Mulliner Nights (17 page)

‘Yes,’ said
Eustace, for it was.

‘I say,
Eustace,’ proceeded the girl, ‘I’m leaving for Paris tomorrow.

‘You aren’t!’ said
Eustace.

‘Yes, I am,
you silly ass,’ said the girl, ‘and I’ve got the tickets to prove it. Listen,
Eustace. There’s something I want you to do for me. You know my canary?’

‘William?’

‘William is
right. And you know my Peke?’

‘Reginald?’

‘Reginald is correct.
Well, I can’t take them with me, because William hates travelling and Reginald
would have to go into quarantine for six months when I got back, which would
make him froth with fury. So will you give them a couple of beds at your flat
while I’m away?’

Absolutely,’
said Eustace. ‘We keep open house, we Mulliners.’

‘You won’t
find them any trouble. There’s nothing of the athlete about Reginald. A brisk
walk of twenty minutes in the park sets him up for the day, as regards
exercise. And, as for food, give him whatever you’re having yourself — raw
meat, puppy biscuits and so on. Don’t let him have cocktails. They unsettle
him.’

‘Right-ho,’
said Eustace. ‘The scenario seems pretty smooth so far. How about William?’

‘In re
William, he’s a bit of an eccentric in the food line. Heaven knows why, but he
likes bird-seed and groundsel. Couldn’t touch the stuff myself. You get
bird-seed at a birdseed shop.’

‘And
groundsel, no doubt, at the groundseller’s?’

‘Exactly. And
you have to let William out of his cage once or twice a day, so that he can
keep his waist-line down by fluttering about the room. He comes back all right
as soon as he’s had his bath. Do you follow all that?’

‘Like a
leopard,’ said Eustace.

‘I bet you don’t.’

‘Yes, I do.
Brisk walk Reginald. Brisk flutter William.’

‘You’ve got
it. All right, then. And remember that I set a high value on those two, so guard
them with your very life.’

‘Absolutely,’
said Eustace. ‘Rather! You bet. I should say so. Positively.’

Ironical, of
course, it seems now, in the light of what occurred subsequently, but my nephew
told me that that was the happiest moment of his life.

He loved this
girl with every fibre of his being, and it seemed to him that, if she selected
him out of all her circle for this intensely important trust, it must mean that
she regarded him as a man of solid worth and one she could lean on.

‘These others,’
she must have said to herself, running over the roster of her friends. ‘What
are they, after all? Mere butterflies. But Eustace Mulliner — ah, that’s
different. Good stuff there. A young fellow of character.’

He was
delighted, also, for another reason. Much as he would miss Marcella Tyrrwhitt,
he was glad that she was leaving London for a while, because his love-life at
the’ moment had got into something of a tangle, and her absence would just give
him nice time to do a little adjusting and unscrambling.

Until a week
or so before he had been deeply in love with another girl — a certain Beatrice
Watterson. And then, one night at a studio-party, he had met Marcella and had
instantly discerned in her an infinitely superior object for his passion.

It ‘is this
sort of thing that so complicates life for the young man about town. He is too
apt to make his choice before walking the whole length of the counter. He
bestows a strong main’s love on Girl A. and is just congratulating himself when
along comes ‘Girl B. whose very existence he had not suspected, and he finds that
he has picked the wrong one ‘and has to work like a beaver to make the switch.

What Eustace
wanted to do at this point was to taper off with Beatrice, thus clearing the
stage and leaving himself free to concentrate his whole soul on Marcella. And
Marcella’s departure from London would afford him the necessary leisure for
the process.

So, by the way
of tapering off with Beatrice, he took her to tea the day Marcella left, and at
tea Beatrice happened to mention, as girls will, that it would be her birthday
next Sunday, and Eustace said: ‘Oh, I say, really? Come and have a bite of
lunch at my flat,’ and Beatrice said that she would love it, and Eustace ‘said
that he must give her something tophole as a present, and Beatrice said: ‘Oh,
no, really, you mustn’t,’ and Eustace said Yes, dash it, he was resolved. Which
started the tapering process nicely, for Eustace knew that on the Sunday he was
due down at his Aunt Georgiana’s at Wittleford-cum-Bagsley-on-Sea for the
week-end, so that when the girl arrived all eager for lunch and found not only
that her host was not there but that there was not a birthday present in sight
of any description, she would be deeply offended and would become cold and
distant and aloof.

