxford Street. In this enterprise he received invaluable a.s.sistance from that strange animal, the pedestrian, and wondered for the hundredth time, as he eluded a panic-stricken party of shoppers who had darted out of Marshall and Snelgrove's apparently for the express purpose of getting run over, why it is that the ordinary citizen--even the self-confident c.o.c.kney--who desires to cross a crowded street should invariably put his head well down and run rather than keep it well up and walk. However, he was gratified to find that the Brake performed its duties without undue suddenness and held the car without apparent effort.

At the Marble Arch he turned into the Park, and gliding sedately past the long rows of green chairs, emerged at Albert Gate and sped down the Fulham Road. Presently he was across Putney Bridge. Twenty minutes later he cleared Kingston, and leaving Suburbia, with its tramlines and other impedimenta, far behind him, headed joyously for the Surrey hills.

It was a perfect afternoon in June, and Philip, who for some reason was in a reminiscent mood, wandered back in his thoughts to his first motor ride--that ecstatic and epoch-making journey in Mr. Mablethorpe's fiery chariot, Boanerges of blessed memory.

Boanerges, alas, was no more. A fighter to the last, he had met his Waterloo more than two years ago in a one-sided but heroic combat with a Pantechnicon furniture-van. Always a strategist, Boanerges had taken the van in the rear, charging through its closed doors with devastating effect and recoiling into the roadway after the impact, with the first fruits of victory, in the shape of a wash-hand stand, adhering firmly to his crumpled radiator. But his triumph was momentary. The radiator stood gaping open; the cooling waters imprisoned therein gushed forth; the temperature of Boanerges rose to fever-heat; and as the faithful engine refused under any conditions to stop running, the whole sizzling fabric rapidly heated itself to redness and finally burst into flame, furnis.h.i.+ng the inhabitants of Maida Vale with the finest and most pestiferous bonfire ever seen in Watling Street. So perished Boanerges, and the wash-hand stand with him. _Pax cineribus._

Roaming further down the avenues of remembrance, Philip came next to the _affaire_ Pegs, and the house on Hampstead Heath. Performing a brief sum in mental arithmetic, he calculated that Pegs would now be about twenty-two. Perhaps she was married by this time. Indeed, it was highly probable, for Montagu Falconer was not precisely the sort of person with whom one would choose to dwell longer than was absolutely necessary.

Still, it was odd to think of such a little girl being married. He recalled some of their quaint childish conversations, and was conscious of a sudden _desiderium_--there is no exact word for it in English--for the days that were no more. It would be pleasant, he reflected, to have some one beside him now--especially some one with kind brown eyes and wavy hair--to cheer him with her presence and act as a repository for his private thoughts and ambitions. However, his own proper Lady would come along some day. Would she be like Pegs, he wondered?

He touched the accelerator with his foot, and the car began to breast the three-mile slope of Wickmore Hill. It was on the farther side that he proposed to test his Brake.

Meanwhile, along a road running almost parallel with Philip's and ultimately converging on Wickmore Hill itself, came another car. It was a Britannia, of a four-year-old pattern. It was driven by a gentleman with a yellow beard, into which streaks of grey had made their way.

Beside him sat a girl. The gentleman, her father, had just completed a sulphurous summary of the character of the man who had designed the carburettor of the car--not because of any inherent defect in the carburettor itself, but because the gentleman, for a variety of reasons, the most cogent of which was an entire ignorance of the elements of motor mechanics, had twice stopped his engine in the course of five miles.

Presently they emerged from the side road on to the summit of Wickmore Hill. The gentleman stopped the car by a fierce application of the brakes.

"I shall write to the band of brigands who sold me this condemned tumbril," he announced, "and ask for my money back."

"Considering that we have had the car for nearly four years now,"

remarked his daughter calmly, "won't they think we have been rather a long time making up our minds about it?"

"Don't be ridiculous! How could I detect the fault when I had never driven the car myself until to-day?" snapped the car's owner.

"I should think," said the girl, "that if there had been a fault Adams would have noticed it."

This apparently harmless observation roused quite a tempest.

"Adams? That numskull! That b.u.mpkin! Haven't I been compelled to dismiss Adams from my service for gross incompetence only yesterday? How would _he_ be likely to notice faults in a car?"

"I don't know, I'm sure," was the unruffled reply, "except that he was a trained mechanic and a good driver."

At this moment a Gabriel horn fluted melodiously in the distance. Philip was coming up behind them, climbing the hill at thirty miles an hour.

Seeing a car in front of him at a standstill, he slowed down punctiliously and glanced in an enquiring fas.h.i.+on at its occupants as he slid past.

"Filthy road-hog!" bellowed the gentleman at the wheel; and Philip went on his way.

The gentleman turned to his daughter.

"Now, let's have no more nonsense about Adams," he said. "I admit he had a wife and four children, but you can hardly hold me responsible for that. Moreover, he was a yahoo. He decorated the interior of the garage--my garage--with chromolithographs, and his wife kept wax fruit under a gla.s.s case in her parlour window. I have dismissed him, and there is an end of it. Let us cease to be sentimental or maudlin upon the subject."

"You might have given him a character," said the girl.

"If I had," replied her father grimly, "he would never have obtained a situation again."

The girl changed the subject.

"Don't you think," she said, "that if we are really going to call on the Easts, we had better be getting on? And go gently. The foot-brake is a good deal worn, and the side-brake won't hold this heavy car if it gets on the run down this hill."

"If there is one thing," replied her amiable papa, "about this miserable and untrustworthy vehicle which can be relied upon at all, it is the efficiency of the brakes."

They set off with a jerk.

Meanwhile Philip, a little startled at the reception accorded to his tacit offer of a.s.sistance, was running down Wickmore Hill. It was a long descent--nearly three miles--but was not steep, and there were no sharp curves until near the bottom. It was a useful spot for brake-tests.

"I wonder who that old a.s.s was," mused Philip. "Rum bird. One of our cars, too. There was something familiar about his voice. Road-hog, indeed!" Philip grunted indignantly, for he was a virtuous motorist.

"Now I will really hog it a bit: this is a lovely piece of road. I'll let the old car rip for a couple of hundred yards and then see what the Ought-to-Sc.r.a.p-It will do. There was a girl with him, too. I wonder what her face was like, behind that thick blue veil. Now, then, old friend, put your back into it!" He patted the steering-wheel affectionately.

"Off you go!... No, steady! Wait a minute."

He closed down the throttle, for another car was coming down the hill behind him, and he intended to let it pa.s.s in order to have a clear road for his own operations. He looked round.

"What in thunder--" he began.

All was not well with the oncoming car. The horn was being blown unceasingly, and some one appeared to be shouting. As Philip looked, he saw that it was the Britannia car which he had pa.s.sed at the top of the hill. It was going thirty miles an hour and swaying a little from side to side. Next moment it was past him.

The gentleman at the wheel turned to Philip as they shot by.

"We are running away, d.a.m.n you!" he bawled.

It was what geometricians call a self-evident proposition, though why Philip should be d.a.m.ned because an incompetent stranger had allowed his car to get out of control was not readily apparent. Still, there was no time to sift the matter. Something must be done--promptly--or there would be a hideous disaster. Besides, the man at the wheel was no stranger. Philip recognized him now.