The Beetle (20 page)

While he still struggled with his words, and with the perspiration
on his brow, Edwards entered. I turned to him.

'What is it?'

'Miss Lindon, sir, wishes to see you particularly, and at once.'

At that moment I found the announcement a trifle perplexing,—it
delighted Lindon. He began to stutter and to stammer.

'T-the very thing!—c-couldn't have been belter!—show her in
here! H—hide me somewhere,—I don't care where,—behind that
screen! Y-you use your influence with her;—g-give her a good
talking to;—t-tell her what I've told you; and at—at the
critical moment I'll come in, and then—then if we can't manage
her between us, it'll be a wonder.'

The proposition staggered me.

'But, my dear Mr Lindon, I fear that I cannot—'

He cut me short.

'Here she comes!'

Ere I could stop him he was behind the screen,—I had not seen him
move with such agility before!—and before I could expostulate
Marjorie was in the room. Something which was in her bearing, in
her face, in her eyes, quickened the beating of my pulses,—she
looked as if something had come into her life, and taken the joy
clean out of it.

'Sydney!' she cried, 'I'm so glad that I can see you!'

She might be,—but, at that moment, I could scarcely assert that I
was a sharer of her joy.

'I told you that if trouble overtook me I should come to you, and
—I'm in trouble now. Such strange trouble.'

So was I,—and in perplexity as well. An idea occurred to me,—I
would outwit her eavesdropping father.

'Come with me into the house,—tell me all about it there.'

She refused to budge.

'No,—I will tell you all about it here.' She looked about her,—
as it struck me queerly. 'This is just the sort of place in which
to unfold a tale like mine. It looks uncanny.'

'But—'

'"But me no buts!" Sydney, don't torture me,—let me stop here
where I am,—don't you see I'm haunted?'

She had seated herself. Now she stood up, holding her hands out in
front of her in a state of extraordinary agitation, her manner as
wild as her words.

'Why are you staring at me like that? Do you think I'm mad?—I
wonder if I'm going mad.—Sydney, do people suddenly go mad?
You're a bit of everything, you're a bit of a doctor too, feel my
pulse,—there it is!—tell me if I'm ill!'

I felt her pulse,—it did not need its swift beating to inform me
that fever of some sort was in her veins. I gave her something in
a glass. She held it up to the level of her eyes.

'What's this?'

'It's a decoction of my own. You might not think it, but my brain
sometimes gets into a whirl. I use it as a sedative. It will do
you good.'

She drained the glass.

'It's done me good already,—I believe it has; that's being
something like a doctor.—Well, Sydney, the storm has almost
burst. Last night papa forbade me to speak to Paul Lessingham—by
way of a prelude.'

'Exactly. Mr Lindon—'

'Yes, Mr Lindon,—that's papa. I fancy we almost quarrelled. I
know papa said some surprising things,—but it's a way he has,—
he's apt to say surprising things. He's the best father in the
world, but—it's not in his nature to like a really clever person;
your good high dried old Tory never can;—I've always thought that
that's why he's so fond of you.'

'Thank you, I presume that is the reason, though it had not
occurred to me before.'

Since her entry, I had, to the best of my ability, been turning
the position over in my mind. I came to the conclusion that, all
things considered, her father had probably as much right to be a
sharer of his daughter's confidence as I had, even from the
vantage of the screen,—and that for him to hear a few home truths
proceeding from her lips might serve to clear the air. From such a
clearance the lady would not be likely to come off worst. I had
not the faintest inkling of what was the actual purport of her
visit.

She started off, as it seemed to me, at a tangent.

'Did I tell you last night about what took place yesterday
morning,—about the adventure of my finding the man?'

'Not a word.'

'I believe I meant to,—I'm half disposed to think he's brought me
trouble. Isn't there some superstition about evil befalling
whoever shelters a homeless stranger?'

'We'll hope not, for humanity's sake.'

