"I don"t know about that. The cruel thing is that she is a woman of strict temperance principles. So am I. I am sure it is an awful thing to say, Mr. Graham, but Satan has sometimes put it into my heart to wish that the woman, like too, too many of her sort, was the victim of alcoholic temptations. He has a fearful temper, and if once she was not fit for duty at one of his dinners, this awful gnawing anxiety would cease to ride my bosom. He would pack her off."
"Very natural. She is free from the besetting sin of the artistic temperament?"
"If you mean drink, she is; and that is one reason why he values her. His last cook, and his last but one--" Here Mrs. Gisborne narrated at some length the tragic histories of these artists.
"Providential, I thought it, but now," she said despairingly.
"She certainly seems a difficult woman to dislodge," said Merton. "A dangerous entanglement. Any followers allowed? Could anything be done through the softer emotions? Would a guardsman, for instance--?"
"She hates the men. Never one of them darkens her kitchen fire. Offers she has had by the score, but they come by post, and she laughs and burns them. Old Mr. Potter, one of his cronies, tried to get her away _that_ way, but he is over seventy, and old at that, and she thought she had another chance to better herself. And she"ll take it, Mr. Graham, if you can"t do something: she"ll take it."
"Will you permit me to say that you seem to know a good deal about her!
Perhaps you have some sort of means of intelligence in the enemy"s camp?"
"The kitchen maid," said Mrs. Gisborne, purpling a little, "is the sister of our servant, and tells her things."
"I see," said Merton. "Now can you remember any little weakness of this, I must frankly admit, admirable artist and exemplary woman?"
"You are not going to take her side, a scheming red-faced hussy, Mr.
Graham?"
"I never betrayed a client, Madam, and if you mean that I am likely to help this person into your uncle"s arms, you greatly misconceive me, and the nature of my profession."
"I beg your pardon, sir, but I will say that your heart does not seem to be in the case."
"It is not quite the kind of case with which we are accustomed to deal,"
said Merton. "But you have not answered my question. Are there any weak points in the defence? To Venus she is cold, of Bacchus she is disdainful."
"I never heard of the gentlemen I am sure, sir, but as to her weaknesses, she has the temper of a--" Here Mrs. Gisborne paused for a comparison.
Her knowledge of natural history and of mythology, the usual sources of parallels, failed to provide a satisfactory resemblance to the cook"s temper.
"The temper of a Megaera," said Merton, admitting to himself that the word was not, though mythological, what he could wish.
"Of a Megaera as you know that creature, sir, and impetuous! If everything is not handy, if that poor girl is not like clockwork with the sauces, and herbs, and things, if a saucepan boils over, or a ham falls into the fire, if the girl treads on the tail of one of the cats--and the woman keeps a dozen--then she flies at her with anything that comes handy."
"She is fond of cats?" said Merton; "really this lady has sympathetic points:" and he patted the grey Russian puss, Kutuzoff, which was a witness to these interviews.
"She dotes on the nasty things: and you may well say "lady!" Her Siamese cat, a wild beast he is, took the first prize at the Crystal Palace Show.
The papers said "Miss Blowser"s _Rangoon_, bred by the exhibitor." Miss Blowser! I don"t know what the world is coming to. He stands on the doorsteps, the cat, like a lynx, and as fierce as a lion. Why he got her into the police-court: flew at a dog, and nearly tore his owner, a clergyman, to pieces. There were articles about it in the papers."
"I seem to remember it," said Merton. "_Christianos ad Leones_". In fact he had written this humorous article himself. "But is there nothing else?" he asked. "Only a temper, so natural to genius disturbed or diverted in the process of composition, and a pa.s.sion for the _felidae_, such as has often been remarked in the great. There was Charles Baudelaire, Mahomet--"
"I don"t know what you mean, sir, and," said Mrs. Gisborne, rising, and snapping her reticule, "I think I was a fool for answering your advertis.e.m.e.nt. I did not come here to be laughed at, and I think common politeness--"
"I beg a thousand pardons," said Merton. "I am most distressed at my apparent discourtesy. My mind was preoccupied by the circ.u.mstances of this very difficult case, and involuntarily glided into literary anecdote on the subject of cats and their owners. They are my pa.s.sion--cats--and I regret that they inspire you with antipathy." Here he picked up Kutuzoff and carried him into the inner room.
