These were the questions he was asking himself
one night as he sat in his library, sombrely sipping a final whisky-and-soda
before retiring. He had asked them once and was going to ask them again, when
he was interrupted by the sound of some one ringing at the front-door bell.
He rose, surprised. It was late for
callers. The domestic staff had gone to bed, so he went to the door and opened
it. A shadowy figure was standing on the steps.
“Mr Mulliner?”
“I am Mr Mulliner.”
The man stepped past him into the hall.
And, as he did so, Clarence saw that he was wearing over the upper half of his
face a black velvet mask.
“I must apologise for hiding my face, Mr
Mulliner,” the visitor said, as Clarence led him to the library.
“Not at all,” replied Clarence,
courteously. “No doubt it is all for the best.”
“Indeed?” said the other, with a touch of
asperity. “If you really want to know, I am probably as handsome a man as there
is in London. But my mission is one of such extraordinary secrecy that I dare
not run the risk of being recognised.” He paused, and Clarence saw his eyes
glint through the holes in the mask as he directed a rapid gaze into each
corner of the library. “Mr Mulliner, have you any acquaintance with the
ramifications of international secret politics?”
“I have.”
“And you are a patriot?”
“I am.”
“Then I can speak freely. No doubt you are
aware, Mr Mulliner, that for some time past this country and a certain rival
Power have been competing for the friendship and alliance of a certain other
Power?”
“No,” said Clarence, “they didn’t tell me
that.”
“Such is the case. And the President of
this Power—”
“Which one?”
“The second one.”
“Call it B.”
“The President of Power B. is now in
London. He arrived incognito, traveling under the assumed name of J. J. Shubert:
and the representatives of Power A., to the best of our knowledge, are not yet
aware of his presence. This gives us just the few hours necessary to clinch
this treaty with Power B. before Power A. can interfere. I ought to tell you, Mr
Mulliner, that if Power B. forms an alliance with this country, the supremacy
of the Anglo-Saxon race will be secured for hundreds of years. Whereas if Power
A. gets hold of Power B., civilisation will be thrown into the melting-pot. In
the eyes of all Europe—and when I say all Europe I refer particularly to Powers
C, D., and E. —this nation would sink to the rank of a fourth-class Power.”
“Call it Power F.,” said Clarence.
“It rests with you, Mr Mulliner, to save
England.”
“Great Britain,” corrected Clarence. He
was half Scotch on his mother’s side. “But how? What can I do about it?”
“The position is this. The President of
Power B. has an overwhelming desire to have his photograph taken by Clarence Mulliner.
Consent to take it, and our difficulties will be at an end. Overcome with
gratitude, he will sign the treaty, and the Anglo-Saxon race will be safe.”
Clarence did not hesitate. Apart from the
natural gratification of feeling that he was doing the Anglo-Saxon race a bit
of good, business was business; and if the President took a dozen of the large
size finished in silver wash it would mean a nice profit.
“I shall be delighted,” he said.
“Your patriotism,” said the visitor, “will
not go unrewarded. It will be gratefully noted in the Very Highest Circles.”
Clarence reached for his appointment-book.
“Now, let me see. Wednesday?—No, I’m full
up Wednesday. Thursday?—No. Suppose the President looks in at my studio between
four and five on Friday?”
The visitor uttered a gasp.
“Good heavens, Mr Mulliner,” he exclaimed,
“surely you do not imagine that, with the vast issues at stake, these things
can be done openly and in daylight? If the devils in the pay of Power A. were
to learn that the President intended to have his photograph taken by you, I
would not give a straw for your chances of living an hour.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“You must accompany me now to the
President’s suite at the Milan Hotel. We shall travel in a closed car, and God
send that these fiends did not recognise me as I came here. If they did, we
shall never reach that car alive. Have you, by any chance, while we have been
talking, heard the hoot of an owl?”
“No,” said Clarence. “No owls.”
