The Beetle

by Richard Marsh

‘No, well, as far as that goes it wasn’t needful. I know the cabman, his name and all about him, his stable’s in Bradmore.’

  I whipped out my note-book.

  ‘Give me his address.’

  ‘I don’t know what his Christian name is, Tom, I believe, but I’m not sure. Anyhow his surname’s Ellis and his address is Church Mews, St John’s Road, Bradmore,—I don’t know his number, but any one will tell you which is his place, if you ask for Four-Wheel Ellis,—that’s the name he’s known by among his pals because of his driving a four-wheeler.’

  ‘Thank you, officer. I am obliged to you.’ Two half-crowns changed hands. ‘If you will keep an eye on the house and advise me at the address which you will find on my card, of any thing which takes place there during the next few days, you will do me a service.’

  We had clambered back into the hansom, the driver was just about to start, when the constable was struck by a sudden thought.

  ‘One moment, sir,—blessed if I wasn’t going to forget the most important bit of all. I did hear him tell Ellis where to drive him to,—he kept saying it over and over again, in that queer lingo of his. “Waterloo Railway Station, Waterloo Railway Station.” “All right,” said Ellis, “I’ll drive you to Waterloo Railway Station right enough, only I’m not going to have that bundle of yours inside my cab. There isn’t room for it, so you put it on the roof.” “To Waterloo Railway Station,” said the Arab, “I take my bundle with me to Waterloo Railway Station,—I take it with me.” “Who says you don’t take it with you?” said Ellis. “You can take it, and twenty more besides, for all I care, only you don’t take it inside my cab,—put it on the roof.” “I take it with me to Waterloo Railway Station,” said the Arab, and there they were, wrangling and jangling, and neither seeming to be able to make out what the other was after, and the people all laughing.’

  ‘Waterloo Railway Station,—you are sure that was what he said?’

  ‘I’ll take my oath to it, because I said to myself, when I heard it, “I wonder what you’ll have to pay for that little lot, for the District Railway Station’s outside the four-mile radius.”’ As we drove off I was inclined to ask myself, a little bitterly—and perhaps unjustly—if it were not characteristic of the average London policeman to almost forget the most important part of his information,—at any rate to leave it to the last and only to bring it to the front on having his palm crossed with silver.

  As the hansom bowled along we three had what occasionally approached a warm discussion.

  ‘Marjorie was in that bundle,’ began Lessingham, in the most lugubrious of tones, and with the most woe-begone of faces.

  ‘I doubt it,’ I observed.

  ‘She was,—I feel it,—I know it. She was either dead and mutilated, or gagged and drugged and helpless. All that remains is vengeance.’

  ‘I repeat that I doubt it.’

  Atherton struck in.

  ‘I am bound to say, with the best will in the world to think otherwise, that I agree with Lessingham.’

  ‘You are wrong.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you to talk in that cock-sure way, but it’s easier for you to say I’m wrong than to prove it. If I am wrong, and if Lessingham’s wrong, how do you explain his extraordinary insistance on taking it inside the cab with him, which the bobby describes? If there wasn’t something horrible, awful in that bundle of his, of which he feared the discovery, why was he so reluctant to have it placed upon the roof?’

  ‘There probably was something in it which he was particularly anxious should not be discovered, but I doubt if it was anything of the kind which you suggest.’

  ‘Here is Marjorie in a house alone—nothing has been seen of her since,—her clothing, her hair, is found hidden away under the floor. This scoundrel sallies forth with a huge bundle on his head,—the bobby speaks of it being five or six feet long, or longer,—a bundle which he regards with so much solicitude that he insists on never allowing it to go, for a single instant, out of his sight and reach. What is in the thing? don’t all the facts most unfortunately point in one direction?’

  Mr Lessingham covered his face with his hands, and groaned.

  ‘I fear that Mr Atherton is right.’

  ‘I differ from you both.’

  Sydney at once became heated.

