Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952
- Автор: Грубер Фрэнк, Кемельман Гарри
- Год: 1952
- Язык: английский
- Год: American Mercury
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952». Краткое содержание книги:
“Amazing the things people will leave in trains,” said a Small Lager. “Bags... umbrellas... even stuffed chimpanzees, occasionally, I’ve been told. I heard a story the other day...”
My nephew Cyril (said Mr. Mulliner) had a greater passion for mystery stories than anyone I have ever met. I attribute this to the fact that, like so many interior decorators, he was a fragile, delicate young fellow, extraordinarily vulnerable to any ailment that happened to be going the rounds. Every time he caught mumps or influenza or German measles or the like, he occupied the period of convalescence in reading mystery stories. And, as the appetite grows by what it feeds on, he had become, at the time at which this narrative opens, a confirmed addict. Not only did he devour every volume of this type on which he could lay his hands, but he was also to be found at any theatre which was offering the kind of drama where skinny arms come unexpectedly out of the chiffonier and the audience feels a mild surprise if the lights stay on for ten consecutive minutes.
And it was during a performance of The Grey Vampire at the St. James’s that he found himself sitting next to Amelia Bassett, the girl whom he was to love with all the stored-up fervor of a man who hitherto had been inclined rather to edge away when in the presence of the other sex.
He did not know her name was Amelia Bassett. He had never seen her before. All he knew was that at last he had met his fate, and for the whole of the first act he was pondering the problem of how he was to make her acquaintance.
It was as the lights went up for the first intermission that he was aroused from his thoughts by a sharp pain in the right leg. He was just wondering whether it was gout or sciatica when, glancing down, he perceived that what had happened was that his neighbor, absorbed by the drama, had absent-mindedly collected a handful of his flesh and was twisting it in an ecstasy of excitement.
It seemed to Cyril a good point d’appui.
“Excuse me,” he said.
The girl turned. Her eyes were glowing, and the tip of her nose still quivered.
“I beg your pardon?”
“My leg,” said Cyril. “Might I have it back, if you’ve finished with it?”
The girl looked down. She started visibly.
“I’m awfully sorry,” she gasped.
“Not at all,” said Cyril. “Only too glad to have been of assistance.”
“I got carried away.”
“You are evidently fond of mystery plays.”
“I love them.”
“So do I. And mystery novels?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Have you read Blood on the Banisters?”
“Oh, yes! I thought it was better than Severed Throats!”
“So did I,” said Cyril. “Much better. Brighter murders, subtler detectives, crisper clues... better in every way.”
The two twin souls gazed into each other’s eyes. There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.
“My name is Amelia Bassett,” said the girl.
“Mine is Cyril Mulliner. Bassett?” He frowned thoughtfully. “The name seems familiar.”
“Perhaps you have heard of my mother. Lady Bassett. She’s rather a well-known big-game hunter and explorer. She tramps through jungles and things. She’s gone out to the lobby for a smoke. By the way” — she hesitated — “if she finds us talking, will you remember that we met at the Polterwoods’?”
“I quite understand.”
“You see, Mother doesn’t like people who talk to me without a formal introduction. And when Mother doesn’t like anyone, she is so apt to hit him over the head with some hard instrument.”
“I see,” said Cyril. “Like the Human Ape in Gore by the Gallon.”
“Exactly. Tell me,” said the girl, changing the subject, “if you were a millionaire, would you rather be stabbed in the back with a paperknife or found dead without a mark on you, staring with blank eyes at some appalling sight?”
Cyril was about to reply when, looking past her, he found himself virtually in the latter position. A woman of extraordinary formidableness had lowered herself into the seat beyond and was scrutinizing him keenly through a tortoise-shell lorgnette. She reminded Cyril of Wallace Beery.
“Friend of yours, Amelia?” she said.
“This is Mr. Mulliner, Mother. We met at the Polterwoods’.”
“Ah?” said Lady Bassett.
She inspected Cyril through her lorgnette.
“Mr. Mulliner,” she said, “is a little like the chief of the lower Isisi — though, of course, he was darker and had a ring through his nose. A dear, good fellow,” she continued reminiscently, “but inclined to become familiar under the influence of trade gin. I shot him in the leg.”
“Er — why?” asked Cyril.
“He was not behaving like a gentleman,” said Lady Bassett primly.
“After taking your treatment,” said Cyril, awed, “I’ll bet he could have written a Book of Etiquette.”
“I believe he did,” said Lady Bassett carelessly. “You must come and call on us some afternoon, Mr. Mulliner. I am in the telephone book. If you are interested in man-eating pumas, I can show you some nice heads.”
The curtain rose on Act Two, and Cyril returned to his thoughts. Love, he felt joyously, had come into his life at last. But then so, he had to admit, had Lady Bassett. There is, he reflected, always something...
I will pass lightly over the period of Cyril’s wooing. Suffice it to say that bis progress was rapid. From the moment he told Amelia he had once met Dorothy L. Sayers, he never looked back. And one afternoon, calling and finding that Lady Bassett was away in the country, he took the girl’s hand in his and told his love.
For a while all was well. Amelia’s reactions proved satisfactory to a degree. She checked up enthusiastically on his proposition. Falling into his arms, she admitted specifically that he was her Dream Man.
Then came the jarring note.
“But it’s no use,” she said, her lovely eyes filling with tears. “Mother will never give her consent.”
“Why not?” said Cyril, stunned. “What is it she objects to about me?”
“I don’t know. But she generally alludes to you as ‘that pipsqueak.’ ”
“Pipsqueak?” said Cyril. “What is a pipsqueak?”
“I’m not quite sure, but it’s something Mother doesn’t like very much. It’s a pity she ever found out that you are an interior decorator.”
“An honorable profession,” said Cyril, a little stiffly.
“I know; but what she admires are men who have to do with the great open spaces.”
“Well, I also design ornamental gardens.”
“Yes,” said the girl doubtfully, “but still—”
“And, dash it,” said Cyril indignantly, “this isn’t the Victorian Age. All that business of Mother’s Consent went out twenty years ago.”
“Yes, but no one told Mother.”
“It’s preposterous!” cried Cyril. “I never heard such rot. Let’s just slip off and get married quietly and send her a picture postcard from Venice or somewhere, with a cross and a ‘This is our room. Wish you were with us’ on it.”
The girl shuddered.
“She would be with us,” she said. “You don’t know Mother. The moment she got that picture postcard, she would come over to wherever we were and put you across her knee and spank you with a hairbrush. I don’t think I could ever feel the same towards you if I saw you lying across Mother’s knee, being spanked with a hairbrush. It would spoil the honeymoon.”