Lord Brangbolton gaped.
“Well, dash my buttons,” he cried, “if that isn’t the smartest bit of work I’ve seen in a month of Sundays!”
“Elementary,” said Adrian with a shrug.
“You ought to be a detective.”
Adrian took the cue.
“I am a detective,” he said. “My name is Mulliner.”
For an instant the words did not appear to have made any impression. The aged peer continued to beam through the soap-suds. Then suddenly his geniality vanished with an ominous swiftness.
“Mulliner? Did you say Mulliner?”
“I did.”
“You aren’t by any chance the feller — ”
“ — who loves your daughter Millicent with a fervour he cannot begin to express? Yes, Lord Brangbolton, I am. And I am hoping that I may receive your consent to the match.”
A hideous scowl had darkened the Earl’s brow. His fingers, which were grasping a loofah, tightened convulsively.
“Oh?” he said. “You are, are you? You imagine, do you, that I propose to welcome a blighted footprint-and-cigar-ash inspector into my family? It is your idea, is it, that I shall acquiesce in the union of my daughter to a dashed feller who goes about the place on his hands and knees with a magnifying-glass, picking up small objects and putting them carefully away in his pocket-book? I seem to see myself! Why, rather than permit Millicent to marry a bally detective — ”
“What is your objection to detectives?”
“Never you mind what’s my objection to detectives. Marry my daughter, indeed! I like your infernal cheek. Why, you couldn’t keep her in lipsticks.”
Adrian preserved his dignity.
“I admit that my services are not so amply remunerated as I could wish, but the firm hint at a rise next Christmas — ”
“Tchah!” said Lord Brangbolton. “Pshaw! If you are interested in my daughter’s matrimonial arrangements, she is going, as soon as he gets through with this Bramah-Yamah Gold Mines flotation of his, to marry my old friend Jasper Addleton. As for you, Mr. Mulliner, I have only two words to say to you. One is POP, the other is OFF. And do it now.”
Adrian sighed. He saw that it would be hopeless to endeavour to argue with the haughty old man in his present mood.
“So be it. Lord Brangbolton,” he said quietly.
And, affecting not to notice the nail-brush which struck him smartly on the back of the head, he left the room.
The food and drink provided for his guests by Sir Sutton Hartley-Wesping at the dinner which began some half-hour later were all that the veriest gourmet could have desired; but Adrian gulped them down, scarcely tasting them. His whole attention was riveted on Sir Jasper Addleton, who sat immediately opposite him.
And the more he examined Sir Jasper, the more revolting seemed the idea of his marrying the girl he loved.
Of course, an ardent young fellow inspecting a man who is going to marry the girl he loves is always a stern critic. In the peculiar circumstances Adrian would, no doubt, have looked askance at a John Barrymore or a Ronald Colman. But, in the case of Sir Jasper, it must be admitted that he had quite reasonable grounds for his disapproval.
In the first place, there was enough of the financier to make two financiers. It was as if Nature, planning a financier, had said to itself: “We will do this thing well. We will not skimp,” with the result that, becoming too enthusiastic, it had overdone it. And then, in addition to being fat, he was also bald and goggle-eyed. And, if you overlooked his baldness and the goggly protuberance of his eyes, you could not get away from the fact that he was well advanced in years. Such a man, felt Adrian, would have been better employed in pricing burial-lots in Kensal Green Cemetery than in forcing his unwelcome attentions on a sweet young girl like Millicent: and as soon as the meal was concluded he approached him with cold abhorrence.
“A word with you,” he said, and led him out on to the terrace.
The O.B.E., as he followed him into the cool night air, seemed surprised and a little uneasy. He had noticed Adrian scrutinizing him closely across the dinner table, and if there is one thing a financier who has just put out a prospectus of a gold mine dislikes, it is to be scrutinized closely.
“What do you want?” he asked nervously.
Adrian gave him a cold glance.
“Do you ever look in a mirror. Sir Jasper?” he asked curtly.
“Frequently,” replied the financier, puzzled.
“Do you ever weigh yourself?”
“Often.”
