Mr. Mulliner Stories

Two men were sitting in the bar-parlour of the Anglers’ Rest as I entered it; and one of them, I gathered from his low, excited voice and wide gestures, was telling the other a story. I could hear nothing but an occasional “Biggest I ever saw in my life!” and “Fully as large as that!” but in such a place it was not difficult to imagine the rest; and when the second man, catching my eye, winked at me with a sort of humorous misery, I smiled sympathetically back at him.

The action had the effect of establishing a bond between us; and when the storyteller finished his tale and left, he came over to my table as if answering a formal invitation.

“Dreadful liars some men are,” he said genially.

“Fishermen,” I suggested, “are traditionally careless of the truth.”

“He wasn’t a fisherman,” said my companion. “That was our local doctor. He was telling me about his latest case of dropsy. Besides”⁠—he tapped me earnestly on the knee⁠—“you must not fall into the popular error about fishermen. Tradition has maligned them. I am a fisherman myself, and I have never told a lie in my life.”

I could well believe it. He was a short, stout, comfortable man of middle age, and the thing that struck me first about him was the extraordinary childlike candour of his eyes. They were large and round and honest. I would have bought oil stock from him without a tremor.

The compartment into which he had made his way was empty at the moment, but just before the train started a very large, fierce-looking man got in. George would have preferred somebody a little less formidable for his first subject, but he braced himself and bent forward. And, as he did so, the man spoke.

“The wur-wur-wur-wur-weather,” he said, “sus-sus-seems to be ter-ter-taking a tur-tur-turn for the ber-ber-better, der-doesn’t it?”

George sank back as if he had been hit between the eyes. The train had moved out of the dimness of the station by now, and the sun was shining brightly on the speaker, illuminating his knobbly shoulders, his craggy jaw, and, above all, the shockingly choleric look in his eyes. The reply “Y-y-y-y-y-y-y-yes” to such a man would obviously be madness.

But to abstain from speech did not seem to be much better as a policy. George’s silence appeared to arouse this man’s worst passions. His face had turned purple and he glared painfully.

“I uk-uk-asked you a sus-sus-civil quk-quk-quk,” he said, irascibly. “Are you d-d-d-d-deaf?”

All we Mulliners have been noted for our presence of mind. To open his mouth, point to his tonsils, and utter a strangled gurgle was with George the work of a moment.

The tension relaxed. The man’s annoyance abated.

“D-d-d-dumb?” he said, commiseratingly. “I beg your p-p-p-p-pup. I t-t-trust I have not caused you p-p-p-p-pup. It m-must be tut-tut-tut-tut-tut not to be able to sus-sus-speak fuf-fuf-fuf-fuf-fluently.”

He then buried himself in his paper, and George sank back in his corner, quivering in every limb.

Mrs. Wardle peered up, astounded and militant.

“Mr. Mulliner, I am not accustomed⁠—”

“Shut up!” thundered Augustine. “What I want from you is less backchat and more hot-water bottles. Bring it up at once, or I leave tomorrow. Let me endeavour to get it into your concrete skull that you aren’t the only person letting rooms in this village. Any more lip and I walk straight round the corner, where I’ll be appreciated. Hot-water bottle ho! And look slippy about it.”

“Yes, Mr. Mulliner. Certainly, Mr. Mulliner. In one moment, Mr. Mulliner.”

“Action! Action!” boomed Augustine. “Show some speed. Put a little snap into it.”

“Yes, yes, most decidedly, Mr. Mulliner,” replied the chastened voice from below.

An hour later, as he was dropping off to sleep, a thought crept into Augustine’s mind. Had he not been a little brusque with Mrs. Wardle? Had there not been in his manner something a shade abrupt⁠—almost rude? Yes, he decided regretfully, there had. He lit a candle and reached for the diary which lay on the table at his bedside.

He made an entry.

The meek shall inherit the earth. Am I sufficiently meek? I wonder. This evening, when reproaching Mrs. Wardle, my worthy housekeeper, for omitting to place a hot-water bottle in my bed, I spoke quite crossly. The provocation was severe, but still I was surely to blame for allowing my passions to run riot. Mem: Must guard agst this.

But when he woke next morning, different feelings prevailed. He took his ante-breakfast dose of Buck-U-Uppo: and looking at the entry in the diary, could scarcely believe that it was he who had written it.

He found Wee Holme, and hit it a nasty slap with its knocker. Footsteps sounded in the passage, and the door opened.

“Why, Master Frederick!” said Nurse Wilks. “I should hardly have known you.”

Frederick, in spite of the natural gloom caused by the blue sky and the warm sunshine, found his mood lightening somewhat. Something that might almost have been a spasm of tenderness passed through him. He was not a bad-hearted young man⁠—he ranked in that respect, he supposed, somewhere midway between his brother George, who had a heart of gold, and people like the future Mrs. Dillingwater, who had no heart at all⁠—and there was a fragility about Nurse Wilks that first astonished and then touched him.

The images which we form in childhood are slow to fade: and Frederick had been under the impression that Nurse Wilks was fully six feet tall, with the shoulders of a weightlifter and eyes that glittered cruelly beneath beetling brows. What he saw now was a little old woman with a wrinkled face, who looked as if a puff of wind would blow her away.

He was oddly stirred. He felt large and protective. He saw his brother’s point now. Most certainly this frail old thing must be humoured. Only a brute would refuse to humour her⁠—yes, felt Frederick Mulliner, even if it meant boiled eggs at five o’clock in the afternoon.

“Well, you are getting a big boy!” said Nurse Wilks, beaming.

“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 apologize 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 recognized.” 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.”