A Few Quick Ones (13 page)

Something to his advantage being always what he was glad to hear of, he took train to London, called at Lincoln's Inn Fields, and you could have knocked him down with a toothpick when Watson - or Watson or Watson or Watson, or it may have been Watson - informed him that under the will of a cousin in the Argentine, whom he had not seen for years, he had benefited to the extent of fifty thousand pounds. It is not surprising that on receipt of this news he reeled and would have fallen, had he not clutched at a passing Watson. It was enough to stagger anyone, especially someone who, like Reginald, had never been strong in the head. Apart from his ability to sing Old Man River, probably instinctive, he was not a very gifted young man. Amanda Biffen, the girl he loved, though she admired his looks - for, like all the Mulliners, he was extraordinarily handsome - had never wavered in her view that if men were dominoes, he would have been the double blank.

His first act on leaving the Watson office was, of course, to put in a trunk call to Lower Smattering and tell Amanda of this signal bit of luck that had befallen him, for it was going to make all the difference to their love lives. Theirs till now had had to be a secret engagement, neither wishing to disturb the peace of mind of Amanda's uncle and guardian, Sir Jasper Todd, the retired financier. Reginald had one of those nice little bachelor incomes which allow a man to get his three square meals a day and do a certain amount of huntin', shootin' and fishin', but before the descent of these pennies from heaven he had been in no sense a matrimonial prize, and Amanda's theory that Sir Jasper, if informed of the betrothal, would have fifty-seven conniption fits was undoubtedly a correct one.

"Who was that, my dear?" Sir Jasper asked as Amanda came back from the telephone, and Amanda said that it was Reginald Mulliner, speaking from London.

"The most wonderful news. He has been left fifty thousand pounds."

"He has?" said Sir Jasper. "Well, well! Just fancy!"

Now when a financier, even a retired one, learns that a young fellow of the mental calibre of Reginald Mulliner has come into possession of fifty thousand pounds, he does not merely say "Just fancy!" and leave it at that. He withdraws to his study, ties a wet towel about his forehead, has lots of black coffee sent in, and starts to ponder on schemes for getting the stuff away from him. Sir Jasper had many expenses, and the circumstance of his young friend having acquired this large sum of money seemed to him, for he was a pious man, a direct answer to prayer. He had often felt how bitterly ironical it was that a super-mug like Reginald, so plainly designed by Nature to be chiselled out of his cash, had had no cash to be chiselled out of.

He rang Reginald up at his bungalow a few days later.

"Good morning, Mulliner, my boy,"

"Oh, what ho. Sir Jasper."

"Amanda…I beg your pardon?"

"Eh?"

"I understood you to say 'He don't plant taters, he don't plant cotton.' Who does not plant potatoes, and how have they and cotton crept into the conversation?"

"Oh, frightfully sorry. I'm singing Old Man River at the village concert tonight, and I must have been rehearsing unconsciously, as it were."

"I see. A comic song?"

"Well, more poignant, I think you'd call it. Or possibly stark. It's about a negro on the Mississippi who trembles a bit when he sees a job of work."

"Quite. I believe many negroes do. Well, be that as it may, Amanda has been telling me of your good fortune. My heartiest congratulations. I wonder if you could spare the time to come and see me this morning. I would enjoy a chat."

"Oh, rather."

"Don't come immediately, if you don't mind, as I have a man from the insurance company calling in a few minutes about increasing the insurance on my house. Suppose we say an hour from now? Excellent."

And at the appointed time Reginald alighted from his new motor-cycle at the door of Sir Jasper's residence, Wissel Hall, and found Sir Jasper on the front steps, bidding farewell to a man in a bowler hat. The bowler-hatted one took his departure, and the financier regarded the motor-cycle with what seemed to Reginald disapproval.

"A recent purchase, is it not?"

"I got it a couple of days ago."

Sir Jasper shook his head.

"A costly toy. I hope, Mulliner, you are not one of those young men who, when suddenly enriched, get it up their noses and start squandering their substance on frivolities and gew-gaws?"

