Mr Mulliner Speaking (17 page)

'You certainly did,' said Aubrey, and would have gone on to comment with warm approbation on the skill she had shown, a skill which – in an untrained novice – had struck him as really remarkable. But he checked himself. 'Surely,' he said, 'you are not letting the fact disturb you? It's the sort of thing that might have happened to anyone.'

She interrupted him.

'How right you were, Mr Bassinger, to warn me against the spell of Bludleigh. And how wrong I was to blame you for borrowing my parasol to chase a rat. Can you ever forgive me?'

'Charlotte!'

'Aubrey!'

'Charlotte!'

'Hush!' she said. 'Listen.'

On the lawn, Sir Francis Pashley-Drake was telling his story to an enthralled audience. The sympathy of the meeting, it was only too plain, was entirely with him. This shooting of a sitting sun-bather had stirred the feelings of his hearers deeply. Indignant exclamations came faintly to the ears of the young couple in the laurels.

'Most irregular!'

'Not done!'

'Scarcely cricket!'

And then, from Sir Alexander Bassinger, a stern 'I shall require a full explanation.'

Charlotte turned to Aubrey.

'What shall we do?'

'Well,' said Aubrey, reflecting, 'I don't think we had better just go and join the party and behave as if nothing had happened. The atmosphere doesn't seem right. What I would propose is that we take a short cut through the fields to the station, hook up with the five-fifty express at Goresby, go to London, have a bit of dinner, get married and . . .'

'Yes, yes,' cried Charlotte. 'Take me away from this awful house.'

'To the ends of the world,' said Aubrey fervently. He paused. 'Look here,' he said suddenly, 'if you move over to where I'm standing, you get the old boy plumb spang against the sky-line. You wouldn't care for just one last . . .'

'No, no!'

'Merely a suggestion,' said Aubrey. 'Ah well, perhaps you're right. Then let's be shifting.'

I think the two young men in the chessboard knickerbockers were a little surprised when they looked up and perceived Mr Mulliner brooding over their table like an affable Slave of the Lamp. Absorbed in their conversation, they had not noticed his approach. It was their first visit to the Angler's Rest, and their first meeting with the Sage of its bar-parlour: and they were not yet aware that to Mr Mulliner any assemblage of his fellow-men over and above the number of one constitutes an audience.

'Good evening, gentlemen,' said Mr Mulliner. 'You have been playing golf, I see.'

They said they had.

'You enjoy the game?'

They said they did.

'Perhaps you will allow me to request Miss Postlethwaite, princess of barmaids, to re-fill your glasses?'

They said they would.

'Golf,' said Mr Mulliner, drawing up a chair and sinking smoothly into it, 'is a game which I myself have not played for some years. I was always an indifferent performer, and I gradually gave it up for the simpler and more straightforward pastime of fishing. It is a curious fact that, gifted though the Mulliners have been in virtually every branch of life and sport, few of us have ever taken kindly to golf. Indeed, the only member of the family I can think of who attained to any real proficiency with the clubs was the daughter of a distant cousin of mine – one of the Devonshire Mulliners who married a man named Flack. Agnes was the girl's name. Perhaps you have run across her? She is always playing in tournaments and competitions, I believe.'

The young men said No, they didn't seem to know the name.

'Ah?' said Mr Mulliner. 'A pity. It would have made the story more interesting to you.'

The two young men exchanged glances.

'Story?' said the one in the slightly more prismatic knickerbockers, speaking in a voice that betrayed agitation.

'Story?' said his companion, blenching a little.

'The story,' said Mr Mulliner, 'of John Gooch, Frederick Pilcher, Sidney McMurdo and Agnes Flack.'

The first young man said he didn't know it was so late. The second young man said it was extraordinary how time went. They began to talk confusedly about trains.

'The story,' repeated Mr Mulliner, holding them with the effortless ease which makes this sort of thing such child's play to him, 'of Agnes Flack, Sidney McMurdo, Frederick Pilcher and John Gooch.'

