Mulliner Nights (24 page)
At the same
moment, Lady Bassett, who had been chasing a bat out of the window, stepped in
from the balcony and switched on the lights.
To say that
Cyril Mulliner was taken aback would be to understate the facts. Nothing like
his recent misadventure had happened to him since his eleventh year, when,
going surreptitiously to his mother’s cupboard for jam, he had jerked three shelves
down on his head, containing milk, butter, home-made preserves, pickles,
cheese, eggs, cakes, and potted-meat. His feelings on the present occasion
closely paralleled that boyhood thrill.
Lady Bassett
also appeared somewhat discomposed.
‘You!’ she said.
Cyril nodded,
endeavouring the while to smile in a reassuring manner.
‘Hullo!’ he
said.
His hostess’s
manner was now one of unmistakable displeasure.
‘Am I not to
have a moment of privacy, Mr Mulliner?’ she asked severely. ‘I am, I trust, a
broad-minded woman, but I cannot approve of this idea of communal bedrooms.’
Cyril made an
effort to be conciliatory.
‘I do keep
coming in, don’t I?’ he said.
‘You do,’
agreed Lady Bassett. ‘Sir Mortimer informed me, on learning that I had been
given this room, that it was supposed to be haunted. Had I known that it was
haunted by you, Mr Mulliner, I should have packed up and gone to the local inn.’
Cyril bowed
his head. The censure, he could not but feel, was deserved.
‘I admit,’ he
said, ‘that my conduct has been open to criticism. In extenuation, I can but
plead my great love. This is no idle social call, Lady Bassett. I looked in
because I wished to take up again this matter of my marrying your daughter
Amelia. You say I can’t. Why can’t I? Answer me that, Lady Bassett.’
‘I have other
views for Amelia,’ said Lady Bassett stiffly. ‘When my daughter gets married it
will not be to a spineless, invertebrate product of our modern hot-house
civilization, but to a strong, upstanding, keen-eyed, two-fisted he-man of the
open spaces. I have no wish to hurt your feelings, Mr Mulliner,’ she continued,
more kindly, ‘but you must admit that you are, when all is said and done, a
pipsqueak.’
‘I deny it,’
cried Cyril warmly. ‘I don’t even know what a pipsqueak is.
A pipsqueak is
a main who has never seen the sun rise beyond the reaches of the Lower Zambezi;
who would not know what to do if faced by a charging rhinoceros. What, pray,
would you do if faced by a charging rhinoceros, Mr Mulliner?’
‘I am not likely,’
said Cyril, ‘to move in the same social circles as charging rhinoceri.’
‘Or take
another simple case, such as happens every day. Suppose you are crossing a rude
bridge over a stream in Equatorial Africa. You have been thinking of a hundred
trifles and are in a reverie. From this you wake to discover that in the
branches overhead a python is extending its fangs towards you. At the same
time, you observe that at one end of the bridge is a crouching puma; at the
other are two head hunters — call them Pat and Mike — with poisoned blow-pipes
to their lips. Below, half hidden in the stream, is an alligator. What would
you do in such a case, Mr Mulliner?’
Cyril weighed
the point.
‘I should feel
embarrassed,’ he had to admit. ‘I shouldn’t know where to look.’
Lady Bassett
laughed an amused, scornful little laugh.
‘Precisely.
Such a situation would not, however, disturb Lester Maple Durham.’
‘Lester Maple
Durham!’
‘The man who
is to marry my daughter Amelia. He asked me for her hand shortly after dinner.’
Cyril reeled.
The blow, falling so suddenly and unexpectedly, had made him feel boneless. And
yet, he felt, he might have expected this. These explorers and big-game hunters
stick together.
‘In a
situation such as I have outlined, Lester Maple Durham would simply drop from
the bridge, wait till the alligator made its rush, insert a
stout stick
between its jaws, and then hit it in the eye with a spear, being careful to
avoid its lashing tail. He would then drift down-stream and land at some safer
spot. That is the type of man I wish for as a son-in-law.’
Cyril left the
room without a word. Not even the fact that he now had ‘Strychnine in the Soup’
in his possession could cheer his mood of unrelieved blackness. Back in his
room, he tossed the book moodily onto the bed and began to pace the floor. And
he had scarcely completed two laps when the door opened.
