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

I returned to Sydney’s shoulder to tell the cabman so.

“There is no place in which anyone could hide, and there is no one in either of the rooms⁠—you must have been mistaken, driver.”

The man waxed wroth.

“Don’t tell me! How could I come to think I saw something when I didn’t?”

“One’s eyes are apt to play us tricks;⁠—how could you see what wasn’t there?”

“That’s what I want to know. As I drove up, before you told me to stop, I saw him looking through the window⁠—the one at which you are. He’d got his nose glued to the broken pane, and was staring as hard as he could stare. When I pulled up, off he started⁠—I saw him get up off his knees, and go to the back of the room. When the gentleman took to knocking, back he came⁠—to the same old spot, and flopped down on his knees. I didn’t know what caper you was up to⁠—you might be bum bailiffs for all I knew!⁠—and I supposed that he wasn’t so anxious to let you in as you might be to get inside, and that was why he didn’t take no notice of your knocking, while all the while he kept a eye on what was going on. When you goes round to the back, up he gets again, and I reckoned that he was going to meet yer, and perhaps give yer a bit of his mind, and that presently I should hear a shindy, or that something would happen. But when you pulls up the blind downstairs, to my surprise back he come once more. He shoves his old nose right through the smash in the pane, and wags his old head at me like a chattering magpie. That didn’t seem to me quite the civil thing to do⁠—I hadn’t done no harm to him; so I gives you the office, and lets you know that he was there. But for you to say that he wasn’t there, and never had been⁠—blimey! that cops the biscuit. If he wasn’t there, all I can say is I ain’t here, and my ’orse ain’t here, and my cab ain’t neither⁠—damn it!⁠—the house ain’t here, and nothing ain’t!”

He settled himself on his perch with an air of the most extreme ill usage⁠—he had been standing up to tell his tale. That the man was serious was unmistakable. As he himself suggested, what inducement could he have had to tell a lie like that? That he believed himself to have seen what he declared he saw was plain. But, on the other hand, what could have become⁠—in the space of fifty seconds!⁠—of his “old gent”?

Atherton put a question.

“What did he look like⁠—this old gent of yours?”

“Well, that I shouldn’t hardly like to say. It wasn’t much of his face I could see, only his face and his eyes⁠—and they wasn’t pretty. He kept a thing over his head all the time, as if he didn’t want too much to be seen.”

“What sort of a thing?”

“Why⁠—one of them cloak sort of things, like them Arab blokes used to wear what used to be at Earl’s Court Exhibition⁠—you know!”

This piece of information seemed to interest my companions more than anything he had said before.

“A burnoose do you mean?”

“How am I to know what the thing’s called? I ain’t up in foreign languages⁠—’tain’t likely! All I know that them Arab blokes what was at Earl’s Court used to walk about in them all over the place⁠—sometimes they wore them over their heads, and sometimes they didn’t. In fact if you’d asked me, instead of trying to make out as I sees double, or things what was only inside my own noddle, or something or other, I should have said this here old gent what I’ve been telling you about was a Arab bloke⁠—when he gets off his knees to sneak away from the window, I could see that he had his cloak thing, what was over his head, wrapped all round him.”

Mr. Lessingham turned to me, all quivering with excitement.

“I believe that what he says is true!”

“Then where can this mysterious old gentleman have got to⁠—can you suggest an explanation? It is strange, to say the least of it, that the cabman should be the only person to see or hear anything of him.”

“Some devil’s trick has been played⁠—I know it, I feel it!⁠—my instinct tells me so!”

I stared. In such a matter one hardly expects a man of Paul Lessingham’s stamp to talk of “instinct.” Atherton stared too. Then, on a sudden, he burst out,

“By the Lord, I believe the Apostle’s right⁠—the whole place reeks to me of hankey-pankey⁠—it did as soon as I put my nose inside. In matters of prestidigitation, Champnell, we Westerns are among the rudiments⁠—we’ve everything to learn⁠—Orientals leave us at the post. If their civilisation’s what we’re pleased to call extinct, their conjuring⁠—when you get to know it!⁠—is all alive oh!”

He moved towards the door. As he went he slipped, or seemed to, all but stumbling on to his knees.

“Something tripped me up⁠—what’s this?” He was stamping on the floor with his foot. “Here’s a board loose. Come and lend me a hand, one of you fellows, to get it up. Who knows what mystery’s beneath?”

I went to his aid. As he said, a board in the floor was loose. His stepping on it unawares had caused his stumble. Together we prised it out of its place⁠—Lessingham standing by and watching us the while. Having removed it, we peered into the cavity it disclosed.

There was something there.

“Why,” cried Atherton, “it’s a woman’s clothing!”

It was a woman’s clothing, beyond a doubt, all thrown in anyhow⁠—as if the person who had placed it there had been in a desperate hurry. An entire outfit was there, shoes, stockings, body linen, corsets, and all⁠—even to hat, gloves, and hairpins;⁠—these latter were mixed up with the rest of the garments in strange confusion.