Tact, my
nephew tells me, is what you need on these occasions. You want to gain the
desired end without hurting anybody’s feelings. And, no doubt, he is right.

After tea he
came back to’ his flat and took Reginald for a brisk walk and gave William a
flutter, and went to bed that night, feeling that God was in His heaven and all
right with the world.

The next day
was warm and sunny, and it struck Eustace that William would appreciate it if
he put his cage out on the window-sill, so that he could get the actinic rays
into his system. He did this, accordingly, and, having taken Reginald for his
saunter, returned to. the flat, feeling that he had earned the morning bracer.
He instructed Blenkinsop, his man, to bring the materials, and soon peace was reigning
in the home to a noticeable extent. William was trilling lustily on the
window-sill, Reginald was resting from his exertions under the sofa, and
Eustace had begun to sip his whisky-and-soda without a care in the world, when
the door opened and Blenkinsop announced a visitor.

‘Mr Orlando
Wotherspoon,’ said Blenkinsop, and withdrew to go on with the motion-picture
magazine which he had been reading in the pantry.

Eustace placed
his glass on the table and rose to extend the courtesies in a somewhat puzzled,
not to say befogged, state of mind. The name Wotherspoon had struck no chord,
and he could not recollect ever having seen the man before in his life.

And Orlando
Wotherspoon was not the sort of person who, once seen, is easily forgotten. He
was built on large lines, and seemed to fill the room to overflowing. In
physique, indeed, he was not unlike what Primo Camera would have been, if
Camera had not stunted his growth by smoking cigarettes when a boy. He was
preceded by a flowing moustache of the outsize soup-strainer kind, and his eyes
were of the piercing type which one associates with owls, sergeant-majors, and
Scotland Yard inspectors.

Eustace found
himself not a little perturbed.

‘Oh, hullo!’
he said.

Orlando
Wotherspoon scrutinized him keenly and, it appeared to Eustace, with hostility.
If Eustace had been a rather more than ordinarily unpleasant black-beetle this
man would have looked at him in much the same fashion. The expression in his
eyes was that which comes into the eyes of suburban house-holders when they
survey slugs among their lettuces.

‘Mr Mulliner?’
he said.

‘I shouldn’t
wonder,’ said Eustace, feeling that this might well be so.

‘My name is
Wotherspoon.’

‘Yes,’ said
Eustace. ‘So Blenkinsop was saying, and he’s a fellow I’ve found I can usually
rely on.

‘I live in the
block of flats across the gardens.’

‘Yes?’ said
Eustace, still at a loss. ‘Have a pretty good time?’

‘In answer to
your question, my life is uniformly tranquil. This morning, however, I saw a
sight which shattered my peace of mind and sent the blood racing hotly through
my veins.

‘Too bad when
it’s like that,’ said Eustace. ‘What made your blood carry on in the manner
described?’

‘I will tell
you, Mr Mulliner. I was seated in my window a few minutes ago, drafting out
some notes for my forthcoming speech at the annual dinner of Our Dumb Chums’
League, of which I am perpetual vice-president, when, to my horror, I observed
a fiend torturing a helpless bird. For a while I gazed in appalled
stupefaction, while my blood ran cold.’

‘Hot, you
said.’

‘First hot,
then cold. I seethed with indignation at this fiend.’

‘I don’t blame
you,’ said Eustace. ‘If there’s one type of chap I bar, it’s a fiend. Who was
the fellow?’

‘Mulliner,’
said Orlando Wotherspoon, pointing a finger that looked like a plantain or some
unusually enlarged banana, ‘thou art the man!’

‘What!’

‘Yes,’
repeated the other, ‘you! Mulliner, the Bird-Bullier! Mulliner, the Scourge of
Our Feathered Friends! What do you mean, you Torquemada, by placing that canary
on the windowsill in the full force of the burning sun? How would you feel if
some pop-eyed assassin left
you
out in the sun without a hat; to fry
where you stood?’ He went to the window and hauled the cage in. ‘It is men like
you, Mulliner, who block the wheels of the world’s progress and render
societies like Our Dumb Chums’ League necessary.

‘I thought the
bally bird enjoyed it,’ said Eustace feebly.

‘Mulliner, you
lie!’ said Orlando Wotherspoon.

And he looked
at Eustace in a way that convinced the latter, who had suspected it from the
first, that he had not made a new friend.

