unprejudiced spirit. When I took this boot off it was black. I close my
eyes for a few brief moments and when I open them it is yellow. I am
not a man tamely to submit to this sort of thing. Who did this?"
"Not me, sir."
"Somebody must have done it. Possibly it is the work of a gang.
Sinister things are happening in this house. I tell you, Jane, that
Seven, Nasturtium Villas has suddenly--on a Sunday, too, which makes
it worse--become a house of mystery. I shall be vastly surprised if,
before the day is out, clutching hands do not appear through the
curtains and dead bodies drop out of the walls. I don't like it, Jane,
and I tell you so frankly. Stand out of my way, woman, and let me get
at those weeds."
The door banged, and there was peace in the sitting-room. But not in
the heart of Cedric Mulliner. All the Mulliners are clear thinkers, and
it did not take Cedric long to recognise the fact that his position had
changed considerably for the worse. Yes, he had lost ground. He had
come into this room with a top-hat and yellow boots. He would go out of
it minus a top-hat and wearing one yellow boot and one black one.
A severe set-back.
And now, to complete his discomfiture, his line of communications had
been cut. Between him and the cab in which he could find at least
temporary safety there stood the man with the hoe. It was a situation
to intimidate even a man with a taste for adventure. Douglas Fairbanks
would not have liked it. Cedric himself found it intolerable.
There seemed but one course to pursue. This ghastly house presumably
possessed a back-garden with a door leading out into it. The only thing
to do was to flit noiselessly along the passage--if in such a house
noiselessness were possible--and find that door and get out into the
garden and climb over the wall into the next garden and sneak out into
the road and gallop to the cab and so home. He had almost ceased to
care what the hall-porter at the Albany would think of him. Perhaps
he could pass his appearance off with a light laugh and some story
of a bet. Possibly a handsome bribe would close the man's mouth. At
any rate, whatever might be the issue, upshot or outcome, back to the
Albany he must go, and that with all possible speed. His spirit was
broken.
Tiptoeing over the carpet, Cedric opened the door and peeped out. The
passage was empty. He crept along it, and had nearly reached its end
when he heard the sound of footsteps descending the stairs. There was a
door to his left. It was ajar. He leaped through and found himself in
a small room through the window of which he looked out onto a pleasant
garden. The footsteps passed on and went down the kitchen stairs.
Cedric breathed again. It seemed to him that the danger was past and
that he could now embark on the last portion of his perilous journey.
The thought of the cab drew him like a magnet. Until this moment he had
not been conscious of any marked fondness for the driver of the cab,
but now he found himself yearning for his society. He panted for the
driver as the hart pants after the water-brooks.
Cautiously, Cedric Mulliner opened the window. He put his head out to
examine the terrain before proceeding farther. The sight encouraged
him. The drop to the ground below was of the simplest. He had merely to
wriggle through, and all would be well.
It was as he was preparing to do this that the window-sash descended
on the back of his neck like a guillotine, and he found himself firmly
pinned to the sill.
A thoughtful-looking ginger-coloured cat, which had risen from the
mat at his entrance and had been scrutinizing him with a pale eye,
now moved forward and sniffed speculatively at his left ankle. The
proceedings seemed to the cat irregular but full of human interest. It
sat down and gave itself up to meditation.
* * * * *
Cedric, meanwhile, had done the same. There is, if you come to think of
it, little else that a man in his position can do but meditate. And so
for some considerable space of time Cedric Mulliner looked down upon
the smiling garden and busied himself with his thoughts.
These, as may readily be imagined, were not of the most agreeable. In
circumstances such as those in which he had been placed, it is but
rarely that the sunny and genial side of a man's mind comes uppermost.
He tends to be bitter, and it is inevitable that his rancour should
be directed at those whom he considers responsible for his unpleasant
situation.
In Cedric's case, there was no difficulty in fixing the responsibility.
