Mr Mulliner Speaking (26 page)

'American roast beef.

'Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style.

'Cranberry sauce. Celery.

'Roast wild turkey. Woodcock.

'Canvas-back duck, from Baltimore.

'Prairie hens, from Illinois.

'Missouri partridges, broiled.

'Possum. Coon.

'Boston bacon and beans.

'Bacon and greens, Southern style.'

Dudley rose from the bed. He could endure no more. His previous experience as a prospector after food had not been such as to encourage further efforts in that direction, but there comes a time when a man recks not of possible discomfort. He removed his shoes and tip-toed out of the room. A familiar form advanced to meet him along the now brightly lit corridor.

'Well?' said Simmons, the butler, shifting his gun to the ready and massaging the trigger with a loving forefinger.

Dudley gazed upon him with a sinking heart.

'Oh, hullo!' he said.

'What do
you
want?'

'Oh – er – oh, nothing.'

'You get back into that room.'

'I say, listen, laddie,' said Dudley, in desperation flinging reticence to the winds. 'I'm starving. Absolutely starving. I wish, like a good old bird, you would just scud down to your pantry or somewhere and get me a sandwich or two.'

'You get back into that room, you hound!' growled Simmons, with such intensity that sheer astonishment sent Dudley tottering back through the door. He had never heard a butler talk like that. He had not supposed that butlers could talk like that.

He put on his shoes again; and, lacing them up, brooded tensely on this matter. What, he asked himself, was the idea? What was the big thought that lay behind all this? That his hostess, alarmed by noises in the night, should have summoned the butler to bring firearms to her assistance was intelligible. But what was the blighter doing, camping outside his door? After all, they knew he was a friend of the daughter of the house.

He was still wrestling with this problem when a curious, sharp, tapping noise attracted his attention. It came at irregular intervals and seemed to proceed from the direction of the window. He sat up, listening. It came again. He crept to the window and looked out. As he did so, something with hard edges smote him painfully in the face.

'Oh, sorry!' said a voice.

Dudley started violently. Looking in the direction from which the voice had proceeded, he perceived that there ran out from the wall immediately to the left of his window a small balcony. On this balcony, bathed in silver moonlight, Roberta Wickham was standing. She was hauling in the slack of a length of string, to the end of which was attached a button-hook.

'Awfully sorry,' she said. 'I was trying to attract your attention.'

'You did,' said Dudley.

'I thought you might be asleep.'

'Asleep!' Dudley's face contorted itself in a dreadful sneer. 'Does anyone ever get any sleep in this house?' He leaned forward and lowered his voice. 'I say, your bally butler has gone off his onion.'

'What?'

'He's doing sentinel duty outside my door with a whacking great cannon. And when I put my head out just now he simply barked at me.'

'I'm afraid,' said Bobbie, gathering in the button-hook, 'he thinks you're a burglar.'

'A burglar? But I told your mother distinctly that I was a friend of yours.'

Something akin to embarrassment seemed to come upon the not easily embarrassed Miss Wickham.

'Yes, I want to talk to you about that,' she said. 'It was like this.'

'I say, when did you arrive, by the way?' asked Dudley, the question suddenly presenting itself to his disordered mind.

'About half an hour ago.'

'What!'

'Yes. I sneaked in through the scullery window. And the first thing I met was mother in her dressing-gown.' Miss Wickham shivered a little as at some unpleasing memory. 'You've never seen mother in her dressing-gown,' she said, in a small voice.

'Yes, I have,' retorted Dudley. 'And while it may be an experience which every chappie ought to have, let me tell you that once is sufficient.'

'I had an accident coming down here,' proceeded Miss Wickham, absorbed in her own story and paying small attention to his. 'An idiot of a man driving a dray let me run into him. My car was all smashed up. I couldn't get away for hours, and then I had to come down on a train that stopped at every station.'

It is proof, if such were needed, of the strain to which Dudley Finch had been subjected that night that the information that this girl had been in a motor-smash did not cause him that anguished concern which he would undoubtedly have felt twenty-four hours earlier. It left him almost cold.

'Well, when you saw your mother,' he said, 'didn't you tell her that I was a friend of yours?'

Miss Wickham hesitated.

'That's the part I want to explain,' she said. 'You see, it was like this. First I had to break it as gently as I could to her that the car wasn't insured. She wasn't frightfully pleased. And then she told me about you and— Dudley, old thing, whatever have you been doing since you got here? The mater seemed to think you had been behaving in the weirdest way.'

'I'll admit that I brought the wrong bag and couldn't dress for dinner, but apart from that I'm dashed if I can see what I did that was weird.'

'Well, she seems to have become frightfully suspicious of you almost from the start.'