‘By the way,’
he said, hoping to ease the strain, ‘have a spot?’

‘I will not
have a spot!’

‘Right-ho,’
said Eustace. ‘No spot. But, coming back to the agenda, you wrong me,
Wotherspoon. Foolish, mistaken, I may have been, but, as God is my witness, I
meant well. Honestly, I thought William would be tickled pink if I put his cage
out in the sun.

‘Tchah!’ said
Orlando Wotherspoon.

And, as he
spoke, the dog Reginald, hearing voices, crawled out from under the sofa in the
hope that something was going on which might possibly culminate in
coffee-sugar.

At the sight
of Reginald’s honest face, Eustace brightened. A cordial friendship had sprung
up between these two based on mutual respect. He extended a hand and chirruped.

Unfortunately,
Reginald, suddenly getting a close-up of that moustache and being convinced by
the sight of it that plots against his person were toward, uttered a piercing
scream and dived back under the sofa, where he remained, calling urgently for
assistance.’

Orlando
Wotherspoon put the worst construction on the incident.

‘Ha, Mulliner!’
he said. ‘This is vastly well! Not content with inflicting fiendish torments on
canaries, it would seem that you also slake your inhuman fury on this innocent
dog, so that he runs, howling, at the mere sight of you.’

Eustace tried
to put the thing right.

‘I don’t think
it’s the mere sight of me he objects to,’ he said. ‘In fact, I’ve frequently
seen him take quite a long, steady look at me without wincing.’

‘Then to what,
pray, do you attribute the animal’s visible emotion?’

‘Well, the
fact is,’ said Eustace, ‘I fancy the root of the trouble is that he doesn’t
much care for that moustache of yours.’

‘His visitor
began to roll up his left coat-sleeve in a meditative way.

‘Are you
venturing, Mulliner, to criticize my moustache?’

‘No,
no,’ said Eustace.
‘I admire it.’

‘I would be
sorry,’ said Orlando Wotherspoon, ‘to think that you were aspersing my
moustache, Mulliner. My grandmother has often described it as the handsomest in
the West End of London. “Leonine” is the adjective she applies to it. But perhaps
you regard my grandmother as prejudiced? Possibly you consider her a foolish
old woman whose judgments may be lightly set aside?’

Absolutely
not,’ said Eustace.

‘I am glad,’
said Wotherspoon. ‘You would have been the third man I have thrashed within an inch
of his life for insulting my grandmother. Or is it,’ he mused, ‘the fourth? I
could consult my books and let you know.’

‘Don’t bother,’
said Eustace.

There was a
lull in the conversation.

‘Well,
Mulliner,’ said Orlando Wotherspoon at length, ‘I will leave you. But let me
tell you this. You have not heard the last of me. You see this?’ He produced a
note-book. ‘I keep here a black list of fiends who must be closely watched.
Your Christian name, if you please?’

‘Eustace.’

‘Age?’

‘Twenty-four.’

‘Height?’

‘Five foot
ten.’

‘Weight?’

‘Well,’ said
Eustace, ‘I was around ten stone eleven when you came in. I think I’m a bit
lighter now.’

‘Let us say
ten stone seven. Thank you, Mr Mulliner. Everything is now in order. You have
been entered on the list of suspects on whom I make a practice of paying
surprise visits. From now on, you will never know when I may or may not knock
upon your door.’

‘Any time you’re
passing,’ said Eustace.

‘Our Dumb
Chums’ League,’ said Orlando Wotherspoon, putting away his note-book, ‘is not
unreasonable in these matters. We of the organization have instructions to
proceed in the matter of fiends with restraint and deliberation. For the first
offence, we are content to warn. After that… I must remember, when I return
home, to post you a copy of our latest booklet. It sets forth in detail what
happened to J. B. Stokes, of 9 Manglesbury Mansions, West Kensington, on his
ignoring our warning to him to refrain from throwing vegetables at his cat.
Good morning, Mr Mulliner. Do not trouble to see me to the door.’

Young men of
my nephew Eustace’s type are essentially resilient. This interview had taken
place on the Thursday. By Friday, at about one o’clock, he had practically
forgotten the entire episode. And by noon on Saturday he was his own merry self
once more.

It was on this
Saturday, as you may remember, that Eustace was to go down to
Wittleford-cum-Bagsley-on-Sea to spend the week-end with his Aunt Georgiana.