Mulliner Nights (3 page)

And the more
he examined Sir Jasper, the more revolting seemed the idea of his marrying the
girl he loved.

Of course, an
ardent young fellow inspecting a man who is going to marry the girl he loves is
always a stern critic. In the peculiar circumstances Adrian would, no doubt,
have looked askance at a John Barrymore or a Ronald Colman. But, in the case of
Sir Jasper, it must be admitted that he had quite reasonable grounds for his
disapproval.

In the first
place, there was enough of the financier to make two financiers. It was as if
Nature, planning a financier, had said to itself: ‘We will do this thing well.
We will not skimp,’ with the result that, becoming too enthusiastic, it had
overdone it. And then, in addition to being fat, he was also bald and
goggle-eyed. And, if you overlooked his baldness and the goggly protuberance of
his eyes, you could not get away from the fact that he was well advanced in
years. Such a man, felt Adrian, would have been better employed in pricing
burial-lots in Kensal Green Cemetery than in forcing his unwelcome attentions
on a sweet young girl like Millicent: and as soon as the meal was concluded he
approached him with cold abhorrence.

‘A word with
you,’ he said, and led him out on to the terrace.

The O.B.E., as
he followed him into the cool night air, seemed surprised and a little uneasy.
He had noticed Adrian scrutinizing him closely across the dinner table, and if
there is one thing a financier who has just put out a prospectus of a gold mine
dislikes, it is to be scrutinized closely.

‘What do you
want?’ he asked nervously. Adrian gave him a cold glance.

‘Do you ever
look in a mirror, Sir Jasper?’ he asked curtly.

‘Frequently,’
replied the financier, puzzled.

‘Do you ever
weigh yourself?’

‘Often.’

‘Do you ever
listen while your tailor is toiling round you with the tape-measure and calling
out the score to his assistant?’

‘I do.’

‘Then,’ said
Adrian, ‘and I speak in the kindest spirit of disinterested friendship, you
must have realized that you are an overfed old bohunkus. And how you ever got
the idea that you were a fit mate for Lady Millicent Shipton-Bellinger frankly
beats me. Surely it must have occurred to you what a priceless ass you will
look, walking up the aisle with that young and lovely girl at your side? People
will mistake you for an elderly uncle taking his niece to the Zoo.’

The O.B.E.
bridled.

‘Ho!’ he said.

‘It is no use
saying “Ho!” ‘said Adrian. ‘You can’t get out of it with any “Ho’s”. When all, the
talk and argument have died away, the fact remains that, millionaire though you
be, you are a nasty-looking, fat, senile millionaire. If I were you, I should
give the whole thing a miss. What do you want to get married for, anyway? You
are much happier as you are. Besides, think of the risks of a financier’s life.
Nice it would be for that sweet girl suddenly to get a wire from you telling
her not to wait dinner for you as you had just started a seven-year stretch at
Dartmoor!’

An angry
retort had been trembling on Sir Jasper’s lips during the early portion of this
speech, but at these concluding words it died unspoken. He blenched visibly,
and stared at the speaker with undisguised apprehension.

‘What do you
mean?’ he faltered.

‘Never mind,’
said Adrian.

He had spoken;
of course, purely at a venture, basing his remarks on the fact that nearly all
O.B.E.s who dabble in High Finance go to prison sooner or later. Of Sir Jasper’s
actual affairs he knew nothing.

‘Hey, listen!’
said the financier.

But Adrian did
not hear him. I have mentioned that during dinner, preoccupied with his
thoughts, he had bolted his food. Nature now took its toll. An acute spasm
suddenly ran through him, and with a brief ‘Ouch!’ of pain he doubled up and
began to walk round in circles.

Sir Jasper
clicked his tongue impatiently.

‘This is no
time for doing the Astaire pom-pom dance,’ he said sharply. ‘Tell me what you
meant by that stuff you were talking about prison.’

Adrian had
straightened himself. In the light of the moon which flooded the terrace with
its silver beams, his dean-cut face was plainly visible. And with a shiver of
apprehension Sir Jasper saw that it wore a sardonic, sinister smile — a smile
which, it struck him, was virtually tantamount to a leer.

I have spoken
of the dislike financiers have for being scrutinized closely. Still more
vehemently do they object to being leered at. Sir Jasper reeled, and was about
to press his question when Adrian, still smiling, tottered off into the shadows
and was lost to sight.

