there spoke an authoritative voice, slightly cracked by age but full,
nevertheless, of the spirit that will stand no nonsense.
'Master Frederick.'
'Hullo?'
'Are you good now?'
'You bet I'm good.'
'Will you give Miss Jane a nice kiss?'
'I will do,' said Frederick Mulliner, enthusiasm ringing in every
syllable, 'just that little thing!'
'Then you may come out,' said Nurse Wilks. 'I have boiled you two more
eggs.'
Frederick paled, but only for an instant. What did anything matter now?
His lips were set in a firm line, and his voice, when he spoke, was
calm and steady.
'Lead me to them,' he said.
8
THE ROMANCE OF A BULB-SQUEEZER
Somebody had left a copy of an illustrated weekly paper in the
bar-parlour of the Anglers' Rest; and, glancing through it, I came upon
the ninth full-page photograph of a celebrated musical-comedy actress
that I had seen since the preceding Wednesday. This one showed her
looking archly over her shoulder with a rose between her teeth, and I
flung the periodical from me with a stifled cry.
'Tut, tut!' said Mr Mulliner, reprovingly. 'You must not allow these
things to affect you so deeply. Remember, it is not actresses'
photographs that matter, but the courage which we bring to them.'
He sipped his hot Scotch.
* * * * *
I wonder if you have ever reflected (he said gravely) what life must be
like for the men whose trade it is to make these pictures? Statistics
show that the two classes of the community which least often marry are
milkmen and fashionable photographers--milkmen because they see women
too early in the morning, and fashionable photographers because their
days are spent in an atmosphere of feminine loveliness so monotonous
that they become surfeited and morose. I know of none of the world's
workers whom I pity more sincerely than the fashionable photographer;
and yet--by one of those strokes of irony which make the thoughtful
man waver between sardonic laughter and sympathetic tears--it is the
ambition of every youngster who enters the profession some day to
become one.
At the outset of his career, you see, a young photographer is sorely
oppressed by human gargoyles: and gradually this begins to prey upon
his nerves.
'Why is it,' I remember my cousin Clarence saying, after he had been
about a year in the business, 'that all these misfits want to be
photographed? Why do men with faces which you would have thought they
would be anxious to hush up wish to be strewn about the country on
whatnots and in albums? I started out full of ardour and enthusiasm,
and my eager soul is being crushed. This morning the Mayor of Tooting
East came to make an appointment. He is coming tomorrow afternoon
to be taken in his cocked hat and robes of office; and there is
absolutely no excuse for a man with a face like that perpetuating his
features. I wish to goodness I was one of those fellows who only take
camera-portraits of beautiful women.'
His dream was to come true sooner than he had imagined. Within a week
the great test-case of Biggs _v._ Mulliner had raised my cousin
Clarence from an obscure studio in West Kensington to the position of
London's most famous photographer.
You possibly remember the case? The events that led up to it were,
briefly, as follows:
Jno. Horatio Biggs, O.B.E., the newly-elected Mayor of Tooting East,
alighted from a cab at the door of Clarence Mulliner's studio at
four-ten on the afternoon of June the seventeenth. At four-eleven
he went in. And at four-sixteen and a half he was observed shooting
out of a first-floor window, vigorously assisted by my cousin, who
was prodding him in the seat of the trousers with the sharp end of a
photographic tripod. Those who were in a position to see stated that
Clarence's face was distorted by a fury scarcely human.
Naturally the matter could not be expected to rest there. A week
later the case of Biggs _v._ Mulliner had begun, the plaintiff
claiming damages to the extent of ten thousand pounds and a new pair of
trousers. And at first things looked very black for Clarence.
It was the speech of Sir Joseph Bodger, K.C., briefed for the defence,
that turned the scale.
'I do not,' said Sir Joseph, addressing the jury on the second day,
'propose to deny the charges which have been brought against my client.
We freely admit that on the seventeenth inst. we did jab the defendant
with our tripod in a manner calculated to cause alarm and despondency.
But, gentlemen, we plead justification. The whole case turns upon one
question. Is a photographer entitled to assault--either with or, as
the case may be, without a tripod--a sitter who, after being warned
that his face is not up to the minimum standard requirements, insists
upon remaining in the chair and moistening the lips with the tip of the
tongue? Gentlemen, I say Yes!
