The Beetle Richard Marsh (most romantic novels TXT) 📖

testimony of the gratitude I felt, Mrs. Clements was dead, drowned during an excursion on the Nile, and her husband had departed on a missionary expedition into Central Africa, from which he never returned.

“Although, in a measure, my physical health returned, for months after I had left the roof of my hospitable hosts, I was in a state of semi-imbecility. I suffered from a species of aphasia. For days together I was speechless, and could remember nothing⁠—not even my own name. And, when that stage had passed, and I began to move more freely among my fellows, for years I was but a wreck of my former self. I was visited, at all hours of the day and night, by frightful⁠—I know not whether to call them visions, they were real enough to me, but since they were visible to no one but myself, perhaps that is the word which best describes them. Their presence invariably plunged me into a state of abject terror, against which I was unable to even make a show of fighting. To such an extent did they embitter my existence, that I voluntarily placed myself under the treatment of an expert in mental pathology. For a considerable period of time I was under his constant supervision, but the visitations were as inexplicable to him as they were to me.

“By degrees, however, they became rarer and rarer, until at last I flattered myself that I had once more become as other men. After an interval, to make sure, I devoted myself to politics. Thenceforward I have lived, as they phrase it, in the public eye. Private life, in any peculiar sense of the term, I have had none.”

Mr. Lessingham ceased. His tale was not uninteresting, and, to say the least of it, was curious. But I still was at a loss to understand what it had to do with me, or what was the purport of his presence in my room. Since he remained silent, as if the matter, so far as he was concerned, was at an end, I told him so.

“I presume, Mr. Lessingham, that all this is but a prelude to the play. At present I do not see where it is that I come in.”

Still for some seconds he was silent. When he spoke his voice was grave and sombre, as if he were burdened by a weight of woe.

“Unfortunately, as you put it, all this has been but a prelude to the play. Were it not so I should not now stand in such pressing want of the services of a confidential agent⁠—that is, of an experienced man of the world, who has been endowed by nature with phenomenal perceptive faculties, and in whose capacity and honour I can place the completest confidence.”

I smiled⁠—the compliment was a pointed one.

“I hope your estimate of me is not too high.”

“I hope not⁠—for my sake, as well as for your own. I have heard great things of you. If ever man stood in need of all that human skill and acumen can do for him, I certainly am he.”

His words aroused my curiosity. I was conscious of feeling more interested than heretofore.

“I will do my best for you. Man can do no more. Only give my best a trial.”

“I will. At once.”

He looked at me long and earnestly. Then, leaning forward, he said, lowering his voice perhaps unconsciously,

“The fact is, Mr. Champnell, that quite recently events have happened which threaten to bridge the chasm of twenty years, and to place me face to face with that plague spot of the past. At this moment I stand in imminent peril of becoming again the wretched thing I was when I fled from that den of all the devils. It is to guard me against this that I have come to you. I want you to unravel the tangled thread which threatens to drag me to my doom⁠—and, when unravelled to sunder it⁠—forever, if God wills!⁠—in twain.”

“Explain.”

To be frank, for the moment I thought him mad. He went on.

“Three weeks ago, when I returned late one night from a sitting in the House of Commons, I found, on my study table, a sheet of paper on which there was a representation⁠—marvellously like!⁠—of the creature into which, as it seemed to me, the woman of the songs was transformed as I clutched her throat between my hands. The mere sight of it brought back one of those visitations of which I have told you, and which I thought I had done with forever⁠—I was convulsed by an agony of fear, thrown into a state approximating to a paralysis both of mind and body.”

“But why?”

“I cannot tell you. I only know that I have never dared to allow my thoughts to recur to that last dread scene, lest the mere recurrence should drive me mad.”

“What was this you found upon your study table⁠—merely a drawing?”

“It was a representation, produced by what process I cannot say, which was so wonderfully, so diabolically, like the original, that for a moment I thought the thing itself was on my table.”

“Who put it there?”

“That is precisely what I wish you to find out⁠—what I wish you to make it your instant business to ascertain. I have found the thing, under similar circumstances, on three separate occasions, on my study table⁠—and each time it has had on me the same hideous effect.”

“Each time after you have returned from a late sitting in the House of Commons?”

“Exactly.”

“Where are these⁠—what shall I call them⁠—delineations?”

“That, again, I cannot tell you.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I say. Each time, when I recovered, the thing had vanished.”

“Sheet of paper and all?”

“Apparently⁠—though on that point I could not be positive. You will understand that my study table is apt to be littered with sheets of paper, and I could not absolutely determine that the thing had not stared at me from one of those. The delineation itself, to use your word, certainly had vanished.”

I began to suspect that this was a case rather for