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

from this gentleman—’ signifying Atherton—‘that your name’s Robert Holt. I’m an Inspector of police, and I want you to tell me what has brought you into this condition. Has anyone been assaulting you?’

Holt, opening his eyes, glanced up at the speaker mistily, as if he could not see him clearly,—still less understand what it was that he was saying. Sydney, stooping over him, endeavoured to explain.

‘The Inspector wants to know how you got here, has anyone been doing anything to you? Has anyone been hurting you?’

The man’s eyelids were partially closed. Then they opened wider and wider. His mouth opened too. On his skeleton features there came a look of panic fear. He was evidently struggling to speak. At last words came.

‘The beetle!’ He stopped. Then, after an effort, spoke again. ‘The beetle!’

‘What’s he mean?’ asked the Inspector.

‘I think I understand,’ Sydney answered; then turning again to the man in the bed. ‘Yes, I hear what you say,—the beetle. Well, has the beetle done anything to you?’

‘It took me by the throat!’

‘Is that the meaning of the marks upon your neck?’

‘The beetle killed me.’

The lids closed. The man relapsed into a state of lethargy. The Inspector was puzzled;—and said so.

‘What’s he mean about a beetle?’

Atherton replied.

‘I think I understand what he means,—and my friends do too. We’ll explain afterwards. In the meantime I think I’d better get as much out of him as I can,—while there’s time.’

‘Yes,’ said the doctor, his hand upon the patient’s pulse, ‘while there’s time. There isn’t much—only seconds.’

Sydney endeavoured to rouse the man from his stupor.

‘You’ve been with Miss Lindon all the afternoon and evening, haven’t you, Mr Holt?’

Atherton had reached a chord in the man’s consciousness. His lips moved,—in painful articulation.

‘Yes—all the afternoon—and evening—God help me!’

‘I hope God will help you my poor fellow; you’ve been in need of His help if ever man was. Miss Lindon is disguised in your old clothes, isn’t she?’

‘Yes,—in my old clothes. My God!’

‘And where is Miss Lindon now?’

The man had been speaking with his eyes closed. Now he opened them, wide; there came into them the former staring horror. He became possessed by uncontrollable agitation,—half raising himself in bed. Words came from his quivering lips as if they were only drawn from him by the force of his anguish.

‘The beetle’s going to kill Miss Lindon.’

A momentary paroxysm seemed to shake the very foundations of his being. His whole frame quivered. He fell back on to the bed,—ominously. The doctor examined him in silence—while we too were still.

‘This time he’s gone for good, there’ll be no conjuring him back again.’

I felt a sudden pressure on my arm, and found that Lessingham was clutching me with probably unconscious violence. The muscles of his face were twitching. He trembled. I turned to the doctor.

‘Doctor, if there is any of that brandy left will you let me have it for my friend?’

Lessingham disposed of the remainder of the ‘shillings worth.’ I rather fancy it saved us from a scene.

The Inspector was speaking to the woman of the house.

‘Now, Mrs Henderson, perhaps you’ll tell us what all this means. Who is this man, and how did he come in here, and who came in with him, and what do you know about it altogether? If you’ve got anything to say, say it, only you’d better be careful, because it’s my duty to warn you that anything you do say may be used against you.’

CHAPTER XLV.
ALL THAT MRS ’ENDERSON KNEW

Mrs Henderson put her hands under her apron and smirked.

‘Well, Mr Phillips, it do sound strange to ’ear you talkin’ to me like that. Anybody’d think I’d done something as I didn’t ought to ’a’ done to ’ear you going on. As for what’s ’appened, I’ll tell you all I know with the greatest willingness on earth. And as for bein’ careful, there ain’t no call for you to tell me to be that, for that I always am, as by now you ought to know.’

‘Yes,—I do know. Is that all you have to say?’

‘Rilly, Mr Phillips, what a man you are for catching people up, you rilly are. O’ course that ain’t all I’ve got to say,—ain’t I just a-comin’ to it?’

‘Then come.’

‘If you presses me so you’ll muddle of me up, and then if I do ’appen to make a herror, you’ll say I’m a liar, when goodness knows there ain’t no more truthful woman not in Limehouse.’

Words plainly trembled on the Inspector’s lips,—which he refrained from uttering. Mrs Henderson cast her eyes upwards, as if she sought for inspiration from the filthy ceiling.

‘So far as I can swear it might ’ave been a hour ago, or it might ’ave been a hour and a quarter, or it might ’ave been a hour and twenty minutes—’

‘We’re not particular as to the seconds.’

‘When I ’ears a knockin’ at my front door, and when I comes to open it, there was a Harab party, with a great bundle on ’is ’ead, bigger nor ’isself, and two other parties along with him. This Harab party says, in that queer foreign way them Harab parties ’as of talkin’, “A room for the night, a room.” Now I don’t much care for foreigners, and never did, especially them Harabs, which their ’abits ain’t my own,—so I as much ’ints the same. But this ’ere Harab party, he didn’t seem to quite foller of my meaning, for all he done was to say as he said afore, “A room for the night, a room.” And he shoves a couple of ’arf crowns into my ’and. Now it’s always been a motter o’ mine, that money is money, and one man’s money is as good as another man’s. So, not wishing to be disagreeable—which other people would have taken ’em if I ’adn’t, I shows ’em up ’ere. I’d been downstairs it might ’ave been ’arf a hour, when I ’ears a shindy a-coming from this room—’

‘What sort of a shindy?’

