The Beetle Part 12

'And, once more, sir, who are you?'

'I am of the children of Isis!'

'Is that so?-It occurs to me that you have made a slight mistake,-this is London, not a dog-hole in the desert.'

'Do I not know?-what does it matter?-you shall see! There will come a time when you will want me,-you will find that you cannot bear to think of him in her arms,-her whom you love! You will call to me, and I shall come, and of Paul Lessingham there shall be an end.'

While I was wondering whether he was really as mad as he sounded, or whether he was some impudent charlatan who had an axe of his own to grind, and thought that he had found in me a grindstone, he had vanished from the room. I moved after him.

'Hang it all!-stop!' I cried.

He must have made pretty good travelling, because, before I had a foot in the hall, I heard the front door slam, and, when I reached the street, intent on calling him back, neither to the right nor to the left was there a sign of him to be seen.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PICTURE

'I wonder what that nice-looking beggar really means, and who he happens to be?' That was what I said to myself when I returned to the laboratory. 'If it is true that, now and again, Providence does write a man's character on his face, then there can't be the slightest shred of a doubt that a curious one's been written on his. I wonder what his connection has been with the Apostle,-or if it's only part of his game of bluff.'

I strode up and down,-for the moment my interest in the experiments I was conducting had waned.

'If it was all bluff I never saw a better piece of acting,-and yet what sort of finger can such a precisian as St Paul have in such a pie? The fellow seemed to squirm at the mere mention of the rising-hope-of-the-Radicals' name. Can the objection be political? Let me consider,-what has Lessingham done which could offend the religious or patriotic susceptibilities of the most fanatical of Orientals? Politically, I can recall nothing. Foreign affairs, as a rule, he has carefully eschewed. If he has offended-and if he hasn't the seeming was uncommonly good!-the cause will have to be sought upon some other track. But, then, what track?'

The more I strove to puzzle it out, the greater the puzzlement grew.

'Absurd!-The rascal has had no more connection with St Paul than St Peter. The probability is that he's a crackpot; and if he isn't, he has some little game on foot-in close a.s.sociation with the hunt of the oof-bird!-which he tried to work off on me, but couldn't. As for-for Marjorie-my Marjorie!-only she isn't mine, confound it!-if I had had my senses about me, I should have broken his head in several places for daring to allow her name to pa.s.s his lips,-the unbaptised Mohammedan!-Now to return to the chase of splendid murder!'

I s.n.a.t.c.hed up my mask-one of the most ingenious inventions, by the way, of recent years; if the armies of the future wear my mask they will defy my weapon!-and was about to re-adjust it in its place, when someone knocked at the door.

'Who's there?-Come in!'

It was Edwards. He looked round him as if surprised.

'I beg your pardon, sir,-I thought you were engaged. I didn't know that-that gentleman had gone.'

'He went up the chimney, as all that kind of gentlemen do.-Why the deuce did you let him in when I told you not to?' 'Really, sir, I don't know. I gave him your message, and-he looked at me, and-that is all I remember till I found myself standing in this room.'

Had it not been Edwards I might have suspected him of having had his palm well greased,-but, in his case, I knew better. It was as I thought,-my visitor was a mesmerist of the first cla.s.s; he had actually played some of his tricks, in broad daylight, on my servant, at my own front door,-a man worth studying. Edwards continued.

'There is someone else, sir, who wishes to see you,-Mr Lessingham.'

'Mr Lessingham!' At that moment the juxtaposition seemed odd, though I daresay it was so rather in appearance than in reality. 'Show him in.'

Presently in came Paul.

I am free to confess,-I have owned it before!-that, in a sense, I admire that man,-so long as he does not presume to thrust himself into a certain position. He possesses physical qualities which please my eye-speaking as a mere biologist like the suggestion conveyed by his every pose, his every movement, of a tenacious hold on life,-of reserve force, of a repository of bone and gristle on which he can fall back at pleasure. The fellow's lithe and active; not hasty, yet agile; clean built, well hung,- the sort of man who might be relied upon to make a good recovery. You might beat him in a sprint,-mental or physical-though to do that you would have to be spry!-but in a staying race he would see you out. I do not know that he is exactly the kind of man whom I would trust,-unless I knew that he was on the job,-which knowledge, in his case, would be uncommonly hard to attain. He is too calm; too self-contained; with the knack of looking all round him even in moments of extremest peril,-and for whatever he does he has a good excuse. He has the reputation, both in the House and out of it, of being a man of iron nerve,-and with some reason; yet I am not so sure. Unless I read him wrongly his is one of those individualities which, confronted by certain eventualities, collapse,-to rise, the moment of trial having pa.s.sed, like Phoenix from her ashes. However it might be with his adherents, he would show no trace of his disaster.

And this was the man whom Marjorie loved. Well, she could show some cause. He was a man of position,-destined, probably, to rise much higher; a man of parts,-with capacity to make the most of them; not ill-looking; with agreeable manners,-when he chose; and he came within the lady's definition of a gentleman, 'he always did the right thing, at the right time, in the right way.' And yet-! Well, I take it that we are all cads, and that we most of us are prigs; for mercy's sake do not let us all give ourselves away.

He was dressed as a gentleman should be dressed,-black frock coat, black vest, dark grey trousers, stand-up collar, smartly- tied bow, gloves of the proper shade, neatly brushed hair, and a smile, which if was not childlike, at any rate was bland.

'I am not disturbing you?'

'Not at all.'

'Sure?-I never enter a place like this, where a man is matching himself with nature, to wrest from her her secrets, without feeling that I am crossing the threshold of the unknown. The last time I was in this room was just after you had taken out the final patents for your System of Telegraphy at Sea, which the Admiralty purchased,-wisely-What is it, now?'

'Death.'

'No?-really?-what do you mean?'

'If you are a member of the next government, you will possibly learn; I may offer them the refusal of a new wrinkle in the art of murder.'

'I see,-a new projectile.-How long is this race to continue between attack and defence?'

'Until the sun grows cold.'

'And then?'

'There'll be no defence,-nothing to defend.'

He looked at me with his calm, grave eyes.

'The theory of the Age of Ice towards which we are advancing is not a cheerful one.' He began to finger a gla.s.s retort which lay upon a table. 'By the way, it was very good of you to give me a look in last night. I am afraid you thought me peremptory,-I have come to apologise.'

'I don't know that I thought you peremptory; I thought you- queer.'

'Yes.' He glanced at me with that expressionless look upon his face which he could summon at will, and which is at the bottom of the superst.i.tion about his iron nerve. 'I was worried, and not well. Besides, one doesn't care to be burgled, even by a maniac.'

'Was he a maniac?'

'Did you see him?'

'Very clearly.'

'Where?'

'In the street.'

'How close were you to him?'

'Closer than I am to you.'

'Indeed. I didn't know you were so close to him as that. Did you try to stop him?'

'Easier said than done,-he was off at such a rate.'