"Good Lord, no," said Reginald. "I plan to freeze on to my little bit of lolly like a porous plaster. The lawyer bloke from whom I heard of something to my advantage was recommending me to put it into a
thing called Funding Loan. Don't ask me what it is, because I haven't the foggiest, but it's something run by the Government, and you buy a
chunk of it and get back so much twice a
year, just like finding it in the street. They pay four and a
half per centum per annum, whatever that means, with the net result, according to this legal eagle, that my fifty thousand will bring me in rather more than two thousand a
year. Fairly whizzo, I call it, and one wonders how long this has been going on."

To his surprise, Sir Jasper did not appear to share his enthusiasm. It would be too much, perhaps, to say that he sneered, but he came very close to sneering.

"Two thousand is not much."

"Oh, isn't it?"

"In these days of inflation and rising costs, a
mere pittance. Would you not prefer twenty-five thousand?"

"Yes, that would be nice."

"Then it can be quite simply arranged. Have you made a study of the oil market?"

"I don't think there is a special market for oil. I get mine at the garage."

"But you know how vital oil is to our industries?"

"Oh, rather. Sardines and all that."

"Just so. There is no sounder investment. Now there happens to be among my effects a block of Smelly River Ordinaries, probably the most valuable share on the market, and I think I could let you have fifty thousand pounds worth of them, as you are - may I say? - a personal friend.

They would bring you in a safe fifty per centum."

"Per annum?"

"Exactly."

"Per person?"

"Precisely. The annual yield would be, I imagine, somewhere in the neighbourhood of twenty-five or thirty thousand pounds."

"I say! That sounds smashing! But are you sure you can spare them? Won't you be losing money?"

Sir Jasper smiled.

"When you get to my age, my boy, you will realize that money is not everything in life. As somebody once said, 'I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to a fellow creature, let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again.' Sign here," said Sir Jasper, producing from an inner pocket a number of stock certificates, a blank cheque, a fountain pen and a piece of blotting paper.

It was with uplifted heart that Reginald went in search of Amanda. He found her, dressed for tennis, about to start off in her car for a neighbouring house, and told her the great news. His income, he said, from now on would be twenty-five thousand pounds or thereabouts each calendar year, which you couldn't say wasn't a bit of a good egg, and this desirable state of things was entirely due to the benevolence of her Uncle Jasper. He had no hesitation, he said, in asking Heaven to bless Sir Jasper Todd.

To his concern, the girl, instead of running about clapping her little hands, shot straight up into the air like a cat which has rashly sat on a too hot radiator.

"You mean to say," she cried, coming back to earth and fixing him with a burning eye, "that you gave him the whole fifty thousand?"

''Not 'gave’, old crumpet,'" said Reginald, amused. Women understand so little of finance. "What happens on these occasions is that one chap, as it might be me, slips another chap, as it might be your uncle, a spot of cash, and in return receives what are called shares. And such shares, for some reason which I haven't quite grasped yet, are the source of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. These Smelly River Ordinaries, for instance"

Amanda uttered a snort which ran through the quiet garden like a pistol shot.

"Let me tell you something," she said, speaking from between clenched teeth, "One of my earliest recollections as a child is of sitting on Uncle Jasper's knee and listening, round-eyed, while he told me how, at a moment when he was not feeling quite himself, having been hit on the head with a bottle by a disgruntled shareholder at a general meeting, he had allowed some hornswoggling highbinder to stick him with these dud Smelly River Ordinaries. I can still remember the light that shone in his eyes as he spoke of his resolve some day, somewhere, to find a mug on whom he could unload them. He realized that such a mug would have to be the Mug Supreme, the sort of mug that happens only once in a lifetime, but that was the gleam which he was following patiently through the years, never deviating from his purpose, and he was confident of eventual success. He related the story to illustrate what Tennyson had meant when he wrote about rising on stepping stones of our dead selves to higher things."

It was not easy to depress Reginald Mulliner, but this
conte
had done it. Her words, it seemed to him, could have but one meaning.

"Are you telling me that these ruddy shares are no ruddy good?"

