Meet Mr. Mulliner by P. G. Wodehouse
But we all fall sooner or later, and these strong concentrated men harder than any. While taking a brief holiday one year at Cannes, he met a Miss Angela Purdue, who was staying at his hotel, and she bowled him over completely.
She was one of these jolly, outdoor girls ; and Wilfred had told me that what attracted him first about her was her wholesome, sunburned complexion. In fact, he told Miss Purdue the same thing when, shortly
after he had proposed and been accepted, she asked him in her girUsh way what it was that had first made him begin to love her.
" It's such a pity," said Miss Purdue, " that the sunburn fades so soon. I do wish I knew some way of keeping it."
Even in his moments of hohest emotion Wilfred never forgot that he was a business man.
" You should try Mulliner's Raven Gipsy Face-Cream," he said. " It comes in two sizes—the small (or half-crown) jar and the large jar at seven shillings and sixpence. The large jar contains three and a half times as much as the small jar. It is applied nightly with a small sponge before retiring to rest. Testimonials have been received from numerous members of the aristocracy and may be examined at the office by any bona-fide inquirer."
" Is it really good ? "
" I invented it," said Wilfred, simply.
She looked at him adoringly.
" How clever you are ! Any girl ought to be proud to marry you."
" Oh, well," said Wilfred, with a modest wave of his hand.
" All the same, my guardian is going to be terribly angry when I tell him we're engaged."
" Why ? "
" I inherited the Purdue millions when my uncle died, you see, and my guardian has always wanted me to marry his son, Percy."
Wilfred kissed her fondly, and laughed a defiant laugh.
" Jer mong feesh der selar," he said lightly.
But, some days after his return to London, whither the girl had preceded him, he had occasion to recall her words. As he sat in his study, musing on a preparation to cure the pip in canaries, a card was brought to him.
" Sir Jasper ffinch-ffarrowmere, Bart.," he read. The name was strange to him.
" Show the gentleman in," he said. And presently there entered a very stout man with a broad, pink face. It was a face whose natural expression should, Wilfred felt, have been jovial, but at the moment it was grave.
" Sir Jasper Finch-Farrowmere ? " said Wilfred.
" ffinch - ffarrowmere," corrected the
visitor, his sensitive ear detecting the capital
letters.
''Ah yes. You spell it with two small
f's."
" Four small f's."
" And to what do I owe the honour "
" I am Angela Purdue's guardian." '' How do you do ? A whisky-and-soda ? "
" I thank you, no. I am a total abstainer. I found that alcohol had a tendency to increase my weight, so I gave it up. I have also given up butter, potatoes, soups of all
kinds and However," he broke off, the
fanatic gleam which comes into the eyes of all fat men who are describing their system of diet fading away, " this is not a social call, and I must not take up your time v/ith idle talk. I have a message for you, Mr. MulUner. From Angela."
" Bless her ! " said Wilfred. *' Sir Jasper, I love that girl with a fervour which increases
daily."
" Is that so ? " said the baronet. '' Well, what I came to say was, it's all off."
" What ? "
" All off. She sent me to say that she had thought it over and wanted to break the engagement."
Wilfred's eyes narrowed. He had not forgotten what Angela had said about this man wanting her to marry his son. He gazed piercingly at liis visitor, no longer deceived by the superficial geniahty of his appearance. He had read too many detective stories where the fat, jolly, red-faced man turns out a fiend in human shape to be a ready victim to appearances.
" Indeed ? " he said, coldly. " I should prefer to have this information from Miss Purdue's own hps."
" She won't see you. But, anticipating this attitude on your part, I brought a letter from her. You recognise the writing ? "
Wilfred took the letter. Certainly, the hand was Angela's, and the meaning of the words he read unmistakable. Nevertheless, as he handed the missive back, there was a hard smile on his face.
" There is such a thing as writing a letter under compulsion," he said.
The baronet's pink face turned mauve.
" What do you mean, sir ? "
•' What I say."
" Are you insinuating "
" Yes, I am."
