Mr Mulliner Speaking (23 page)

From the expression of the eyes that once more raked him in his retirement, it was plain that the assembled company were of the opinion that it was Roland's turn to speak. But speech was beyond him. He had been backing slowly for some little time, and now, as he backed another step, the handle of his bedroom door insinuated itself into the small of his back. It was almost as if the thing were hinting to him that refuge lay beyond.

He did not resist the kindly suggestion. With one quick, emotional movement he turned, plunged into his room, and slammed the door behind him.

From the corridor without came the sound of voices in debate. He was unable to distinguish words, but the general trend of them was clear. Then silence fell.

Roland sat on his bed, staring before him. He was roused from his trance by a tap on the door.

'Who's that?' he cried, bounding up. His eye was wild. He was prepared to sell his life dearly.

'It is I, sir. Simmons.'

'What do you want?'

The door opened a few inches. Through the gap there came a hand. In the hand was a silver salver. On the salver lay something squishy that writhed and wriggled.

'Your serpent, sir,' said the voice of Simmons.

It was the opinion of Roland Attwater that he was now entitled to the remainder of the night in peace. The hostile forces outside must now, he felt, have fired their last shot. He sat on his bed, thinking deeply, if incoherently. From time to time the clock on the stables struck the quarters, but he did not move. And then into the silence it seemed to him that some sound intruded – a small tapping sound that might have been the first tentative efforts of a very young woodpecker just starting out in business for itself. It was only after this small noise had continued for some moments that he recognized it for what it was. Somebody was knocking softly on his door.

There are moods in which even the mildest man will turn to bay, and there gleamed in Roland Attwater's eyes as he strode to the door and flung it open a baleful light. And such was his militant condition that, even when he glared out and beheld Roberta Wickham, still in that green négligée, the light did not fade away. He regarded her malevolently.

'I thought I'd better come and have a word with you,' whispered Miss Wickham.

'Indeed?' said Roland.

'I wanted to explain.'

'Explain!'

'Well,' said Miss Wickham, 'you may not think there's any explanation due to you, but I really feel there is. Oh, yes, I do. You see, it was this way. Claude had asked me to marry him.'

'And so you put a snake in his bed? Of course! Quite natural!'

'Well, you see, he was so frightfully perfect and immaculate and dignified and – oh, well, you've seen him for yourself, so you know what I mean. He was too darned overpowering – that's what I'm driving at – and it seemed to me that if I could only see him really human and undignified – just once – I might – well, you see what I mean?'

'And the experiment, I take it, was successful?'

Miss Wickham wriggled her small toes inside her slippers.

'It depends which way you look at it. I'm not going to marry him, if that's what you mean.'

'I should have thought,' said Roland, coldly, 'that Sir Claude behaved in a manner sufficiently – shall I say human? – to satisfy even you.'

Miss Wickham giggled reminiscently.

'He did leap, didn't he? But it's all off, just the same.'

'Might I ask why?'

'Those pyjamas,' said Miss Wickham, firmly. 'The moment I caught a glimpse of them, I said to myself, ''No wedding bells for me!'' No! I've seen too much of life to be optimistic about a man who wears mauve pyjamas.' She plunged for a space into maiden meditation. When she spoke again, it was on another aspect of the affair. 'I'm afraid mother is rather cross with you, Roland.'

'You surprise me!'

'Never mind. You can slate her next novel.'

'I intend to,' said Roland, grimly, remembering what he had suffered in the study from chapters one to seven of it.

'But meanwhile I don't think you had better meet her again just yet. Do you know, I really think the best plan would be for you to go away to-night without saying good-bye. There is a very good milk-train which gets you into London at six-forty-five.'

'When does it start?'

'At three-fifteen.'

'I'll take it,' said Roland.

There was a pause. Roberta Wickham drew a step closer.

'Roland,' she said, softly, 'you were a dear not to give me away. I do appreciate it so much.'

'Not at all!'

'There would have been an awful row. I expect mother would have taken away my car.'

'Ghastly!'

