The Beetle: A Mystery by Richard Marsh (large screen ebook reader TXT) 📕

boy! The division’s over—you are free—now we’ll go “on the fly.”’

And we did ‘go on the fly.’

CHAPTER XVI.
ATHERTON’S MAGIC VAPOUR

I bore him off to supper at the Helicon. All the way in the cab he was trying to tell me the story of how he proposed to Marjorie,—and he was very far from being through with it when we reached the club. There was the usual crowd of supperites, but we got a little table to ourselves, in a corner of the room, and before anything was brought for us to eat he was at it again. A good many of the people were pretty near to shouting, and as they seemed to be all speaking at once, and the band was playing, and as the Helicon supper band is not piano, Percy did not have it quite all to himself, but, considering the delicacy of his subject, he talked as loudly as was decent,—getting more so as he went on. But Percy is peculiar.

‘I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to tell her,—over and over again.’

‘Have you now?’

‘Yes, pretty near every time I met her,—but I never seemed to get quite to it, don’t you know.’

‘How was that?’

‘Why, just as I was going to say, “Miss Lindon, may I offer you the gift of my affection—”’

‘Was that how you invariably intended to begin?’

‘Well, not always—one time like that, another time another way. Fact is, I got off a little speech by heart, but I never got a chance to reel it off, so I made up my mind to just say anything.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘Well, nothing,—you see, I never got there. Just as I was feeling my way, she’d ask me if I preferred big sleeves to little ones, or top hats to billycocks, or some nonsense of the kind.’

‘Would she now?’

‘Yes,—of course I had to answer, and by the time I’d answered the chance was lost.’ Percy was polishing his eye-glass. ‘I tried to get there so many times, and she choked me off so often, that I can’t help thinking that she suspected what it was that I was after.’

‘You think she did?’

‘She must have done. Once I followed her down Piccadilly, and chivied her into a glove shop in the Burlington Arcade. I meant to propose to her in there,—I hadn’t had a wink of sleep all night through dreaming of her, and I was just about desperate.’

‘And did you propose?’

‘The girl behind the counter made me buy a dozen pairs of gloves instead. They turned out to be three sizes too large for me when they came home. I believe she thought I’d gone to spoon the glove girl,—she went out and left me there. That girl loaded me with all sorts of things when she was gone,—I couldn’t get away. She held me with her blessed eye. I believe it was a glass one.’

‘Miss Linden’s—or the glove girl’s?’

‘The glove girl’s. She sent me home a whole cartload of green ties, and declared I’d ordered them. I shall never forget that day. I’ve never been up the Arcade since, and never mean to.’

‘You gave Miss Lindon a wrong impression.’

‘I don’t know. I was always giving her wrong impressions. Once she said that she knew I was not a marrying man, that I was the sort of chap who never would marry, because she saw it in my face.’

‘Under the circumstances, that was trying.’

‘Bitter hard.’ Percy sighed again. ‘I shouldn’t mind if I wasn’t so gone. I’m not a fellow who does get gone, but when I do get gone, I get so beastly gone.’

‘I tell you what, Percy,—have a drink!’

‘I’m a teetotaler,—you know I am.’

‘You talk of your heart being broken, and of your being a teetotaler in the same breath,—if your heart were really broken you’d throw teetotalism to the winds.’

‘Do you think so,—why?’

‘Because you would,—men whose hearts are broken always do,—you’d swallow a magnum at the least.’

Percy groaned.

‘When I drink I’m always ill,—but I’ll have a try.’

He had a try,—making a good beginning by emptying at a draught the glass which the waiter had just now filled. Then he relapsed into melancholy.

‘Tell me, Percy,—honest Indian!—do you really love her?’

‘Love her?’ His eyes grew round as saucers. ‘Don’t I tell you that I love her?’

‘I know you tell me, but that sort of thing is easy telling. What does it make you feel like, this love you talk so much about?’