" Pooh, sir ! "
" Pooh to you ! " said Wilfred. " And, if you want to know what I think, you poor f&sh, I believe your name is spelled with a capital F, hke anybody else's."
Stung to the quick, the baronet turned on his heel and left the room without another word.
Although he had given up his hfe to chemical research, Wilfred MuUiner was no mere dreamer. He could be the man of action when necessity demanded. Scarcely had his visitor left when he was on his way to the Senior Test-Tubes, the famous chemists' club in St. James's. There, consulting Kelly's " County FamiUes," he learnt that Sir Jasper's address was fQnch Hall in Yorkshire. He had found out all he wanted to know. It was at ffinch Hall, he decided, that Angela must now be immured.
For that she was being immured somewhere he had no doubt. That letter, he was positive, had been written by her under stress of threats. The writing was Angela's, but
he declined to believe that she was responsible for the phraseology and sentiments. He remembered reading a story where the heroine was forced into courses which she would not otherwise have contemplated by the fact that somebody was standing over her with a flask of vitriol. Possibly this was what that bounder of a baronet had done to Angela.
Considering this possibiUty, he did not blame her for what she had said about him, Wilfred, in the second paragraph of her note. Nor did he reproach her for signing herself " Yrs truly, A. Purdue." Naturally, when baronets are threatening to pour vitriol down her neck, a refined and sensitive young girl cannot pick her words. This sort of thing must of necessity interfere with the selection of the mot piste.
That afternoon, Wilfred was in a train on his way to Yorkshire. That evening, he was in the ffinch Arms in the village of which Sir Jasper was the squire. That night, he was in the gardens of ffinch Hall, prowling softly round the house, listening.
And presently, as he prowled, there came to his ears from an upper window a sound
that made him stiffen hke a statue and clench his hands till the knuckles stood out white under the strain.
It was the sound of a woman sobbing.
Wilfred spent a sleepless night, but by morning he had formed his plan of action. I will not weary you with a description of the slow and tedious steps by which he first made the acquaintance of Sir Jasper's valet, who was an habitue of the village inn, and then by careful stages won the man's confidence with friendly words and beer. Suffice it to say that, about a week later, Wilfred had induced this man with bribes to leave suddenly on the plea of an aunt's illness, supplying—so as to cause his employer no inconvenience—a cousin to take his place.
This cousin, as you will have guessed, was Wilfred himself. But a very different Wilfred from the dark-haired, clean-cut young scientist who had revolutionised the world of chemistry a few months before by proving that H20+b3g4z7-m9z8=g6f5p3x. Before leaving London on what he knew would be a dark and dangerous enterprise, Wilfred had taken the precaution of calhng in at a well-
known costumier's and buying a red wig. He had also purchased a pair of blue spectacles : but for the role which he had now undertaken these were, of course, useless. A blue-spectacled valet could not but have aroused suspicion in the most guileless baronet. All that Wilfred did, therefore, in the way of preparation, was to don the wdg, shave off his moustache, and treat his face to a hght coating of the Raven Gipsy Face-Cream. This done, he set out for fhnch Hal
Externally, fhnch Hall was one of those gloomy, sombre country-houses which seem to exist only for the purpose of having horrid crimes committed in them. Even in his brief visit to the grounds, Wilfred had noticed fully half a dozen places which seemed incomplete without a cross indicating spot where body was found by the pohce. It was the sort of house where ravens croak in the front garden just before the death of the heir, and shrieks ring out from behind barred windows in the night.
Nor was its interior more cheerful. And, as for the personnel of the domestic staff, that was less exhilarating than anything else about the place. It consisted of an aged
cook who, as she bent over her cauldrons, looked Uke something out of a travelhng company of " Macbeth," touring the smaller towns of the North, and Murgatroyd, the butler, a huge, sinister man with a cast in one e5/e and an evil light in the other.
Many men, under these conditions, would have been daunted. But not Wilfred Mul-liner. Apart from the fact that, hke all the MuUiners, he was as brave as a Hon, he had come expecting something of this nature. He settled down to his duties and kept his eyes open, and before long his vigilance was rewarded.
