The Beetle by Richard Marsh (read e books online free txt) 📕
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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.
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- Author: Richard Marsh
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It happens that I am myself endowed with an unusual tenacity of vision. I could, for instance, easily outstare any man I ever met. Yet, as I continued to stare at this man, I was conscious that it was only by an effort of will that I was able to resist a baleful something which seemed to be passing from his eyes to mine. It might have been imagination, but, in that sense, I am not an imaginative man; and, if it was, it was imagination of an unpleasantly vivid kind. I could understand how, in the case of a nervous, or a sensitive temperament, the fellow might exercise, by means of the peculiar quality of his glance alone, an influence of a most disastrous sort, which given an appropriate subject in the manifestation of its power might approach almost to the supernatural. If ever man was endowed with the traditional evil eye, in which Italians, among modern nations, are such profound believers, it was he.
When we had stared at each other for, I daresay, quite five minutes, I began to think I had had about enough of it. So, by way of breaking the ice, I put to him a question.
“May I ask how you found your way into my back yard?”
He did not reply in words, but, raising his hands he lowered them, palms downward, with a gesture which was peculiarly Oriental.
“Indeed?—Is that so?—Your meaning may be lucidity itself to you, but, for my benefit, perhaps you would not mind translating it into words. Once more I ask, how did you find your way into my back yard?”
Again nothing but the gesture.
“Possibly you are not sufficiently acquainted with English manners and customs to be aware that you have placed yourself within reach of the pains and penalties of the law. Were I to call in the police you would find yourself in an awkward situation—and, unless you are presently more explanatory, called in they will be.”
By way of answer he indulged in a distortion of the countenance which might have been meant for a smile—and which seemed to suggest that he regarded the police with a contempt which was too great for words.
“Why do you laugh—do you think that being threatened with the police is a joke? You are not likely to find it so.—Have you suddenly been bereft of the use of your tongue?”
He proved that he had not by using it.
“I have still the use of my tongue.”
“That, at least, is something. Perhaps, since the subject of how you got into my back yard seems to be a delicate one, you will tell me why you got there.”
“You know why I have come.”
“Pardon me if I appear to flatly contradict you, but that is precisely what I do not know.”
“You do know.”
“Do I?—Then, in that case, I presume that you are here for the reason which appears upon the surface—to commit a felony.”
“You call me thief?”
“What else are you?”
“I am no thief.—You know why I have come.”
He raised his head a little. A look came into his eyes which I felt that I ought to understand, yet to the meaning of which I seemed, for the instant, to have mislaid the key. I shrugged my shoulders.
“I have come because you wanted me.”
“Because I wanted you!—On my word!—That’s sublime!”
“All night you have wanted me—do I not know? When she talked to you of him, and the blood boiled in your veins; when he spoke, and all the people listened, and you hated him, because he had honour in her eyes.”
I was startled. Either he meant what it appeared incredible that he could mean, or—there was confusion somewhere.
“Take my advice, my friend, and don’t try to come the bunco-steerer over me—I’m a bit in that line myself, you know.”
This time the score was mine—he was puzzled.
“I know not what you talk of.”
“In that case, we’re equal—I know not what you talk of either.”
His manner, for him, was childlike and bland.
“What is it you do not know? This morning did I not say—if you want me, then I come?”
“I fancy I have some faint recollection of your being so good as to say something of the kind, but—where’s the application?”
“Do you not feel for him the same as I?”
“Who’s the him?”
“Paul Lessingham.”
It was spoken quietly, but with a degree of—to put it gently—spitefulness which showed that at least the will to do the Apostle harm would not be lacking.
“And, pray, what is the common feeling which we have for him?”
“Hate.”
Plainly, with this gentleman, hate meant
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