Mr Mulliner Speaking (25 page)

'He says he is a friend of Miss Roberta, Simmons,' she said graciously.

'Says!' said the butler, and there was no eluding the sinister meaning in his voice.

'What do you mean, Simmons?'

'Begging your pardon, m'lady, I am convinced that this person is here with some criminal intention. Thomas reports that his suit-case contained a complete disguise.'

'Disguise! What sort of disguise?'

'Thomas did not convey that very clearly, your ladyship, but I understand that it was of a juvenile nature. And just now, m'lady, the man has been making inquiries as to the time of departure of the milk-train.'

'Milk-train!'

'Thomas also states, m'lady, that the man was visibly took aback when he learned that there were guests expected here to-night. If you ask me, your ladyship, it was the man's intention to make what I might term a quick clean-up immediately after dinner and escape on the nine-fifty-seven. Foiled in that by the presence of the guests, he is going to endeavour to collect the swag in the small hours and get away on the milk-train.'

'Simmons!'

'That is my opinion, your ladyship.'

'Good gracious! He told me that Miss Roberta had said to him that she was coming down here to-night. She has not come!'

'A ruse, m'lady. To inspire confidence.'

'Simmons,' said Lady Wickham, rising to the crisis like the strong woman she was, 'you must sit up to-night!'

'With a gun, m'lady,' cried the butler, with a sportsman's enthusiasm.

'Yes, with a gun. And if you hear him prowling about you must come and wake me instantly.'

'Very good, your ladyship.'

'You must be very quiet, of course.'

'Like a mouse, your ladyship,' said Simmons.

Dudley, meanwhile, in his refuge in the Blue Room, had for some time past been regretting – every moment more keenly – that preoccupation with his troubles had led him to deal so sparingly with his food down there in the dining-room. The peace of the Blue Room had soothed his nervous system, and with calm had come the realization that he was most confoundedly hungry. There was something uncanny in the way Fate had worked to do him out of his proper supply of proteins and carbohydrates to-day. Hungry as he had been when waiting at Claridge's for Bobbie, the moment she appeared love had taken his mind off the menu, and he had made a singularly light lunch. Since then he had had nothing but the few scattered mouthfuls which he had forced himself to swallow at the dinner-table.

He consulted his watch. It was later than he had supposed. Much too late to ring the bell and ask for sandwiches – even supposing that his standing in this poisonous house had been such as to justify the demand.

He flung himself back on the bed and tried to doze off. That footman had said that the milk-train left at three-fifteen, and he was firmly resolved to catch it. The sooner he was out of this place the better. Meanwhile, he craved food. Any sort of food. His entire interior organism was up on its feet, shouting wildly for sustenance.

A few minutes later, Lady Wickham, waiting tensely in her room, was informed by a knock on the door that the hour had arrived.

'Yes?' she whispered, turning the handle noiselessly and putting her head out.

'The man, m'lady,' breathed the voice of Simmons in the darkness.

'Prowling?'

'Yes, m'lady.'

Dudley Finch's unwilling hostess was a woman of character and decision. From girlhood up she had been accustomed to hunting and the other hardy sports of the aristocracy of the countryside. And though the pursuit of burglars had formed up to the present no part of her experience, she approached it without a qualm. Motioning the butler to follow, she wrapped her dressing-gown more closely about her and strode down the corridor.

There was plenty of noise to guide her to her goal. Dudley's progress from his bed-room to the dining-room, the fruit and biscuits on the sideboard of which formed his objective, had been far from quiet. Once he had tripped over a chair, and now, as his hostess and her attendant began to descend the stairs, he collided with and upset a large screen. He was endeavouring to remove the foot which he had inadvertently put through this when a quiet voice spoke from above.

'Can you see him, Simmons?'

'Yes, m'lady. Dimly but adequately.'

'Then shoot if he moves a step.'

'Very good, m'lady.'

Dudley wrenched his foot free and peered upwards, appalled.

'I say!' he quavered. 'It's only me, you know!'

Light flooded the hall.

'Only me!' repeated Dudley, feverishly. The sight of the enormous gun in the butler's hands had raised his temperature to a painful degree.

'What,' demanded Lady Wickham, coldly, 'are you doing here, Mr Finch?'

An increased sense of the delicacy of his position flooded over Dudley. He was a young man with the nicest respect for the conventions, and he perceived that the situation required careful handling. It is not tactful, he realized, for a guest for whose benefit a hostess has only a few hours earlier provided a lavish banquet to announce to the said hostess that he has been compelled by hunger to rove the house in search of food. For a moment he stood there, licking his lips; then something like an inspiration came to him.