One day, as he lurked about the dim-lit passage-ways, he saw Sir Jasper coming up the stairs with a laden tray in his hands. It contained a toast-rack, a half bot. of white wine, pepper, salt, veg., and in a covered dish something which Wilfred, sniffing cautiously, decided was a cutlet.
Lurking in the shadows, he followed the baronet to the top of the house. Sir Jasper paused at a door on the second floor. He knocked. The door opened, a hand was stretched forth, the tray vanished, the door closed, and the baronet moved away.
So did Wilfred. He had seen what he had wanted to see, discovered what he had wanted to discover. He returned to the servants' hall, and under the gloomy eyes of Murgatroyd began to shape his plans.
" Where you been ? " demanded the butler, suspiciously.
" Oh, hither and thither," said Wilfred, with a well-assumed airiness.
Murgatroyd directed a menacing glance at him.
" You'd better stay where you belong," he said, in his thick, growhng voice. ** There's things in this house that don't want seeing." ** Ah ! " agreed the cook, dropping an onion in the cauldron.
Wilfred could not repress a shudder. But, even as he shuddered, he was conscious of a certain reUef. At least, he reflected, they were not starving his darling. That cutlet had smelt uncommonly good: and, if the bill of fare was always maintained at this level, she had nothing to complain of in the catering.
But his relief was short-lived. What, after all, he asked himself, are cutlets to a girl who is imprisoned in a locked room of
a sinister country-house and is being forced to marry a man she does not love ? Practically nothing. When the heart is sick, cutlets merely alleviate, they do not cure. Fiercely Wilfred told himself that, come what might, few days should pass before he found the key to that locked door and bore away his love to freedom and happiness.
The only obstacle in the way of this scheme was that it was plainly going to be a matter of the greatest difficulty to find the key. That night, when his employer dined, Wilfred searched his room thoroughly. He found nothing. The key, he was forced to conclude, was kept on the baronet's person.
Then how to secure it ?
It is not too much to say that Wilfred MuUiner was non-plussed. The brain which had electrified the world of Science by discovering that if you mixed a stifiish oxygen and potassium and added a splash of trinitrotoluol and a spot of old brandy you got something that could be sold in America as champagne at a hundred and fifty dollars the case, had to confess itself baffled.
To attempt to analyse the young man's
emotions, as the next week dragged itself by, would be merely morbid. Life cannot, of course, be all sunshine : and in relating a story like this, which is a slice of life, one must pay as much attention to shade as to light : nevertheless, it would be tedious were I to describe to you in detail the soul-torments which afflicted Wilfred MuUiner as day followed day and no solution to the problem presented itself. You are all intelligent men, and you can picture to yourselves how a high-spirited young fellow, deeply in love, must have felt; knowing that the girl he loved was languishing in what practically amounted to a dungeon, though situated on an upper floor, and chafing at his inabihty to set her free.
His eyes became sunken. His cheekbones stood out. He lost weight. And so noticeable was this change in his physique that Sir Jasper fhnch-ffarrowmere commented on it one evening in tones of unconcealed envy.
" How the devil, Straker," he said—for this was the pseudonym under which Wilfred was passing, " do you manage to keep so thin ? Judging by the weekly books, you eat like a starving Esquimaux, and yet you don't put
on weight. Now I, in addition to knocking off butter and potatoes, have started drinking hot unsweetened lemon-juice each night before retiring : and yet, damme," he said —for, like all baronets, he was careless in his language, " I weighed myself this morning, and I was up another six ounces. What's the explanation ? "
" Yes, Sir Jasper," said Wilfred, mechanically.
" What the devil do you mean, Yes, Sir Jasper ? "
" No, Sir Jasper."
The baronet wheezed plaintively.