The financier
hurried into the smoking-room, where he knew there would be the materials for a
stiff drink. A stiff drink was what he felt an imperious need of at the moment.
He tried to tell himself that that smile could not really have had the inner
meaning which he had read into it; but he was still quivering nervously as he
entered the smoking-room.

As he opened
the door, the sound of an angry voice smote his ears. He recognized it as Lord
Brangbolton’s.

‘I call it
dashed low,’ his lordship was saying in his high-pitched tenor.

Sir Jasper
gazed in bewilderment. His host, Sir Sutton Hartley-Wesping, was standing
backed against the wall, and Lord Brangbolton, tapping him on the shirt-front
with a piston-like forefinger, was plainly in the process of giving him a
thorough ticking off.

‘What’s the
matter?’ asked the financier.

‘I’ll tell you
what’s the matter,’ cried Lord Brangbolton. ‘This hound here has got down a
detective to watch his guests. A dashed fellow named Mulliner. So much,’ he
said bitterly, ‘for our boasted English hospitality. Egad!’ he went on, still
tapping the baronet round and about the diamond solitaire. ‘I call it
thoroughly low. If I have a few of my society chums down to my little place for
a visit, naturally I chain up the hair-brushes and tell the butler to count the
spoons every night, but I’d never dream of going so far as to employ beastly
detectives. One has one’s code.
Noblesse,
I mean to say,
oblige,
what,
what?’

‘But, listen,’
pleaded the Baronet. ‘I keep telling you. I had to invite the fellow here. I
thought that if he had eaten my bread and salt, he would not expose me.’

‘How do you
mean, expose you?’

Sir Sutton
coughed.

‘Oh, it was
nothing. The merest trifle. Still, the man undoubtedly could have made things
unpleasant for me, if he had wished. So, when I looked up and saw him smiling
at me in that frightful sardonic, knowing way—’

Sir Jasper
Addleton uttered a sharp cry.

‘Smiling!’ He
gulped. ‘Did you say smiling?’

‘Smiling,’
said the Baronet, ‘is right. It was one of those smiles that seem to go clean
through you and light up all your inner being as if with a searchlight.’

Sir Jasper
gulped again.

‘Is this
fellow — this smiler fellow — is he a tall, dark, thin chap?’

‘That’s right.
He sat opposite you at dinner.’

‘And he’s a
detective?’

‘He is,’ said
Lord Brangbolton. ‘As shrewd and smart a detective,’ he added grudgingly, ‘as I
ever met in my life. The way he found that soap…. Feller struck me as having
some sort of a sixth sense, if you know what I mean, dash and curse him. I hate
detectives,’ he said with a shiver. ‘They give me the creeps. This one wants to
marry my daughter, Millicent, of all the dashed nerve!’

‘See you
later,’ said Sir Jasper. And with a single bound he was out of the room and on
his way to the terrace. There was, he felt, no time to waste. His florid face,,
as he galloped along, was twisted and ashen. With one hand he drew from his
inside pocket a cheque-book, with the other from his trouser-pocket a
fountain-pen.

Adrian, when
the financier found him, was feeling a good deal better. He blessed the day
when he had sought the specialist’s advice. There was no doubt about it, he
felt, the man knew his business. Smiling might make the cheek-muscles ache, but
it undoubtedly did the trick as regarded the pangs of dyspepsia.

For a brief
while before Sir Jasper burst onto the terrace, waving fountain-pen and
cheque-book, Adrian had been giving his face a rest. But now, the pain in his
cheeks having abated, he deemed it prudent to resume the treatment. And so it
came about that the financier, hurrying towards him, was met with a smile so
meaning, so suggestive, that he stopped in his tracks and for a moment could
not speak.

‘Oh, there you
are!’ he said, recovering at length. ‘Might I have a word with you in private,
Mr Mulliner?’

Adrian nodded,
beaming. The financier took him by the coat-sleeve and led him across the
terrace. He was breathing a little stertorously.

‘I’ve been
thinking things over,’ he said, ‘and I’ve come to the conclusion that you were
right.’

‘Right?’ said
Adrian.

About me
marrying. It wouldn’t do.’

‘No?’

‘Positively
not. Absurd. I can see it now. I’m too old for the girl.’