“Do you ever listen while your tailor is toiling round you with the tape-measure and calling out the score to his assistant?”
“I do.”
“Then,” said Adrian, “and I speak in the kindest spirit of disinterested friendship, you must have realized that you are an overfed old bohunkus. And how you ever got the idea that you were a fit mate for Lady Millicent Shipton-Bellinger frankly beats me. Surely it must have occurred to you what a priceless ass you will look, walking up the aisle with that young and lovely girl at your side? People will mistake you for an elderly uncle taking his niece to the Zoo.”
The O.B.E. bridled.
“Ho!” he said.
“It is no use saying ‘Hoi’ ” said Adrian. “You can’t get out of it with any ‘Ho’s.’ When all the talk and argument have died away, the fact remains that, millionaire though you be, you are a nasty-looking, fat, senile millionaire. If I were you, I should give the whole thing a miss. What do you want to get married for, anyway? You are much happier as you are. Besides, think of the risks of a financier’s life. Nice it would be for that sweet girl suddenly to get a wire from you telling her not to wait dinner for you as you had just started a seven-year stretch at Dartmoor!”
An angry retort had been trembling on Sir Jasper’s lips during the early portion of this speech, but at these concluding words it died unspoken. He blenched visibly, and stared at the speaker with undisguised apprehension.
“What do you mean?” he faltered.
“Never mind,” said Adrian.
He had spoken, of course, purely at a venture, basing his remarks on the fact that nearly all O.B.E.‘s who dabble in High Finance go to prison sooner or later. Of Sir Jasper’s actual affairs he knew nothing.
“Hey, listen!” said the financier.
But Adrian did not hear him. I have mentioned that during dinner, preoccupied with his thoughts, he had bolted his food. Nature now took its toll. An acute spasm suddenly ran through him, and with a brief “Ouch!” of pain he doubled up and began to walk round in circles.
Sir Jasper clicked his tongue impatiently.
“This is no time for doing the Astaire pom-pom dance,” he said sharply. “Tell me what you meant by that stuff you were talking about prison.”
Adrian had straightened himself. In the light of the moon which flooded the terrace with its silver beams, his clean-cut face was plainly visible. And with a shiver of apprehension Sir Jasper saw that it wore a sardonic, sinister smile — a smile which, it struck him, was virtually tantamount to a leer.
I have spoken of the dislike financiers have for being scrutinized closely. Still more vehemently do they object to being leered at. Sir Jasper reeled, and was about to press his question when Adrian, still smiling, tottered off into the shadows and was lost to sight.
The financier hurried into the smoking-room, where he knew there would be the materials for a stiff drink. A stiff drink was what he felt an imperious need of at the moment. He tried to tell himself that that smile could not really have had the inner meaning which he had read into it; but he was still quivering nervously as he entered the smoking-room.
As he opened the door, the sound of an angry voice smote his ears. He recognized it as Lord Brangbolton’s.
“I call it dashed low,” his lordship was saying in his high-pitched tenor.
Sir Jasper gazed in bewilderment. His host. Sir Sutton Hartley-Wesping, was standing backed against the wall, and Lord Brangbolton,
tapping him on the shirt-front with a piston-like forefinger, was plainly in the process of giving him a thorough ticking off.
“What’s the matter?” asked the financier.
“I’ll tell you what’s the matter,” cried Lord Brangbolton. “This hound here has got down a detective to watch his guests. A dashed fellow named Mulliner. So much,” he said bitterly, “for our boasted English hospitality. Egad!” he went on, still tapping the baronet round and about the diamond solitaire. “I call it thoroughly low. If I have a few of my society chums down to my little place for a visit, naturally I chain up the hair-brushes and tell the butler to count the spoons every night, but I’d never dream of going so far as to employ beastly detectives. One has one’s code. Noblessey I mean to say, oblige^ what, what?”
“But, listen,” pleaded the Baronet “I keep telling you. I had to invite the fellow here. I thought that if he had eaten my bread and salt, he would not expose me.”
“How do you mean, expose you?”
Sir Sutton coughed.