For an
instant, when he heard the click of the latch, Cyril supposed that his visitor
must be Lady Bassett, who, having put two and two together on discovering her
loss, had come to demand her property back. And he cursed the rashness which
had led him to fling it so carelessly upon the bed, in full view.
But it was not
Lady Bassett. The intruder was Lester Maple Durham. Clad in a
suit of
pyjamas which in their general colour scheme reminded Cyril of a boudoir he had
recently decorated for a Society poetess, he stood with folded arms, his keen
eyes fixed menacingly on the young man.
‘Give me those
jewels!’ said Lester Maple Durham. Cyril was at a loss.
‘Jewels?’
‘Jewels!’
‘What jewels?’
Lester Maple
Durham tossed his head impatiently.
‘I don’t know
what jewels. They may be the Wingham Pearls or the Bassett Diamonds or the
Simpson Sapphires. I’m not sure which room it was I saw you coming out of.’
Cyril began to
understand.
‘Oh, did you
see me coming out of a room?’
‘I did. I
heard a crash and, when I looked out, you were hurrying along the corridor.’
‘I can explain
everything,’ said Cyril. ‘I had just been having a chat with Lady Bassett on a
personal matter. Nothing to do with diamonds.’
‘You’re sure?’
said Maple Durham.
‘Oh, rather,’
said Cyril. ‘We talked about rhinoceri and pythons and her daughter Amelia and
alligators and all that sort of thing, and then I came away.
Lester Maple
Durham seemed only half convinced.
‘H’m!’ he
said. ‘Well, if anything is missing in the morning, I shall know what to do
about it.’ His eye fell on the bed. ‘Hullo!’ he went on, with sudden animation.
‘Slingsby’s latest? Well, well! I’ve been wanting to get hold of this. I hear
it’s good. The
Leeds Mercury
says: “These gripping pages …”.’
He turned to
the door, and with a hideous pang of agony Cyril perceived that it was plainly
his intention to take the book with him. It was swinging lightly from a bronzed
hand about the size of a medium ham.
‘Here!’ he
cried, vehemently. ‘Lester Maple Durham turned.
‘Well?’
‘Oh, nothing,’
said Cyril. Just good night.’
He flung
himself face downwards on the bed as the door closed, cursing himself for the
craven cowardice which had kept him from snatching the book from the explorer.
There had been a moment when he had almost nerved himself to the deed, but it
was followed by another moment in which he had caught the other’s eye. And it
was as if he had found himself exchanging glances with Lady Bassett’s charging
rhinoceros.
And now,
thanks to this pusillanimity, he was once more ‘Strychnine in the Soup’-less.
How long Cyril
lay there, a prey to the gloomiest thoughts, he could not have said. He was
aroused from his meditations by the sound of the door opening again.
Lady Bassett
stood before him. It was plain that she was deeply moved. In addition to
resembling Wallace Beery and Victor McLaglen, she now had a distinct look of
George Bancroft.
She pointed a
quivering finger at Cyril.
‘You hound!’
she cried. ‘Give me that book!’
Cyril
maintained his poise with a strong effort.
‘What book?’
‘The book you
sneaked out of my room?’
‘Has someone
sneaked a book out of your room?’ Cyril struck his forehead. ‘Great heavens!’
he cried.
‘Mr Mulliner,’
said Lady Bassett coldly, ‘more book and less gibbering!’
Cyril raised a
hand.
‘I know who’s
got your book. Lester Maple Durham!’
‘Don’t be
absurd.’
‘He has, I
tell you. As I was on ‘my way to your room just now,
I saw him
coming out, carrying something in a furtive manner.
I remember
wondering a bit at the time. He’s in the Clock Room.
If we pop
along there now, we shall just catch him red-handed.’ Lady Bassett reflected.
‘It is
impossible,’ she said at length. ‘He is incapable of such an act. Lester Maple
Durham is a man who once killed a lion with a sardine—opener.’
‘The very
worst sort,’ said Cyril. Ask anyone.
And he is
engaged to my daughter.’ Lady Bassett paused. ‘Well, he won’t belong, if I find
that what you say is true. Come, Mr Mulliner!’
Together the
two passed down the silent passage. At the door of the Clock Room they paused.
A light streamed from beneath it. Cyril pointed silently to this sinister
evidence of reading in bed, and noted that his companion stiffened and said
something to herself in an undertone in what appeared to be some sort of native
dialect.