'I want to see you again quite soon, Roland. I'm coming up to London next week. Will you give me lunch? And then we might go and sit in Kensington Gardens or somewhere where it's quiet.'

Roland eyed her fixedly.

'I'll drop you a line,' he said.

Sir Joseph Moresby was an early breakfaster. The hands of the clock pointed to five minutes past eight as he entered his dining-room with a jaunty and hopeful step. There were, his senses told him, kidneys and bacon beyond that door. To his surprise he found that there was also his nephew Roland. The young man was pacing the carpet restlessly. He had a rumpled look, as if he had slept poorly, and his eyes were pink about the rims.

'Roland!' exclaimed Sir Joseph. 'Good gracious! What are you doing here? Didn't you go to Skeldings after all?'

'Yes, I went,' said Roland, in a strange, toneless voice.

'Then what—?'

'Uncle Joseph,' said Roland, 'you remember what we were talking about at dinner? Do you really think Lucy would have me if I asked her to marry me?'

'What! My dear boy, she's been in love with you for years.'

'Is she up yet?'

'No. She doesn't breakfast till nine.'

'I'll wait.'

Sir Joseph grasped his hand.

'Roland, my boy—' he began.

But there was that on Roland's mind that made him unwilling to listen to set speeches.

'Uncle Joseph,' he said, 'do you mind if I join you for a bite of breakfast?'

'My dear boy, of course—'

'Then I wish you would ask them to be frying two or three eggs and another rasher or so. While I'm waiting I'll be starting on a few kidneys.'

It was ten minutes past nine when Sir Joseph happened to go into the morning-room. He had supposed it empty, but he perceived that the large arm-chair by the window was occupied by his nephew Roland. He was leaning back with the air of one whom the world is treating well. On the floor beside him sat Lucy, her eyes fixed adoringly on the young man's face.

'Yes, yes,' she was saying. 'How wonderful! Do go on, darling.'

Sir Joseph tiptoed out, unnoticed. Roland was speaking as he softly closed the door.

'Well,' Sir Joseph heard him say, 'it was raining, you know, and just as I reached the corner of Duke Street—'

'And then,' said Mr Mulliner, 'there was the case of Dudley Finch.'

He looked inquiringly at his glass, found that it was three-parts full, and immediately proceeded to resume the Saga of his cousin's daughter, Roberta.

'At the moment at which I would introduce Dudley Finch to you,' said Mr Mulliner, 'we find him sitting in the lobby of Claridge's Hotel, looking at his watch with the glazing eye of a starving man. Five minutes past two was the time it registered, and Roberta Wickham had promised to meet him for lunch at one-thirty sharp. He heaved a plaintive sigh, and a faint sense of grievance began to steal over him. Impious though it was to feel that that angelic girl had any faults, there was no denying, he told himself, that this tendency of hers to keep a fellow waiting for his grub amounted to something very like a flaw in an otherwise perfect nature. He rose from his chair and, having dragged his emaciated form to the door, tottered out into Brook Street and stood gazing up and down it like a male Lady of Shalott.

Standing there in the weak sunlight (said Mr Mulliner), Dudley Finch made a singularly impressive picture. He was – sartorially – so absolutely right in every respect. From his brilliantined hair to his gleaming shoes, from his fawn-coloured spats to his Old Etonian tie, he left no loophole to the sternest critic. You felt as you saw him that if this was the sort of chap who lunched at Claridge's, old man Claridge was in luck.

It was not admiration, however, that caused the earnest-looking young man in the soft hat to stop as he hurried by. It was surprise. He stared wide-eyed at Dudley.

'Good heavens!' he exclaimed. 'I thought you were on your way to Australia.'

'No,' said Dudley Finch, 'not on my way to Australia.' His smooth forehead wrinkled in a frown. 'Rolie, old thing,' he said, with gentle reproach, 'you oughtn't to go about London in a hat like that.' Roland Attwater was his cousin, and a man does not like to see his relatives careering all over the Metropolis looking as if cats had brought them in. 'And your tie doesn't match your socks.'

He shook his head sorrowfully. Roland was a literary man, and, worse, had been educated at an inferior school – Harrow, or some such name, Dudley understood that it was called; but even so he ought to have more proper feeling about the vital things of life.

