Meet Mr Mulliner Read Online Free PDF

Jasper’s valet, who was an habitué 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 H 2 O + b3g4z7 - m9z8 = g6f5p3x. Before leaving
London on what he knew would be a dark and dangerous enterprise, Wilfred had
taken the precaution of calling 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 wig, shave
off his moustache, and treat his face to a light coating of the Raven Gipsy
Face-Cream. This done, he set out for ffinch Hall.
    Externally, ffinch 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 police. 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 like something out of a travelling company of Macbeth ,
touring the smaller towns of the North, and Murgatroyd, the butler, a huge,
sinister man with a cast in one eye and an evil light in the other.
    Many men, under these conditions, would
have been daunted. But not Wilfred Mulliner. Apart from the fact that, like all
the Mulliners, 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, growling 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 relief. 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