'Unless you decide in favour of my client, gentlemen of the jury,
photographers--debarred by law from the privilege of rejecting
sitters--will be at the mercy of anyone who comes along with the price
of a dozen photographs in his pocket. You have seen the plaintiff,
Biggs. You have noted his broad, slab-like face, intolerable to any man
of refinement and sensibility. You have observed his walrus moustache,
his double chin, his protruding eyes. Take another look at him, and
then tell me if my client was not justified in chasing him with a
tripod out of that sacred temple of Art and Beauty, his studio.
'Gentlemen, I have finished. I leave my client's fate in your hands
with every confidence that you will return the only verdict that can
conceivably issue from twelve men of your obvious intelligence, your
manifest sympathy, and your superb breadth of vision.'
Of course, after that there was nothing to it. The jury decided in
Clarence's favour without leaving the box; and the crowd waiting
outside to hear the verdict carried him shoulder-high to his house,
refusing to disperse until he had made a speech and sung Photographers
never, never, never shall be slaves. And next morning every paper in
England came out with a leading article commending him for having so
courageously established, as it had not been established since the days
of Magna Carta, the fundamental principle of the Liberty of the Subject.
* * * * *
The effect of this publicity on Clarence's fortunes was naturally
stupendous. He had become in a flash the best-known photographer in
the United Kingdom, and was now in a position to realize that vision
which he had of taking the pictures of none but the beaming and the
beautiful. Every day the loveliest ornaments of Society and the
Stage flocked to his studio; and it was with the utmost astonishment,
therefore, that, calling upon him one morning on my return to England
after an absence of two years in the East, I learned that Fame and
Wealth had not brought him happiness.
I found him sitting moodily in his studio, staring with dull eyes at a
camera-portrait of a well-known actress in a bathing-suit. He looked up
listlessly as I entered.
'Clarence!' I cried, shocked at his appearance, for there were hard
lines about his mouth and wrinkles on a forehead that once had been
smooth as alabaster. 'What is wrong?'
'Everything,' he replied, 'I'm fed up.'
'What with?'
'Life. Beautiful women. This beastly photography business.'
I was amazed. Even in the East rumours of his success had reached me,
and on my return to London I found that they had not been exaggerated.
In every photographers' club in the Metropolis, from the Negative and
Solution in Pall Mall to the humble public-houses frequented by the men
who do your pictures while you wait on the sands at seaside resorts, he
was being freely spoken of as the logical successor to the Presidency
of the Amalgamated Guild of Bulb-Squeezers.
'I can't stick it much longer,' said Clarence, tearing the
camera-portrait into a dozen pieces with a dry sob and burying his face
in his hands. 'Actresses nursing their dolls! Countesses simpering over
kittens! Film stars among their books! In ten minutes I go to catch a
train at Waterloo. I have been sent for by the Duchess of Hampshire to
take some studies of Lady Monica Southbourne in the castle grounds.'
A shudder ran through him. I patted him on the shoulder. I understood
now.
'She has the most brilliant smile in England,' he whispered.
'Come, come!'
'Coy yet roguish, they tell me.'
'It may not be true.'
'And I bet she will want to be taken offering a lump of sugar to her
dog, and the picture will appear in the _Sketch_ and _Tatler_
as "Lady Monica Southbourne and Friend".'
'Clarence, this is morbid.'
He was silent for a moment.
'Ah, well,' he said, pulling himself together with a visible effort, 'I
have made my sodium sulphite, and I must lie in it.'
I saw him off in a cab. The last view I had of him was of his pale,
drawn profile. He looked, I thought, like an aristocrat of the French
Revolution being borne off to his doom on a tumbril. How little he
guessed that the only girl in the world lay waiting for him round the
corner.
* * * * *
No, you are wrong. Lady Monica did not turn out to be the only girl
in the world. If what I said caused you to expect that, I misled you.
Lady Monica proved to be all his fancy had pictured her. In fact even
more. Not only was her smile coy yet roguish, but she had a sort of
coquettish droop of the left eyelid of which no one had warned him.
And, in addition to her two dogs, which she was portrayed in the act of
feeding with two lumps of sugar, she possessed a totally unforeseen pet
monkey, of which he was compelled to take no fewer than eleven studies.
No, it was not Lady Monica who captured Clarence's heart, but a girl in
a taxi whom he met on his way to the station.