"It is not that I object to any of Heaven"s creatures kept in their place," said Mrs. Gisborne somewhat mollified, "but you must make allowances, sir, for my anxiety. It sours a mother of nine. Friday is one of his gorging dinner-parties, and who knows what may happen if she pleases him? The kitchen maid says, I mean I hear, that she wears an engaged ring already."
"That is very bad," said Merton, with sympathy. "The dinner is on Friday, you say?" and he made a note of the date.
"Yes, 15 Albany Grove, on the Regent"s Ca.n.a.l."
"You can think of nothing else--no weakness to work on?"
"No, sir, just her awful temper; I would save him from it, for _he_ has another as bad. And besides hopes from him have kept me up so long, his only relation, and times are so hard, and schooling and boots, and everything so dear, and we so many in family." Tears came into the poor lady"s eyes.
"I"ll give the case my very best attention," he said, shaking hands with the client. To Merton"s horror she tried, Heaven help her, to pa.s.s a circular packet, wrapped in paper, into his hand. He evaded it. It was a first interview, for which no charge was made. "What can be done shall be done, though I confess that I do not see my way," and he accompanied her downstairs to the street.
"I behaved like a cad with my chaff," he said to himself, "but hang me if I see how to help her. And I rather admire that cook."
He went into the inner room, wakened the sleeping partner, Logan, on the sofa, and unfolded the case with every detail. "What can we do, _que faire_!"
"There"s an exhibition of modern, mediaeval, ancient, and savage cookery at Earl"s Court, the Cookeries," said Logan. "Couldn"t we seduce an artist like Miss Blowser there, I mean _thither_ of course, the night before the dinner, and get her up into the Great Wheel and somehow stop the Wheel--and make her too late for her duties?"
"And how are you going to stop the Wheel?"
"Speak to the Man at the Wheel. Bribe the beggar."
"Dangerous, and awfully expensive. Then think of all the other people on the Wheel! Logan, _vous cha.s.sez de race_. The old Restalrig blood is in your veins."
"My ancestors nearly nipped off with a king, and why can"t I carry off a cook? Hustle her into a hansom--"
"Oh, bah! these are not modern methods."
"_Il n"y a rien tel que d"enlever_," said Logan.
"I never shall stain the cause with police-courts," said Merton. "It would be fatal."
"I"ve heard of a cook who fell on his sword when the fish did not come up to time. Now a raid on the fish? She might fall on her carving knife when they did not arrive, or leap into the flames of the kitchen fire, like OEnone, don"t you know."
"Bosh. Vatel was far from the sea, and he had not a fish-monger"s shop round the corner. Be modern."
Logan rumpled his hair, "Can"t I get her to lunch at a restaurant and ply her with the wines of Eastern France? No, she is Temperance personified.
Can"t we send her a forged telegram to say that her mother is dying?
Servants seem to have such lots of mothers, always inconveniently, or conveniently, moribund."
"I won"t have forgery. Great heavens, how obsolete you are! Besides, that would not put her employer in a rage."
"Could I go and consult ---?" he mentioned a specialist. "He is a man of ideas."
"He is a man of the purest principles--and an uncommonly hard hitter."
"It is his purity I want. My own mind is hereditarily lawless. I want something not immoral, yet efficacious. There was that parson, whom you say the woman"s cat nearly devoured. Like Paul with beasts he fought the cat. Now, I wonder if that injured man is not meditating some priestly revenge that would do our turn and get rid of Miss Blowser?"
Merton shook his head impatiently. His own invention was busy, but to no avail. Miss Blowser seemed impregnable. Kutuzoff Hedzoff, the puss, stalked up to Logan and leaped on his knees. Logan stroked him, Kutuzoff purred and blinked, Logan sought inspiration in his topaz eyes. At last he spoke: "Will you leave this affair to me, Merton? I think I have found out a way."
"What way?"
"That"s my secret. You are so beastly moral, you might object. One thing I may tell you--it does not compromise the Honourable Company of Disentanglers."