The Beetle (40 page)

'The birds have flown,' he cried.

'Flown!—How?'

In reply he gave me the telegram. I glanced at it. It ran:

'Persons described not in the train. Guard says they got out at
Vauxhall. Have wired Vauxhall to advise you.'

'That's a level-headed chap,' said Bellingham. 'The man who sent
that telegram. His wiring to Vauxhall should save us a lot of
time,—we ought to hear from there directly. Hollo! what's this? I
shouldn't be surprised if this is it.'

As he spoke a porter entered,—he handed an envelope to
Bellingham. We all three kept our eyes fixed on the inspector's
face as he opened it. When he perceived the contents he gave an
exclamation of surprise.

'This Arab of yours, and his two friends, seem rather a curious
lot, Mr Champnell.'

He passed the paper on to me. It took the form of a report.
Lessingham and Sydney, regardless of forms and ceremonies, leaned
over my shoulder as I read it.

'Passengers by 7.30 Southampton, on arrival of train, complained
of noises coming from a compartment in coach 8964. Stated that
there had been shrieks and yells ever since the train left
Waterloo, as if someone was being murdered. An Arab and two
Englishmen got out of the compartment in question, apparently the
party referred to in wire just to hand from Basingstoke. All three
declared that there was nothing the matter. That they had been
shouting for fun. Arab gave up three third singles for
Southampton, saying, in reply to questions, that they had changed
their minds, and did not want to go any farther. As there were no
signs of a struggle or of violence, nor, apparently, any definite
cause for detention, they were allowed to pass. They took a four-
wheeler, No. 09435. The Arab and one man went inside, and the
other man on the box. They asked to be driven to Commercial Road,
Limehouse. The cab has since returned. Driver says he put the
three men down, at their request, in Commercial Road, at the
corner of Sutcliffe Street, near the East India Docks. They walked
up Sutcliffe Street, the Englishmen in front, and the Arab behind,
took the first turning to the right, and after that he saw nothing
of them. The driver further states that all the way the Englishman
inside, who was so ragged and dirty that he was reluctant to carry
him, kept up a sort of wailing noise which so attracted his
attention that he twice got off his box to see what was the
matter, and each time he said it was nothing. 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.

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 to-night?'

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

'But have you acquainted no one with the cause of your non-
attendance?'

'Acquaint!—whom should I acquaint?'

'My good sir! Listen to me, Mr Lessingham. Let me entreat you very
earnestly, to follow my advice. Call another cab,—or take this!
and go at once to the House. It is not too late. Play the man,
deliver the speech you have undertaken to deliver, perform your
political duties. By coming with me you will be a hindrance rather
than a help, and you may do your reputation an injury from which
it never may recover. Do as I counsel you, and I will undertake to
do my very utmost to let you have good news by the time your
speech is finished.'

He turned on me with a bitterness for which I was unprepared.

'If I were to go down to the House, and try to speak in the state
in which I am now, they would laugh at me, I should be ruined.'

'Do you not run an equally great risk of being ruined by staying
away?'

He gripped me by the arm.

'Mr Champnell, do you know that I am on the verge of madness? Do
you know that as I am sitting here by your side I am living in a
dual world? I am going on and on to catch that—that fiend, and I
am back again in that Egyptian den, upon that couch of rugs, with
the Woman of the Songs beside me, and Marjorie is being torn and
tortured, and burnt before my eyes! God help me! Her shrieks are
ringing in my ears!'

He did not speak loudly, but his voice was none the less
impressive on that account. I endeavoured my hardest to be stern.

'I confess that you disappoint me, Mr Lessingham. I have always
understood that you were a man of unusual strength; you appear
instead, to be a man of extraordinary weakness; with an
imagination so ill-governed that its ebullitions remind me of
nothing so much as feminine hysterics, Your wild language is not
warranted by circumstances. I repeat that I think it quite
possible that by to-morrow morning she will be returned to you.'

'Yes,—but how? as the Marjorie I have known, as I saw her last,—
or how?'

That was the question which I had already asked myself, in what
condition would she be when we had succeeded in snatching her from
her captor's grip? It was a question to which I had refused to
supply an answer. To him I lied by implication.

'Let us hope that, with the exception of being a trifle scared,
she will be as sound and hale and hearty as even in her life.'

'Do you yourself believe that she'll be like that,—untouched,
unchanged, unstained?'

Then I lied right out,—it seemed to me necessary to calm his
growing excitement.

'I do.'

'You don't!'

'Mr Lessingham!'

'Do you think that I can't see your face and read in it the same
thoughts which trouble me? As a man of honour do you care to deny
that when Marjorie Lindon is restored to me,—if she ever is!—you
fear she will be but the mere soiled husk of the Marjorie whom I
knew and loved?'

'Even supposing that there may be a modicum of truth in what you
say,—which I am far from being disposed to admit—what good
purpose do you propose to serve by talking in such a strain?'

'None,—no good purpose,—unless it be the desire of looking the
truth in the face. For, Mr Champnell, you must not seek to play
with me the hypocrite, nor try to hide things from me as if I were
a child. If my life is ruined—it is ruined,—let me know it, and
look the knowledge in the face. That, to me, is to play the man.'

I was silent.

The wild tale he had told me of that Cairene inferno, oddly
enough—yet why oddly, for the world is all coincidence!—had
thrown a flood of light on certain events which had happened some
three years previously and which ever since had remained shrouded
in mystery. The conduct of the business afterwards came into my
hands,—and briefly, what had occurred was this:

Three persons,—two sisters and their brother, who was younger
than themselves, members of a decent English family, were going on
a trip round the world. They were young, adventurous, and—not to
put too fine a point on it—foolhardy. The evening after their
arrival in Cairo, by way of what is called 'a lark,' in spite of
the protestations of people who were better informed than
themselves, they insisted on going, alone, for a ramble through
the native quarter.

They went,—but they never returned. Or, rather the two girls
never returned. After an interval the young man was found again,—
what was left of him. A fuss was made when there were no signs of
their re-appearance, but as there were no relations, nor even
friends of theirs, but only casual acquaintances on board the ship
by which they had travelled, perhaps not so great a fuss as might
have been was made. Anyhow, nothing was discovered. Their widowed
mother, alone in England, wondering bow it was that beyond the
receipt of a brief wire, acquainting her with their arrival at
Cairo, she had heard nothing further of their wanderings, placed
herself in communication with the diplomatic people over there,—
to learn that, to all appearances, her three children had vanished
from off the face of the earth.

Then a fuss was made,—with a vengeance. So far as one can judge
the whole town and neighbourhood was turned pretty well upside
down. But nothing came of it,—so far as any results were
concerned, the authorities might just as well have left the
mystery of their vanishment alone. It continued where it was in
spite of them.

However, some three months afterwards a youth was brought to the
British Embassy by a party of friendly Arabs who asserted that
they had found him naked and nearly dying in some remote spot in
the Wady Haifa desert. It was the brother of the two lost girls.
He was as nearly dying as he very well could be without being
actually dead when they brought him to the Embassy,—and in a
state of indescribable mutilation. He seemed to rally for a time
under careful treatment, but he never again uttered a coherent
word. It was only from his delirious ravings that any idea was
formed of what had really occurred.