Mulliner Nights (22 page)

She clung to
him.

‘I got a
letter from him this morning. He has just fixed me up solid with two more
magazines.

Egbert kissed
her tenderly. Before he had become an assistant editor, he, too, had been an
author, and he understood. It is not the being paid money in advance that jars
the sensitive artist: it is the having to work.

‘What shall I
do?’ cried Evangeline.

‘Drop the
whole thing,’ said Egbert. ‘Evangeline, do you remember your first drive at
golf? I wasn’t there, but I bet it travelled about five hundred yards and you
wondered what people meant when they talked about golf being a difficult game.
After that, for ages, you couldn’t do anything right. And then, gradually,
after years of frightful toil, you began to get the knack of it. It is just the
same with writing. You’ve had your first drive, and it has been some smite.
Now, if you’re going to stick to it, you’ve got to do the frightful toil. What’s
the use? Drop it.’

‘And return
the money?’

Egbert shook
his head.

‘No,’ he said,
firmly. ‘There you go too far. Stick to the money like glue. Clutch it with
both hands. Bury it in the garden and mark the spot with a cross.’

‘But what
about the stories? Who is going to write them?’

Egbert smiled
a tender smile.

‘I am,’ he
said. ‘Before I saw the light, I, too, used to write stearine bilge just like “Parted
Ways”. When we are married, I shall say to you, if I remember the book of words
correctly, “With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” They will include three
novels I was never able to kid a publisher into printing, and at least twenty
short stories no editor would accept. I give them to you freely. You can have
the first of the novels to-night, and we will sit back and watch Mainprice and
Peabody sell half a million copies.’

‘Oh, Egbert!’
said Evangeline.

‘Evangeline!’
said Egbert.

8 STRYCHNINE IN THE SOUP

F
rom
the moment the Draught Stout entered the bar-parlour of the Angler’s Rest, it
had been obvious that he was not his usual cheery self. His face was drawn and
twisted, and he sat with bowed head in a distant corner by the window,
contributing nothing to the conversation which, with Mr Mulliner as its centre,
was in progress around the fire. From time to time he heaved a hollow sigh.

A sympathetic
Lemonade and Angostura, puffing down his glass, went across and laid a kindly
hand on the sufferer’s shoulder.

 ‘What is it,
old man?’ he asked. ‘Lost a friend?’

‘Worse,’ said
the Draught Stout. A mystery novel. Got halfway through it on the journey down
here, and left it in the train.’

‘My nephew
Cyril, the interior decorator,’ said Mr Mulliner, ‘once did the very same
thing. These mental lapses are not infrequent.’

‘And now,’
proceeded the Draught Stout, ‘I’m going to have a
sleepless night,
wondering who poisoned Sir Geoffrey Tuttle, Bart.’

‘The Bart was
poisoned, was he?’

‘You never
said a truer word. Personally, I think it was the Vicar who did him in. He was
known to be interested in strange poisons.’

Mr Mulliner
smiled indulgently.

‘It was not
the Vicar,’ he said. ‘I happen to have read “The Murglow Manor Mystery”. The
guilty man was the plumber.’

‘What plumber?’

‘The one who
comes in chapter two to mend the shower-bath. Sir Geoffrey had wronged his aunt
in the year ‘96, so he fastened a snake in the nozzle of the shower-bath with
glue; and when Sir Geoffrey turned on the stream the hot water melted the glue.
This released the snake, which dropped through one of the holes, bit the
Baronet in the leg, and disappeared down the waste-pipe.’

‘But that can’t
be right,’ said the Draught Stout. ‘Between chapter two and the murder there
was an interval of several days.’

‘The plumber
forgot his snake and had to go back for it,’ explained Mr Mulliner. ‘I trust
that this revelation will prove sedative.’

‘I feel a new
man,’ said the Draught Stout. ‘I’d have lain awake worrying about that murder
all night.’