" I've been studying this matter closely,'* he said, *' and it's one of the seven wonders of the world. Have you ever seen a fat valet ? Of course not. Nor has anybody else. There is no such thing as a fat valet. And yet there is scarcely a moment during the day when a valet is not eating. He rises at six-thirty, and at seven is having coffee and buttered toast. At eight, he breakfasts off porridge, cream, eggs, bacon, jam, bread, butter, more eggs, more bacon, more jam, more tea, and more butter, finishing up with a slice of cold ham and a
sardine. At eleven o'clock he has his ' elevenses,' consisting of coffee, cream, more bread and more butter. At one, luncheon —a hearty meal, replete with every form of starchy food and lots of beer. If he can get at the port, he has port. At three, a snack. At four, another snack. At five, tea and buttered toast. At seven—dinner, probably with floury potatoes, and certainly with lots more beer. At nine, another snack. And at ten-thirty he retires to bed, taking with him a glass of milk and a plate of biscuits to keep himself from getting hungry in the night. And yet he remains as slender as a string-bean, while I, who have been dieting for 3^ears, tip the beam at two hundred and seventeen pounds, and am growing a third and supplementary chin. These are mysteries, Straker."
" Yes, Sir Jasper."
" WeU, I U tell you one thing," said the baronet, " I'm getting down one of those indoor Turkish Bath cabinet-affairs from London ; and if that doesn't do the trick, I give up the struggle."
The indoor Turkish Bath duly arrived and
was unpacked ; and it was some three nights later that Wilfred, brooding in the servants' hall, was aroused from his reverie by Mur-gatroyd.
" Here," said Murgatroyd, " wake up. Sir Jasper's caUing you."
'* CaUing me what ? " asked Wilfred, coming to himself with a start.
** Calling you very loud," growled the butler.
It was indeed so. From the upper regions of the house there was proceeding a series of sharp yelps, evidently those of a man in mortal stress. Wilfred was reluctant to interfere in any way if, as seemed probable, his employer was dying in agony ; but he was a conscientious man, and it was his duty, while in this sinister house, to perform the work for which he was paid. He hurried up the stairs; and, entering Sir Jasper's bedroom, perceived the baronet's crimson face protruding from the top of the indoor Turkish Bath.
" So you've come at last! " cried Sir Jasper. " Look here, when you put me into this infernal contrivance just now, what did you do to the dashed thing ? "
" Nothing beyond what was indicated in the printed pamphlet accompanying the machine, Sir Jasper. Following the instructions, I slid Rod A into Groove B, fastening with Catch C "
" Well, you must have made a mess of it, someho
" You can't ? " cried Wilfred.
" No. And the bally apparatus is getting considerably hotter than the hinges of the Inferno." I must apologise for Sir Jasper's language, but you know what baronets are. " I'm being cooked to a crisp."
A sudden flash of light seemed to blaze upon Wilfred Mulhner.
** I will release you. Sir Jasper "
" Well, hurry up, then."
" On one condition." Wilfred fixed him with a piercing gaze. " First, I must have the key."
" There isn't a key, you idiot. It doesn't lock. It just clicks when you sHde Gadget D into Thingummybob E."
" The key I require is that of the room in which you are holding Angela Purdue a prisoner."
" What the devil do you mean ? Ouch ! "
" I will tell you what I mean, Sir Jasper ffinch-ffarrowmere. I am Wilfred Mul-liner ! "
'* Don't be an ass. Wilfred MulUner has black hair. Yours is red. You must be thinking of some one else."
"This is a wig," said Wilfred. "By Clarkson." He shook a menacing finger at the baronet. " You Httle thought, Sir Jasper ffinch-ffarrowmere, when you embarked on this dastardly scheme, that Wilfred Mulliner was watching your every move. I guessed your plans from the start. And now is the moment when I checkmate them. Give me that key, you Fiend."
" ffiend," corrected Sir Jasper, automatically.
" I am going to release my darUng, to take her away from this dreadful house, to marry her by special Hcence as soon as it can legally be done."
In spite of his sufferings, a ghastly laugh escaped Sir Jasper's lips.
" You are, are you ! "
" I am."
" Yes, you are ! "
** Give me the key,"
" I haven't got it, you chump. It's in the door."
" Ha, ha ! "
" It's no good saying ' Ha, ha ! ' It is in the door. On Angela's side of the door."