'I fancy there is,—I feel sure there is.—Anyhow, listen to my
story. Yesterday morning, before breakfast,—to be accurate,
between eight and nine, I looked out of the window, and I saw a
crowd in the street. I sent Peter out to see what was the matter.
He came back and said there was a man in a fit. I went out to look
at the man in the fit. I found, lying on the ground, in the centre
of the crowd, a man who, but for the tattered remnants of what had
apparently once been a cloak, would have been stark naked. He was
covered with dust, and dirt, and blood,—a dreadful sight. As you
know, I have had my smattering of instruction in First Aid to the
Injured, and that kind of thing, so, as no one else seemed to have
any sense, and the man seemed as good as dead, I thought I would
try my hand. Directly I knelt down beside him, what do you think
he said?'

'Thank you.'

'Nonsense.—He said, in such a queer, hollow, croaking voice,
"Paul Lessingham." I was dreadfully startled. To hear a perfect
stranger, a man in his condition, utter that name in such a
fashion—to me, of all people in the world!—took me aback. The
policeman who was holding his head remarked, "That's the first
time he's opened his mouth. I thought he was dead." He opened his
mouth a second time. A convulsive movement went all over him, and
he exclaimed, with the strangest earnestness, and so loudly that
you might have heard him at the other end of the street, "Be
warned, Paul Lessingham, be warned!" It was very silly of me,
perhaps, but I cannot tell you how his words, and his manner—the
two together—affected me.—Well, the long and the short of it
was, that I had him taken into the house, and washed, and put to
bed,—and I had the doctor sent for. The doctor could make nothing
of it at all. He reported that the man seemed to be suffering from
some sort of cataleptic seizure,—I could see that he thought it
likely to turn out almost as interesting a case as I did.'

'Did you acquaint your father with the addition to his household?'

She looked at me, quizzically.

'You see, when one has such a father as mine one cannot tell him
everything, at once. There are occasions on which one requires
time.'

I felt that this would be wholesome hearing for old Lindon.

'Last night, after papa and I had exchanged our little
courtesies,—which, it is to be hoped, were to papa's
satisfaction, since they were not to be mine—I went to see the
patient. I was told that he had neither eaten nor drunk, moved nor
spoken. But, so soon as I approached his bed, he showed signs of
agitation. He half raised himself upon his pillow, and he called
out, as if he had been addressing some large assembly—I can't
describe to you the dreadful something which was in his voice, and
on his face,—"Paul Lessingham!—Beware!—The Beetle!"'

When she said that, I was startled.

'Are you sure those were the words he used?'

'Quite sure. Do you think I could mistake them,—especially after
what has happened since? I hear them singing in my ears,—they
haunt me all the time.'

She put her hands up to her face, as if to veil something from her
eyes. I was becoming more and more convinced that there was
something about the Apostle's connection with his Oriental friend
which needed probing to the bottom.

'What sort of a man is he to look at, this patient of yours?'

I had my doubts as to the gentleman's identity,—which her words
dissolved; only, however, to increase my mystification in another
direction.

'He seems to be between thirty and forty. He has light hair, and
straggling sandy whiskers. He is so thin as to be nothing but skin
and bone,—the doctor says it's a case of starvation.'

'You say he has light hair, and sandy whiskers. Are you sure the
whiskers are real?'

She opened her eyes.

'Of course they're real. Why shouldn't they be real?'

'Does he strike you as being a—foreigner?'

'Certainly not. He looks like an Englishman, and he speaks like
one, and not, I should say, of the lowest class. It is true that
there is a very curious, a weird, quality in his voice, what I
have heard of it, but it is not un-English. If it is catalepsy he
is suffering from, then it is a kind of catalepsy I never heard
of. Have you ever seen a clairvoyant?' I nodded. 'He seems to me
to be in a state of clairvoyance. Of course the doctor laughed
when I told him so, but we know what doctors are, and I still
believe that he is in some condition of the kind. When he said
that last night he struck me as being under what those sort of
people call 'influence,' and that whoever had him under influence
was forcing him to speak against his will, for the words came from
his lips as if they had been wrung from him in agony.'

Knowing what I did know, that struck me as being rather a
remarkable conclusion for her to have reached, by the exercise of
her own unaided powers of intuition,—but I did not choose to let
her know I thought so.