It was in a traffic jam at the top of Whitehall that he first observed
this girl. His cab had become becalmed in a sea of omnibuses, and,
chancing to look to the right, he perceived within a few feet of him
another taxi, which had been heading for Trafalgar Square. There was a
face at its window. It turned towards him, and their eyes met.
To most men it would have seemed an unattractive face. To Clarence,
surfeited with the coy, the beaming, and the delicately-chiselled,
it was the most wonderful thing he had ever looked at. All his life,
he felt, he had been searching for something on these lines. That
snub-nose--those freckles--that breadth of cheekbone--the squareness of
that chin. And not a dimple in sight. He told me afterwards that his
only feeling at first was one of incredulity. He had not believed that
the world contained women like this. And then the traffic jam loosened
up and he was carried away.
It was as he was passing the Houses of Parliament that the realization
came to him that the strange bubbly sensation that seemed to start
from just above the lower left side-pocket of his waistcoat was not,
as he had at first supposed, dyspepsia, but love. Yes, love had come
at long last to Clarence Mulliner; and for all the good it was likely
to do him, he reflected bitterly, it might just as well have been the
dyspepsia for which he had mistaken it. He loved a girl whom he would
probably never see again. He did not know her name or where she lived
or anything about her. All he knew was that he would cherish her image
in his heart for ever, and that the thought of going on with the old
dreary round of photographing lovely women with coy yet roguish smiles
was almost more than he could bear.
However, custom is strong; and a man who has once allowed the
bulb-squeezing habit to get a grip on him cannot cast it off in a
moment. Next day Clarence was back in his studio, diving into the
velvet nose-bag as of yore and telling peeresses to watch the little
birdie just as if nothing had happened. And if there was now a strange,
haunting look of pain in his eyes, nobody objected to that. Indeed,
inasmuch as the grief which gnawed at his heart had the effect of
deepening and mellowing his camera-side manner to an almost sacerdotal
unctuousness, his private sorrows actually helped his professional
prestige. Women told one another that being photographed by Clarence
Mulliner was like undergoing some wonderful spiritual experience in a
noble cathedral; and his appointment-book became fuller than ever.
So great now was his reputation that to anyone who had had the
privilege of being taken by him, either full face or in profile, the
doors of Society opened automatically. It was whispered that his name
was to appear in the next Birthday Honours List; and at the annual
banquet of the Amalgamated Bulb-Squeezers, when Sir Godfrey Stooge,
the retiring President, in proposing his health, concluded a glowingly
eulogistic speech with the words, 'Gentlemen, I give you my destined
successor, Mulliner the Liberator!' five hundred frantic photographers
almost shivered the glasses on the table with their applause.
And yet he was not happy. He had lost the only girl he had ever loved,
and without her what was Fame? What was Affluence? What were the
Highest Honours in the Land?
These were the questions he was asking himself one night as he sat in
his library, sombrely sipping a final whisky-and-soda before retiring.
He had asked them once and was going to ask them again, when he was
interrupted by the sound of someone ringing at the front-door bell.
He rose, surprised. It was late for callers. The domestic staff had
gone to bed, so he went to the door and opened it. A shadowy figure was
standing on the steps.
'Mr Mulliner?'
'I am Mr Mulliner.'
The man stepped past him into the hall. And, as he did so, Clarence saw
that he was wearing over the upper half of his face a black velvet mask.
'I must apologize for hiding my face, Mr Mulliner,' the visitor said,
as Clarence led him to the library.
'Not at all,' replied Clarence, courteously. 'No doubt it is all for
the best.'
'Indeed?' said the other, with a touch of asperity. 'If you really want
to know, I am probably as handsome a man as there is in London. But my
mission is one of such extraordinary secrecy that I dare not run the
risk of being recognized.' He paused, and Clarence saw his eyes glint
through the holes in the mask as he directed a rapid gaze into each
corner of the library, 'Mr Mulliner, have you any acquaintance with the
ramifications of international secret politics?'
'I have.'
'And you are a patriot?'
'I am.'
'Then I can speak freely. No doubt you are aware, Mr Mulliner, that
for some time past this country and a certain rival Power have been
competing for the friendship and alliance of a certain other Power?'
'No,' said Clarence, 'they didn't tell me that.'
'Such is the case. And the President of this Power--'
'Which one?'
'The second one.'
'Call it B.'