'If you had sent that wire, telling her I was coming—'

Miss Wickham clicked her tongue regretfully.

'I knew there was something I had forgotten. Oh, Dudley, I'm awfully sorry.'

'Don't mention it,' said Dudley, bitterly. 'It's probably going to lead to my having my head blown off by a looney butler, but don't give it another thought. You were saying—'

'Oh, yes, when I met mother. You do see, Dudley dear, how terribly difficult it was for me, don't you? I mean, I had just broken it to her that the car was all smashed up and not insured, and then she suddenly asked me if it was true that I had invited you down here. I was just going to say I had, when she began to talk about you in such a bitter spirit that somehow the time didn't seem ripe. So when she asked me if you were a friend of mine, I—'

'You said I was?'

'Well, not in so many words.'

'How do you mean?'

'I had to be awfully tactful, you see.'

'Well?'

'So I told her I had never seen you in my life.'

Dudley uttered a sound like the breeze sighing in the tree-tops.

'But it's all right,' went on Miss Wickham, reassuringly.

'Yes, isn't it?' said Dudley. 'I noticed that.'

'I'm going to go and have a talk with Simmons and tell him he must let you escape. Then everything will be splendid. There's an excellent milk-train—'

'I know all about the milk-train, thanks.'

'I'll go and see him now. So don't you worry, old thing.'

'Worry?' said Dudley. 'Me? What have I got to worry about?'

Bobbie disappeared. Dudley turned away from the window. Faint whispering made itself heard from the passage. Somebody tapped softly on the door. Dudley opened it and found the ambassadress standing on the mat. Farther down the corridor, tactfully withdrawn into the background, Simmons the butler stood grounding arms.

'Dudley,' whispered Miss Wickham, 'have you got any money on you?'

'Yes, a certain amount.'

'Five pounds? It's for Simmons.'

Dudley felt the militant spirit of the Finches surging within him. His blood boiled.

'You don't mean to say that after what has happened the blighter has the crust to expect me to tip him?'

He glared past her at the man behind the gun, who simpered respectfully. Evidently Bobbie's explanations had convinced him that he had wronged Dudley, for the hostility which had been so marked a short while back had now gone out of his manner.

'Well, it's like this, you see,' said Bobbie. 'Poor Simmons is worried.'

'I'm glad,' said Dudley, vindictively. 'I wish he would worry himself into a decline.'

'He's afraid that mother may be angry with him when she finds that you have gone. He doesn't want to lose his place.'

'A man who doesn't want to get out of a place like this must be an ass.'

'And so, in case mother does cut up rough and dismiss him for not keeping a better watch over you, he wants to feel that he has something in hand. He started by asking for a tenner, but I got him down to five. So hand it over, Dudley, dear, and then we can get action.'

Dudley produced a five-pound note and gazed at it with a long, lingering look of affection and regret.

'Here you are,' he said. 'I hope the man spends it on drink, gets tight, trips over his feet, and breaks his neck!'

'Thanks,' said Bobbie. 'There's just one other trifling condition he made, but you needn't worry about that.'

'What was it?'

'Oh, just something very trifling. Nothing that you have to do. No need for you to worry at all. You had better start now tying knots in the sheets.'

Dudley stared.

'Knots?' he said. 'In the sheets?'

'To climb down by.'

It was Dudley's guiding rule in life never, when once he had got it brushed and brilliantined and properly arranged in the fashionable back-sweep, to touch his hair; but on this fearful night all the rules of civilized life were going by the board. He clutched upwards, collected a handful and churned it about. No lesser gesture could have expressed his consternation.

'You aren't seriously suggesting that I climb out of the window and shin down a knotted sheet?' he gasped.

'You must, I'm afraid. Simmons insists on it.'

'Why?'

'Well—'

Dudley groaned.

'I know why,' he said, bitterly. 'He's been going to the movies. It's always the way. You give a butler an evening off and he sneaks out to a picture-house and comes back with a diseased mind, thinking he's playing a star part in
The Clutching Hand
or something. Knotted sheets, indeed!' Such was his emotion that Dudley very nearly said 'Forsooth!' 'The man is simply a drivelling imbecile. Will you kindly inform me why, in the name of everything infernal, the poor, silly, dashed fish can't just let me out of the front door like an ordinary human being?'

'Why, don't you see?' reasoned Miss Wickham. 'How could he explain to mother? She must be made to think that you escaped in spite of his vigilance.'

Disordered though his faculties were, Dudley could dimly see that there was something in this. He made no further objections. Bobbie beckoned to the waiting Simmons. Money changed hands. The butler passed amiably into the room to lend assistance to the preparations.