'My dear Marjorie!—you who pride yourself on having your
imagination so strictly under control!—on suffering it to take no
errant flights!'

'Is not the fact that I do so pride myself proof that I am not
likely to make assertions wildly,—proof, at any rate, to you?
Listen to me. When I left that unfortunate creature's room,—I had
had a nurse sent for, I left him in her charge—and reached my own
bedroom, I was possessed by a profound conviction that some
appalling, intangible, but very real danger, was at that moment
threatening Paul.'

'Remember,—you had had an exciting evening; and a discussion with
your father. Your patient's words came as a climax.'

'That is what I told myself,—or, rather, that was what I tried to
tell myself; because, in some extraordinary fashion, I had lost
the command of my powers of reflection.'

'Precisely.'

'It was not precisely,—or, at least, it was not precisely in the
sense you mean. You may laugh at me, Sydney, but I had an
altogether indescribable feeling, a feeling which amounted to
knowledge, that I was in the presence of the supernatural.'

'Nonsense!'

'It was not nonsense,—I wish it had been nonsense. As I have
said, I was conscious, completely conscious, that some frightful
peril was assailing Paul. I did not know what it was, but I did
know that it was something altogether awful, of which merely to
think was to shudder. I wanted to go to his assistance, I tried
to, more than once; but I couldn't, and I knew that I couldn't,—I
knew that I couldn't move as much as a finger to help him.—Stop,
—let me finish!—I told myself that it was absurd, but it wouldn't
do; absurd or not, there was the terror with me in the room. I
knelt down, and I prayed, but the words wouldn't come. I tried to
ask God to remove this burden from my brain, but my longings
wouldn't shape themselves into words, and my tongue was palsied. I
don't know how long I struggled, but, at last, I came to
understand that, for some cause, God had chosen to leave me to
fight the fight alone. So I got up, and undressed, and went to
bed,—and that was the worst of all. I had sent my maid away in
the first rush of my terror, afraid, and, I think, ashamed, to let
her see my fear. Now I would have given anything to summon her
back again, but I couldn't do it, I couldn't even ring the bell.
So, as I say, I got into bed.'

She paused, as if to collect her thoughts. To listen to her words,
and to think of the suffering which they meant to her, was almost
more than I could endure. I would have thrown away the world to
have been able to take her in my arms, and soothe her fears. I
knew her to be, in general, the least hysterical of young women;
little wont to become the prey of mere delusions; and, incredible
though it sounded, I had an innate conviction that, even in its
wildest periods, her story had some sort of basis in solid fact.
What that basis amounted to, it would be my business, at any and
every cost, quickly to determine.

'You know how you have always laughed at me because of my
objection to—cockroaches, and how, in spring, the neighbourhood
of May-bugs has always made me uneasy. As soon as I got into bed I
felt that something of the kind was in the room.'

'Something of what kind?'

'Some kind of—beetle. I could hear the whirring of its wings; I
could hear its droning in the air; I knew that it was hovering
above my head; that it was coming lower and lower, nearer and
nearer. I hid myself; I covered myself all over with the clothes,
—then I felt it bumping against the coverlet. And, Sydney!' She
drew closer. Her blanched cheeks and frightened eyes made my heart
bleed. Her voice became but an echo of itself. 'It followed me.'

'Marjorie!'

'It got into the bed.'

'You imagined it.'

'I didn't imagine it. I heard it crawl along the sheets, till it
found a way between them, and then it crawled towards me. And I
felt it—against my face.—And it's there now.'

'Where?'

She raised the forefinger of her left hand.

'There!—Can't you hear it droning?'

She listened, intently. I listened too. Oddly enough, at that
instant the droning of an insect did become audible.

'It's only a bee, child, which has found its way through the open
window.'

'I wish it were only a bee, I wish it were.—Sydney, don't you
feel as if you were in the presence of evil? Don't you want to get
away from it, back into the presence of God?'

'Marjorie!'

'Pray, Sydney, pray!—I can't!—I don't know why, but I can't!