'The President of Power B is now in London. He arrived incognito,
travelling under the assumed name of J. J. Shubert: and the
representatives of Power A, to the best of our knowledge, are not yet
aware of his presence. This gives us just the few hours necessary to
clinch this treaty with Power B before Power A can interfere. I ought
to tell you, Mr Mulliner, that if Power B forms an alliance with
this country, the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race will be secured
for hundreds of years. Whereas if Power A gets hold of Power B,
civilization will be thrown into the melting-pot. In the eyes of all
Europe--and when I say all Europe I refer particularly to Powers C, D,
and E--this nation would sink to the rank of a fourth-class Power.'
'Call it Power F,' said Clarence.
'It rests with you, Mr Mulliner, to save England.'
'Great Britain,' corrected Clarence. He was half Scotch on his mother's
side. 'But how? What can I do about it?'
'The position is this. The President of Power B has an overwhelming
desire to have his photograph taken by Clarence Mulliner. Consent
to take it, and our difficulties will be at an end. Overcome with
gratitude, he will sign the treaty, and the Anglo-Saxon race will be
safe.'
Clarence did not hesitate. Apart from the natural gratification of
feeling that he was doing the Anglo-Saxon race a bit of good, business
was business; and if the President took a dozen of the large size
finished in silver wash it would mean a nice profit.
'I shall be delighted,' he said.
'Your patriotism,' said the visitor, 'will not go unrewarded. It will
be gratefully noted in the Very Highest Circles.'
Clarence reached for his appointment-book.
'Now, let me see. Wednesday?--No, I'm full up Wednesday. Thursday?--No.
Suppose the President looks in at my studio between four and five on
Friday?'
The visitor uttered a gasp.
'Good heavens, Mr Mulliner,' he exclaimed, 'surely you do not imagine
that, with the vast issues at stake, these things can be done openly
and in daylight? If the devils in the pay of Power A were to learn
that the President intended to have his photograph taken by you, I
would not give a straw for your chances of living an hour.'
'Then what do you suggest?'
'You must accompany me now to the President's suite at the Milan Hotel.
We shall travel in a closed car, and God send that these fiends did not
recognize me as I came here. If they did, we shall never reach that car
alive. Have you, by any chance, while we have been talking, heard the
hoot of an owl?'
'No,' said Clarence. 'No owls.'
'Then perhaps they are nowhere near. The fiends always imitate the hoot
of an owl.'
'A thing,' said Clarence, 'which I tried to do when I was a small
boy and never seemed able to manage. The popular idea that owls
say "Tu-whit, tu-whoo" is all wrong. The actual noise they make is
something far more difficult and complex, and it was beyond me.'
'Quite so.' The visitor looked at his watch. 'However, absorbing as
these reminiscences of your boyhood days are, time is flying. Shall we
be making a start?'
'Certainly.'
'Then follow me.'
It appeared to be holiday-time for fiends, or else the night-shift
had not yet come on, for they reached the car without being molested.
Clarence stepped in, and his masked visitor, after a keen look up and
down the street, followed him.
'Talking of my boyhood--' began Clarence.
The sentence was never completed. A soft wet pad was pressed over his
nostrils: the air became a-reek with the sickly fumes of chloroform:
and Clarence knew no more.
* * * * *
When he came to, he was no longer in the car. He found himself lying
on a bed in a room in a strange house. It was a medium-sized room with
scarlet wall-paper, simply furnished with a wash-hand stand, a chest
of drawers, two cane-bottomed chairs, and a 'God Bless Our Home' motto
framed in oak. He was conscious of a severe headache, and was about
to rise and make for the water-bottle on the wash-stand when, to his
consternation, he discovered that his arms and legs were shackled with
stout cord.
As a family, the Mulliners have always been noted for their reckless
courage; and Clarence was no exception to the rule. But for an instant
his heart undeniably beat a little faster. He saw now that his masked
visitor had tricked him. Instead of being a representative of His
Majesty's Diplomatic Service (a most respectable class of men), he had
really been all along a fiend in the pay of Power A.
No doubt he and his vile associates were even now chuckling at the ease
with which their victim had been duped. Clarence gritted his teeth and
struggled vainly to loose the knots which secured his wrists. He had
fallen back exhausted when he heard the sound of a key turning and the
door opened. Somebody crossed the room and stood by the bed, looking
down on him.