'Never mind my hat,' said Roland. 'Why aren't you on your way to Australia?'

'Oh, that's all right. Broadhurst had a cable, and isn't sailing till the fifteenth.'

Roland Attwater looked relieved. Like all the more seriousminded members of the family, he was deeply concerned about his cousin's future. With regard to this there had been for some time past a little friction, a little difficulty in reconciling two sharply conflicting points of view. The family had wanted Dudley to go into his uncle John's business in the City; whereas what Dudley desired was that some broad-minded sportsman should slip him a few hundred quid and enable him to start a new dance-club. A compromise had been effected when his godfather, Mr Sampson Broadhurst, arriving suddenly from Australia, had offered to take the young man back with him and teach him sheep-farming. It fortunately happening that he was a great reader of the type of novel in which everyone who goes to Australia automatically amasses a large fortune and leaves it to the hero, Dudley had formally announced at a family council that – taking it by and large – Australia seemed to him a pretty good egg, and that he had no objection to having a pop at it.

'Thank goodness,' said Roland. 'I thought you might have backed out of going at the last moment.'

Dudley smiled.

'Funny you should have said that, old man. A coincidence, I mean. Because that's just exactly what I've half made up my mind to do.'

'What!'

'Absolutely. The fact is, Rolie,' said Dudley, confidentially, 'I've just met the most topping girl. And sometimes, when I think of buzzing off on the fifteenth and being separated from her by all those leagues of water, I could howl like a dog. I've a jolly good mind to let the old man sail by himself, and stick here on my native heath.'

'This is appalling! You mustn't dream—'

'She's the most wonderful girl. Knows you, too. Roberta Wickham's her name. She lets me call her Bobbie. She—'

He broke off abruptly. His eyes, gazing past Roland, were shining with a holy light of devotion. His lips had parted in a brilliant smile.

'Yo-ho!' he cried.

Roland turned. A girl was crossing the road; a slim, boyish-looking girl, with shingled hair of a glorious red. She came tripping along with all the gay abandon of a woman who is forty minutes late for lunch and doesn't give a hoot.

'Yo-ho!' yowled young Mr Finch. 'Yo frightfully ho!'

The girl came up, smiling and debonair.

'I'm not late, am I?' she said.

'Rather not,' cooed the love-sick Dudley. 'Not a bit. Only just got here myself.'

'That's good,' said Miss Wickham. 'How are you, Roland?'

'Very well, thanks,' replied Roland Attwater, stiffly.

'I must congratulate you, mustn't I?'

'What on?' asked Dudley, puzzled.

'His engagement, of course.'

'Oh, that!' said Dudley. He knew that his cousin had recently become engaged to Lucy Moresby, and he had frequently marvelled at the lack of soul which could have led one acquainted with the divine Roberta to go and tack himself on to any inferior female. He put it down to Roland having been at Harrow.

'I hope you will be very happy.'

'Thank you,' said Roland, sedately. 'Well, I must be going. Good-bye. Glad to have seen you.'

He stalked off towards Grosvenor Square. It seemed to Dudley that his manner was peculiar.

'Not a very cordial bird, old Rolie,' he said, returning to the point at the luncheon-table. 'Biffed off a trifle abruptly, didn't it strike you?'

Miss Wickham sighed.

'I'm afraid Roland doesn't like me.'

'Not like you!' Dudley swallowed a potato which, in a calmer moment, he would have realized was some eighty degrees Fahrenheit too warm for mastication. 'Not like you!' he repeated, with watering eyes. 'The man must be an ass.'

'We were great friends at one time,' said Roberta, sadly. 'But ever since that snake business—'

'Snake business?'

'Roland had a snake, and I took it with me when he came down to Hertfordshire for the week-end. And I put it in a man's bed, and the mater got the impression that Roland had done it, and he had to sneak away on a milk-train. He's never quite forgiven me, I'm afraid.'

'But what else could you have done?' demanded Dudley, warmly. 'I mean to say, if a fellow's got a snake, naturally you put it in some other fellow's bed.'

