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:
Cyril frowned. But a man who has spent most of his life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist.
“There is only one thing to be done,” he said. “I shall see your mother and try to make her listen to reason. Where is she now?”
“She left this morning for a visit to the Winghams in Sussex.”
“Excellent! I know the Winghams. In fact, I have a standing invitation to go and stay with them whenever I like. I’ll send them a wire and push down this evening. I will oil up to your mother sedulously and try to correct her present unfavorable impression of me. Then, choosing the moment, I will shoot her the news. It may work. It may not work. But at any rate I consider it a fair sporting venture.”
“But you are so diffident, Cyril. So shrinking. So retiring and shy. How can you carry through such a task?”
“Love will nerve me.”
“Enough, do you think? Remember what Mother is. Wouldn’t a good, strong drink be more help?”
Cyril looked doubtful.
“My doctor has always forbidden me alcoholic stimulants. He says they increase the blood pressure.”
“Well, when you meet Mother, you will need all the blood pressure you can get. I really do advise you to fuel up a little before you see her.”
“Yes,” agreed Cyril, nodding thoughtfully. “I think you’re right. It shall be as you say. Goodbye, my angel one.”
“Goodbye, Cyril, darling. You will think of me every minute while you’re gone?”
“Every single minute. Well, practically every single minute. You see, I have just got Horatio Slingsby’s latest book, Strychnine in the Soup, and I shall be dipping into that from time to time. But all the rest of the while... Have you read it, by the way?”
“Not yet. I had a copy, but Mother took it with her.”
“Ah? Well, if I am to catch a train that will get me to Barkley for dinner, I must be going. Goodbye, sweetheart, and never forget that Gilbert Glendale in The Missing Toe won the girl he loved in spite of being up against two mysterious stranglers and the entire Black Mustache gang.”
He kissed her fondly, and went off to pack.
Barkley Towers, the country seat of Sir Mortimer and Lady Wingham, was two hours from London by rail. Thinking of Amelia and reading the opening chapters of Horatio Slingsby’s powerful story, Cyril found the journey passing rapidly. In fact, so preoccupied was he that it was only as the train started to draw out of Barkley Regis station that he realized where he was. He managed to hurl himself onto the platform just in time.
As he had taken the five-seven express, stopping only at Gluebury Peveril, he arrived at Barkley Towers at an hour which enabled him not only to be on hand for dinner but also to take part in the life-giving distribution of cocktails which preceded the meal.
The house party, he perceived on entering the drawing-room, was a small one. Besides Lady Bassett and himself, the only visitors were a nondescript couple of the name of Simpson, and a tall, bronzed, handsome man with flashing eyes who, his hostess informed him in a whispered aside, was Lester Mapledurham (pronounced Mum), the explorer and big-game hunter.
Perhaps it was the oppressive sensation of being in the same room with two explorers and big-game hunters that brought home to Cyril the need for following Amelia’s advice as quickly as possible. But probably the mere sight of Lady Bassett alone would have been enough to make him break a life-long abstinence. To her normal resemblance to Wallace Beery she appeared now to have added a distinct suggestion of Victor McLaglen, and the spectacle was sufficient to send Cyril leaping toward the cocktail tray.
After three rapid glasses he felt a better and a braver man. And so lavishly did he irrigate the ensuing dinner with hock, sherry, champagne, old brandy, and port that at the conclusion of the meal he was pleased to find that his diffidence had completely vanished. He rose from the table feeling equal to asking a dozen Lady Bassetts for their consent to marry a dozen daughters.
In fact, as he confided to the butler, prodding him genially in the ribs as he spoke, if Lady Bassett attempted to put on any dog with him, he would know what to do about it. He made no threats, he explained to the butler; he simply stated that he would know what to do about it. The butler said, “Very good, sir. Thank you, sir,” and the incident closed.
It had been Cyril’s intention — feeling, as he did, in this singularly uplifted and dominant frame of mind — to get hold of Amelia’s mother and start oiling up to her immediately after dinner. But, what with falling into a doze in the smoking room and then getting into an argument on theology with one of the underfoot-men whom he met in the hall, he did not reach the drawing-room until nearly half-past ten. And he was annoyed, on walking in with a merry cry of “Lady Bassett! Call for Lady Bassett!” on his lips, to discover that she had retired to her room.
Had Cyril’s mood been even slightly less elevated, this news might have acted as a check on his enthusiasm. So generous, however, had been Sir Mortimer’s hospitality that he merely nodded eleven times, to indicate comprehension, and then, having ascertained that his quarry was roosting in the Blue Room, sped thither with a brief “Tally-ho!”
Arriving at the Blue Room, he banged heartily on the door and breezed in. He found Lady Bassett propped up with pillows. She was smoking a cigar and reading a book. And that book, Cyril saw with intense surprise and resentment, was none other than Horatio Slingsby’s Strychnine in the Soup.
The spectacle brought him to an abrupt halt.
“Well, I’m dashed!” he cried. “Well, I’m blowed! What do you mean by pinching my book?”
Lady Bassett had lowered her cigar. She now raised her eyebrows.
“What are you doing in my room, Mr. Mulliner?”
“It’s a little hard,” said Cyril, trembling with self-pity. “I go to enormous expense to buy detective stories, and no sooner is my back turned than people rush about the place sneaking them.”
“This book belongs to my daughter Amelia.”
“Good old Amelia!” said Cyril cordially. “One of the best.”
“I borrowed it to read on the train. Now will you kindly tell me what you are doing in my room, Mr. Mulliner?”
Cyril smote his forehead.
“Of course. I remember now. It all comes back to me. She told me you had taken it. And, what’s more, I’ve suddenly recollected something which clears you completely. I was hustled and bustled at the end of the journey. I sprang to my feet, hurled bags onto the platform — in a word, lost my head. And, like a chump, I went and left my copy of Strychnine in the Soup in the train. Well, I can only apologize.”
“You can not only apologize. You can also tell me what you are doing in my room.”
“What I am doing in your room?”
“Exactly.”
“Ah!” said Cyril, sitting down on the bed. “You may well ask.”
“I have asked. Three times.”
Cyril closed his eyes. For some reason, his mind seemed cloudy and not at its best.
“If you are proposing to go to sleep here, Mr. Mulliner,” said Lady Bassett, “tell me, and I shall know what to do about it.”
The phrase touched a chord in Cyril’s memory. He recollected now his reasons for being where he was. Opening his eyes, he fixed them on her.
“Lady Bassett,” he said, “you are, I believe, an explorer.”
“I am.”
“In the course of your explorations, you have wandered through many a jungle in many a distant land?”
“I have.”