The Beetle (10 page)

What my Marjorie—if everyone had his own, she is mine, and, in
that sense, she always will be mine—what my Marjorie could see in
such a dry-as-dust out of which even to construct the rudiments of
a husband was beyond my fathoming.

Suchlike agreeable reflections were fit company for the wind and
the wet, so they bore me company all down the lane. I crossed at
the corner, going round the hospital towards the square. This
brought me to the abiding-place of Paul the Apostle. Like the
idiot I was, I went out into the middle of the street, and stood
awhile in the mud to curse him and his house,—on the whole, when
one considers that that is the kind of man I can be, it is,
perhaps, not surprising that Marjorie disdained me.

'May your following,' I cried,—it is an absolute fact that the
words were shouted!—'both in the House and out of it, no longer
regard you as a leader! May your party follow after other gods!
May your political aspirations wither, and your speeches be
listened to by empty benches! May the Speaker persistently and
strenuously refuse to allow you to catch his eye, and, at the next
election, may your constituency reject you!—Jehoram!—what's
that?'

I might well ask. Until that moment I had appeared to be the only
lunatic at large, either outside the house or in it, but, on a
sudden, a second lunatic came on the scene, and that with a
vengeance. A window was crashed open from within,—the one over
the front door, and someone came plunging through it on to the top
of the portico. That it was a case of intended suicide I made
sure,—and I began to be in hopes that I was about to witness the
suicide of Paul. But I was not so assured of the intention when
the individual in question began to scramble down the pillar of
the porch in the most extraordinary fashion I ever witnessed,—I
was not even convinced of a suicidal purpose when he came tumbling
down, and lay sprawling in the mud at my feet.

I fancy, if I had performed that portion of the act I should have
lain quiet for a second or two, to consider whereabouts I was, and
which end of me was uppermost. But there was no nonsense of that
sort about that singularly agile stranger,—if he was not made of
india-rubber he ought to have been. So to speak, before he was
down he was up,—it was all I could do to grab at him before he
was off like a rocket.

Such a figure as he presented is seldom seen,—at least, in the
streets of London. What he had done with the rest of his apparel I
am not in a position to say,—all that was left of it was a long,
dark cloak which he strove to wrap round him. Save for that,—and
mud!—he was bare as the palm of my hand, Yet it was his face that
held me. In my time I have seen strange expressions on men's
faces, but never before one such as I saw on his. He looked like a
man might look who, after living a life of undiluted crime, at
last finds himself face to face with the devil. It was not the
look of a madman,—far from it; it was something worse.

It was the expression on the man's countenance, as much as
anything else, which made me behave as I did. I said something to
him,—some nonsense, I know not what. He regarded me with a
silence which was supernatural. I spoke to him again;—not a word
issued from those rigid lips; there was not a tremor of those
awful eyes,—eyes which I was tolerably convinced saw something
which I had never seen, or ever should. Then I took my hand from
off his shoulder, and let him go. I know not why,—I did.

He had remained as motionless, as a statue while I held him,—
indeed, for any evidence of life he gave, he might have been a
statue; but, when my grasp was loosed, how he ran! He had turned
the corner and was out of sight before I could say, 'How do!'

It was only then,—when he had gone, and I had realised the extra-
double-express-flash-of-lightning rate at which he had taken his
departure—that it occurred to me of what an extremely sensible
act I had been guilty in letting him go at all. Here was an
individual who had been committing burglary, or something very
like it, in the house of a budding cabinet minister, and who had
tumbled plump into my arms, so that all I had to do was to call a
policeman and get him quodded,—and all that I had done was
something of a totally different kind.

'You're a nice type of an ideal citizen!' I was addressing myself,
'A first chop specimen of a low-down idiot,—to connive at the
escape of the robber who's been robbing Paul. Since you've let the
villain go, the least you can do is to leave a card on the
Apostle, and inquire how he's feeling.'

I went to Lessingham's front door and knocked,—I knocked once, I
knocked twice, I knocked thrice, and the third time, I give you my
word, I made the echoes ring,—but still there was not a soul that
answered.

