Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/103

Rh comrades by snatching at the starting-lever. He was quick as a flash of summer lightning, but if I had n't been quicker, the big car might have leaped into life, and run amuck through the most crowded street in busy Marseilles. I felt myself go cold and hot, horribly uncertain whether my interference might work harm or good, but before I quite knew what I did, I had sent the boy flying with a sounding box on the ear.

He squealed as he sprawled backward, and I stood up, ready for battle, my fingers tingling, my heart pounding. The imp was up again, in half a breath, pushed forward by his friends to take revenge, and I could hear Sir Samuel or her ladyship wrestling vainly with the window behind me. What would have happened next I can't tell, except that I was in a mood to fight for our car till the death, even if knives flashed out; and I think I was gasping "Police! Police!" but at that instant Mr. Jack Dane hurled himself like a catapult from the hotel. He dashed the weedy youths out of his way like ninepins, jumped to his seat, and the car and the car's occupants were safe.

"You are a trump, Miss d'Angely," said he, as we boomed away from the hotel, scattering the crowd before us as an eddy of wind scatters autumn leaves. "You did just the right thing at just the right time. It was all my fault. I ought n't to have left the motor going."

"It was Sir Samuel's fault," I contradicted him.

"No. Whatever goes wrong with the car is always the chauffeur's fault. Sir Samuel wanted me to do a foolish thing, and I ought n't to have done it. I had your life to think of ⸺"

"And theirs." nop