“Marry Amelia?”
“No. You may not.”
“No?”
“No!”
“Oh!” said Cyril. “Well, pip-pip once more.”
It was a moody Cyril Mulliner who withdrew to the Moat Room. He now realized the position of affairs. The mother of the girl he loved refused to accept him as an eligible suitor. A dickens of a situation to be in, felt Cyril, sombrely unshoeing himself.
Then he brightened a little. His life, he reflected, might be wrecked, but he still had two-thirds of Strychnine in the Soup to read.
At the moment when the train reached Barkley Regis station, Cyril had just got to the bit where Detective Inspector Mould looks through the half-open cellar door and, drawing in his breath with a sharp, hissing sound, recoils in horror. It was obviously going to be good. He was just about to proceed to the dressing-table where, he presumed, the footman had placed the book on unpacking his bag, when an icy stream seemed to flow down the centre of his spine and the room and its contents danced before him.
Once more he had remembered that he had left the volume in the train.
He uttered an animal cry and tottered to a chair.
The subject of bereavement is one that has often been treated powerfully by poets, who have run the whole gamut of the emotions while laying bare for us the agony of those who have lost parents, wives, children, gazelles, money, fame, dogs, cats, doves, sweethearts, horses, and even collarstuds. But no poet has yet treated of the most poignant bereavement of all — that of the man half-way through a detective story who finds himself at bedtime without the book.
Cyril did not care to think of the night that lay before him. Already his brain was lashing itself from side to side like a wounded snake as it sought for some explanation of Inspector Mould’s strange behaviour. Horatio Slingsby was an author who could be relied on to keep faith with his public. He was not the sort of man to fob the reader off in the next chapter with the statement that what had made Inspector Mould look horrified was the fact that he had suddenly remembered that he had forgotten all about the letter his wife had given him to post. If looking through cellar doors disturbed a Slingsby detective, it was because a dismembered corpse lay there, or at least a severed hand.
A soft moan, as of some thing in torment, escaped Cyril. What to do? What to do? Even a makeshift substitute for Strychnine in the Soup was beyond his reach. He knew so well what he would find if he went to the library in search of something to read. Sir Mortimer Wingham was heavy and country-squire-ish. His wife affected strange religions. Their literature was in keeping with their tastes. In the library there would be books on Ba-ha-ism, volumes in old leather of the Rural Encyclopaedia, “My Two Years in Sunny Ceylon,” by the Rev. Orlo Waterbury … but of anything that would interest Scotland Yard, of anything with a bit of blood in it and a corpse or two into which a fellow could get his teeth, not a trace.
What, then, coming right back to it, to do?
And suddenly, as if in answer to the question, came the solution. Electrified, he saw the way out.
The hour was now well advanced. By this time Lady Bassett must surely be asleep. Strychnine in the Soup would be lying on the table beside her bed. All he had to do was to creep in and grab it.
The more he considered the idea, the better it looked. It was not as if he did not know the way to Lady Bassett’s room or the topography of it when he got there. It seemed to him as if most of his later life had been spent in Lady Bassett’s room. He could find his way about it with his eyes shut.
He hesitated no longer. Donning a dressing-gown, he left his room and hurried along the passage.
Pushing open the door of the Blue Room and closing it softly behind him, Cyril stood for a moment full of all those emotions which come to man revisiting some long-familiar spot. There the dear old room was, just the same as ever. How it all came back to him! The place was in darkness, but that did not deter him. He knew where the bed-table was, and he made for it with stealthy steps.
In the manner in which Cyril Mulliner advanced towards the bed-table there was much which would have reminded Lady Bassett, had she been an eye-witness, of the furtive prowl of the Lesser Iguanodon tracking its prey. In only one respect did Cyril and this creature of the wild edifier in their technique. Iguanodons — and this applies not only to the Lesser but to the Larger Iguanodon — seldom, if ever, trip over cords on the floor and bring the lamps to which they are attached crashing to the ground like a ton of bricks.
