The Admirable Tinker Part 20

As he wheeled his bicycle into the coach-house of the hotel, Dorothy ran into it, caught him by the arm, and cried, "Did they fight? Is your father hurt?"

He looked at her white, strained face, and said with a dogged air, "My father's all right. What do you mean about fighting? I--I've been for a ride--on my bicycle."

"Then you did stop it!" cried Dorothy; and before he could ward her off she had kissed him.

"Look here," said Tinker firmly, but gently, "these things won't bear talking about. They won't really."

CHAPTER TWELVE

TINKER BORROWS A MOTOR-CAR

A few days later, early in the afternoon, Sir Tancred was leaning on the wall of the gardens of the Temple of Fortune, smoking a cigarette, and looking down on the Mediterranean in a very thoughtful mood.

Tinker was by his side, also looking down on the Mediterranean, also silent, out of respect to his father's mood.

Suddenly Sir Tancred turned towards him, and said abruptly, "What did you say you paid your governess?"

"Thirty pounds a year," said Tinker.

"She dresses well," said Sir Tancred.

Tinker turned his head and eyed his father with a trifle of distrust.

"She does dress well," he said gravely, "and I can't quite make it out.

Sometimes I think that her people must have lost their money, and she bought her gowns before that happened. Sometimes I really think she's only being a governess for fun."

"For fun?" said Sir Tancred. "But I thought her references were all right. Yes; you told me she carried them about with her."

"Well, she has the nicest kind of face," said Tinker; and his own was out of the common guileless.

"Oh! her face was her reference, was it?" said Sir Tancred quickly.

"You can forge references, but you can't forge a face," said Tinker with the air of a philosopher.

Sir Tancred laughed gently. "My good Tinker," he said, "I look forward to the day when you enter the diplomatic service. The diplomacy of your country will be newer than ever. But don't be too sure that a woman can't forge her face."

"There'd be a precious lot of forgery, if they could forge faces like Dorothy's," said Tinker with conviction.

"You seem a perfect well of truth to-day," said Sir Tancred.

They were silent a while, gazing idly over the sea; then Tinker said, "I'm beginning to think that Dorothy is rather mysterious, don't you know. She gets very few letters, but lots of cablegrams, from America.

She has lots of money, too, and she spends it. Sometimes I have to talk to her seriously about being extravagant."

"You do? What does she say?"

"Oh, she laughs. That's what makes me think she's only a governess for fun. I never knew a girl so ready to laugh--though she did cry that morning." He spoke musingly, half to himself.

"What morning was that?" said Sir Tancred quickly.

"It was a few mornings ago," said Tinker vaguely; and he added hastily, "I think I'll go after her and Elsie; they've gone down the Corniche towards Mentone."

"Was it the morning I had an affair with M. le Comte de Puy-de-Dome?"

"Ye-e-s," said Tinker with some reluctance, and he prepared for trouble. Hitherto his father had said nothing of that timely but eldritch yell. Now, by his careless admission about the tears of Dorothy, he had opened the matter, and let himself in for a rating.

But Sir Tancred was silent, musing, and Tinker returned to his idle consideration of the Mediterranean.

Presently he said, "She would make you a nice little wife, sir."

Sir Tancred started. "There are times," he said, "when I feel you would take my breath away, if I hadn't very good lungs."

"I thought that that was what you were thinking about," said the ingenuous Tinker.

"If you add thought-reading to your other accomplishments, it will be too much," said Sir Tancred with conviction.

Of a sudden there came bustling round the right-hand horn of the bay a most disreputable, bedraggled-looking vessel. By her lines a yacht, her decks would have been a disgrace to the oldest and most battered tin-pot of an ocean tramp. Her masts had gone, there were gaps in her bulwarks, and the smoke of her furnaces, pouring through a hole in her deck over which her funnel had once reared itself, had taken advantage of this rare and golden opportunity to blacken her after-part to a very fair semblance of imitation ebony, and to transform her crew to an even fairer imitation of negroes dressed in black.

"She is in a mess!" said Tinker.

"Of the Atlantic's making, to judge by its completeness," said Sir Tancred. "Whose yacht is it?"

"I don't know," said Tinker, staring at it with all his eyes.

"You ought to," said Sir Tancred with some severity. "You've been on it. It's Meyer's."

"So it is," said Tinker, mortified. "I am stupid not to have recognised it!"

"Your new clairvoyant faculty must be weakening your power of observation. I shouldn't give way to it, if I were you."

Tinker wriggled.

A hundred yards from the jetty the yacht's engines were reversed; and the way was scarcely off her, when her only remaining boat fell smartly on the water, and was rowed quickly to the steps.

"They seem in a hurry," said Sir Tancred.

For a while they busied themselves in conjectures as to what errand had brought the yacht to Monaco; Sir Tancred lighted another cigarette, and they watched the crew of the yacht set to work at once to wash the decks.

Some twenty minutes later a little group hurried into the gardens, the manager of the Hotel des Princes, a tall, bearded, grimy man, and a stout, clean-shaven, grimy man. They came straight to Sir Tancred and Tinker, and the bearded man said quickly, "My name is Rainer, Septimus Rainer. I've just learnt that my daughter Dorothy is governessing your little girl. Where is she?"

Sir Tancred bowed, and said languidly, "Miss Rainer is the governess of my son's adopted sister. He is her employer, not I. Here he is."

Tinker stepped forward, and bowed.

Septimus Rainer stared at him with a bewildered air, and said, "Well, if this don't beat the Dutch!" Then he added feverishly, "Where is she? Where's my little girl? Where's Dorothy?"

"She went with Elsie--that's her pupil--down the Corniche towards Mentone after dejeuner," said Tinker.