Mr. Mulliner Speaking Read online

  Drones, he considered them, and – it might be severe, but he stuck to it – mere popinjays. Yes, mere thriftless popinjays. It so happened that he had never actually seen a popinjay, but he was convinced by some strange instinct that this was what the typical aristocrat of his native country resembled.

  'How long?' groaned Cedric. 'How long?'

  He yearned for the day when the clean flame of Freedom, blazing from Moscow, should scorch these wastrels to a crisp, starting with Lady Chloe Downblotton and then taking the others in order of precedence.

  It was at this point in his meditations that his attention was diverted from the Social Revolution by an agonizing pain in his right calf.

  To the more meditative type of cat there comes at irregular intervals a strange, dreamy urge to stand on its hind legs and sharpen its claws on the nearest perpendicular object. This is usually a tree, but in the present case, there being no tree to hand, the ginger-coloured cat inside the room had made shift with Cedric's right calf. Absently, its mind revolving who knows what abstruse subjects, it blinked once or twice; then, rising, got its claws well into the flesh and pulled them down with a slow, lingering motion.

  From Cedric's lips there came a cry like that of some Indian peasant who, wandering on the banks of the Ganges, suddenly finds himself being bitten in half by a crocodile. It rang through the garden like a clarion, and, as the echoes died away, a girl came up the path. The sun glinted on her tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, and Cedric recognized his secretary, Miss Myrtle Watling.

  'Good afternoon, Mr Mulliner,' said Miss Watling.

  She spoke in her usual calm, controlled voice. If she was surprised to see her employer and, seeing him, to behold nothing of him except his head, there was little to show it. A private secretary learns at the outset of their association never to be astonished at anything her employer may do.

  Yet Myrtle Watling was not altogether devoid of feminine curiosity.

  'What are you doing there, Mr Mulliner?' she asked.

  'Something is biting me in the leg,' cried Cedric.

  'It is probably Mortal Error,' said Miss Watling, who was a Christian Scientist. 'Why are you standing there in that rather constrained attitude?'

  'The sash came down as I was looking out of the window.'

  'Why were you looking out of the window?'

  'To see how far there was to drop?'

  'Why did you wish to drop?'

  'I wanted to get away from here.'

  'Why did you come here?'

  It became plain to Cedric that he must tell his story. He was loath to do so, but to refrain meant that Myrtle Watling would stand there till sunset, saying sentences beginning with 'Why?' In a husky voice he told her all.

  For some moment after he had finished, the girl remained silent. A pensive expression had come into her face.

  'What you need,' she said, 'is someone to look after you.'

  She paused.

  'Well, it's not everybody's job,' she said reflectively, 'but I don't mind taking it on.'

  A strange foreboding chilled Cedric.

  'What do you mean?' he gasped. 'What you need,' said Myrtle Watling, 'is a wife. It is a matter which I have been turning over in my mind for some time, and now the thing is quite clear to me. You should be married. I will marry you, Mr Mulliner.'

  Cedric uttered a low cry. This, then, was the meaning of that look which during the past few weeks he had happened to note from time to time in his secretary's glass-fringed eyes.

  Footsteps sounded in the gravel path. A voice spoke, the voice of the man who had slept in the chair. He was plainly perturbed.

  'Myrtle,' he said, 'I am not a man, as you know, to make a fuss about nothing. I take life as it comes, the rough with the smooth. But I feel it my duty to tell you that eerie influences are at work in this house. The atmosphere has become definitely sinister. Top hats appear from nowhere. Black boots turn yellow. And now this cabby here, this cab-driver fellow. . . I didn't get your name. Lanchester? Mr Lanchester, my daughter Myrtle . . .And now Mr Lanchester here tells me that a fare of his entered our front garden some time back and instantly vanished off the face of the earth, and has never been seen again. I am convinced that some little-known Secret Society is at work and that Seven, Nasturtium Villas, is one of those houses you see in the mystery-plays where shrieks are heard from dark corners and mysterious Chinamen flit to and fro making significant gestures and . . .' He broke off with a sharp howl of dismay, and stood staring. 'Good God! What's that?'

  'What, father?'

  'That. That bodiless head. That trunkless face. I give you my honest word that there is a severed head protruding from the side of the house. Come over where I'm standing. You can see it distinctly from here.'

  'Oh, that?' said Myrtle. 'That is my fiancé.'

  'Your fiancé?'

  'My fiancé, Mr Cedric Mulliner.'

  'Is that all there is of him?' asked the cabman, surprised.

  'There is more inside the house,' said Myrtle.

  Mr Watling, his composure somewhat restored, was scrutinizing Cedric narrowly.