It was a woman--if one may apply the term to the only daughter of an
Earl--who had caused his downfall. Nothing could be more significant
of the revolution which circumstances had brought about in Cedric's
mind than the fact that, regardless of her high position in Society, he
now found himself thinking of Lady Chloe Downblotton in the harshest
possible vein.
So moved, indeed, was he that, not content with thoroughly disliking
Lady Chloe, he was soon extending his loathing--first to her nearer
relations, and finally, incredible is it may seem, to the entire
British aristocracy. Twenty-four hours ago--aye even a brief two hours
ago--Cedric Mulliner had loved every occupant of Debrett's Peerage,
from the premier Dukes right down to the people who scrape in at the
bottom of the page under the heading "Collateral Branches," with a
respectful fervour which it had seemed that nothing would ever be able
to quench. And now there ran riot in his soul something that was little
short of Red Republicanism.
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 recognised
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 window."
"Why were you looking out of 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 moments 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."
IV
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 Anglers' 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."
Mr. Mulliner sighed.
"The fact of the matter is," he said, "marriage to-day is made much too
simple 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.
It would be possible, of course, to find excuses for him. The thing
had come upon him very suddenly, and even the stoutest are sometimes
disconcerted by sudden peril. Then, again, his circumstances and
upbringing had fitted him ill for such a crisis. A man who has been
pampered by Fortune from birth becomes highly civilized: and the more
highly civilized we are, the less adroitly do we cope with bounders of
the Braddock type who seem to belong to an earlier and rougher age.
Osbert Mulliner was simply unequal to the task of tackling cavemen.
Apart from some slight skill at contract bridge, the only thing he was
really good at was collecting old jade, and what a help that would be,
he felt as he mixed himself a third brandy-and-soda, in a personal
combat with a man who appeared to think it only sporting to give
jaguars a chance by fighting them one-handed.
He could see but one way out of the delicate situation in which he had
been placed. To give Mabel Petherick-Soames up would break his heart,
but it seemed to be a straight issue between that and his neck, and
in this black hour the voting in favour of the neck was a positive
landslide. Trembling in every limb, my nephew Osbert went to the desk
and began to compose a letter of farewell.
He was sorry, he wrote, that he would be unable to see Miss
Petherick-Soames on the morrow, as they had planned, owing to his
unfortunately being called away to Australia. He added that he was
pleased to have made her acquaintance and that if, as seemed probable,
they never saw each other again, he would always watch her future
career with considerable interest.
Signing the letter "Yrs. truly, O. Mulliner," Osbert addressed the
envelope and, taking it up the street to the post-office, dropped it in
the box. Then he returned home and went to bed.
* * * * *
The telephone, ringing by his bedside, woke Osbert at an early hour
next morning. He did not answer it. A glance at his watch had told him
that the time was half-past eight, when the first delivery of letters
is made in London. It seemed only too likely that Mabel, having just
received and read his communication, was endeavouring to discuss the
matter with him over the wire. He rose, bathed, shaved and dressed, and
had just finished a sombre breakfast when the door opened and Parker,
his man, announced Major-General Sir Masterman Petherick-Soames.
An icy finger seemed to travel slowly down Osbert's backbone. He cursed
the preoccupation which had made him omit to instruct Parker to inform
all callers that he was not at home. With some difficulty, for the
bones seemed to have been removed from his legs, he rose to receive the
tall, upright, grizzled and formidable old man who entered, and rallied
himself to play the host.
"Good morning," he said. "Will you have a poached egg?"
"I will not have a poached egg," replied Sir Masterman. "Poached egg,
indeed! Poached egg, forsooth! Ha! Tchal! Bah!"
He spoke with such curt brusqueness that a stranger, had one been
present, might have supposed him to belong to some league or society
for the suppression of poached eggs. Osbert, however, with his special
knowledge of the facts, was able to interpret this brusqueness
correctly and was not surprised when his visitor, gazing at him keenly
with a pair of steely blue eyes which must have got him very much
disliked in military circles, plunged at once into the subject of the
letter.
"Mr. Mulliner, my niece Mabel has received a strange communication from
you."