“Oh, it was nothing. The merest trifle. Still, the man undoubtedly could have made things unpleasant for me, if he had wished. So, when I looked up and saw him smiling at me in that frightful sardonic, knowing way — ”
Sir Jasper Addleton uttered a sharp cry.
“Smiling!” He gulped. “Did you say smiling?”
“Smiling,” said the Baronet, “is right. It was one of those smiles that seem to go clean through you and light up all your inner being as if with a searchlight.”
Sir Jasper gulped again.
“Is this fellow — this smiler fellow — is he a tall, dark, thin chap?”
“That’s right. He sat opposite you at dinner.”
“And he’s a detective?”
“He is,” said Lord Brangbolton. “As shrewd and smart a detective,” he added grudgingly, “as I ever met in my life. The way he found that soap … Feller struck me as having some sort of a sixth sense, if you know what I mean, dash and curse him. I hate detectives,” he said with a shiver. “They give me the creeps. This one wants to marry my daughter, Millicent, of all the dashed nerve!”
“See you later,” said Sir Jasper. And with a single bound he was out of the room and on his way to the terrace. There was, he felt, no time to waste. His florid face, as he galloped along, was twisted and ashen. With one hand he drew from his inside pocket a cheque-book, with the other from his trouser-pocket a fountain-pen.
Adrian, when the financier found him, was feeling a good deal better. He blessed the day when he had sought the specialist’s advice. There was no doubt about it, he felt, the man knew his business. Smiling might make the cheek-muscles ache, but it undoubtedly did the trick as regarded the pangs of dyspepsia.
For a brief while before Sir Jasper burst onto the terrace, waving fountain-pen and cheque-book, Adrian had been giving his face a rest. But now, the pain in his cheeks having abated, he deemed it prudent to resume the treatment. And so it came about that the financier, hurrying towards him, was met with a smile so meaning, so suggestive, that he stopped in his tracks and for a moment could not speak.
“Oh, there you are!” he said, recovering at length. “Might I have a word with you in private, Mr. Mulliner?”
Adrian nodded, beaming. The financier took him by the coat-sleeve and led him across the terrace. He was breathing a little stertorously.
“I’ve been thinking things over,” he said, “and I’ve come to the conclusion that you were right.”
“Right?” said Adrian.
“About me marrying. It wouldn’t do.”
“No?”
“Positively not. Absurd. I can see it now. I’m too old for the girl.”
“Yes.”
“Too bald.”
“Exactly.”
“And too fat.”
“Much too fat,” agreed Adrian. This sudden change of heart puzzled him, but none the less the other’s words were as music to his ears. Every syllable the O.B.E. had spoken had caused his heart to leap within him like a young lamb in springtime, and his mouth curved in a smile.
Sir Jasper, seeing it, shied like a frightened horse. He patted Adrian’s arm feverishly.
“So I have decided,” he said, “to take your advice and — if I recall your expression — give the thing a miss.”
“You couldn’t do better,” said Adrian heartily.
“Now, if I were to remain in England in these circumstances,” proceeded Sir Jasper, “there might be unpleasantness. So I propose to go quietly away at once to some remote spot — say. South America. Don’t you think I am right?” he asked, giving the cheque-book a twitch.
“Quite right,” said Adrian.
“You won’t mention this little plan of mine to anyone? You will keep it as just a secret between ourselves? If, for instance, any of your cronies at Scotland Yard should express curiosity as to my whereabouts, you will plead ignorance?”
“Certainly.”
“Capital!” said Sir Jasper, relieved. “And there is one other thing. I gather from Brangbolton that you are anxious to marry Lady Millicent yourself. And, as by the time of the wedding I shall doubtless be in — well, Callao is a spot that suggests itself off-hand, I would like to give you my little wedding-present now.”
He scribbled hastily in his cheque-book, tore out a page and handed it to Adrian.
“Remember!” he said. “Not a word to anyone!”
“Quite,” said Adrian.