  'Mulliner? You're the fellow my daughter works for, aren't you?'

  'I am,' said Cedric.

  'And you want to marry her?'

  'Certainly he wants to marry me,' said Myrtle, before Cedric could reply.

  And suddenly something inside Cedric seemed to say 'Why not?' It was true that he had never contemplated matrimony, except with that shrinking horror which all middle-aged bachelors feel when the thought of it comes into their minds in moments of depression. It was true, also, that if he had been asked to submit specifications for a bride, he would have sketched out something differing from Myrtle Watling in not a few respects. But, after all, he felt as he looked at her strong, capable face, with a wife like this girl he would at least be shielded and sheltered from the world, and never again exposed to the sort of thing he had been going through that afternoon. It seemed good enough.

  And there was another thing. And to a man of Cedric's strong Republican views it was perhaps the most important of all. Whatever you might say against Myrtle Watling, she was not a member of the gay and heartless aristocracy. No Sussex Booles, no Hants Hilsbury-Hepworths in her family. She came of good, solid suburban stock, related on the male side to the Higginsons of Tangerine Road, Wandsworth, and through the female branch connected with the Browns of Bickley, the Perkinses of Peckham, and the Wodgers, – the Winchmore Hill Wodgers, not the Ponder's End lot.

  'It is my dearest wish,' said Cedric in a low, steady voice. 'And if somebody will kindly lift this window off my neck and kick this beastly cat or something which keeps clawing my leg, we can all get together and talk it over.'

  4 THE ORDEAL OF OSBERT MULLINER

  The unwonted gravity of Mr Mulliner's demeanour had struck us all directly he entered the bar-parlour of the Angler's Rest: and the silent, moody way in which he sipped his hot Scotch and lemon convinced us that something was wrong. We hastened to make sympathetic inquiries.

  Our solicitude seemed to please him. He brightened a little.

  'Well, gentlemen,' he said, 'I had not intended to intrude my private troubles on this happy gathering, but, if you must know, a young second cousin of mine has left his wife and is filing papers of divorce. It has upset me very much.'

  Miss Postlethwaite, our warm-hearted barmaid, who was polishing glasses, introduced a sort of bedside manner into her task.

  'Some viper crept into his home?' she asked.

  Mr Mulliner shook his head.

  'No,' he said. 'No vipers. The whole trouble appears to have been that, whenever my second cousin spoke to his wife, she would open her eyes to their fullest extent, put her head on one side like a canary, and say ''What?'' He said he had stood it for eleven months and three days, which he believes to be a European record, and that the time had now come, in his opinion, to take steps.'

  'The fact of the matter is,' he said, 'marriage to-day is made much too simpl
e for a man. He finds it so easy to go out and grab some sweet girl that when he has got her he does not value her. I am convinced that that is the real cause of this modern boom in divorce. What marriage needs, to make it a stable institution, is something in the nature of obstacles during the courtship period. I attribute the solid happiness of my nephew Osbert's union, to take but one instance, to the events which preceded it. If the thing had been a walk-over, he would have prized his wife far less highly.'

  'It took him a long time to teach her his true worth?' we asked.

  'Love burgeoned slowly?' hazarded Miss Postlethwaite.

  'On the contrary,' said Mr Mulliner, 'she loved him at first sight. What made the wooing of Mabel Petherick-Soames so extraordinarily difficult for my nephew Osbert was not any coldness on her part, but the unfortunate mental attitude of J. Bashford Braddock. Does that name suggest anything to you, gentlemen?'

  'No.'

  'You do not think that a man with such a name would be likely to be a toughish sort of egg?'

  'He might be, now you mention it.'

  'He was. In Central Africa, where he spent a good deal of his time exploring, ostriches would bury their heads in the sand at Bashford Braddock's approach and even rhinoceroses, the most ferocious beasts in existence, frequently edged behind trees and hid till he had passed. And the moment he came into Osbert's life my nephew realized with a sickening clearness that those rhinoceroses had known their business.'

  Until the advent of this man Braddock (said Mr Mulliner), Fortune seemed to have lavished her favours on my nephew Osbert in full and even overflowing measure. Handsome, like all the Mulliners, he possessed in addition to good looks the inestimable blessings of perfect health, a cheerful disposition, and so much money that Income-Tax assessors screamed with joy when forwarding Schedule D to his address. And, on top of all this, he had fallen deeply in love with a most charming girl and rather fancied that his passion was reciprocated.

  For several peaceful, happy weeks all went well. Osbert advanced without a set-back of any description through the various stages of calling, sending flowers, asking after her father's lumbago, and patting her mother's Pomeranian to the point where he was able, with the family's full approval, to invite the girl out alone to dinner and a theatre. And it was on this night of nights, when all should have been joy and happiness, that the Braddock menace took shape.

