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

The cabman is of opinion that both the Englishmen were of weak intellect. We were of the same impression here. They said nothing, except at the seeming instigation of the Arab, but when spoken to stared and gaped like lunatics.

“It may be mentioned that the Arab had with him an enormous bundle, which he persisted, in spite of all remonstrances, on taking with him inside the cab.”

As soon as I had mastered the contents of the report, and perceived what I believed to be⁠—unknown to the writer himself⁠—its hideous inner meaning, I turned to Bellingham.

“With your permission, Mr. Bellingham, I will keep this communication⁠—it will be safe in my hands, you will be able to get a copy, and it may be necessary that I should have the original to show to the police. If any inquiries are made for me from Scotland Yard, tell them that I have gone to the Commercial Road, and that I will report my movements from Limehouse Police Station.”

In another minute we were once more traversing the streets of London⁠—three in a hansom cab.

XLIII The Murder at Mrs. ’Enderson’s

It is something of a drive from Waterloo to Limehouse⁠—it seems longer when all your nerves are tingling with anxiety to reach your journey’s end; and the cab I had hit upon proved to be not the fastest I might have chosen. For some time after our start, we were silent. Each was occupied with his own thoughts.

Then Lessingham, who was sitting at my side, said to me,

“Mr. Champnell, you have that report.”

“I have.”

“Will you let me see it once more?”

I gave it to him. He read it once, twice⁠—and I fancy yet again. I purposely avoided looking at him as he did so. Yet all the while I was conscious of his pallid cheeks, the twitched muscles of his mouth, the feverish glitter of his eyes⁠—this Leader of Men, whose predominate characteristic in the House of Commons was immobility, was rapidly approximating to the condition of a hysterical woman. The mental strain which he had been recently undergoing was proving too much for his physical strength. This disappearance of the woman he loved bade fair to be the final straw. I felt convinced that unless something was done quickly to relieve the strain upon his mind he was nearer to a state of complete mental and moral collapse than he himself imagined. Had he been under my orders I should have commanded him to at once return home, and not to think; but conscious that, as things were, such a direction would be simply futile, I decided to do something else instead. Feeling that suspense was for him the worst possible form of suffering I resolved to explain, so far as I was able, precisely what it was I feared, and how I proposed to prevent it.

Presently there came the question for which I had been waiting, in a harsh, broken voice which no one who had heard him speak on a public platform, or in the House of Commons, would have recognised as his.

“Mr. Champnell⁠—who do you think this person is of whom the report from Vauxhall Station speaks as being all in rags and tatters?”

He knew perfectly well⁠—but I understood the mental attitude which induced him to prefer that the information should seem to come from me.

“I hope that it will prove to be Miss Lindon.”

“Hope!” He gave a sort of gasp.

“Yes, hope⁠—because if it is I think it possible, nay probable, that within a few hours you will have her again enfolded in your arms.”

“Pray God that it may be so! pray God!⁠—pray the good God!”

I did not dare to look round for, from the tremor which was in his tone, I was persuaded that in the speaker’s eyes were tears. Atherton continued silent. He was leaning half out of the cab, staring straight ahead, as if he saw in front a young girl’s face, from which he could not remove his glance, and which beckoned him on.

After a while Lessingham spoke again, as if half to himself and half to me.

“This mention of the shrieks on the railway, and of the wailing noise in the cab⁠—what must this wretch have done to her? How my darling must have suffered!”

That was a theme on which I myself scarcely ventured to allow my thoughts to rest. The notion of a gently-nurtured girl being at the mercy of that fiend incarnate, possessed⁠—as I believed that so-called Arab to be possessed⁠—of all the paraphernalia of horror and of dread, was one which caused me tangible shrinkings of the body. Whence had come those shrieks and yells, of which the writer of the report spoke, which had caused the Arab’s fellow-passengers to think that murder was being done? What unimaginable agony had caused them? what speechless torture? And the “wailing noise,” which had induced the prosaic, indurated London cabman to get twice off his box to see what was the matter, what anguish had been provocative of that? The helpless girl who had already endured so much, endured, perhaps, that to which death would have been preferred!⁠—shut up in that rattling, jolting box on wheels, alone with that diabolical Asiatic, with the enormous bundle, which was but the lurking place of nameless terrors⁠—what might she not, while being borne through the heart of civilised London, have been made to suffer? What had she not been made to suffer to have kept up that continued “wailing noise”?

It was not a theme on which it was wise to permit one’s thoughts to linger⁠—and particularly was it clear that it was one from which Lessingham’s thoughts should have been kept as far as possible away.

“Come, Mr. Lessingham, neither you nor I will do himself any good by permitting his reflections to flow in a morbid channel. Let us talk of something else. By the way, weren’t you due to speak in the House tonight?”

“Due!⁠—Yes, I was due⁠—but what does it matter?”

“But have you acquainted no one with the cause of