‘Feel like?—Just anyhow,—and nohow. You should look inside me, and then you’d know.’

‘I see.—It’s like that, is it?—Suppose she loved another man, what sort of feeling would you feel towards him?’

‘Does she love another man?’

‘I say, suppose.’

‘I dare say she does. I expect that’s it.—What an idiot I am not to have thought of that before.’ He sighed,—and refilled his glass. ‘He’s a lucky chap, whoever he is. I’d—I’d like to tell him so.’

‘You’d like to tell him so?’

‘He’s such a jolly lucky chap, you know.’

‘Possibly,—but his jolly good luck is your jolly bad luck. Would you be willing to resign her to him without a word?’

‘If she loves him.’

‘But you say you love her.’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Well then?’

‘You don’t suppose that, because I love her, I shouldn’t like to see her happy?—I’m not such a beast!—I’d sooner see her happy than anything else in all the world.’

‘I see.—Even happy with another?—I’m afraid that my philosophy is not like yours. If I loved Miss Lindon, and she loved, say, Jones, I’m afraid I shouldn’t feel like that towards Jones at all.’

‘What would you feel like?’

‘Murder.—Percy, you come home with me,—we’ve begun the night together, let’s end it together,—and I’ll show you one of the finest notions for committing murder on a scale of real magnificence you ever dreamed of. I should like to make use of it to show my feelings towards the supposititious Jones,—he’d know what I felt for him when once he had been introduced to it.’

Percy went with me without a word. He had not had much to drink, but it had been too much for him, and he was in a condition of maundering sentimentality. I got him into a cab. We dashed along Piccadilly.

He was silent, and sat looking in front of him with an air of vacuous sullenness which ill-became his cast of countenance. I bade the cabman pass though Lowndes Square. As we passed the Apostle’s I pulled him up. I pointed out the place to Woodville.

‘You see, Percy, that’s Lessingham’s house!—that’s the house of the man who went away with Marjorie!’

‘Yes.’ Words came from him slowly, with a quite unnecessary stress on each. ‘Because he made a speech.—I’d like to make a speech.—One day I’ll make a speech.’

‘Because he made a speech,—only that, and nothing more! When a man speaks with an Apostle’s tongue, he can witch any woman in the land.—Hallo, who’s that?—Lessingham, is that you?’

I saw, or thought I saw, someone, or something, glide up the steps, and withdraw into the shadow of the doorway, as if unwilling to be seen. When I hailed no one answered. I called again.

‘Don’t be shy, my friend!’

I sprang out of the cab, ran across the pavement, and up the steps. To my surprise, there was no one in the doorway. It seemed incredible, but the place was empty. I felt about me with my hands, as if I had been playing at blind man’s buff, and grasped at vacancy. I came down a step or two.

‘Ostensibly, there’s a vacuum,—which nature abhors.—I say, driver, didn’t you see someone come up the steps?’

‘I thought I did, sir,—I could have sworn I did.’

‘So could I.—It’s very odd.’

‘Perhaps whoever it was has gone into the ’ouse, sir.’

‘I don’t see how. We should have heard the door open, if we hadn’t seen it,—and we should have seen it, it’s not so dark as that.—I’ve half a mind to ring the bell and inquire.’

‘I shouldn’t do that if I was you, sir,—you jump in, and I’ll get along. This is Mr Lessingham’s,—the great Mr Lessingham’s.’

I believe the cabman thought that I was drunk,—and not respectable enough to claim acquaintance with the great Mr Lessingham.

‘Wake up, Woodville! Do you know I believe there’s some mystery about this place,—I feel assured of it. I feel as if I were in the presence of something uncanny,—something which I can neither see, nor touch, nor hear.’

The cabman bent down from his seat, wheedling me.

‘Jump in, sir, and we’ll be getting along.’

I jumped in, and we got along,—but not far. Before we had gone a dozen yards, I was out again, without troubling the driver to stop. He pulled up, aggrieved.