  Until Bashford Braddock made his appearance, no sort of hitch had occurred to mar the perfect tranquillity of the evening's proceedings. The dinner had been excellent, the play entertaining. Twice during the third act Osbert had ventured to squeeze the girl's hand in a warm, though of course gentlemanly, manner: and it seemed to him that the pressure had been returned. It is not surprising, therefore, that by the time they were parting on the steps of her house he had reached the conclusion that he was onto a good thing which should be pushed along.

  Putting his fortune to the test, to win or lose it all, Osbert Mulliner reached forward, clasped Mabel Petherick-Soames to his bosom, and gave her a kiss so ardent that in the silent night it sounded like somebody letting off a Mills bomb.

  And scarcely had the echoes died away, when he became aware that there was standing at his elbow a tall, broad-shouldered man in evening dress and an opera hat.

  There was a pause. The girl was the first to speak.

  'Hullo, Bashy,' she said, and there was annoyance in her voice. 'Where on earth did you spring from? I thought you were exploring on the Congo or somewhere.'

  The man removed his opera hat, squashed it flat, popped it out again and spoke in a deep, rumbling voice.

  'I returned from the Congo this morning. I have been dining with your father and mother. They informed me that you had gone to the theatre with this gentleman.'

  'Mr Mulliner. My cousin, Bashford Braddock.'

  'How do you do?' said Osbert.

  There was another pause. Bashford Braddock removed his opera hat, squashed it flat, popped it out again and replaced it on his head. He seemed disappointed that he could not play a tune on it.

  'Well, good night,' said Mabel.

  'Good night,' said Osbert.

  'Good night,' said Bashford Braddock.

  The door closed, and Osbert, looking from it to his companion, found that the other was staring at him with a peculiar expression in his eyes. They were hard, glittering eyes. Osbert did not like them.

  'Mr Mulliner,' said Bashford Braddock.

  'Hullo?' said Osbert.

  'A word with you. I saw all.'

  'All?'

  'All. Mr Mulliner, you love that girl.'

  'I do.'

  'So do I.'

  'You do?'

  'I do.'

  Osbert felt a little embarrassed. All he could think of to say was that it made them seem like one great big family.

  'I have loved her since she was so high.'

  'How high?' asked Osbert, for the light was uncertain.

  'About so high. And I have always sworn that if ever any man came between us; if ever any slinking, sneaking, pop-eyed, lop-eared son of a sea-cook attempted to rob me of that girl, I would . . .'

  'Er – what?' asked Osbert.

  Bashford Braddock laughed a short, metallic laugh.

  'Did you ever hear what I did to the King of Mgumbo-Mgumbo?'

  'I didn't even know there was a King of Mgumbo-Mgumbo.'

  'There isn't – now,' said Bashford Braddock.

  Osbert was conscious of a clammy, creeping sensation in the region of his spine.

  'What did you do to him?'

  'Don't ask.'

  'But I want to know.'

  'Far better not. You will find out quite soon enough if you continue to hang round Mabel Petherick-Soames. That is all, Mr Mulliner.' Bashford Braddock looked up at the twinkling stars. 'What delightful weather we are having,' he said. 'There was just the same quiet hush and peaceful starlight, I recollect, that time out in the Ngobi desert when I strangled the jaguar.'

  Osbert's Adam's apple slipped a cog.

  'W – what jaguar?'

  'Oh, you wouldn't know it. Just one of the jaguars out there. I had a rather tricky five minutes of it at first, because my right arm was in a sling and I could only use my left. Well, good night, Mr Mulliner, good night.'

  And Bashford Braddock, having removed his opera hat, squashed it flat, popped it out again and replaced it on his head, stalked off into the darkness.

  For several minutes after he had disappeared Osbert Mulliner stood motionless, staring after him with unseeing eyes. Then, tottering round the corner, he made his way to his residence in South Audley Street, and, contriving after three false starts to unlock the front door, climbed the stairs to his cosy library. There, having mixed himself a strong brandy-and-soda, he sat down and gave himself up to meditation: and eventually, after one quick drink and another taken rather slower, was able to marshal his thoughts with a certain measure of coherence. And those thoughts, I regret to say, when marshalled, were of a nature which I shrink from revealing to you.

  It is never pleasant, gentlemen, to have to display a relative in an unsympathetic light, but the truth is the truth and must be told. I am compelled, therefore, to confess that my nephew Osbert, forgetting that he was a Mulliner, writhed at this moment in an agony of craven fear.