It is an odd thing (said Mr Mulliner) how often one finds that those who practise the Arts are quiet, timid little men, shy in company and unable to express themselves except through the medium of the pencil or the pen. I have noticed it again and again. John Gooch was like that. So was Frederick Pilcher. Gooch was a writer and Pilcher was an artist, and they used to meet a good deal at Agnes Flack's house, where they were constant callers. And every time they met John Gooch would say to himself, as he watched Pilcher balancing a cup of tea and smiling his weak, propitiatory smile, 'I am fond of Frederick, but his best friend could not deny that he is a pretty dumb brick.' And Pilcher, as he saw Gooch sitting on the edge of his chair and fingering his tie, would reflect, 'Nice fellow as John is, he is certainly a total loss in mixed society.'

Mark you, if ever men had an excuse for being ill at ease in the presence of the opposite sex, these two had. They were both eighteen-handicap men, and Agnes was exuberantly and dynamically scratch. Her physique was an asset to her, especially at the long game. She stood about five feet ten in her stockings, and had shoulders and forearms which would have excited the envious admiration of one of those muscular women on the music-halls, who good-naturedly allow six brothers, three sisters, and a cousin by marriage to pile themselves on her collar-bone while the orchestra plays a long-drawn chord and the audience hurries out to the bar. Her eye resembled the eye of one of the more imperious queens of history: and when she laughed, strong men clutched at their temples to keep the tops of their heads from breaking loose.

Even Sidney McMurdo was as a piece of damp blotting-paper in her presence. And he was a man who weighed two hundred and eleven pounds and had once been a semi-finalist in the Amateur Championship. He loved Agnes Flack with an ox-like devotion. And yet – and this will show you what life is – when she laughed, it was nearly always at him. I am told by those in a position to know that, on the occasion when he first proposed to her – on the sixth green – distant rumblings of her mirth were plainly heard in the club-house locker-room, causing two men who were afraid of thunderstorms to scratch their match.

Such, then, was Agnes Flack. Such, also, was Sidney McMurdo. And such were Frederick Pilcher and John Gooch.

Now John Gooch, though, of course, they had exchanged a word from time to time, was in no sense an intimate of Sidney McMurdo. It was consequently a surprise to him when one night, as he sat polishing up the rough draft of a detective story – for his was the talent that found expression largely in blood, shots in the night, and millionaires who are found murdered in locked rooms with no possible means of access except a window forty feet above the ground – the vast bulk of McMurdo lumbered across his threshold and deposited itself in a chair.

The chair creaked. Gooch stared. McMurdo groaned.

'Are you ill?' said John Gooch.

'Ha!' said Sidney McMurdo.

He had been sitting with his face buried in his hands, but now he looked up; and there was a red glare in his eyes which sent a thrill of horror through John Gooch. The visitor reminded him of the Human Gorilla in his novel,
The Mystery of the
Severed Ear.

'For two pins,' said Sidney McMurdo, displaying a more mercenary spirit than the Human Gorilla, who had required no cash payment for his crimes, 'I would tear you to shreds.'

'Me?' said John Gooch, blankly.

'Yes, you. And that fellow Pilcher, too.' He rose; and, striding to the mantelpiece, broke off a corner of it and crumbled it in his fingers. 'You have stolen her from me.'

'Stolen? Whom?'

'My Agnes.'

John Gooch stared at him, thoroughly bewildered. The idea of stealing Agnes Flack was rather like the notion of sneaking off with the Albert Hall. He could make nothing of it.

'She is going to marry you.'

'What!' cried John Gooch, aghast.

'Either you or Pilcher.' McMurdo paused. 'Shall I tear you into little strips and tread you into the carpet?' he murmured, meditatively.

'No,' said John Gooch. His mind was blurred, but he was clear on that point.

'Why did you come butting in?' groaned Sidney McMurdo, absently taking up the poker and tying it into a lover's knot. 'I was getting along splendidly until you two pimples broke out. Slowly but surely I was teaching her to love me, and now it can never be. I have a message for you. From her. I proposed to her for the eleventh time to-night; and when she had finished laughing she told me that she could never marry a mere mass of brawn. She said she wanted brain. And she told me to tell you and the pest Pilcher that she had watched you closely and realized that you both loved her, but were too shy to speak, and that she understood and would marry one of you.'