‘Yes.’

‘Too bald.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And too fat.’

‘Much too fat,’
agreed Adrian. This sudden change of heart puzzled him, but none the less the
other’s words were as music to his ears. Every syllable the O.B.E. had spoken
had caused his heart to leap within him like a young lamb in springtime, and
his mouth curved in a smile.

Sir Jasper,
seeing it, shied like a frightened horse. He patted Adrian’s arm feverishly.

‘So I have
decided,’ he said, ‘to take your advice and — if I recall your expression —
give the thing a miss.’

‘You couldn’t
do better,’ said Adrian heartily.

‘Now, if I
were to remain in England in these circumstances,’ proceeded Sir Jasper, ‘there
might be unpleasantness. So I propose to go quietly away at once to some
remote spot — say, South America. Don’t you think I am right?’ he asked, giving
the cheque-book a twitch.

‘Quite right,’
said Adrian.

‘You won’t
mention this little plan of mine to anyone? You will keep it as just a secret
between ourselves? If, for instance, any of your cronies at Scotland Yard
should express curiosity as to my whereabouts, you will plead ignorance?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Capital!’
said Sir Jasper, relieved. ‘And there is one other thing. I gather from
Brangbolton that you are anxious to marry Lady Millicent yourself. And, as by
the time of the wedding I shall doubtless be in — well, Callao is a spot that
suggests itself off-hand, I would like to give you my little wedding-present
now.

He scribbled
hastily in his cheque-book, tore out a page and handed it to Adrian.

‘Remember!’ he
said. ‘Not a word to anyone!’

‘Quite,’ said
Adrian.

He watched the
financier disappear in the direction of the garage, regretting that he could
have misjudged a man who so evidently had much good in him. Presently the sound
of a motor engine announced that the other was on his way. Feeling that one
obstacle, at least, between himself and his happiness had been removed, Adrian
strolled indoors to see what the rest of the party were doing.

It was a
quiet, peaceful scene that met his eyes as he wandered into the library.
Overruling the request of some of the members of the company for a rubber of
bridge, Lord Brangbolton had gathered them together at a small table and was
initiating them into his favourite game of Persian Monarchs.

‘It’s
perfectly simple, dash it,’ he was saying. ‘You just take the pack and cut. You
bet — let us say ten pounds — that you will cut a higher card than the feller
you’re cutting against. And, if you do, you win, dash it. And, if you don’t,
the other dashed feller wins. Quite clear, what?’

Somebody said
that it sounded a little like Blind Hooky.

‘It is like
Blind Hooky,’ said Lord Brangbolton. ‘Very like Blind Hooky. In fact, if you
can play Blind Hooky, you can play Persian Monarchs.’

They settled
down to their game, and Adrian wandered about the room, endeavouring to still
the riot of emotion which his recent interview with Sir Jasper Addleton had
aroused in his bosom. All that remained for him to do now, he reflected, was by
some means or other to remove the existing prejudice against him from Lord
Brangbolton’s mind.

It would not
be easy, of course. To begin with, there was the matter of his straitened
means.

He suddenly
remembered that he had not yet looked at the cheque which the financier had
handed him. He pulled it out of his pocket.

And, having
glanced at it, Adrian Mulliner swayed like a poplar in a storm.

Just what he
had expected, he could not have said. A fiver, possibly. At the most, a tenner.
Just a trifling gift, he had imagined, with which to buy himself a
cigarette-lighter, a fish-slice, or an egg-boiler.

The cheque was
for a hundred thousand pounds. So great was the shock that, as Adrian caught
sight of himself in the mirror opposite to which he was standing, he scarcely
recognized the face in the glass. He seemed to be seeing it through a mist.
Then the mist cleared, and he saw not only his own face clearly, but also that
of Lord Brangbolton, who was in the act of cutting against his left-hand
neighbour, Lord Knubble of Knopp.

And, as he
thought of the effect this sudden accession of wealth must surely have on the
father of the girl he loved, there came into Adrian’s face a sudden, swift
smile.

And
simultaneously from behind him he heard a gasping exclamation, and, looking in
the mirror, he met Lord Brangbolton’s eyes. Always a little prominent, they
were now almost prawn-like in their convexity.

Lord Knubble
of Knopp had produced a bank-note from his pocket and was pushing it along the
table.