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

behalf, and, so far as their power of doing mischief went, his big words proved empty windbags, or Marjorie would have to be warned that there was at least one passage in her suitor’s life, into which, ere it was too late, it was advisable that inquiry should be made. To allow Marjorie to irrevocably link her fate with the Apostle’s, without being first of all made aware that he was, to all intents and purposes, a haunted man⁠—that was not to be thought of.

“You employ large phrases.”

My words cooled the other’s heated blood. Once more his eyes were cast down, his hands crossed upon his breast.

“I crave my lord’s pardon. My wound is ever new.”

“By the way, what was the secret history, this morning, of that little incident of the cockroach?”

He glanced up quickly.

“Cockroach?⁠—I know not what you say.”

“Well⁠—was it beetle, then?”

“Beetle!”

He seemed, all at once, to have lost his voice⁠—the word was gasped.

“After you went we found, upon a sheet of paper, a capitally executed drawing of a beetle, which, I fancy, you must have left behind you⁠—Scaraboeus sacer, wasn’t it?”

“I know not what you talk of.”

“Its discovery seemed to have quite a singular effect on Mr. Lessingham. Now, why was that?”

“I know nothing.”

“Oh yes you do⁠—and, before you go, I mean to know something too.”

The man was trembling, looking this way and that, showing signs of marked discomfiture. That there was something about that ancient scarab, which figures so largely in the still unravelled tangles of the Egyptian mythologies, and the effect which the mere sight of its cartouche⁠—for the drawing had resembled something of the kind⁠—had had on such a seasoned vessel as Paul Lessingham, which might be well worth my finding out, I felt convinced⁠—the man’s demeanour, on my recurring to the matter, told its own plain tale. I made up my mind, if possible, to probe the business to the bottom, then and there.

“Listen to me, my friend. I am a plain man, and I use plain speech⁠—it’s a kind of hobby I have. You will give me the information I require, and that at once, or I will pit my magic against yours⁠—in which case I think it extremely probable that you will come off worst from the encounter.”

I reached out for the lever, and the exhibition of electricity recommenced. Immediately his tremors were redoubled.

“My lord, I know not of what you talk.”

“None of your lies for me.⁠—Tell me why, at the sight of the thing on that sheet of paper, Paul Lessingham went green and yellow.”

“Ask him, my lord.”

“Probably, later on, that is what I shall do. In the meantime, I am asking you. Answer⁠—or look out for squalls.”

The electrical exhibition was going on. He was glaring at it as if he wished that it would stop. As if ashamed of his cowardice, plainly, on a sudden, he made a desperate effort to get the better of his fears⁠—and succeeded better than I had expected or desired. He drew himself up with what, in him, amounted to an air of dignity.

“I am a child of Isis!”

It struck me that he made this remark, not so much to impress me, as with a view of elevating his own low spirits.

“Are you?⁠—Then, in that case, I regret that I am unable to congratulate the lady on her offspring.”

When I said that, a ring came into his voice which I had not heard before.

“Silence!⁠—You know not of what you speak!⁠—I warn you, as I warned Paul Lessingham, be careful not to go too far. Be not like him⁠—heed my warning.”

“What is it I am being warned against⁠—the beetle?”

“Yes⁠—the beetle!”

Were I upon oath, and this statement being made, in the presence of witnesses, say, in a solicitor’s office, I standing in fear of pains and penalties, I think that, at this point, I should leave the paper blank. No man likes to own himself a fool, or that he ever was a fool⁠—and ever since I have been wondering whether, on that occasion, that “child of Isis” did, or did not, play the fool with me. His performance was realistic enough at the time, heaven knows. But, as it gets farther and farther away, I ask myself, more and more confidently, as time effluxes, whether, after all, it was not clever juggling⁠—superhumanly clever juggling, if you will; that, and nothing more. If it was something more, then, with a vengeance! there is more in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in our philosophy. The mere possibility opens vistas which the sane mind fears to contemplate.

Since, then, I am not on oath, and, should I fall short of verbal accuracy, I do not need to fear the engines of the law, what seemed to happen was this.

He was standing within about ten feet of where I leaned against the edge of the table. The light was full on, so that it was difficult to suppose that I could make a mistake as to what took place in front of me. As he replied to my mocking allusion to the beetle by echoing my own words, he vanished⁠—or, rather, I saw him taking a different shape before my eyes. His loose draperies all fell off him, and, as they were in the very act of falling, there issued, or there seemed to issue out of them, a monstrous creature of the beetle type⁠—the man himself was gone. On the point of size I wish to make myself clear. My impression, when I saw it first, was that it was as large as the man had been, and that it was, in some way, standing up on end, the legs towards me. But, the moment it came in view, it began to dwindle, and that so rapidly that, in a couple of seconds at most, a little heap of drapery was lying on the floor, on which was a truly astonishing example of the coleoptera. It appeared to be a beetle. It was, perhaps, six or seven inches