‘I suppose you
would. My nephew Cyril was just the same. Nothing in this modern life of ours,’
said Mr Mulliner, taking a sip of his hot Scotch and lemon, ‘is more remarkable
than the way in which the mystery novel has gripped the public. Your true
enthusiast, deprived of his favourite reading, will stop at nothing in order to
get it. He is like a victim of the drug habit when withheld from cocaine. My
nephew Cyril—’

‘Amazing the
things people will leave in trains,’ said a Small Lager. ‘Bags… umbrellas …
even stuffed chimpanzees, occasionally, I’ve been told. I heard a
story
the other day-’

My nephew
Cyril (said Mr Mulliner) had a greater passion for mystery stories than anyone
I have ever met. I attribute this to the fact that, like so many interior
decorators, he was a fragile, delicate young fellow, extraordinarily vulnerable
to any ailment that happened to be going the rounds. Every time he caught mumps
or influenza or German measles or the like, he occupied the period of
convalescence in reading mystery stories. And, as the appetite grows by what it
feeds on, he ‘had become, at the time at which this narrative opens, a confirmed
addict. Not only did he devour every volume of this type on which he could lay
his hands, but he was also to be found at any theatre which was offering the
kind of drama where skinny arms come unexpectedly out of the chiffonier and the
audience feels a mild surprise if the lights stay on for ten consecutive
minutes.

And it was
during a performance of ‘The Grey Vampire’ at the St James’s that he found
himself sitting next to Amelia Bassett, the girl whom he was to love with all
the stored-up fervour of a man who hitherto had been inclined rather to edge
away when in the presence of the other sex.

He did not
know her name was Amelia Bassett. He had never seen her before. All he knew was
that at last he had met his fate, and for the whole of the first act he was
pondering the problem of how he-was to make her acquaintance.

It was as the
lights went up for the first intermission that he was aroused from his thoughts
by a sharp pain in the right leg. He was just wondering whether it was gout or
sciatica when, glancing down, he perceived that what had happened was that his
neighbour, absorbed by the drama, had absent-mindedly collected a handful of
his flesh and was twisting it in an ecstasy of excitement.

It seemed to
Cyril a
good point d’appui.

‘Excuse me,’
he said.

The girl
turned. Her eyes were glowing, and the tip of her nose still quivered.

‘I beg your
pardon?’

‘My leg,’ said
Cyril. ‘Might I have it back, if you’ve finished with it?’

The girl
looked down. She started visibly.

‘I’m awfully
sorry,’ she gasped.

‘Not at all,’
said Cyril. ‘Only too glad to have been of assistance.’

‘I got carried
away.’

‘You are
evidently fond of mystery plays.’

‘I love them.’

‘So do I. And
mystery novels?’

‘Oh, yes!’

‘Have you read
“Blood on the Banisters”?’

‘Oh,
yes!
I
thought it was better than “Severed Throats”.’

‘So did I,’
said Cyril. ‘Much better. Brighter murders, subtler detectives, crisper
clues.., better in every way.’

The two twin
souls gazed into each other’s eyes. There is no surer foundation for a beautiful
friendship than a mutual taste in literature.

‘My name is
Amelia Bassett,’ said the girl.

‘Mine is Cyril
Mulliner. Bassett?’ He frowned thoughtfully. ‘The name seems familiar.’

‘Perhaps you
have heard of my mother. Lady Bassett. She’s rather a well-known big-game
hunter and explorer. She tramps through jungles and things. She’s gone out to
the lobby for a smoke. By the way’— she hesitated — ‘if she finds us talking,
will you remember that we met at the Polterwoods’?’

‘I quite
understand.’

‘You see,
mother doesn’t like people who talk to me without a
formal introduction.
And, when mother doesn’t like anyone, she is so apt to hit them over the head
with some hard instrument.

‘I see,’ said
Cyril. ‘Like the Human Ape in “Gore by the Gallon”.’

‘Exactly. Tell
me,’ said the girl, changing the subject, ‘if you were a millionaire, would you
rather be stabbed in the back with a paper-knife or found dead without a mark
on you, staring with blank eyes at some appalling sight?’

Cyril was
about to reply when, looking past her, he found himself virtually in the latter
position. A woman of extraordinary formidableness had lowered herself into the
seat beyond and was scrutinizing him keenly through a tortoiseshell lorgnette.
She reminded Cyril of Wallace Beery.

‘Friend of
yours, Amelia?’ she said.

‘This is Mr
Mulliner, mother. We met at the Polterwoods’.’

‘Ah?’ said
Lady Bassett.

She inspected
Cyril through her lorgnette.

‘Mr Mulliner,’
she said, ‘is a little like the chief of the Lower Isisi — though, of course,
he was darker and had a ring through his nose. A dear, good fellow,’ she
continued reminiscently, ‘but inclined to become familiar under the influence
of trade gin. I shot him in the leg.’