‘Well, sir, what’s the matter now? You’ll be damaging yourself before you’ve done, and then you’ll be blaming me.’

I had caught sight of a cat crouching in the shadow of the railings,—a black one. That cat was my quarry. Either the creature was unusually sleepy, or slow, or stupid, or it had lost its wits—which a cat seldom does lose!—anyhow, without making an attempt to escape it allowed me to grab it by the nape of the neck.

So soon as we were inside my laboratory, I put the cat into my glass box. Percy stared.

‘What have you put it there for?’

‘That, my dear Percy, is what you are shortly about to see. You are about to be the witness of an experiment which, to a legislator—such as you are!—ought to be of the greatest possible interest. I am going to demonstrate, on a small scale, the action of the force which, on a large scale, I propose to employ on behalf of my native land.’

He showed no signs of being interested. Sinking into a chair, he recommenced his wearisome reiteration.

‘I hate cats!—Do let it go!—I’m always miserable when there’s a cat in the room.’

‘Nonsense,—that’s your fancy! What you want’s a taste of whisky—you’ll be as chirpy as a cricket.’

‘I don’t want anything more to drink!—I’ve had too much already!’

I paid no heed to what he said. I poured two stiff doses into a couple of tumblers. Without seeming to be aware of what it was that he was doing he disposed of the better half of the one I gave him at a draught. Putting his glass upon the table, he dropped his head upon his hands, and groaned.

‘What would Marjorie think of me if she saw me now?’

‘Think?—nothing. Why should she think of a man like you, when she has so much better fish to fry?’

‘I’m feeling frightfully ill!—I’ll be drunk before I’ve done!’

‘Then be drunk!—only, for gracious sake, be lively drunk, not deadly doleful.—Cheer up, Percy!’ I clapped him on the shoulder,—almost knocking him off his seat on to the floor. ‘I am now going to show you that little experiment of which I was speaking!—You see that cat?’

‘Of course I see it!—the beast!—I wish you’d let it go!’

‘Why should I let it go?—Do you know whose cat that is? That cat’s Paul Lessingham’s.’

‘Paul Lessingham’s?’

‘Yes, Paul Lessingham’s,—the man who made the speech,—the man whom Marjorie went away with.’

‘How do you know it’s his?’

‘I don’t know it is, but I believe it is,—I choose to believe it is!—I intend to believe it is!—It was outside his house, therefore it’s his cat,—that’s how I argue. I can’t get Lessingham inside that box, so I get his cat instead.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘You shall see.—You observe how happy it is?’

‘It don’t seem happy.’

‘We’ve all our ways of seeming happy,—that’s its way.’

The creature was behaving like a cat gone mad, dashing itself against the sides of its glass prison, leaping to and fro, and from side to side, squealing with rage, or with terror, or with both. Perhaps it foresaw what was coming,—there is no fathoming the intelligence of what we call the lower animals.

‘It’s a funny way.’

‘We some of us have funny ways, beside cats. Now, attention! Observe this little toy,—you’ve seen something of its kind before. It’s a spring gun; you pull the spring—drop the charge into the barrel—release the spring—and the charge is fired. I’ll unlock this safe, which is built into the wall. It’s a letter lock, the combination just now, is “whisky,”—you see, that’s a hint to you. You’ll notice the safe is strongly made,—it’s air-tight, fire-proof, the outer casing is of triple-plated drill-proof steel,—the contents are valuable—to me!—and devilish dangerous,—I’d pity the thief who, in his innocent ignorance, broke in to steal. Look inside—you see it’s full of balls,—glass balls, each in its own little separate nest; light as feathers; transparent,—you can see right through them. Here are a couple, like tiny pills. They contain neither dynamite, nor cordite, nor anything of the kind, yet, given a fair field and no favour, they’ll work more mischief than all the explosives man has fashioned. Take hold of one—you say