'The fact is,' he said, 'I couldn't sleep, you know.'

'Possibly,' said Lady Wickham, 'you would have a better chance of doing so if you were to go to bed. Is it your intention to walk about the house all night?'

'No, no, absolutely not. I couldn't sleep, so I – er – I thought I would pop down and see if I could find something to read, don't you know.'

'Oh, you want a book?'

'That's right. That's absolutely it. A book. You've put it in a nutshell.'

'I will show you to the library.'

In spite of her stern disapproval of this scoundrel who wormed his way into people's houses in quest of loot, a slight diminution of austerity came to Lady Wickham as the result of this introduction of the literary note. She was an indefatigable novelist, and it pleased her to place her works in the hands of even the vilest. Ushering Dudley into the library, she switched on the light and made her way without hesitation to the third shelf from the top nearest the fireplace. Selecting one from a row of brightly covered volumes, she offered it to him.

'Perhaps this will interest you,' she said.

Dudley eyed it dubiously.

'Oh, I say,' he protested, 'I don't know, you know. This is one of that chap, George Masterman's.'

'Well?' said Lady Wickham, frostily.

'He writes the most frightful bilge, I mean. Don't you think so?'

'I cannot say that I do. I am possibly biased, however, by the fact that George Masterman is the name I write under.'

Dudley blinked.

'Oh, do you?' he babbled. 'Do you? You do, eh? Well, I mean—' An imperative desire to be elsewhere swept over him. 'This'll do me,' he said, grabbing wildly at the nearest shelf. 'This will do me fine. Thanks awfully. Good night. I mean, thanks, thanks. I mean good night. Good night.'

Two pairs of eyes followed him as he shot up the stairs. Lady Wickham's were cold and hard; the expression in those of Simmons was wistful. It was seldom that the butler's professional duties allowed him the opportunity of indulging the passion for sport which had been his since boyhood. A very occasional pop at a rabbit was about all the shooting he got nowadays, and the receding Dudley made his mouth water. He fought the craving down with a sigh.

'A nasty fellow, m'lady,' he said.

'Quick-witted,' Lady Wickham was forced to concede.

'Full of low cunning, m'lady,' emended the butler. 'All that about wanting a book. A ruse.'

'You had better continue watching, Simmons.'

'Most decidedly, your ladyship.'

Dudley sat on his bed, panting. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before, and for a while the desire for food left him, overcome by a more spiritual misery. If there was one thing in the world that gave him the pip, it was looking like a silly idiot; and every nerve in his body told him that during the recent interview he must have looked the most perfect silly idiot. Staring bleakly before him, he re-lived every moment of the blighted scene, and the more he examined his own share in it the worse it looked. He quivered in an agony of shame. He seemed to be bathed from head to foot in a sort of prickly heat.

And then, faintly at first, but growing stronger every moment, hunger began to clamour once again.

Dudley clenched his teeth. Something must be done to combat this. Mind must somehow be enabled to triumph over matter. He glanced at the book which he had snatched from the shelf, and for the first time that night began to feel that Fate was with him. Out of a library which was probably congested with the most awful tosh, he had stumbled first pop upon Mark Twain's
Tramp Abroad
, a book which he had not read since he was a kid but had always been meaning to read again; just the sort of book, in fact, which would enable a fellow to forget the anguish of starvation until that milk-train went.

He opened it at random, and found with shock that Fate had but been playing with him.

'It has now been many months, at the present writing'
(read Dudley)
, 'since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon have
one – a modest, private affair, all to myself. I have selected a few
dishes, and made out a little bill of fare, which will go home in the
steamer that precedes me and be hot when I arrive – as follows:–'

Dudley quailed. Memories of his boyhood came to him, of the time when he had first read what came after those last two words. The passage had stamped itself on his mind, for he had happened upon it at school, at a time when he was permanently obsessed by a wolfish hunger and too impecunious to purchase anything at the school shop to keep him going till the next meal. It had tortured him then, and it would, he knew, torture him even more keenly now.

Nothing, he resolved, should induce him to go on reading. So he immediately went on.

'Radishes. Baked apples, with cream.

'Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs.

'American coffee, with real cream.

'American butter.

'Fried chicken, Southern style.

'Porterhouse steak.

'Saratoga potatoes.

'Broiled chicken, American style.'

A feeble moan escaped Dudley. He endeavoured to close the book, but it would not close. He tried to remove his eyes from the page, but they wandered back like homing pigeons.

'Brook trout, from Sierra Nevada.

'Lake trout, from Tahoe.

'Sheephead and croakers, from New Orleans.

'Black bass, from the Mississippi.