Read "The Man who Drove the Car" by Max Pemberton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
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 about.
I was out of a job at the time, and had picked up an endorsement at Hayward's Heath and left a matter of six pounds there for the justices to get busy with. Time is money, they say, and I have found it to be so. generally five pounds and costs, though more if you take a quantity. It isn't easy for a good man with a road mechanic's knowledge and five years' experience, racing and otherwise, to place himself nowadays, when any groom can get made a slap-bang "shuffer" for five pounds at a murder-shop, and any old coachman is young enough to put his guv'nor in the ditch. My knowledge and my experience had gone begging for exactly three months when I heard of Benny, and hurried round to his flat off Russell Square, "just the chap for you," they said at the garage. I thought so, too, when I saw him.