He watched the financier disappear in the direction of the garage, regretting that he could have misjudged a man who so evidently had much good in him. Presently the sound of a motor engine announced that the other was on his way. Feeling that one obstacle, at least, between himself and his happiness had been removed, Adrian strolled indoors to see what the rest of the party were doing.
It was a quiet, peaceful scene that met his eyes as he wandered into the library. Overruling the request of some of the members of the company for a rubber of bridge. Lord Brangbolton had gathered them together at a small table and was initiating them into his favourite game of Persian Monarchs.
“It’s perfectly simple, dash it,” he was saying. “You just take the pack and cut. You bet — let us say ten pounds — that you will cut a higher card than the feller you’re cutting against. And if you do, you win, dash it. And, if you don’t, the other dashed feller wins. Quite clear, what?”
Somebody said that it sounded a little like Blind Hooky.
“It is like Blind Hooky,” said Lord Brangbolton. “Very like Blind Hooky. In fact, if you can play Blind Hooky, you can play Persian Monarchs.”
They settled down to their game, and Adrian wandered about the room, endeavouring to still the riot of emotion which his recent interview with Sir Jasper Addleton had aroused in his bosom. All that remained for him to do now, he reflected, was by some means or other to remove the existing prejudice against him from Lord Brangbolton’s mind.
It would not be easy, of course. To begin with, there was the matter of his straitened means.
He suddenly remembered that he had not yet looked at the cheque which the financier had handed him. He pulled it out of his pocket.
And, having glanced at it, Adrian Mulliner swayed like a poplar in a storm.
Just what he had expected, he could not have said. A fiver, possibly. At the most, a tenner. Just a trifling gift, he had imagined, with which to buy himself a cigarette-lighter, a fish-slice, or an egg-boiler.
The cheque was for a hundred thousand pounds.
So great was the shock that, as Adrian caught sight of himself in the mirror opposite to which he was standing, he scarcely recognized the face in the glass. He seemed to be seeing it through a mist. Then the mist cleared, and he saw not only his own face clearly, but also that of Lord Brangbolton, who was in the act of cutting against his left-hand neighbour, Lord Knubble of Knopp.
And, as he thought of the effect this sudden accession of wealth must surely have on the father of the girl he loved
, there came into Adrian’s face a sudden, swift smile.
And simultaneously from behind him he heard a gasping exclamation, and, looking in the mirror, he met Lord Brangbolton’s eyes. Always a little prominent, they were now almost prawn-like in their convexity.
Lord Knubble of Knopp had produced a banknote from his pocket and was pushing it along the table.
“Another ace!” he exclaimed. “Well I’m dashed!’’
Lord Brangbolton had risen from his chair.
“Excuse me,’’ he said in a strange, croaking voice. “I just want to have a little chat with my friend, my dear old friend, Mulliner here. Might I have a word in private with you, Mr. Mulliner?’’
There was silence between the two men until they had reached a corner of the terrace out of earshot of the library window. Then Lord Brangbolton cleared his throat.
“Mulliner,’’ he began, “or, rather — what is your Christian name?’’
“Adrian.’’
“Adrian, my dear fellow,’’ said Lord Brangbolton, “my memory is not what it should be, but I seem to have a distinct recollection that, when I was in my bath before dinner, you said something about wanting to marry my daughter Millicent.’’
“I did,’’ replied Adrian. “And, if your objections to me as a suitor were mainly financial, let me assure you that, since we last spoke, I have become a wealthy man.’’
“I never had any objections to you, Adrian, financial or otherwise,’’ said Lord Brangbolton, patting his arm affectionately. “I have always felt that the man my daughter married ought to be a fine, warm-hearted young fellow like you. For you, Adrian,’’ he proceeded, “are essentially warm-hearted. You would never dream of distressing a father-in-law by mentioning any … any little … well, in short, I saw from your smile in there that you had noticed that I was introducing into that game of Blind Hooky — or, rather, Persian Monarchs — certain little — shall I say variations, designed to give it additional interest and excitement, and I feel sure that you would scorn to embarrass a father-in-law by… Well, to cut a long story short, my boy, take Millicent and with her a father’s blessing.”
Wodehouse On Crime Page 14
