Meet Mr Mulliner Read Online Free Page A

from a distance—the sound
of feet and voices. George leaped to the window. Rounding the comer, just by
the Cow and Wheelbarrow public-house, licensed to sell ales, wines, and
spirits, was the man with the pitchfork, and behind him followed a vast crowd.
    “My darling,” said George. “For purely
personal and private reasons, into which I need not enter, I must now leave
you. Will you join me later?”
    “I will follow you to the ends of the
earth,” replied Susan, passionately.
    “It will not be necessary,” said George. “I
am only going down to the coal-cellar. I shall spend the next half-hour or so
there.
    If anybody calls and asks for me, perhaps
you would not mind telling them that I am out.”
    “I will, I will,” said Susan. “And,
George, by the way. What I really came here for was to ask you if you knew a
hyphenated word of nine letters, ending in k and signifying an implement
employed in the pursuit of agriculture.”
    “Pitch-fork, sweetheart,” said George. “But
you may take it from me, as one who knows, that agriculture isn’t the only
thing it is used in pursuit of.”
     
    And since that day (concluded Mr Mulliner)
George, believe me or believe me not, has not had the slightest trace of an
impediment in his speech. He is now the chosen orator at all political rallies
for miles around; and so offensively self-confident has his manner become that
only last Friday he had his eye blacked by a hay-corn-and-feed merchant of the
name of Stubbs. It just shows you, doesn’t it?

 
     
     
     
     
    2
     
    A S LICE OF L IFE
     
    T HE conversation in the bar-parlour of the Anglers’ Rest had drifted
round to the subject of the Arts: and somebody asked if that film-serial, The
Vicissitudes of Vera , which they were showing down at the Bijou Dream, was
worth seeing.
    “It’s very good,” said Miss Postlethwaite,
our courteous and efficient barmaid, who is a prominent first-nighter. “It’s
about this mad professor who gets this girl into his toils and tries to turn
her into a lobster.”
    “Tries to turn her into a lobster?” echoed
we, surprised.
    “Yes, sir. Into a lobster. It seems
he collected thousands and thousands of lobsters and mashed them up and boiled
down the juice from their glands and was just going to inject it into this Vera
Dalrymple’s spinal column when Jack Frobisher broke into the house and stopped
him.”
    “Why did he do that?”
    “Because he didn’t want the girl he loved
to be turned into a lobster.”
    “What we mean,” said we, “is why did the
professor want to turn the girl into a lobster?”
    “He had a grudge against her.”
    This seemed plausible, and we thought it
over for a while. Then one of the company shook his head disapprovingly.
    “I don’t like stories like that,” he said.
“They aren’t true to life.”
    “Pardon me, sir,” said a voice. And we
were aware of Mr Mulliner in our midst.
    “Excuse me interrupting what may be a
private discussion,” said Mr Mulliner, “but I chanced to overhear the recent
remarks, and you, sir, have opened up a subject on which I happen to hold
strong views—to wit, the question of what is and what is not true to life. How
can we, with our limited experience, answer that question? For all we know, at
this very moment hundreds of young women all over the country may be in the
process of being turned into lobsters. Forgive my warmth, but I have suffered a
good deal from this sceptical attitude of mind which is so prevalent nowadays.
I have even met people who refused to believe my story about my brother
Wilfred, purely because it was a little out of the ordinary run of the average
man’s experience.”
    Considerably moved, Mr Mulliner ordered a
hot Scotch with a slice of lemon.
    “What happened to your brother Wilfred?
Was he turned into a lobster?”
    “No,” said Mr Mulliner, fixing his honest
blue eyes on the speaker, “he was not. It would be perfectly easy for me to
pretend that he was turned into a