There was a long silence.

'Pilcher is a splendid fellow,' said John Gooch. 'She must marry Pilcher.'

'She will, if he wins the match.'

'What match?'

'The golf match. She read a story in a magazine the other day where two men played a match at golf to decide which was to win the heroine; and about a week later she read another story in another magazine where two men played a match at golf to decide which was to win the heroine. And a couple of days ago she read three more stories in three more magazines where exactly the same thing happened; and she has decided to accept it as an omen. So you and the hound Pilcher are to play eighteen holes, and the winner marries Agnes.'

'The winner?'

'Certainly.'

'I should have thought – I forget what I was going to say.'

McMurdo eyed him keenly.

'Gooch,' he said, 'you are not one of those thoughtless butterflies, I hope, who go about breaking girls' hearts?'

'No, no,' said John Gooch, learning for the first time that this was what butterflies did.

'You are not one of those men who win a good girl's love and then ride away with a light laugh?'

John Gooch said he certainly was not. He would not dream of laughing, even lightly, at any girl. Besides, he added, he could not ride. He had once had three lessons in the Park, but had not seemed to be able to get the knack.

'So much the better for you,' said Sidney McMurdo heavily. 'Because, if I thought that, I should know what steps to take. Even now. . .' He paused, and looked at the poker in a rather yearning sort of way. 'No, no,' he said, with a sigh, 'better not, better not.' He flung the thing down with a gesture of resignation. 'Better, perhaps, on the whole not.' He rose, frowning. 'Well, good night, weed,' he said. 'The match will be played on Friday morning. And may the better – or, rather, the less impossibly foul – man win.'

He banged the door, and John Gooch was alone.

But not for long. Scarcely half an hour had passed when the door opened once more to admit Frederick Pilcher. The artist's face was pale, and he was breathing heavily. He sat down, and after a brief interval contrived to summon up a smile. He rose and patted John Gooch on the shoulder.

'John,' he said, 'I am a man who as a general rule hides his feelings. I mask my affections. But I want to say, straight out, here and now, that I like you, John.'

'Yes?' said John Gooch.

Frederick Pilcher patted his other shoulder. 'I like you so much, John, old man, that I can read your thoughts, strive to conceal them though you may. I have been watching you closely of late, John, and I know your secret. You love Agnes Flack.'

'I don't!'

'Yes, you do. Ah, John, John,' said Frederick Pilcher, with a gentle smile, 'why try to deceive an old friend? You love her, John. You love that girl. And I have good news for you, John – tidings of great joy. I happen to know that she will look favourably on your suit. Go in and win, my boy, go in and win. Take my advice and dash round and propose without a moment's delay.'

John Gooch shook his head. He, too, smiled a gentle smile.

'Frederick,' he said, 'this is like you. Noble. That's what I call it. Noble. It's the sort of thing the hero does in act two. But it must not be, Frederick. It must not, shall not be. I also can read a friend's heart, and I know that you, too, love Agnes Flack. And I yield my claim. I am excessively fond of you, Frederick, and I give her up to you. God bless you, old fellow. God, in fact, bless both of you.'

'Look here,' said Frederick Pilcher, 'have you been having a visit from Sidney McMurdo?'

'He did drop in for a minute.'

There was a tense pause.

'What I can't understand,' said Frederick Pilcher, at length, peevishly, 'is why, if you don't love this infernal girl, you kept calling at her house practically every night and sitting goggling at her with obvious devotion.'

'It wasn't devotion.'

'It looked like it.'

'Well, it wasn't. And, if it comes to that, why did you call on her practically every night and goggle just as much as I did?'

'I had a very good reason,' said Frederick Pilcher. 'I was studying her face. I am planning a series of humorous drawings on the lines of Felix the Cat, and I wanted her as a model. To goggle at a girl in the interests of one's Art, as I did, is a very different thing from goggling wantonly at her, like you.'