CHAPTER IX
THE CONTENTS OF THE PACKET
I pulled up sharply,--as if a brake had been suddenly, and evenmercilessly, applied to bring me to a standstill. In front of thewindow I stood shivering. A shower had recently commenced,--the fallingrain was being blown before the breeze. I was in a terrible sweat,--yettremulous as with cold; covered with mud; bruised, and cut, andbleeding,--as piteous an object as you would care to see. Every limb inmy body ached; every muscle was exhausted; mentally and physically Iwas done; had I not been held up, willy nilly, by the spell which wasupon me, I should have sunk down, then and there, in a hopeless,helpless, hapless heap.
But my tormentor was not yet at an end with me.
As I stood there, like some broken and beaten hack, waiting for theword of command, it came. It was as if some strong magnetic current hadbeen switched on to me through the window to draw me into the room.Over the low wall I went, over the sill,--once more I stood in thatchamber of my humiliation and my shame. And once again I was consciousof that awful sense of the presence of an evil thing. How much of itwas fact, and how much of it was the product of imagination I cannotsay; but, looking back, it seems to me that it was as if I had beentaken out of the corporeal body to be plunged into the inner chambersof all nameless sin. There was the sound of something flopping from offthe bed on to the ground, and I knew that the thing was coming at meacross the floor. My stomach quaked, my heart melted within me,--thevery anguish of my terror gave me strength to scream,--and scream!Sometimes, even now, I seem to hear those screams of mine ringingthrough the night, and I bury my face in the pillow, and it is asthough I was passing through the very Valley of the Shadow.
The thing went back,--I could hear it slipping and sliding across thefloor. There was silence. And, presently, the lamp was lit, and theroom was all in brightness. There, on the bed, in the familiar attitudebetween the sheets, his head resting on his hand, his eyes blazing likeliving coals, was the dreadful cause of all my agonies. He looked at mewith his unpitying, unblinking glance.
'So!--Through the window again!--like a thief!--Is it always throughthat door that you come into a house?'
He paused,--as if to give me time to digest his gibe.
'You saw Paul Lessingham,--well?--the great Paul Lessingham!--Was he,then, so great?'
His rasping voice, with its queer foreign twang, reminded me, in someuncomfortable way, of a rusty saw,--the things he said, and the mannerin which he said them, were alike intended to add to my discomfort. Itwas solely because the feat was barely possible that he only partiallysucceeded.
'Like a thief you went into his house,--did I not tell you that youwould? Like a thief he found you,--were you not ashamed? Since, like athief he found you, how comes it that you have escaped,--by whatrobber's artifice have you saved yourself from gaol?'
His manner changed,--so that, all at once, he seemed to snarl at me.
'Is he great?--well!--is he great,--Paul Lessingham? You are small, buthe is smaller,--your great Paul Lessingham!--Was there ever a man soless than nothing?'
With the recollection fresh upon me of Mr Lessingham as I had so latelyseen him I could not but feel that there might be a modicum of truth inwhat, with such an intensity of bitterness, the speaker suggested. Thepicture which, in my mental gallery, I had hung in the place of honour,seemed, to say the least, to have become a trifle smudged.
As usual, the man in the bed seemed to experience not the slightestdifficulty in deciphering what was passing through my mind.
'That is so,--you and he, you are a pair,--the great Paul Lessingham isas great a thief as you,--and greater!--for, at least, than you he hasmore courage.'
For some moments he was still; then exclaimed, with sudden fierceness,
'Give me what you have stolen!'
I moved towards the bed--most unwillingly--and held out to him thepacket of letters which I had abstracted from the little drawer.Perceiving my disinclination to his near neighbourhood, he set himselfto play with it. Ignoring my outstretched hand, he stared me straightin the face.
'What ails you? Are you not well? Is it not sweet to stand close at myside? You, with your white skin, if I were a woman, would you not takeme for a wife?'
There was something about the manner in which this was said which wasso essentially feminine that once more I wondered if I could possiblybe mistaken in the creature's sex. I would have given much to have beenable to strike him across the face,--or, better, to have taken him bythe neck, and thrown him through the window, and rolled him in the mud.