Cyril did. Scarcely had he snatched up the book and placed it in the pocket of his dressing-gown, when his foot became entangled in the trailing cord and the lamp on the table leaped nimbly into the air and, to the accompaniment of a sound not unlike that made by a hundred plates coming apart simultaneously in the hands of a hundred scullerymaids, nose-dived to the floor and became a total loss.
At the same moment. Lady Bassett, who had been chasing a bat out of the window, stepped in from the balcony and switched on the lights.
To say that Cyril Mulliner was taken aback would be to understate the facts. Nothing like his recent misadventure had happened to him since his eleventh year, when, going surreptitiously to his mother’s cupboard for jam, he had jerked three shelves down on his head, containing milk, butter, home-made preserves, pickles, cheese, eggs, cakes, and potted-meat. His feelings on the present occasion closely paralleled that boyhood thrill.
Lady Bassett also appeared somewhat discomposed.
“You!” she said.
Cyril nodded, endeavouring the while to smile in a reassuring manner.
“Hullo!” he said.
His hostess’s manner was now one of unmistakable displeasure.
“Am I not to have a moment of privacy, Mr. Mulliner?” she asked severely. “I am, I trust, a broad-minded woman, but I cannot approve of this idea of communal bedrooms.”
Cyril made an effort to be conciliatory.
“I do keep coming in, don’t I?” he said.
“You do,” agreed Lady Bassett. “Sir Mortimer informed me, on learning that I had been given this room, that it was supposed to be haunted. Had I known that it was haunted by you, Mr. Mulliner, I should have packed up and gone to the local inn.”
Cyril bowed his head. The censure, he could not but feel, was deserved.
“I admit,” he said, “that my conduct has been open to criticism. In extenuation, I can but plead my great love. This is no idle social call, Lady Bassett. I looked in because I wished to take up again this matter of my marrying your daughter Amelia. You say I can’t. Why can’t I? Answer me that, Lady Bassett.”
“I have other views for Amelia,” said Lady Bassett stiffly. “When my daughter gets married it will not be to a spineless, invertebrate product of our modern hot-house civilization, but to a strong, upstanding, keen-eyed, two-fisted he-man of the open spaces. I have no wish to hurt your feelings, Mr. Mulliner,” she continued, more kindly, “but you must admit that you are, when all is said and done, a pipsqueak.”
“I deny it,” cried Cyril warmly. “I don’t even know what a pipsqueak is.”
“A pipsqueak is a man who has never seen the sun rise beyond the reaches of the Lower Zambezi; who would not know what to do if faced by a charging rhinoceros. What, pray, would you do if faced by a charging rhinoceros, Mr. Mulliner?”
“I am not likely,” said Cyril, “to move in the same social circles as charging rhinoceri.”
“Or take another simple case, such as happens every day. Suppose you are crossing a rude bridge over a stream in Equatorial Africa. You have been thinking of a hundred trifles and are in a reverie. From this you wake to discover that in the branches overhead a python is extending its fangs towards you. At the same time, you observe that at one end of the bridge is a crouching puma; at the other are two head hunters — call them Pat and Mike — with poisoned blowpipes to their lips. Below, half hidden in the stream, is an alligator. What would you do in such a case, Mr. Mulliner?”
Cyril wei
ghed the point.
“I should feel embarrassed,” he had to admit. “I shouldn’t know where to look.”
Lady Bassett laughed an amused, scornful little laugh.
“Precisely. Such a situation would not, however, disturb Lester Mapledurham.”
“Lester Mapledurham!”
“The man who is to marry my daughter Amelia. He asked me for her hand shortly after dinner.”
Cyril reeled. The blow, falling so suddenly and unexpectedly, had made him feel boneless. And yet, he felt, he might have expected this. These explorers and big-game hunters stick together.
“In a situation such as I have outlined, Lester Mapledurham would simply drop from the bridge, wait till the alligator made its rush, insert a stout stick between its jaws, and then hit it in the eye with a spear, being careful to avoid its lashing tail. He would then drift down-stream and land at some safer spot. That is the type of man I wish for as a son-in-law.”
