The Beetle, Richard Marsh [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

“If you’ll believe me, no more notice was taken of me than if I was one of the dead. I hammers, and I hammers, till my wrist was aching, I daresay I hammered twenty times⁠—and then I went round to the back door, and I hammers at that⁠—but it wasn’t the least good in the world. I was that provoked to think I should be treated as if I was nothing and nobody, by a dirty foreigner, who went about in a bed-gown through the public streets, that it was all I could do to hold myself.

“I comes round to the front again, and I starts hammering at the window, with every knuckle on my hands, and I calls out, ‘I’m Miss Louisa Coleman, and I’m the owner of this house, and you can’t deceive me⁠—I saw you come in, and you’re in now, and if you don’t come and speak to me this moment I’ll have the police.’

“All of a sudden, when I was least expecting it, and was hammering my very hardest at the pane, up goes the blind, and up goes the window too, and the most awful-looking creature ever I heard of, not to mention seeing, puts his head right into my face⁠—he was more like a hideous baboon than anything else, let alone a man. I was struck all of a heap, and plumps down on the little wall, and all but tumbles head over heels backwards, And he starts shrieking, in a sort of a kind of English, and in such a voice as I’d never heard the like⁠—it was like a rusty steam engine.

“ ‘Go away! go away! I don’t want you! I will not have you⁠—never! You have your fifty pounds⁠—you have your money⁠—that is the whole of you⁠—that is all you want! You come to me no more!⁠—never!⁠—never no more!⁠—or you be sorry!⁠—Go away!’

“I did go away, and that as fast as ever my legs would carry me⁠—what with his looks, and what with his voice, and what with the way that he went on, I was nothing but a mass of trembling. As for answering him back, or giving him a piece of my mind, as I had meant to, I wouldn’t have done it not for a thousand pounds. I don’t mind confessing, between you and me, that I had to swallow four cups of tea, right straight away, before my nerves was steady.

“ ‘Well,’ I says to myself, when I did feel, as it might be, a little more easy, ‘you never have let that house before, and now you’ve let it with a vengeance⁠—so you have. If that there new tenant of yours isn’t the greatest villain that ever went unhung it must be because he’s got near relations what’s as bad as himself⁠—because two families like his I’m sure there can’t be. A nice sort of Arab party to have sleeping over the road he is!’

“But after a time I cools down, as it were⁠—because I’m one of them sort as likes to see on both sides of a question. ‘After all,’ I says to myself, ‘he has paid his rent, and fifty pounds is fifty pounds⁠—I doubt if the whole house is worth much more, and he can’t do much damage to it whatever he does.’

“I shouldn’t have minded, so far as that went, if he’d set fire to the place, for, between ourselves, it’s insured for a good bit over its value. So I decided that I’d let things be as they were, and see how they went on. But from that hour to this I’ve never spoken to the man, and never wanted to, and wouldn’t, not of my own free will, not for a shilling a time⁠—that face of his will haunt me if I live till Noah, as the saying is. I’ve seen him going in and out at all hours of the day and night⁠—that Arab party’s a mystery if ever there was one⁠—he always goes tearing along as if he’s flying for his life. Lots of people have come to the house, all sorts and kinds, men and women⁠—they’ve been mostly women, and even little children. I’ve seen them hammer and hammer at that front door, but never a one have I seen let in⁠—or yet seen taken any notice of, and I think I may say, and yet tell no lie, that I’ve scarcely took my eye off the house since he’s been inside it, over and over again in the middle of the night have I got up to have a look, so that I’ve not missed much that has took place.

“What’s puzzled me is the noises that’s come from the house. Sometimes for days together there’s not been a sound, it might have been a house of the dead; and then, all through the night, there’ve been yells and screeches, squawks and screams⁠—I never heard nothing like it. I have thought, and more than once, that the devil himself must be in that front room, let alone all the rest of his demons. And as for cats!⁠—where they’ve come from I can’t think. I didn’t use to notice hardly a cat in the neighbourhood till that there Arab party came⁠—there isn’t much to attract them; but since he came there’s been regiments. Sometimes at night there’s been troops about the place, screeching like mad⁠—I’ve wished them farther, I can tell you. That Arab party must be fond of ’em. I’ve seen them inside the house, at the windows, upstairs and downstairs, as it seemed to me, a dozen at a time.

As Miss Coleman had paused, as if her narrative was approaching a conclusion, I judged it expedient to make an attempt to bring the record as quickly as possible up to date.

“I take it, Miss Coleman, that you have observed what has occurred in the house today.”

She tightened her nutcracker jaws and glared at me disdainfully⁠—her