The Beetle - Richard Marsh (top romance novels txt) 📗

an opusculum surpassed my comprehension; especially when there was a man of my sort walking about, who adored the very ground she trod upon. XII A Morning Visitor

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 répétitions 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 Sudan, 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 prearranged 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?”

“I did, sir.”

“Then how comes he here?”

“Really, sir,”⁠—Edwards put his hand up to his head as if he was half asleep⁠—“I don’t quite know.”

“What do you mean by you don’t know? Why didn’t you stop him?”

“I think, sir, that I must have had a touch of sudden faintness, because I tried to put out my hand to stop him, and⁠—I couldn’t.”

“You’re an idiot.⁠—Go!” And he went. I turned to the stranger. “Pray, sir, are you a magician?”

He replied to my question with another.

“You, Mr. Atherton⁠—are you also a magician?”

He was staring at my mask with an evident lack of comprehension.

“I wear this because, in this place, death lurks in so many subtle forms, that, without it, I dare not breathe,” He inclined his head⁠—though I doubt if he understood. “Be so good as to tell me, briefly, what it is you wish with me.”

He slipped his hand into the folds of his burnoose, and, taking out a slip of paper, laid it on the shelf by which we were standing. I glanced at it, expecting to find on it a petition, or a testimonial, or a true statement of his sad case; instead it contained two words only⁠—“Marjorie Lindon.” The unlooked-for sight of that well-loved name brought the blood into my cheeks.

“You come from Miss Lindon?” He narrowed his shoulders, brought