“Then perhaps they are nowhere near. The
fiends always imitate the hoot of an owl.”
“A thing,” said Clarence, “which I tried
to do when I was a small boy and never seemed able to manage. The popular idea
that owls say ‘Tu-whit, tu-whoo’ is all wrong. The actual noise they make is
something far more difficult and complex, and it was beyond me.”
“Quite so.” The visitor looked at his
watch. “However, absorbing as these reminiscences of your boyhood days are,
time is flying. Shall we be making a start?”
“Certainly.”
“Then follow me.”
It appeared to be holiday-time for fiends,
or else the night-shift had not yet come on, for they reached the car without
being molested. Clarence stepped in, and his masked visitor, after a keen look
up and down the street, followed him.
“Talking of my boyhood—” began Clarence.
The sentence was never completed. A soft
wet pad was pressed over his nostrils: the air became a-reek with the sickly
fumes of chloroform: and Clarence knew no more.
When he came to, he was no longer in the
car. He found himself lying on a bed in a room in a strange house. It was a
medium-sized room with scarlet wall-paper, simply furnished with a wash-hand
stand, a chest of drawers, two cane-bottomed chairs, and a “God Bless Our Home”
motto framed in oak. He was conscious of a severe headache, and was about to
rise and make for the water-bottle on the wash-stand when, to his
consternation, he discovered that his arms and legs were shackled with stout
cord.
As a family, the Mulliners have always
been noted for their reckless courage; and Clarence was no exception to the
rule. But for an instant his heart undeniably beat a little faster. He saw now
that his masked visitor had tricked him. Instead of being a representative of
His Majesty’s Diplomatic Service (a most respectable class of men), he had
really been all along a fiend in the pay of Power A.
No doubt he and his vile associates were
even now chuckling at the ease with which their victim had been duped. Clarence
gritted his teeth and struggled vainly to loose the knots which secured his
wrists. He had fallen back exhausted when he heard the sound of a key turning
and the door opened. Somebody crossed the room and stood by the bed, looking down
on him.
The new-comer was a stout man with a
complexion that matched the wall-paper. He was puffing slightly, as if he had
found the stairs trying. He had broad, slab-like features; and his face was split
in the middle by a walrus moustache. Somewhere and in some place, Clarence was
convinced, he had seen this man before.
And then it all came back to him. An open
window with a pleasant summer breeze blowing in; a stout man in a cocked hat trying
to climb through this window; and he, Clarence, doing his best to help him with
the sharp end of a tripod. It was Jno. Horatio Biggs, the Mayor of Tooting
East.
A shudder of loathing ran through
Clarence.
“Traitor!” he cried.
“Eh?” said the Mayor.
“If anybody had told me that a son of
Tooting, nursed in the keen air of freedom which blows across the Common, would
sell himself for gold to the enemies of his country, I would never have
believed it. Well, you may tell your employers—”
“What employers?”
“Power A.”
“Oh, that?” said the Mayor. “I am afraid
my secretary, whom I instructed to bring you to this house, was obliged to
romance a little in order to ensure your accompanying him, Mr Mulliner. All
that about Power A. and Power B. was just his little joke. If you want to know
why you were brought here—”
Clarence uttered a low groan.
“I have guessed your ghastly object, you
ghastly object,” he said quietly. “You want me to photograph you.”
The Mayor shook his head.
“Not myself. I realise that that can never
be. My daughter.”
“Your daughter?”
“My daughter.”
“Does she take after you?”
“People tell me there is a resemblance.”
“I refuse,” said Clarence.
“Think well, Mr Mulliner.”
“I have done all the thinking that is
necessary. England—or, rather. Great Britain—looks to me to photograph only her
fairest and loveliest; and though, as a man, I admit that I loathe beautiful
women, as a photographer I have a duty to consider that is higher than any
personal feelings. History has yet to record an instance of a photographer
playing his country false, and Clarence Mulliner is not the man to supply the
first one. I decline your offer.”
