The Beetle by Richard Marsh (read e books online free txt) 📕
Description
The Beetle was published in 1897, the same year as Dracula—and outsold it six to one that year. Like Dracula, the novel is steeped in the evil mysteries of an ancient horror: in this case, a mysterious ancient Egyptian creature bent on revenge.
The story is told through the sequential points of view of a group of middle-class Victorians who find themselves enmeshed in the creature’s plot. The creature, in the guise of an Egyptian man, appears in London seeking revenge against a popular member of Parliament. They soon find out that it can shape shift into other things, including women; that it can control minds and use hypnosis; and that it won’t stop at anything to get the revenge it seeks. The heroes are soon caught in a whirlwind of chase scenes, underground laboratories, secret cults, and more as they race to foil the creature.
While The Beetle didn’t earn the lasting popularity of Stoker’s counterpart, it remains a strange and unique morsel of Victorian sensationalist fiction.
Read free book «The Beetle by Richard Marsh (read e books online free txt) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Richard Marsh
Read book online «The Beetle by Richard Marsh (read e books online free txt) 📕». Author - Richard Marsh
But I was destined on the occasion of my first—and, I trust, last—experience of the burglar’s calling, to carry the part completely through. I had gained access to the flap itself only to find that at the back were several small drawers, on one of which my observation was brought to bear in a fashion which it was quite impossible to disregard. As a matter of course it was locked, and, once more, I had to search for something which would serve as a rough-and-ready substitute for the missing key.
There was nothing at all suitable among the weapons—I could hardly for such a purpose use the hatchet; the drawer in question was such a little one that to have done so would have been to shiver it to splinters. On the mantelshelf, in an open leather case, were a pair of revolvers. Statesmen, nowadays, sometimes stand in actual peril of their lives. It is possible that Mr. Lessingham, conscious of continually threatened danger, carried them about with him as a necessary protection. They were serviceable weapons, large, and somewhat weighty—of the type with which, I believe, upon occasion the police are armed. Not only were all the barrels loaded, but, in the case itself there was a supply of cartridges more than sufficient to charge them all again.
I was handling the weapons, wondering—if, in my condition, the word was applicable—what use I could make of them to enable me to gain admission to that drawer, when there came, on a sudden, from the street without, the sound of approaching wheels. There was a whirring within my brain, as if someone was endeavouring to explain to me to what service to apply the revolvers, and I, perforce, strained every nerve to grasp the meaning of my invisible mentor. While I did so, the wheels drew rapidly nearer, and, just as I was expecting them to go whirling by, stopped—in front of the house. My heart leapt in my bosom. In a convulsion of frantic terror, again, during the passage of one frenzied moment, I all but burst the bonds that held me, and fled, haphazard, from the imminent peril. But the bonds were stronger than I—it was as if I had been rooted to the ground.
A key was inserted in the keyhole of the front door, the lock was turned, the door thrown open, firm footsteps entered the house. If I could I would not have stood upon the order of my going, but gone at once, anywhere, anyhow; but, at that moment, my comings and goings were not matters in which I was consulted. Panic fear raging within, outwardly I was calm as possible, and stood, turning the revolvers over and over, asking myself what it could be that I was intended to do with them. All at once it came to me in an illuminating flash—I was to fire at the lock of the drawer, and blow it open.
A madder scheme it would have been impossible to hit upon. The servants had slept through a good deal, but they would hardly sleep through the discharge of a revolver in a room below them—not to speak of the person who had just entered the premises, and whose footsteps were already audible as he came up the stairs. I struggled to make a dumb protest against the insensate folly which was hurrying me to infallible destruction, without success. For me there was only obedience. With a revolver in either hand I marched towards the bureau as unconcernedly as if I would not have given my life to have escaped the denouement which I needed but a slight modicum of common sense to be aware was close at hand. I placed the muzzle of one of the revolvers against the keyhole of the drawer to which my unseen guide had previously directed me, and pulled the trigger. The lock was shattered, the contents of the drawer were at my mercy. I snatched up a bundle of letters, about which a pink ribbon was wrapped. Startled by a noise behind me, immediately following the report of the pistol, I glanced over my shoulder.
The room door was open, and Mr. Lessingham was standing with the handle in his hand.
VII The Great Paul LessinghamHe was in evening dress. He carried a small portfolio in his left hand. If the discovery of my presence startled him, as it could scarcely have failed to do, he allowed no sign of surprise to escape him. Paul Lessingham’s impenetrability is proverbial. Whether on platforms addressing excited crowds, or in the midst of heated discussion in the House of Commons, all the world knows that his coolness remains unruffled. It is generally understood that he owes his success in the political arena in no slight measure to the adroitness which is born of his invulnerable presence of mind. He gave me a taste of its quality then. Standing in the attitude which has been familiarised to us by caricaturists, his
Comments (0)