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

“I’m coming to it, aren’t I?⁠—if you’ll let me. If you’ve got no manners I’ll learn you some. One doesn’t like to be hurried at my time of life, young man.”

I was meekly silent;⁠—plainly, if she was to talk, everyone else must listen.

“During the last few days there have been some queer goings on over the road⁠—out of the common queer, I mean, for goodness knows that they always have been queer enough. That Arab party has been flitting about like a creature possessed⁠—I’ve seen him going in and out twenty times a day. This morning⁠—”

She paused⁠—to fix her eyes on Lessingham. She apparently observed his growing interest as she approached the subject which had brought us there⁠—and resented it.

“Don’t look at me like that, young man, because I won’t have it. And as for questions, I may answer questions when I’m done, but don’t you dare to ask me one before, because I won’t be interrupted.”

Up to then Lessingham had not spoken a word⁠—but it seemed as if she was endowed with the faculty of perceiving the huge volume of the words which he had left unuttered.

“This morning⁠—as I’ve said already⁠—” she glanced at Lessingham as if she defied his contradiction⁠—“when that Arab party came home it was just on the stroke of seven. I know what was the exact time because, when I went to the door to the milkman, my clock was striking the half hour, and I always keep it thirty minutes fast. As I was taking the milk, the man said to me, ‘Hollo, Miss Coleman, here’s your friend coming along.’ ‘What friend?’ I says⁠—for I ain’t got no friends, as I know, round here, nor yet, I hope no enemies neither.

“And I looks round, and there was the Arab party coming tearing down the road, his bedcover thing all flying in the wind, and his arms straight out in front of him⁠—I never did see anyone go at such a pace. ‘My goodness,’ I says, ‘I wonder he don’t do himself an injury.’ ‘I wonder someone else don’t do him an injury,’ says the milkman. ‘The very sight of him is enough to make my milk go sour.’ And he picked up his pail and went away quite grumpy⁠—though what that Arab party’s done to him is more than I can say.⁠—I have always noticed that milkman’s temper’s short like his measure. I wasn’t best pleased with him for speaking of that Arab party as my friend, which he never has been, and never won’t be, and never could be neither.

“Five persons went to the house after the milkman was gone, and that there Arab party was safe inside⁠—three of them was commercials, that I know, because afterwards they came to me. But of course they none of them got no chance with that there Arab party except of hammering at his front door, which ain’t what you might call a paying game, nor nice for the temper but for that I don’t blame him, for if once those commercials do begin talking they’ll talk forever.

“Now I’m coming to this afternoon.”

I thought it was about time⁠—though for the life of me, I did not dare to hint as much.

“Well, it might have been three, or it might have been half past, anyhow it was thereabouts, when up there comes two men and a woman, which one of the men was that young man what’s a friend of yours. ‘Oh,’ I says to myself, ‘here’s something new in callers, I wonder what it is they’re wanting.’ That young man what was a friend of yours, he starts hammering, and hammering, as the custom was with everyone who came, and, as usual, no more notice was taken of him than nothing⁠—though I knew that all the time the Arab party was indoors.”

At this point I felt that at all hazards I must interpose a question.

“You are sure he was indoors?”

She took it better than I feared she might.

“Of course I’m sure⁠—hadn’t I seen him come in at seven, and he never hadn’t gone out since, for I don’t believe that I’d taken my eyes off the place not for two minutes together, and I’d never had a sight of him. If he wasn’t indoors, where was he then?”

For the moment, so far as I was concerned, the query was unanswerable. She triumphantly continued:

“Instead of doing what most did, when they’d had enough of hammering, and going away, these three they went round to the back, and I’m blessed if they mustn’t have got through the kitchen window, woman and all, for all of a sudden the blind in the front room was pulled not up, but down⁠—dragged down it was, and there was that young man what’s a friend of yours standing with it in his hand.

“ ‘Well,’ I says to myself, ‘if that ain’t cool I should like to know what is. If, when you ain’t let in, you can let yourself in, and that without so much as saying by your leave, or with your leave, things is coming to a pretty pass. Wherever can that Arab party be, and whatever can he be thinking of, to let them go on like that because that he’s the sort to allow a liberty to be took with him, and say nothing, I don’t believe.’

“Every moment I expects to hear a noise and see a row begin, but, so far as I could make out, all was quiet and there wasn’t nothing of the kind. So I says to myself, ‘There’s more in this than meets the eye, and them three parties must have right upon their side, or they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing in the way they are, there’d be a shindy.’

“Presently, in about five minutes, the front door opens, and a young man⁠—not the one what’s your friend, but the other⁠—comes sailing out, and through the gate, and down the road, as stiff and upright as a grenadier⁠—I never see