Meet Mr Mulliner Read Online Free PDF Page B

imprisoned in a
locked room of a sinister country-house and is being forced to marry a man she
does not love? Practically nothing. When the heart is sick, cutlets merely
alleviate, they do not cure. Fiercely Wilfred told himself that, come what
might, few days should pass before he found the key to that locked door and
bore away his love to freedom and happiness.
    The only obstacle in the way of this
scheme was that it was plainly going to be a matter of the greatest difficulty
to find the key. That night, when his employer dined, Wilfred searched his room
thoroughly. He found nothing. The key, he was forced to conclude, was kept on
the baronet’s person.
    Then how to secure it?
    It is not too much to say that Wilfred Mulliner
was non-plussed. The brain which had electrified the world of Science by
discovering that if you mixed a stiffish oxygen and potassium and added a
splash of trinitrotoluol and a spot of old brandy you got something that could
be sold in America as champagne at a hundred and fifty dollars the case, had to
confess itself baffled.
     
    To attempt to analyse the young man’s emotions,
as the next week dragged itself by, would be merely morbid. Life cannot, of
course, be all sunshine: and in relating a story like this, which is a slice of
life, one must pay as much attention to shade as to light: nevertheless, it
would be tedious were I to describe to you in detail the soul-torments which
afflicted Wilfred Mulliner as day followed day and no solution to the problem
presented itself. You are all intelligent men, and you can picture to
yourselves how a high-spirited young fellow, deeply in love, must have felt;
knowing that the girl he loved was languishing in what practically amounted to
a dungeon, though situated on an upper floor, and chafing at his inability to
set her free.
    His eyes became sunken. His cheekbones
stood out. He lost weight. And so noticeable was this change in his physique
that Sir Jasper ffinch-ffarrowmere commented on it one evening in tones of
unconcealed envy.
    “How the devil, Straker,” he said—for this
was the pseudonym under which Wilfred was passing, “do you manage to keep so
thin? Judging by the weekly books, you eat like a starving Esquimaux, and yet
you don’t put on weight. Now I, in addition to knocking off butter and
potatoes, have started drinking hot unsweetened lemon-juice each night before
retiring: and yet, damme,” he said —for, like all baronets, he was careless in
his language, “I weighed myself this morning, and I was up another six ounces.
What’s the explanation?”
    “Yes, Sir Jasper,” said Wilfred,
mechanically.
    “What the devil do you mean, Yes, Sir
Jasper?”
    “No, Sir Jasper.”
    The baronet wheezed plaintively.
    “I’ve been studying this matter closely,” he
said, “and it’s one of the seven wonders of the world. Have you ever seen a fat
valet? Of course not. Nor has anybody else. There is no such thing as a fat
valet. And yet there is scarcely a moment during the day when a valet is not
eating. He rises at six-thirty, and at seven is having coffee and buttered
toast. At eight, he breakfasts off porridge, cream, eggs, bacon, jam, bread,
butter, more eggs, more bacon, more jam, more tea, and more butter, finishing
up with a slice of cold ham and a sardine. At eleven o’clock he has his ‘elevenses,’
consisting of coffee, cream, more bread and more butter. At one, luncheon —a
hearty meal, replete with every form of starchy food and lots of beer. If he
can get at the port, he has port. At three, a snack. At four, another snack. At
five, tea and buttered toast. At seven—dinner, probably with floury potatoes,
and certainly with lots more beer. At nine, another snack. And at ten-thirty he
retires to bed, taking with him a glass of milk and a plate of biscuits to keep
himself from getting hungry in the night. And yet he remains as slender as a
string-bean, while I, who have been dieting for 3 years, tip the beam at two
hundred