‘Yelling and shrieking—oh my gracious, it was enough to set your blood all curdled,—for ear-piercingness I never did ’ear nothing like it. We do ’ave troublesome parties in ’ere, like they do elsewhere, but I never did ’ear nothing like that before. I stood it for about a minute, but it kep’ on, and kep’ on, and every moment I expected as the other parties as was in the ’ouse would be complainin’, so up I comes and I thumps at the door, and it seemed that thump I might for all the notice that was took of me.’

‘Did the noise keep on?’

‘Keep on! I should think it did keep on! Lord love you! shriek after shriek, I expected to see the roof took off.’

‘Were there any other noises? For instance, were there any sounds of struggling, or of blows?’

‘There weren’t no sounds except of the party hollering.’

‘One party only?’

‘One party only. As I says afore, shriek after shriek,—when you put your ear to the panel there was a noise like some other party blubbering, but that weren’t nothing, as for the hollering you wouldn’t have thought that nothing what you might call ’umin could ’ave kep’ up such a screechin’. I thumps and thumps and at last when I did think that I should ’ave to ’ave the door broke down, the Harab says to me from inside, “Go away! I pay for the room! go away!” I did think that pretty good, I tell you that. So I says, “Pay for the room or not pay for the room, you didn’t pay to make that shindy!” And what’s more I says, “If I ’ear it again,” I says, “out you goes! And if you don’t go quiet I’ll ’ave somebody in as’ll pretty quickly make you!”’

‘Then was there silence?’

‘So to speak there was,—only there was this sound as if some party was a-blubbering, and another sound as if a party was a-panting for his breath.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘Seeing that, so to speak, all was quiet, down I went again. And in another quarter of a hour, or it might ’ave been twenty minutes, I went to the front door to get a mouthful of hair. And Mrs Barker, what lives over the road, at No. 24, she comes to me and says, “That there Arab party of yours didn’t stop long.” I looks at ’er, “I don’t quite foller you,” I says,—which I didn’t. “I saw him come in,” she says, “and then, a few minutes back, I see ’im go again, with a great bundle on ’is ’ead he couldn’t ’ardly stagger under!” “Oh,” I says, “that’s news to me, I didn’t know ’e’d gone, nor see him neither—” which I didn’t. So, up I comes again, and, sure enough, the door was open, and it seems to me that the room was empty, till I come upon this pore young man what was lying be’ind the bed.’

There was a growl from the doctor.

‘If you’d had any sense, and sent for me at once, he might have been alive at this moment.’

‘’Ow was I to know that, Dr Glossop? I couldn’t tell. My finding ’im there murdered was quite enough for me. So I runs downstairs, and I nips ’old of ’Gustus Barley, what was leaning against the wall, and I says to him, “’Gustus Barley, run to the station as fast as you can and tell ’em that a man’s been murdered,—that Harab’s been and killed a bloke.” And that’s all I know about it, and I couldn’t tell you no more, Mr Phillips, not if you was to keep on asking me questions not for hours and hours.’

‘Then you think it was this man’—with a motion towards the bed—‘who was shrieking?’

‘To tell you the truth, Mr Phillips, about that I don’t ’ardly know what to think. If you ’ad asked me I should ’ave said it was a woman. I ought to know a woman’s holler when I ’ear it, if any one does, I’ve ’eard enough of ’em in my time, goodness knows. And I should ’ave said that only a woman could ’ave hollered like that and only ’er when she was raving mad. But there weren’t no woman with him. There was only this man what’s murdered, and the other man,—and as for the other man I will say this, that ’e ’adn’t got twopennyworth of clothes to cover ’im. But, Mr Phillips, howsomever that may be, that’s the last Harab I’ll ’ave under my roof, no matter what they pays, and you may mark my words I’ll ’ave no more.’

Mrs Henderson, once more glancing upward, as if she imagined herself to have made some declaration of a religious nature, shook her head with much solemnity.

CHAPTER XLVI.
THE SUDDEN STOPPING

As we were leaving the house a constable gave the Inspector a note. Having read it he passed it to me. It was from the local office.

‘Message received that an Arab with a big bundle on his head has been noticed loitering about the neighbourhood of St Pancras Station. He seemed to be accompanied by a young man who had the appearance of a tramp. Young man seemed ill. They appeared to be waiting for a train, probably to the North. Shall I advise detention?’

I scribbled on the flyleaf of the note.

‘Have them detained. If they have gone by train have a special in readiness.’

In a minute we were again in the cab. I endeavoured to persuade Lessingham and Atherton to allow me to conduct the pursuit alone,—in vain. I had no fear of Atherton’s succumbing, but I was afraid for Lessingham. What was more almost than the expectation of his collapse was the fact that his looks and manner, his whole bearing, so eloquent of the agony and agitation of his mind, was beginning to tell upon my nerves. A catastrophe of some sort I foresaw. Of the curtain’s fall upon one tragedy we had just been witnesses. That there was worse—much worse, to follow I did not doubt. Optimistic anticipations were out of the question,—that the creature we were chasing would relinquish the prey uninjured, no one, after what we had seen and heard, could by any possibility suppose. Should a necessity suddenly arise for prompt and immediate action, that Lessingham would prove a hindrance rather than a help I felt persuaded.

But since moments were precious, and Lessingham was not to be persuaded to allow the matter to proceed without him, all that remained was to make the best of his presence.

The great arch of St Pancras was in darkness. An occasional light seemed to make the darkness still more visible. The station seemed deserted. I thought, at first, that there was not a soul about the place, that our errand was in vain, that the only thing for us