'If this is a case of a seven or seventy-fold murder, and the
gentleman in the cloak has made a fair clearance of every living
creature the house contains, perhaps it's just as well I've
chanced upon the scene,—still I do think that one of the corpses
might get up to answer the door. If it is possible to make noise
enough to waken the dead, you bet I'm on to it.'

And I was,—I punished that knocker! until I warrant the pounding
I gave it was audible on the other side of Green Park. And, at
last, I woke the dead,—or, rather, I roused Matthews to a
consciousness that something was going on Opening the door about
six inches, through the interstice he protruded his ancient nose.

'Who's there?'

'Nothing, my dear sir, nothing and no one. It must have been your
vigorous imagination which induced you to suppose that there was,
—you let it run away with you.'

Then he knew me,—and opened the door about two feet.

'Oh, it's you, Mr Atherton. I beg your pardon, sir,—I thought it
might have been the police.'

'What then? Do you stand in terror of the minions of the law,—at
last?'

A most discreet servant, Matthews,—just the fellow for a budding
cabinet minister. He glanced over his shoulder,—I had suspected
the presence of a colleague at his back, now I was assured. He put
his hand up to his mouth,—and I thought how exceedingly discreet
he looked, in his trousers and his stockinged feet, and with his
hair all rumpled, and his braces dangling behind, and his
nightshirt creased.

'Well, sir, I have received instructions not to admit the police.'

'The deuce you have!—From whom?'

Coughing behind his hand, leaning forward, he addressed me with an
air which was flatteringly confidential.

'From Mr Lessingham, sir.'

'Possibly Mr Lessingham is not aware that a robbery has been
committed on his premises, that the burglar has just come out of
his drawing-room window with a hop, skip, and a jump, bounded out
of the window like a tennis-ball, flashed round the corner like a
rocket,'

Again Matthews glanced over his shoulder, as if not clear which
way discretion lay, whether fore or aft.

'Thank you, sir. I believe that Mr Lessingham is aware of
something of the kind.' He seemed to come to a sudden resolution,
dropping his voice to a whisper. 'The fact is, sir, that I fancy
Mr Lessingham's a good deal upset.'

'Upset?' I stared at him. There was something in his manner I did
not understand. 'What do you mean by upset? Has the scoundrel
attempted violence?'

'Who's there?'

The voice was Lessingham's, calling to Matthews from the
staircase, though, for an instant, I hardly recognised it, it was
so curiously petulant. Pushing past Matthews, I stepped into the
hall. A young man, I suppose a footman, in the same undress as
Matthews, was holding a candle,—it seemed the only light about
the place. By its glimmer I perceived Lessingham standing half-way
up the stairs. He was in full war paint,—as he is not the sort of
man who dresses for the House, I took it that he had been mixing
pleasure with business.

'It's I, Lessingham,—Atherton. Do you know that a fellow has
jumped out of your drawing-room window?'

It was a second or two before he answered. When he did, his voice
had lost its petulance.

'Has he escaped?'

'Clean,—he's a mile away by now.'

It seemed to me that in his tone, when he spoke again, there was a
note of relief.

'I wondered if he had. Poor fellow! more sinned against than
sinning! Take my advice, Atherton, and keep out of politics. They
bring you into contact with all the lunatics at large. Good night!
I am much obliged to you for knocking us up. Matthews, shut the
door.'

Tolerably cool, on my honour,—a man who brings news big with the
fate of Rome does not expect to receive such treatment. He expects
to be listened to with deference, and to hear all that there is to
hear, and not to be sent to the right-about before he has had a
chance of really opening his lips. Before I knew it—almost!—the
door was shut, and I was on the doorstep. Confound the Apostle's
impudence! next time he might have his house burnt down—and him
in it!—before I took the trouble to touch his dirty knocker.

What did he mean by his allusion to lunatics in politics,—did he
think to fool me? There was more in the business than met the
eye,—and a good deal more than he wished to meet mine,—hence his
insolence. The creature.