The next
moment she had flung the door open and, with a spring like that of a crouching
zebu, had leaped to the bed and wrenched the book from Lester Mapledurham’s
hands.
‘So!’ said
Lady Bassett.’
‘So!’ said
Cyril, feeling that he could not do better than follow ‘the lead of such a
woman.
‘Hullo!’ said
Lester Maple Durham, surprised. ‘Something the matter?’
‘So it was you
who stole my book!’
‘Your book?’
said Lester Maple Durham. ‘I borrowed this from Mr Mulliner there.’
A likely
story!’ said Cyril. ‘Lady Bassett is aware that I left my copy of “Strychnine
in the Soup” in the train.’
‘Certainly,’
said Lady Bassett. ‘It’s no use talking, young man, I have caught you with the
goods. And let me tell ‘you one thing that may be of interest. If you think
that, after a dastardly act like this, you are going to marry Amelia, forget
it!’
‘Wipe it right
out of your mind,’ said Cyril.
‘But listen—!’
‘I will not
listen. Come, Mr Mulliner.’
She left the
room, followed by Cyril. For some moments they walked in silence.
A merciful
escape,’ said Cyril.
‘For whom?’
‘For Amelia.
My gosh, think of her tied to a man like that. Must be a relief to you to feel
that she’s going to marry a respectable interior decorator.’
Lady Bassett
halted. They were standing outside the Moat Room now. She looked at Cyril, her
eyebrows raised.
‘Are you under
the impression, Mr Mulliner,’ she said, ‘that, on the strength of what has
happened, I intend to accept you as a son-in-law?’
Cyril reeled.
‘Don’t you?’
‘Certainly
not:
Something
inside Cyril seemed to snap. Recklessness descended upon him. He became for a
space a thing of courage and fire, like the African leopard in the mating
season.
‘Oh!’ he said.
And, deftly
whisking ‘Strychnine in the Soup’ from his companion’s hand, he darted into
his room, banged the door, and bolted it.
‘Mr Mulliner!’
It was Lady
Bassett’s voice, coming pleadingly through the woodwork. It was plain that she
was shaken to the core, and Cyril smiled sardonically. He was in a position to
dictate terms.
‘Give me that
book, Mr Mulliner!’
‘Certainly
not,’ said Cyril. ‘I intend to read it myself. I hear good reports of it on
every side. The
Peebles Intelligencer
says:
“Vigorous and
absorbing”.’
A low wail
from the other side of the door answered him.
‘Of course,’
said Cyril, suggestively, ‘if it were my future mother-in-law who was speaking,
her word would naturally be law.’
There was a
silence outside.
‘Very well,’
said Lady Bassett.
‘I may marry
Amelia?’
‘You may.
Cyril unbolted
the door.
‘Come —
Mother,’ he said, in a soft, kindly voice. ‘We will read it together, down in
the library.’
Lady Bassett
was still shaken.
‘I hope I have
acted for the best,’ she said.
‘You have,’
said Cyril.
‘You will make
Amelia a
good husband?’
‘Grade A,’
Cyril assured her.
‘Well, even if
you don’t,’ said Lady Bassett resignedly, ‘I can’t go to bed without that book.
I had just got to the bit where Inspector Mould is trapped in the underground
den of the Faceless Fiend.’
Cyril
quivered.
‘Is
there
a Faceless Fiend?’ he cried.
‘There are two
Faceless Fiends,’ said Lady Bassett.
‘My gosh!’
said Cyril. ‘Let’s hurry.’
T
he
bar-parlour of the Angler’s Rest was fuller than usual. Our local race meeting
had been held during the afternoon, and this always means a rush of custom. In
addition to the
habitués,
that faithful little band of listeners which
sits nightly at the feet of Mr Mulliner, there were present some half a dozen
strangers. One of these, a fair-haired young Stout and Mild, wore the
unmistakable air of a main who has not been fortunate in his selections. He sat
staring before him with dull eyes and a drooping jaw, and nothing that his
companions could do seemed able to cheer him up.
A genial
Sherry and Bitters, one of the regular patrons, eyed the sufferer with bluff sympathy.
‘What your
friend appears to need, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘is a dose of Mulliner’s
Buck-U-Uppo.’
‘What’s
Mulliner’s Buck-U-Uppo?’ asked one of the strangers, a Whisky Sour, interested.
‘Never heard of it myself.’
Mr Mulliner
smiled indulgently.