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

anyone walk more upright, and few as fast. At his heels comes the young man what is your friend, and it seems to me that he couldn’t make out what this other was a-doing of. I says to myself, ‘There’s been a quarrel between them two, and him as has gone has hooked it.’ This young man what is your friend he stood at the gate, all of a fidget, staring after the other with all his eyes, as if he couldn’t think what to make of him, and the young woman, she stood on the doorstep, staring after him too.

“As the young man what had hooked it turned the corner, and was out of sight, all at once your friend he seemed to make up his mind, and he started off running as hard as he could pelt⁠—and the young woman was left alone. I expected, every minute, to see him come back with the other young man, and the young woman, by the way she hung about the gate, she seemed to expect it too. But no, nothing of the kind. So when, as I expect, she’d had enough of waiting, she went into the house again, and I see her pass the front room window. After a while, back she comes to the gate, and stands looking and looking, but nothing was to be seen of either of them young men. When she’d been at the gate, I daresay five minutes, back she goes into the house⁠—and I never saw nothing of her again.”

“You never saw anything of her again?⁠—Are you sure she went back into the house?”

“As sure as I am that I see you.”

“I suppose that you didn’t keep a constant watch upon the premises?”

“But that’s just what I did do. I felt something queer was going on, and I made up my mind to see it through. And when I make up my mind to a thing like that I’m not easy to turn aside. I never moved off the chair at my bedroom window, and I never took my eyes off the house, not till you come knocking at my front door.”

“But, since the young lady is certainly not in the house at present, she must have eluded your observation, and, in some manner, have left it without your seeing her.”

“I don’t believe she did, I don’t see how she could have done⁠—there’s something queer about that house, since that Arab party’s been inside it. But though I didn’t see her, I did see someone else.”

“Who was that?”

“A young man.”

“A young man?”

“Yes, a young man, and that’s what puzzled me, and what’s been puzzling me ever since, for see him go in I never did do.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Not as to the face, for he wore a dirty cloth cap pulled down right over it, and he walked so quickly that I never had a proper look. But I should know him anywhere if I saw him, if only because of his clothes and his walk.”

“What was there peculiar about his clothes and his walk?”

“Why, his clothes were that old, and torn, and dirty, that a ragman wouldn’t have given a thank you for them⁠—and as for fit⁠—there wasn’t none, they hung upon him like a scarecrow⁠—he was a regular figure of fun; I should think the boys would call after him if they saw him in the street. As for his walk, he walked off just like the first young man had done, he strutted along with his shoulders back, and his head in the air, and that stiff and straight that my kitchen poker would have looked crooked beside of him.”

“Did nothing happen to attract your attention between the young lady’s going back into the house and the coming out of this young man?”

Miss Coleman cogitated.

“Now you mention it there did⁠—though I should have forgotten all about it if you hadn’t asked me⁠—that comes of your not letting me tell the tale in my own way. About twenty minutes after the young woman had gone in someone put up the blind in the front room, which that young man had dragged right down, I couldn’t see who it was for the blind was between us, and it was about ten minutes after that that young man came marching out.”

“And then what followed?”

“Why, in about another ten minutes that Arab party himself comes scooting through the door.”

“The Arab party?”

“Yes, the Arab party! The sight of him took me clean aback. Where he’d been, and what he’d been doing with himself while them there people played hi-spy-hi about his premises I’d have given a shilling out of my pocket to have known, but there he was, as large as life, and carrying a bundle.”

“A bundle?”

“A bundle, on his head, like a muffin-man carries his tray. It was a great thing, you never would have thought he could have carried it, and it was easy to see that it was as much as he could manage; it bent him nearly double, and he went crawling along like a snail⁠—it took him quite a time to get to the end of the road.”

Mr. Lessingham leaped up from his seat, crying, “Marjorie was in that bundle!”

“I doubt it,” I said.

He moved about the room distractedly, wringing his hands.

“She was! she must have been! God help us all!”

“I repeat that I doubt it. If you will be advised by me you will wait awhile before you arrive at any such conclusion.”

All at once there was a tapping at the window pane. Atherton was staring at us from without.

He shouted through the glass, “Come out of that, you fossils!⁠—I’ve news for you!”

XLI The Constable⁠—His Clue⁠—and the Cab

Miss Coleman, getting up in a fluster, went hurrying to the door.

“I won’t have that young man in my house. I won’t have him! Don’t let him dare to put his nose across my doorstep.”

I endeavoured to appease her perturbation.

“I promise you that he shall not come in, Miss