'That's just what I felt.'

'Only once in a blue moon, I mean, you get hold of a snake. When you do, you can't be expected to waste it.'

'Exactly. Roland couldn't see that, though. Nor, for the matter of that,' continued Miss Wickham, dreamily, 'could mother.'

'I say,' said Dudley, 'that reminds me. I'd like to meet your mother.'

'Well, I'm going down there this evening. Why don't you come, too?'

'No, I say, really? May I?'

'Of course.'

'Rather short notice, though, isn't it?'

'Oh, that's all right. I'll send the mater a wire. She'll be awfully glad to see you.'

'You're sure?'

'Oh, rather! Awfully glad.'

'Well, that's fine. Thanks ever so much.'

'I'll motor you down.'

Dudley hesitated. Something of the brightness died out of his fair young face. He had had experience of Miss Wickham as a chauffeuse and had died half-a-dozen deaths in the extremely brief space of time which it had taken her to thread her way through half a mile of traffic.

'If it's all the same,' he said, nervously, 'I think I'll pop down by train.'

'Just as you like. The best one's the six-fifteen. Gets you there in time for dinner.'

'Six-fifteen? Right. Liverpool Street, of course? Just bring a suit-case, I suppose? Fine! I say, you're really sure your mother won't think I'm butting in?'

'Of course not. She'll be awfully glad to see you.'

'Splendid!' said Dudley.

The six-fifteen train was just about to draw out of Liverpool Street Station when Dudley flung himself and suit-case into it that evening. He had rather imprudently stepped in at the Drones Club on his way and, while having a brief refresher at the bar, had got into an interesting argument with a couple of the lads. There had only just been time for him to race to the cloak-room, retrieve his suit-case, and make a dash for the train. Fortunately, he had chanced upon an excellent taxi, and here he was, a little out of breath from the final sprint down the platform, but in every other respect absolutely all-righto. He leaned back against the cushions and gave himself up to thought.

From thinking of Bobbie he drifted shortly into meditation on her mother. If all went well, he felt this up-to-the-present-unmet mater was destined to be an important figure in his life. It was to her that he would have to go after Bobbie, hiding her face shyly on his waistcoat, had whispered that she had loved him from the moment they had met.

'Lady Wickham,' he would say. 'No, not Lady Wickham – mother!'

Yes, that was undoubtedly the way to start. After that it would be easy. Providing, of course, that the mater turned out to be one of the better class of maters and took to him from the beginning. He tried to picture Lady Wickham, and had evolved a mental portrait of a gentle, sweet-faced woman of latish middle-age when the train pulled up at a station, and a lucky glimpse of a name on one of the lamps told Dudley that this was where he alighted.

Some twenty minutes later he was being relieved of his suitcase and shown into a room that looked like a study of sorts.

'The gentleman, m'lady,' boomed the butler, and withdrew.

It was rather a rummy way of announcing the handsome guest, felt Dudley, but he was not able to give much thought to the matter, for from a chair in front of the desk at which she had been writing there now rose a most formidable person, at the sight of whom his heart missed a beat. So vivid had been that image of sweet-faced womanhood which he had fashioned that his hostess in the flesh had the effect of being a changeling.

Beauty, as it has been well said, is largely in the eye of the beholder, and it may be stated at once that Lady Wickham's particular type did not appeal to Dudley. He preferred the female eye to be a good deal less like a combination of gimlet and X-ray, and his taste in chins was something a little softer and not quite so reminiscent of a battleship going into action. Bobbie's mater might, as Bobbie had predicted, be awfully glad to see him, but she did not look it. And suddenly there came over him like a wave the realization that the check suit which he had selected so carefully was much too bright. At the tailor's, and subsequently at the Drones Club, it had had a pleasing and cheery effect, but here in this grim study he felt that it made him look like an absconding bookmaker.

'You are very late,' said Lady Wickham.

'Late?' quavered Dudley. The train had seemed to him to be making more or less good going.

'I supposed you would be here early in the afternoon. But perhaps you have brought a flashlight apparatus?'