Cyril left the room without a word. Not even the fact that he now had Strychnine in the Soup in his possession could cheer his mood of unrelieved blackness. Back in his room, he tossed the book moodily on to the bed and began to pace the floor. And he had scarcely completed two laps when the door opened.
For an instant, when he heard the click of the latch, Cyril supposed that his visitor must be Lady Bassett, who, having put two and two together on discovering her loss, had come to demand her property back. And he cursed the rashness which had led him to fling it so carelessly upon the bed, in full view.
But it was not Lady Bassett. The intruder was Lester Mapledurham. Clad in a suit of pyjamas which in their general colour scheme reminded Cyril of a boudoir he had recently decorated for a Society poetess, he stood with folded arms, his keen eyes fixed menacingly on the young man.
“Give me those jewels!” said Lester Mapledurham.
Cyril was at a loss.
“Jewels?”
“Jewels!”
“What jewels?”
Lester Mapledurham tossed his head impatiently.
“I don’t know what jewels. They may be the Wingham Pearls or the Bassett Diamonds or the Simpson Sapphires. I’m not sure which room it was I saw you coming out of.”
Cyril began to understand.
“Oh, did you see me coming out of a room?”
“I did. I heard a crash and, when I looked out, you were hurrying along the corridor.”
“I can explain everything,” said Cyril. “I had just been having a chat with Lady Bassett on a personal matter. Nothing to do with diamonds.”
“You’re sure?” said Mapledurham.
“Oh, rather,” said Cyril. ‘ We talked about rhinoceri and pythons and her daughter Amelia and alligators and all that sort of thing, and then I came away.”
Lester Mapledurham seemed only half convinced.
“H’m!” he said. “Well, if anything is missing in the morning, I shall know what to do about it.” His eye fell on the bed. “Hullo!” he went on, with sudden animation. “Slingsby’s latest? Well, well! I’ve been wanting to get hold of this. I hear it’s good. The Leeds Mercury says: ‘These gripping pages…’ ”
He turned to the door, and with a hideous pang of agony Cyril perceived that it was plainly his intention to take the book with him. It was swinging lightly from a bronzed hand about the size of a medium ham.
“Here!” he cried, vehemently.
Lester Mapledurham turned.
“Well?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Cyril. “Just good night.”
He flung himself face downwards on the bed as the door closed, cursing himself for the craven cowardice which had kept him from snatching the book from the explorer. There had been a moment when he had almost nerved himself to the deed, but it was followed by another moment in which he had caught the other’s eye. And it was as if he had found himself exchanging glances with Lady Bassett’s charging rhinoceros.
And now, thanks to this pusillanimity, he was once more Strychnine in the Soup -less.
How long Cyril lay there, a prey to the gloomiest thoughts, he could not have said. He was aroused from his meditations by the sound of the door opening again.
Lady Bassett stood before him. It was plain that she was deeply moved. In addition to resembling Wallace Beery and Victor McLaglen, she now had a distinct look of George Bancroft.
She pointed a quivering finger at Cyril.
“You hound!” she cried. “Give me that book!”
Cyril maintained his poise with a strong effort.
“What book?”
“The book you sneaked out of my room?”
“Has someone sneaked a book out of your room?” Cyril struck his forehead. “Great heavens!” he cried.
“Mr. Mulliner,” said Lady Bassett coldly, “more book and less gibbering!”
Cyril raised a hand.
“I know who’s got your book. Lester Mapledurham!”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“He has, I tell you. As I was on my way to your room just now, I saw him coming out, carrying something in a furtive manner. I remember wondering a bit at the time. He’s in the Clock Room. If we pop along there now, we shall just catch him red-handed.”
Lady Bassett reflected.
”It is impossible,” she said at length. “He is incapable of such an act. Lester Mapledurham is a man who once killed a lion with a sardine-opener.”
“The very worst sort,” said Cyril. “Ask anyone.”
“And he is engaged to my daughter.” Lady Bassett paused. “Well, he won’t be long, if I find that what you say is true. Come, Mr. Mulliner!”
Together the two passed down the silent passage. At the door of the Clock Room they paused. A light streamed from beneath it. Cyril pointed silently to this sinister evidence of reading in bed, and noted that his companion stiffened and said something to herself in an undertone in what appeared to be some sort of native dialect.
