The Man Who Drove The Car
Max Pemberton
6 chapters
4 hour read
Selected Chapters
6 chapters
THE ROOM IN BLACK
THE ROOM IN BLACK
They say that every man should have a master, but, for my part, I prefer a mistress. Give me a nice young woman with plenty of money in her pocket, and a bit of taste for seeing life, and I'll leave you all the prying "amatoors" that ever sniffed about a gear-box without knowing what was inside that same. I have driven plenty of pretty girls in my life; but I don't know that the prettiest wasn't Fauny Dartel, of the Apollo. This story isn't about her—except in a way—so it doesn't much matter; bu
31 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE SILVER WEDDING
THE SILVER WEDDING
Yes, I shall never forget "Benny," and I shall never forget his beautiful red hair. Gentlemen, I have driven for many ... and the other sort, but "Benny" was neither the one nor the other—not a man, but a tribe ... not a Jew nor yet a Christian, but just something you meet every day and all days—a big, blundering heap of good-nature, which quarrels with one half the world and takes Bass's beer with the other. That was Benjamin Colmacher—"Benny" for short—that was the master I want to tell you ab
30 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
IN ACCOUNT WITH DOLLY ST. JOHN
IN ACCOUNT WITH DOLLY ST. JOHN
My old father used to say that "woman's looks were his only books and folly was all they taught him," which shows, I suppose, that what he knew about the sex he learned from a circulating library. Anyway, he never drove a motor-car, or he would have written in another strain. Sometimes I pick up a piece in the newspapers about women and then I laugh to myself, thinking how many mugs there are in the world and how they were born for the other sex to make game of. Let 'em get on the driver's seat
32 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE LADY WHO LOOKED ON
THE LADY WHO LOOKED ON
I wonder how many nowadays remember that pretty bit of goods, Maisa Hubbard, who used to drive the racing cars in France, and was the particular fancy of half the motormen who drive on the other side of the blue water. I first met her at the Gordon Bennett of 1901, and I must say I thought her "sample goods." It's true that many would have it she was over-well-known in America, and more than one young man got on the rocks because of her; but the world rather likes a bit of scandal about a pretty
31 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE BASKET IN THE BOUNDARY ROAD
THE BASKET IN THE BOUNDARY ROAD
The doctors will tell you sometimes that motoring is good for the nerves; and since so many of them now buy cars, and there's no man like a doctor for looking after his own flesh and blood, I suppose they mean what they say. All the same, I wish I'd had a doctor with me the night I picked up Mabel Bellamy; for if his nerves had stood that and he hadn't given himself quinine and iron for the next two months, why, I'd have paid his fee myself. You see, it was a rum job from the very beginning of i
30 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
THE COUNTESS
THE COUNTESS
To begin with, I suppose, it would be as well to tell you her name, but I only saw it once in the address-book at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, and then I couldn't have written it down for myself—no, not if a man had offered me five of the best for doing so. You see, she gave it out that she came from foreign parts, and her husband, when she remembered that she'd got one, was supposed to be a Hungarian grandee with a name fit to crack walnuts, and a moustache like an antelope's horns set over a fireg
32 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter