The Beetle: A Mystery, Richard Marsh [chromebook ebook reader .TXT] 📗

during the next few days, you will do me a service.’

We had clambered back into the hansom, the driver was just about to start, when the constable was struck by a sudden thought.

‘One moment, sir,—blessed if I wasn’t going to forget the most important bit of all. I did hear him tell Ellis where to drive him to,—he kept saying it over and over again, in that queer lingo of his. “Waterloo Railway Station, Waterloo Railway Station.” “All right,” said Ellis, “I’ll drive you to Waterloo Railway Station right enough, only I’m not going to have that bundle of yours inside my cab. There isn’t room for it, so you put it on the roof.” “To Waterloo Railway Station,” said the Arab, “I take my bundle with me to Waterloo Railway Station,—I take it with me.” “Who says you don’t take it with you?” said Ellis. “You can take it, and twenty more besides, for all I care, only you don’t take it inside my cab,—put it on the roof.” “I take it with me to Waterloo Railway Station,” said the Arab, and there they were, wrangling and jangling, and neither seeming to be able to make out what the other was after, and the people all laughing.’

‘Waterloo Railway Station,—you are sure that was what he said?’

‘I’ll take my oath to it, because I said to myself, when I heard it, “I wonder what you’ll have to pay for that little lot, for the District Railway Station’s outside the four-mile radius.”’

As we drove off I was inclined to ask myself, a little bitterly—and perhaps unjustly—if it were not characteristic of the average London policeman to almost forget the most important part of his information,—at any rate to leave it to the last and only to bring it to the front on having his palm crossed with silver.

As the hansom bowled along we three had what occasionally approached a warm discussion.

‘Marjorie was in that bundle,’ began Lessingham, in the most lugubrious of tones, and with the most woebegone of faces.

‘I doubt it,’ I observed.

‘She was,—I feel it,—I know it. She was either dead and mutilated, or gagged and drugged and helpless. All that remains is vengeance.’

‘I repeat that I doubt it.’

Atherton struck in.

‘I am bound to say, with the best will in the world to think otherwise, that I agree with Lessingham.’

‘You are wrong.’

‘It’s all very well for you to talk in that cocksure way, but it’s easier for you to say I’m wrong than to prove it. If I am wrong, and if Lessingham’s wrong, how do you explain his extraordinary insistance on taking it inside the cab with him, which the bobby describes? If there wasn’t something horrible, awful in that bundle of his, of which he feared the discovery, why was he so reluctant to have it placed upon the roof?’

‘There probably was something in it which he was particularly anxious should not be discovered, but I doubt if it was anything of the kind which you suggest.’

‘Here is Marjorie in a house alone—nothing has been seen of her since,—her clothing, her hair, is found hidden away under the floor. This scoundrel sallies forth with a huge bundle on his head,—the bobby speaks of it being five or six feet long, or longer,—a bundle which he regards with so much solicitude that he insists on never allowing it to go, for a single instant, out of his sight and reach. What is in the thing? don’t all the facts most unfortunately point in one direction?’

Mr Lessingham covered his face with his hands, and groaned.

‘I fear that Mr Atherton is right.’

‘I differ from you both.’

Sydney at once became heated.

‘Then perhaps you can tell us what was in the bundle?’

‘I fancy I could make a guess at the contents.’

‘Oh you could, could you, then, perhaps, for our sakes, you’ll make it,—and not play the oracular owl!—Lessingham and I are interested in this business, after all.’

‘It contained the bearer’s personal property: that, and nothing more. Stay! before you jeer at me, suffer me to finish. If I am not mistaken as to the identity of the person whom the constable describes as the Arab, I apprehend that the contents of that bundle were of much more importance to him than if they had consisted of Miss Lindon, either dead or living. More. I am inclined to suspect that if the bundle was placed on the roof of the cab, and if the driver did meddle with it, and did find out the contents, and understand them, he would have been driven, out of hand, stark staring mad.’

Sydney was silent, as if he reflected. I imagine he perceived there was something in what I said.

‘But what has become of Miss Lindon?’

‘I fancy that Miss Lindon, at this moment, is—somewhere; I don’t, just now, know exactly where, but I hope very shortly to be able to give you a clearer notion,—attired in a rotten, dirty pair of boots; a filthy, tattered pair of trousers; a ragged, unwashed apology for a shirt; a greasy, ancient, shapeless coat; and a frowsy peaked cloth cap.’

They stared at me, opened-eyed. Atherton was the first to speak.

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘I mean that it seems to me that the facts point in the direction of my conclusions rather than yours—and that very strongly too. Miss Coleman asserts that she saw Miss London return into the house; that within a few minutes the blind was replaced at the front window; and that shortly after a young man, attired in the costume I have described, came walking out of the front door. I believe that young man was Miss Marjorie Lindon.’

Lessingham and Atherton both broke out into interrogations, with Sydney, as usual, loudest.

‘But—man alive! what on earth should make her do a thing like that? Marjorie, the most retiring, modest girl on all God’s earth, walk about in broad daylight, in such a costume, and for no reason at all! my dear Champnell, you are suggesting that she first of all went mad.’

‘She was in a state of trance.’

‘Good God!—Champnell!’

‘Well?’

‘Then you think that—juggling villain did get hold of her?’

‘Undoubtedly. Here is my view of the case, mind it is only a hypothesis and you must take it for what it is worth. It seems to me quite clear that the Arab, as we will call the person for the sake of identification, was somewhere about the premises when you thought he wasn’t.’

‘But—where? We looked upstairs, and downstairs, and everywhere—where could he have been?’

‘That, as at present advised, I am not prepared to say, but I think you may take it for granted that he was there. He hypnotised the man Holt, and sent him away, intending you to go after him, and so being rid of you both—’

‘The deuce he did, Champnell! You write me down an ass!’

‘As soon as the coast was clear he discovered himself to Miss Lindon, who, I expect, was disagreeably surprised, and hypnotised her.’

‘The hound!’

‘The devil!’

The first exclamation was Lessingham’s, the second Sydney’s.

‘He then constrained her to strip herself to the skin—’

‘The wretch!’

‘The fiend!’

‘He cut off her hair; he hid it and her clothes under the floor where we found them—where I think it probable that he had already some ancient masculine garments concealed—’

‘By Jove! I shouldn’t be surprised if they were Holt’s. I remember the man saying that that nice joker stripped him of his duds,—and certainly when I saw him,—and when Marjorie found him!—he had absolutely nothing on but a queer sort of cloak. Can it be possible that that humorous professor of hankey-pankey—may all the maledictions of the accursed alight upon his head!—can have sent Marjorie Lindon, the daintiest damsel in the land!—into the streets of London rigged out in Holt’s old togs!’

‘As to that, I am not able to give an authoritative opinion, but, if I understand you aright, it at least is possible. Anyhow I am disposed to think that he sent Miss Lindon after the man Holt, taking it for granted that he had eluded you.—’

‘That’s it. Write me down an ass again!’

‘That he did elude you, you have yourself admitted.’

‘That’s because I stopped talking with that mutton-headed bobby,—I’d have followed the man to the ends of the earth if it hadn’t been for that.’

‘Precisely; the reason is immaterial, it is the fact with which we are immediately concerned. He did elude you. And I think you will find that Miss Lindon and Mr Holt are together at this moment.’

‘In men’s clothing?’

‘Both in men’s clothing, or, rather, Miss Lindon is in a man’s rags.’

‘Great Potiphar! To think of Marjorie like that!’

‘And where they are, the Arab is not very far off either.’

Lessingham caught me by the arm.

‘And what diabolical mischief do you imagine that he proposes to do to her?’

I shirked the question.

‘Whatever it is, it is our business to prevent his doing it.’

‘And where do you think they have been taken?’

‘That it will be our immediate business to endeavour to discover,—and here, at any rate, we are at Waterloo.’

CHAPTER XLII.
THE QUARRY DOUBLES

I turned towards the booking-office on the main departure platform. As I went, the chief platform inspector, George Bellingham, with whom I had some acquaintance, came out of his office. I stopped him.

‘Mr Bellingham, will you be so good as to step with me to the booking-office, and instruct the clerk in charge to answer one or two questions which I wish to put to him. I will explain to you afterwards what is their exact import, but you know me sufficiently to be able to believe me when I say that they refer to a matter in which every moment is of the first importance.’

He turned and accompanied us into the interior of the booking-case.

‘To which of the clerks, Mr Champnell, do you wish to put your questions?’

‘To the one who issues third-class tickets to Southampton.’

Bellingham beckoned to a man who was counting a heap of money, and apparently seeking to make it tally with the entries in a huge ledger which lay open before him,—he was a short, slightly-built young fellow, with a pleasant face and smiling eyes.

‘Mr Stone, this gentleman wishes to ask you one or two questions.’

‘I am at his service.’

I put my questions.

‘I want to know, Mr Stone, if, in the course of the day, you have issued any tickets to a person dressed in Arab costume?’

His reply was prompt.

‘I have—by the last train, the 7.25,—three singles.’

Three singles! Then my instinct had told me rightly.

‘Can you describe the person?’

Mr Stone’s eyes twinkled.

‘I don’t know that I can, except in a general way,—he was uncommonly old and uncommonly ugly, and he had a pair of the most extraordinary eyes I ever saw,—they gave me a sort of all-overish feeling when I saw them glaring at me through the pigeon hole. But I can tell you one thing about him, he had a great bundle on his head, which he steadied with one hand, and as it bulged out in all directions it’s presence didn’t make him popular with other people who wanted tickets too.’

Undoubtedly this was our man.

‘You are sure he asked for three tickets?’

‘Certain. He said three tickets to Southampton; laid down the exact fare,—nineteen and six—and held up three fingers—like that. Three nasty looking fingers they were, with nails as long as talons.’

‘You didn’t see who were his companions?’

‘I didn’t,—I didn’t try to look. I gave him his tickets and off he went,—with the people grumbling at him because that bundle of his kept getting in their way.’

Bellingham touched me on the arm.

‘I can tell you about the Arab of whom Mr Stone speaks. My attention was called to him by his insisting on taking his bundle with him into the carriage,—it was an enormous thing, he could hardly squeeze it through the door; it occupied the entire seat. But as there weren’t as many passengers as usual, and he wouldn’t or couldn’t be made to understand that his precious bundle would be safe in the luggage van along with the rest of the luggage, and as he wasn’t the sort of person you could argue with to any advantage, I had him put into an empty compartment, bundle and all.’

‘Was he alone then?’

‘I thought so at the time, he said nothing about having more than one ticket, or any companions, but just before the train started two other men—English men—got into his compartment; and as I came down the platform, the ticket inspector at the barrier informed me that these two men were with him, because he held tickets for the three, which, as he was a foreigner, and they seemed English, struck the inspector as odd.’

‘Could you describe the two men?’

‘I couldn’t, not particularly, but the man who had charge