The Beetle by Richard Marsh (read e books online free txt) 📕

She handed me a greasy envelope which she ferreted out of a capacious pocket which was suspended from her waist, and which she had to lift up her skirt to reach. The envelope was addressed, in unformed characters, “Miss Louisa Coleman, The Rhododendrons, Convolvulus Avenue, High Oaks Park, West Kensington.”⁠—I felt, if the writer had not been of a humorous turn of mind, and drawn on his imagination, and this really was the lady’s correct address, then there must be something in a name.

The letter within was written in the same straggling, characterless calligraphy⁠—I should have said, had I been asked offhand, that the whole thing was the composition of a servant girl. The composition was about on a par with the writing.

“The undersigned would be oblidged if Miss Coleman would let her emptey house. I do not know the rent but send fifty pounds. If more will send. Please address, Mohamed el Kheir, Post Office, Sligo Street, London.”

It struck me as being as singular an application for a tenancy as I remembered to have encountered. When I passed it on to Lessingham, he seemed to think so too.

“This is a curious letter, Miss Coleman.”

“So I thought⁠—and still more so when I found the fifty pounds inside. There were five ten-pound notes, all loose, and the letter not even registered. If I had been asked what was the rent of the house, I should have said, at the most, not more than twenty pounds⁠—because, between you and me, it wants a good bit of doing up, and is hardly fit to live in as it stands.”

I had had sufficient evidence of the truth of this altogether apart from the landlady’s frank admission.

“Why, for all he could have done to help himself I might have kept the money, and only sent him a receipt for a quarter. And some folks would have done⁠—but I’m not one of that sort myself, and shouldn’t care to be. So I sent this here party⁠—I never could pronounce his name, and never shall⁠—a receipt for a year.”

Miss Coleman paused to smooth her apron, and consider.

“Well, the receipt should have reached this here party on the Thursday morning, as it were⁠—I posted it on the Wednesday night, and on the Thursday, after breakfast, I thought I’d go over the way to see if there was any little thing I could do⁠—because there wasn’t hardly a whole pane of glass in the place⁠—when I all but went all of a heap. When I looked across the road, blessed it the party wasn’t in already⁠—at least as much as he ever was in, which, so far as I can make out, never has been anything particular⁠—though how he had got in, unless it was through a window in the middle of the night, is more than I should care to say⁠—there was nobody in the house when I went to bed, that I could pretty nearly take my Bible oath⁠—yet there was the blind up at the parlour, and, what’s more, it was down, and it’s been down pretty nearly ever since.

“ ‘Well,’ I says to myself, ‘for right down imperence this beats anything⁠—why he’s in the place before he knows if I’ll let him have it. Perhaps he thinks I haven’t got a word to say in the matter⁠—fifty pounds or no fifty pounds, I’ll soon show him.’ So I slips on my bonnet, and I walks over the road, and I hammers at the door.

“Well, I have seen people hammering since then, many a one, and how they’ve kept it up has puzzled me⁠—for an hour, some of them⁠—but I was the first one as begun it. I hammers, and I hammers, and I kept on hammering, but it wasn’t no more use than if I’d been hammering at a tombstone. So I starts rapping at the window, but that wasn’t no use neither. So I goes round behind, and I hammers at the back door⁠—but there, I couldn’t make anyone hear nohow. So I says to myself, ‘Perhaps the party as is in, ain’t in, in a manner of speaking; but I’ll keep an eye on the house, and when he is in I’ll take care that he ain’t out again before I’ve had a word to say.’

“So I come back home, and as I said I would, I kept an eye on the house the whole of that livelong day, but never a soul went either out or in. But the next day, which it was a Friday, I got out of bed about five o’clock, to see if it was raining, through my having an idea of taking a little excursion if the weather was fine, when I see a party coming down the road. He had on one of them dirty-coloured bedcover sort of things, and it was wrapped all over his head and round his body, like, as I have been told, them there Arabs wear⁠—and, indeed, I’ve seen them in them myself at West Brompton, when they was in the exhibition there. It was quite fine, and broad day, and I see him as plainly as I see you⁠—he comes skimming along at a tear of a pace, pulls up at the house over the way, opens the front door, and lets himself in.

“ ‘So,’ I says to myself, ‘there you are. Well, Mr. Arab, or whatever, or whoever, you may be, I’ll take good care that you don’t go out again before you’ve had a word from me. I’ll show you that landladies have their rights, like other Christians, in this country, however it may be in yours.’ So I kept an eye on the house, to see that he didn’t go out again, and nobody never didn’t, and between seven and eight I goes and I knocks at the door⁠—because I thought to myself that the earlier I was the better it