What Marjorie Lindon could see in such an opusculum surpassed my
comprehension; especially when there was a man of my sort walking
about, who adored the very ground she trod upon.

All through the night, waking and sleeping, and in my dreams, I
wondered what Marjorie could see in him! In those same dreams I
satisfied myself that she could, and did, see nothing in him, but
everything in me,—oh the comfort! The misfortune was that when I
awoke I knew it was the other way round,—so that it was a sad
awakening. An awakening to thoughts of murder.

So, swallowing a mouthful and a peg, I went into my laboratory to
plan murder—legalised murder—on the biggest scale it ever has
been planned. I was on the track of a weapon which would make war
not only an affair of a single campaign, but of a single half-
hour. It would not want an army to work it either. Once let an
individual, or two or three at most, in possession of my weapon-
that-was-to-be, get within a mile or so of even the largest body
of disciplined troops that ever yet a nation put into the field,
and—pouf!—in about the time it takes you to say that they would
be all dead men. If weapons of precision, which may be relied upon
to slay, are preservers of the peace—and the man is a fool who
says that they are not!—then I was within reach of the finest
preserver of the peace imagination ever yet conceived.

What a sublime thought to think that in the hollow of your own
hand lies the life and death of nations,—and it was almost in
mine.

I had in front of me some of the finest destructive agents you
could wish to light upon—carbon-monoxide, chlorine-trioxide,
mercuric-oxide, conine, potassamide, potassium-carboxide,
cyanogen—when Edwards entered. I was wearing a mask of my own
invention, a thing that covered ears and head and everything,
something like a diver's helmet—I was dealing with gases a sniff
of which meant death; only a few days before, unmasked, I had been
doing some fool's trick with a couple of acids—sulphuric and
cyanide of potassium—when, somehow, my hand slipped, and, before
I knew it, minute portions of them combined. By the mercy of
Providence I fell backwards instead of forwards;—sequel, about an
hour afterwards Edwards found me on the floor, and it took the
remainder of that day, and most of the doctors in town, to bring
me back to life again.

Edwards announced his presence by touching me on the shoulder,—
when I am wearing that mask it isn't always easy to make me hear.

'Someone wishes to see you, sir.'

'Then tell someone that I don't wish to see him.'

Well-trained servant, Edwards,—he walked off with the message as
decorously as you please. And then I thought there was an end,—
but there wasn't.

I was regulating the valve of a cylinder in which I was fusing
some oxides when, once more, someone touched me on the shoulder.
Without turning I took it for granted it was Edwards back again.

'I have only to give a tiny twist to this tap, my good fellow, and
you will be in the land where the bogies bloom. Why will you come
where you're not wanted?' Then I looked round. 'Who the devil are
you?'

For it was not Edwards at all, but quite a different class of
character.

I found myself confronting an individual who might almost have sat
for one of the bogies I had just alluded to. His costume was
reminiscent of the 'Algerians' whom one finds all over France, and
who are the most persistent, insolent and amusing of pedlars. I
remember one who used to haunt the repetitions at the Alcazar at
Tours,—but there! This individual was like the originals, yet
unlike,—he was less gaudy, and a good deal dingier, than his
Gallic prototypes are apt to be. Then he wore a burnoose,—the
yellow, grimy-looking article of the Arab of the Soudan, not the
spick and span Arab of the boulevard. Chief difference of all, his
face was clean shaven,—and whoever saw an Algerian of Paris whose
chiefest glory was not his well-trimmed moustache and beard?

I expected that he would address me in the lingo which these
gentlemen call French,—but he didn't.

'You are Mr Atherton?'

'And you are Mr—Who?—how did you come here? Where's my servant?'

The fellow held up his hand. As he did so, as if in accordance
with a pre-arranged signal, Edwards came into the room looking
excessively startled. I turned to him.

'Is this the person who wished to see me?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Didn't I tell you to say that I didn't wish to see him?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Then why didn't you do as I told you?'