“I wasn’t looking on it exactly as an
offer,” said the Mayor, thoughtfully. “More as a command, if you get my
meaning.”
“You imagine that you can bend a
lens-artist to your will and make him false to his professional reputation?”
“I was thinking of having a try.”
“Do you realise that, if my incarceration
here were known, ten thousand photographers would tear this house brick from
brick and you limb from limb?”
“But it isn’t,” the Mayor pointed out. “And
that, if you follow me, is the whole point. You came here by night in a closed
car. You could stay here for the rest of your life, and no one would be any the
wiser. I really think you had better reconsider, Mr Mulliner.”
“You have had my answer.”
“Well, I’ll leave you to think it over.
Dinner will be served at seven-thirty. Don’t bother to dress.”
At half-past seven precisely the door
opened again and the Mayor reappeared, followed by a butler bearing on a silver
salver a glass of water and a small slice of bread. Pride urged Clarence to
reject the refreshment, but hunger overcame pride. He swallowed the bread which
the butler offered him in small bits in a spoon, and drank the water.
“At what hour would the gentleman desire
breakfast, sir?” asked the butler.
“Now,” said Clarence, for his appetite, always
healthy, seemed to have been sharpened by the trials which he had undergone.
“Let us say nine o’clock,” suggested the
Mayor. “Put aside another slice of that bread, Meadows. And no doubt Mr Mulliner
would enjoy a glass of this excellent water.”
For perhaps half an hour after his host
had left him, Clarence’s mind was obsessed to the exclusion of all other
thoughts by a vision of the dinner he would have liked to be enjoying. All we Mulliners
have been good trenchermen, and to put a bit of bread into it after it had been
unoccupied for a whole day was to offer to Clarence’s stomach an insult which
it resented with an indescribable bitterness. Clarence’s only emotion for some
considerable time, then, was that of hunger. His thoughts centred themselves on
food. And it was to this fact, oddly enough, that he owed his release.
For, as he lay there in a sort of delirium,
picturing himself getting outside a medium-cooked steak smothered in onions,
with grilled tomatoes and floury potatoes on the side, it was suddenly borne in
upon him that this steak did not taste quite so good as other steaks which he
had eaten in the past. It was tough and lacked juiciness. It tasted just like
rope.
And then, his mind clearing, he saw that
it actually was rope. Carried away by the anguish of hunger, he had been
chewing the cord which bound his hands; and he now discovered that he had
bitten into it quite deeply.
A sudden flood of hope poured over
Clarence Mulliner. Carrying on at this rate, he perceived, he would be able ere
long to free himself. It only needed a little imagination. After a brief
interval to rest his aching jaws, he put himself deliberately into that state
of relaxation which is recommended by the apostles of Suggestion.
“I am entering the dining-room of my club,”
murmured Clarence. “I am sitting down. The waiter is handing me the bill of
fare. I have selected roast duck with green peas and new potatoes, lamb cutlets
with Brussels sprouts, fricassee of chicken, porterhouse steak, boiled beef and
carrots, leg of mutton, haunch of mutton, mutton chops, curried mutton, veal,
kidneys sauté, spaghetti Caruso, and eggs and bacon, fried on both sides. The
waiter is now bringing my order. I have taken up my knife and fork. I am
beginning to eat.”
And, murmuring a brief grace, Clarence
flung himself on the rope and set to.
Twenty minutes later he was hobbling about
the room, restoring the circulation to his cramped limbs.
Just as he had succeeded in getting
himself nicely limbered up, he heard the key turning in the door.
Clarence crouched for the spring. The room
was quite dark now, and he was glad of it, for darkness well fitted the work
which lay before him. His plans, conceived on the spur of the moment, were
necessarily sketchy, but they included jumping on the Mayor’s shoulders and
pulling his head off. After that, no doubt, other modes of self-expression
would suggest themselves.