The new-comer was a stout man with a complexion that matched the
wall-paper. He was puffing slightly, as if he had found the stairs
trying. He had broad, slab-like features; and his face was split in the
middle by a walrus moustache. Somewhere and in some place, Clarence was
convinced, he had seen this man before.
And then it all came back to him. An open window with a pleasant summer
breeze blowing in; a stout man in a cocked hat trying to climb through
this window; and he, Clarence, doing his best to help him with the
sharp end of a tripod. It was Jno. Horatio Biggs, the Mayor of Tooting
East.
A shudder of loathing ran through Clarence.
'Traitor!' he cried.
'Eh?' said the Mayor.
'If anybody had told me that a son of Tooting, nursed in the keen air
of freedom which blows across the Common, would sell himself for gold
to the enemies of his country, I would never have believed it. Well,
you may tell your employers--'
'What employers?'
'Power A.'
'Oh, that?' said the Mayor. 'I am afraid my secretary, whom I
instructed to bring you to this house, was obliged to romance a little
in order to ensure your accompanying him, Mr Mulliner. All that about
Power A and Power B was just his little joke. If you want to know why
you were brought here--'
Clarence uttered a low groan.
'I have guessed your ghastly object, you ghastly object,' he said
quietly. 'You want me to photograph you.'
The Mayor shook his head.
'Not myself. I realize that that can never be. My daughter.'
'Your daughter?'
'My daughter.'
'Does she take after you?'
'People tell me there is a resemblance.'
'I refuse,' said Clarence.
'Think well, Mr Mulliner.'
'I have done all the thinking that is necessary. England--or,
rather, Great Britain--looks to me to photograph only her fairest
and loveliest; and though, as a man, I admit that I loathe beautiful
women, as a photographer I have a duty to consider that is higher than
any personal feelings. History has yet to record an instance of a
photographer playing his country false, and Clarence Mulliner is not
the man to supply the first one. I decline your offer.'
'I wasn't looking on it exactly as an offer,' said the Mayor,
thoughtfully. 'More as a command, if you get my meaning.'
'You imagine that you can bend a lens-artist to your will and make him
false to his professional reputation?'
'I was thinking of having a try.'
'Do you realize that, if my incarceration here were known, ten thousand
photographers would tear this house brick from brick and you limb from
limb?'
'But it isn't,' the Mayor pointed out. 'And that, if you follow me, is
the whole point. You came here by night in a closed car. You could stay
here for the rest of your life, and no one would be any the wiser. I
really think you had better reconsider, Mr Mulliner.'
'You have had my answer.'
'Well, I'll leave you to think it over. Dinner will be served at
seven-thirty. Don't bother to dress.' At half past seven precisely
the door opened again and the Mayor reappeared, followed by a butler
bearing on a silver salver a glass of water and a small slice of bread.
Pride urged Clarence to reject the refreshment, but hunger overcame
pride. He swallowed the bread which the butler offered him in small
bits in a spoon, and drank the water.
'At what hour would the gentleman desire breakfast, sir?' asked the
butler.
'Now,' said Clarence, for his appetite, always healthy, seemed to have
been sharpened by the trials which he had undergone.
'Let us say nine o'clock,' suggested the Mayor. 'Put aside another
slice of that bread, Meadows. And no doubt Mr Mulliner would enjoy a
glass of this excellent water.'
* * * * *
For perhaps half an hour after his host had left him, Clarence's mind
was obsessed to the exclusion of all other thoughts by a vision of
the dinner he would have liked to be enjoying. All we Mulliners have
been good trenchermen, and to put a bit of bread into it after it had
been unoccupied for a whole day was to offer to Clarence's stomach an
insult which it resented with an indescribable bitterness. Clarence's
only emotion for some considerable time, then, was that of hunger. His
thoughts centred themselves on food. And it was to this fact, oddly
enough, that he owed his release.
For, as he lay there in a sort of delirium, picturing himself getting
outside a medium-cooked steak smothered in onions, with grilled
tomatoes and floury potatoes on the side, it was suddenly borne in upon
him that this steak did not taste quite so good as other steaks which
he had eaten in the past. It was tough and lacked juiciness. It tasted
just like rope.
And then, his mind clearing, he saw that it actually was rope. Carried
away by the anguish of hunger, he had been chewing the cord which bound
his hands; and he now discovered that he had bitten into it quite
deeply.