"As wall paper, perhaps, they might lend a tasteful note to a study or rumpus room, but otherwise I should describe their value as non-existent,"

"Well, I’m blowed!"

"You are also bust."

"Then how are we going to get married ?"

"We aren't. I do not propose," said Amanda coldly, "to link my lot with that of a man who on the evidence would seem to be a member in good standing of the Jukes family. If you are interested in my future plans, I will sketch them out for you. I am now going off to play tennis with Lord Knubble of Knopp at Knubble Towers. Between the sets or possibly while standing me a gin and tonic at the end of the game he will, I imagine, ask me to be his wife. He always has so far. On this occasion my reply will be in the affirmative. Goodbye, Reginald. It has been nice knowing you. If you follow the path to the right, you will find your way out."

Reginald was not a quickwitted man, but, reading between the lines, he seemed to sense what she was trying to say.

"This sounds like the raspberry."

"It is."

"You mean all is over?"

"I do."

"You are casting me aside like a…what are those things people cast aside?"

" 'Worn-out glove’ is, I presume, the expression for which you are groping."

"Do you know," said Reginald, struck by a thought, "I don't believe I've ever cast aside a worn-out glove. I always give mine to the Salvation Army. However, that is not the point at issue. The point at issue is that you have broken my bally heart."

"A girl with less self-control," said Amanda, switching her tennis racquet, "would have broken your bally head."

Such then was the situation in which Reginald Mulliner found himself on this sunny summer day, and it was one that seemed to him to present few redeeming features. He was down fifty thousand pounds, he had lost the girl he loved, his heart was broken, and he had a small pimple coming on the back of his neck - a combination which in his opinion gave him a full hand. The only thing that could possibly be regarded as an entry on the credit side was that his spiritual anguish had put him in rare shape for singing Old Man River at the village concert.

Too little attention has been given by our greatest minds to the subject of Old Man River-singing, though such a subject is of absorbing interest. It has never, as far as one knows, been pointed out that this song is virtually impossible of proper rendition by a vocalist who is feeling boomps-a-daisy and on top of the world. The full flavour can be obtained and the last drop of juice squeezed out only by the man who is down among the wines and spirits and brooding gloomily on life in general. Hamlet would have sung it superbly. So would Schopenhauer and J. B. Priestley. And so, at eight o'clock that night, up on the platform at the village hall with the Union Jack behind him and Miss Frisby, the music teacher, playing the accompaniment at his side, did Reginald Mulliner.

He had not been feeling any too happy to begin with, and the sight of Amanda in the front row in close proximity to a horse-faced young man with large ears and no chin, in whom he recognized Lord Knubble of Knopp, set the seal on his sombre mood, lending to each low note something of the quality of the
obiter dicta
of Hamlet's father's ghost. By the time he had reached that "He must know somefin', he don't say nuffin', he jest keeps rollin' along" bit there was not a dry eye in the house - or very few - and the applause that broke out from the two-bob seats, the one-bob seats, the sixpenny seats and the threepenny standees at the back can only be described as thunderous. He took three encores and six bows and, had not the curtain been lowered for the intermission, might have stolen a seventh. That organ of the theatre world,
Variety,
does not cover amateur concerts at places like Lower-Smattering-on-the-Wissel, but if it did its headline for Reginald Mulliner's performance that night would have been

MULL SWEET SOCKO

The effect on Reginald of this tornado of enthusiasm was rather remarkable. It was as though he had passed through some great spiritual experience which left him a changed man. Normally diffident, he was conscious now of a strange new sense of power. He felt masterful and dominant and for the first time capable of seeking out Sir Jasper Todd, who until now had always overawed him, and telling him just what he thought of him. Before he had even emerged into the open air, six excellent descriptions of Sir Jasper had occurred to him, the mildest of which was "pot-bellied old swindler". He resolved to lose no time in sharing these with the financier face to face.

He had not seen Sir Jasper among the audience. In the seat in which he should have been sitting, on Amanda's right, the eye had rested on what looked like
a
woman of good family who kept cats. The inference, therefore, was that he had given the concert a
miss and was having a quiet evening at home, and it was to his home, accordingly, that Reginald now made his way.