He condescended to notice what I was holding out to him.
'So!--that is what you have stolen!--That is what you have taken fromthe drawer in the bureau--the drawer which was locked--and which youused the arts in which a thief is skilled to enter. Give it tome,--thief!'
He snatched the packet from me, scratching the back of my hand as hedid so, as if his nails had been talons. He turned the packet over andover, glaring at it as he did so,--it was strange what a relief it wasto have his glance removed from off my face.
'You kept it in your inner drawer, Paul Lessingham, where none but youcould see it,--did you? You hid it as one hides treasure. There shouldbe something here worth having, worth seeing, worth knowing,--yes,worth knowing!--since you found it worth your while to hide it up soclosely.'
As I have said, the packet was bound about by a string of pinkribbon,--a fact on which he presently began to comment.
'With what a pretty string you have encircled it,--and how neatly it istied! Surely only a woman's hand could tie a knot like that,--who wouldhave guessed yours were such agile fingers?--So! An endorsement on thecover! What's this?--let's see what's written!--"The letters of my dearlove, Marjorie Lindon."'
As he read these words, which, as he said, were endorsed upon the outersheet of paper which served as a cover for the letters which wereenclosed within, his face became transfigured. Never did I suppose thatrage could have so possessed a human countenance. His jaw dropped openso that his yellow fangs gleamed though his parted lips,--he held hisbreath so long that each moment I looked to see him fall down in a fit;the veins stood out all over his face and head like seams of blood. Iknow not how long he continued speechless. When his breath returned, itwas with chokings and gaspings, in the midst of which he hissed out hiswords, as if their mere passage through his throat brought him near tostrangulation.
'The letters of his dear love!--of his dear love!--his!--PaulLessingham's!--So!--It is as I guessed,--as I knew,--as Isaw!--Marjorie Lindon!--Sweet Marjorie!--His dear love!--PaulLessingham's dear love!--She with the lily face, the corn-huedhair!--What is it his dear love has found in her fond heart to writePaul Lessingham?'
Sitting up in bed he tore the packet open. It contained, perhaps, eightor nine letters,--some mere notes, some long epistles. But, short orlong, he devoured them with equal appetite, each one over and overagain, till I thought he never would have done re-reading them. Theywere on thick white paper, of a peculiar shade of whiteness, withuntrimmed edges, On each sheet a crest and an address were stamped ingold, and all the sheets were of the same shape and size. I told myselfthat if anywhere, at any time, I saw writing paper like that again, Ishould not fail to know it. The caligraphy was, like the paper,unusual, bold, decided, and, I should have guessed, produced by a J pen.
All the time that he was reading he kept emitting sounds, moreresembling yelps and snarls than anything more human,--like some savagebeast nursing its pent-up rage. When he had made an end ofreading,--for the season,--he let his passion have full vent.
'So!--That is what his dear love has found it in her heart to writePaul Lessingham!--Paul Lessingham!'
Pen cannot describe the concentrated frenzy of hatred with which thespeaker dwelt upon the name,--it was demoniac.
'It is enough!--it is the end!--it is his doom! He shall be groundbetween the upper and the nether stones in the towers of anguish, andall that is left of him shall be cast on the accursed stream of thebitter wa
ters, to stink under the blood-grimed sun! And for her--forMarjorie Lindon!--for his dear love!--it shall come to pass that sheshall wish that she was never born,--nor he!--and the gods of theshadows shall smell the sweet incense of her suffering!--It shall be!it shall be! It is I that say it,--even I!'
In the madness of his rhapsodical frenzy I believe that he had actuallyforgotten I was there. But, on a sudden, glancing aside, he saw me, andremembered,--and was prompt to take advantage of an opportunity towreak his rage upon a tangible object.
'It is you!--you thief!--you still live!--to make a mock of one of thechildren of the gods!'
He leaped, shrieking, off the bed, and sprang at me, clasping my throatwith his horrid hands, bearing me backwards on to the floor; I felt hisbreath mingle with mine * * * and then God, in His mercy, sent oblivion.
BOOK II
The Haunted Man
The Story according to Sydney Atherton, Esquire
The Beetle: A Mystery Page 9