‘Er — why?’
asked Cyril.

‘He was not
behaving like a
gentleman,’ said Lady Bassett primly.

After taking
your treatment,’ said Cyril, awed, ‘I’ll bet he could have written a Book of
Etiquette.’

‘I believe he
did,’ said Lady Bassett carelessly. ‘You must come and call on us some
afternoon, Mr Mulliner. I am in the telephone book. If you are interested in
man-eating pumas, I can show you some nice heads.’

The curtain
rose on act two, and Cyril returned to his thoughts. Love, he felt joyously,
had come into his life at last. But then so, he had to admit, had Lady Bassett.
There is, he reflected, always something.

I will pass
lightly over the period of Cyril’s wooing. Suffice it to say that his progress
was rapid. From the moment he told Amelia that he had once met Dorothy Sayers,
he never looked back. And one afternoon, calling and finding that Lady Bassett
was away in the country, he took the girl’s hand in his and told his love.

For a while
all was well. Amelia’s reactions proved satisfactory to a degree. She checked
up enthusiastically on his proposition. Falling into his arms, she admitted
specifically that he was her Dream Man.

Then came the
jarring note.

‘But it’s no
use,’ she said, her lovely eyes filling with tears. ‘Mother will never give her
consent.’

‘Why not?’
said Cyril, stunned. ‘What is it she objects to about me?’

‘I don’t know.
But she generally alludes to you as “that pip-squeak”.’

‘Pipsqueak?’
said Cyril. ‘What
is
a pipsqueak?’

‘I’m not quite
sure, but it’s something mother doesn’t like very much. It’s a pity she ever
found out that you are an interior decorator.’

‘An honourable
profession,’ said Cyril, a little stiffly.

‘I know; but
what she admires are men who have to do with the great open spaces.’

‘Well, I also
design ornamental gardens.’

‘Yes,’ said
the girl doubtfully, ‘but still—’

‘And, dash it,’
said Cyril indignantly, ‘this isn’t the Victorian age. All that business of
Mother’s Consent went out twenty years ago.

‘Yes, but no
one told mother.’

‘It’s
preposterous!’ cried Cyril. ‘I never heard such rot. Let’s just slip off and
get married quietly and send her a picture postcard from Venice or somewhere,
with a cross and a “This is our room. Wish you were with us” on it.’

The girl
shuddered.

‘She would be
with us,’ she said. ‘You don’t know mother. The moment she got that picture
postcard, she would come over to wherever we were and put you across her knee
and spank you with a hair-brush. I don’t think I could ever feel the same
towards you if I saw you lying across mother’s knee, being spanked with a
hair-brush. It would spoil the honeymoon.’

Cyril frowned.
But a man who has spent most of his life trying out a series of patent
medicines is always an optimist.

‘There is only
one thing to be done,’ he said. ‘I shall see your mother and try to make her
listen to reason. Where is she now?’

‘She left this
morning for a
visit to the Winghams in Sussex.’

‘Excellent! I
know the Winghams. In fact, I have a standing invitation to go and stay with
them whenever I like. I’ll send them a wire and push down this evening. I will
oil up to your mother sedulously and try to correct her present unfavourable impression
of me. Then, choosing my moment, I will shoot her the news. It may work. It may
not work. But at any rate I consider it a fair sporting venture.’

‘But you are
so diffident, Cyril. So shrinking. So retiring and shy. How can you carry
through such a task?’

‘Love will
nerve me.’

‘Enough, do
you think? Remember what mother is. Wouldn’t a
good, strong drink be
more help?’

Cyril looked
doubtful.

‘My doctor has
always forbidden me alcoholic stimulants. He says they increase the blood
pressure.’

‘Well, when
you meet mother, you will need all the blood pressure you can get. I really do
advise you to fuel up a little before you see her.’

‘Yes,’ agreed
Cyril, nodding thoughtfully. ‘I think you’re right. It shall be as you say.
Good-bye, my angel one.’

‘Good-bye,
Cyril, darling. You will think of me every minute while you’re gone?’

‘Every single
minute. Well, practically every single minute. You see, I have just got Horatio
Slingsby’s latest book, “Strychnine in the Soup”, and I shall be dipping into
that from time to time. But all the rest of the while… Have you read it, by
the way?’