The next moment she had flung the door open and, with a spring like that of a crouching zebu, had leaped to the bed and wrenched the book from Lester Mapledurham’s hands.
“So!” said Lady Bassett.
“Sol” said Cyril, feeling that he could not do better than follow the lead of such a woman.
“Hullo!” said Lester Mapledurham, surprised. “Something the matter?”
“So it was you who stole my book!”
“Your book?” said Lester Mapledurham. “I borrowed this from Mr. Mulliner there.”
“A likely story!” said Cyril. “Lady Bassett is aware that I left my copy of Strychnine in the Soup in the train.”
“Certainly,” said Lady Bassett. “It’s no use talking, young man, I have caught you with the goods. And let me tell you one thing that may be of interest. If you think that, after a dastardly act like this, you are going to marry Amelia, forget it!”
“Wipe it right out of your mind,” said Cyril.
“But listen — !”
“I will not listen. Come, Mr. Mulliner.’’
She left the room, followed by Cyril. For some moments they walked in silence.
“A merciful escape,” said Cyril.
“For whom?”
“For Amelia. My gosh, think of her tied to a man like that. Must be a relief to you to feel that she’s going to marry a respectable interior decorator.”
Lady Bassett halted. They were standing outside the Moat Room now. She looked at Cyril, her eyebrows raised.
“Are you under the impression, Mr. Mulliner,” she said, “that, on the strength of what has happened, I intend to accept you as a son-in-law?”
Cyril reeled.
“Don’t you?”
“Certainly not.”
Something inside Cyril seemed to snap. Recklessness descended upon him. He became for a space a thing of courage and fire, like the African leopard in the mating season.
“Oh!” he said.
And, deftly whisking Strychnine in the Soup from his companion’s hand, he darted into his room,
banged the door, and bolted it.
“Mr. Mulliner!”
It was Lady Bassett’s voice, coming pleadingly through the woodwork. It was plain that she was shaken to the core, and Cyril smiled sardonically. He was in a position to dictate terms.
“Give me that book, Mr. Mulliner!”
“Certainly not,” said Cyril. “I intend to read it myself. I hear good reports of it on every side. The Peebles Intelligencer says; ‘Vigorous and absorbing.’ ”
A low wail from the other side of the door answered him.
“Of course,” said Cyril, suggestively, “if it were my future mother-in-law who was speaking, her word would naturally be law.”
There was a silence outside.
“Very well,” said Lady Bassett.
“I may marry Amelia?”
“You may.”
Cyril unbolted the door.
“Come — Mother,” he said, in a soft, kindly voice. “We will read it together, down in the library.”
Lady Bassett was still shaken.
“I hope I have acted for the best,” she said.
“You have,” said Cyril.
“You will make Amelia a good husband?”
“Grade A,” Cyril assured her.
“Well, even if you don’t,” said Lady Bassett resignedly, “I can’t go to bed without that book. I had just got to the bit where Inspector Mould is trapped in the underground den of the Faceless Fiend.”
Cyril quivered.
“Is there a Faceless Fiend?” he cried.
“There are two Faceless Fiends,” said Lady Bassett.
“My gosh!” said Cyril. “Let’s hurry.”
THE CRIME WAVE AT BLANDINGS
THE DAY ON WHICH LAWLESSNESS REARED ITS ugly head at Blandings Castle was one of singular beauty. The sun shone down from a sky of cornflower-blue, and what one would really like would be to describe in leisurely detail the ancient battlements, the smooth green lawns, the rolling parkland, the majestic trees, the well-bred bees and the gentlemanly birds on which it shone.
But those who read thrillers are an impatient race. They chafe at scenic rhapsodies and want to get on to the rough stuff. When, they ask, did the dirty work start? Who were mixed up in it? Was there blood, and, if so, how much? And — most particularly — where was everybody and what was everybody doing at whatever time it was? The chronicler who wishes to grip must supply this information at the earliest possible moment.
Wodehouse On Crime Page 3