  ‘Then perhaps you can tell us what was in the bundle?’

  ‘I fancy I could make a guess at the contents.’

  ‘Oh you could, could you, then, perhaps, for our sakes, you’ll make it,—and not play the oracular owl!—Lessingham and I are interested in this business, after all.’

  ‘It contained the bearer’s personal property: that, and nothing more. Stay! before you jeer at me, suffer me to finish. If I am not mistaken as to the identity of the person whom the constable describes as the Arab, I apprehend that the contents of that bundle were of much more importance to him than if they had consisted of Miss Lindon, either dead or living. More. I am inclined to suspect that if the bundle was placed on the roof of the cab, and if the driver did meddle with it, and did find out the contents, and understand them, he would have been driven, out of hand, stark staring mad.’

  Sydney was silent, as if he reflected. I imagine he perceived there was something in what I said.

  ‘But what has become of Miss Lindon?’

  ‘I fancy that Miss Lindon, at this moment, is—somewhere; I don’t, just now, know exactly where, but I hope very shortly to be able to give you a clearer notion,—attired in a rotten, dirty pair of boots; a filthy, tattered pair of trousers; a ragged, unwashed apology for a shirt; a greasy, ancient, shapeless coat; and a frowsy peaked cloth cap.’

  They stared at me, opened-eyed. Atherton was the first to speak.

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that it seems to me that the facts point in the direction of my conclusions rather than yours—and that very strongly too. Miss Coleman asserts that she saw Miss London return into the house; that within a few minutes the blind was replaced at the front window; and that shortly after a young man, attired in the costume I have described, came walking out of the front door. I believe that young man was Miss Marjorie Lindon.’

  Lessingham and Atherton both broke out into interrogations, with Sydney, as usual, loudest.

  ‘But—man alive! what on earth should make her do a thing like that? Marjorie, the most retiring, modest girl on all God’s earth, walk about in broad daylight, in such a costume, and for no reason at all! my dear Champnell, you are suggesting that she first of all went mad.’

  ‘She was in a state of trance.’

  ‘Good God!—Champnell!’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Then you think that—juggling villain did get hold of her?’

  ‘Undoubtedly. Here is my view of the case, mind it is only a hypothesis and you must take it for what it is worth. It seems to me quite clear that the Arab, as we will call the person for the sake of identification, was somewhere about the premises when you thought he wasn’t.’

  ‘But—where? We looked upstairs, and downstairs, and everywhere—where could he have been?’

  ‘That, as at present advised, I am not prepared to say, but I think you may take it for granted that he was there. He hypnotised the man Holt, and sent him away, intending you to go after him, and so being rid of you both—’

  ‘The deuce he did, Champnell! You write me down an ass!’

  ‘As soon as the coast was clear he discovered himself to Miss Lindon, who, I expect, was disagreeably surprised, and hypnotised her.’

  ‘The hound!’

  ‘The devil!’

  The first exclamation was Lessingham’s, the second Sydney’s.

  ‘He then constrained her to strip herself to the skin—’

  ‘The wretch!’

  ‘The fiend!’

  ‘He cut off her hair; he h
id it and her clothes under the floor where we found them—where I think it probable that he had already some ancient masculine garments concealed—’

  ‘By Jove! I shouldn’t be surprised if they were Holt’s. I remember the man saying that that nice joker stripped him of his duds,—and certainly when I saw him,—and when Marjorie found him!—he had absolutely nothing on but a queer sort of cloak. Can it be possible that that humorous professor of hankey-pankey—may all the maledictions of the accursed alight upon his head!—can have sent Marjorie Lindon, the daintiest damsel in the land!—into the streets of London rigged out in Holt’s old togs!’

  ‘As to that, I am not able to give an authoritative opinion, but, if I understand you aright, it at least is possible. Anyhow I am disposed to think that he sent Miss Lindon after the man Holt, taking it for granted that he had eluded you.—’

  ‘That’s it. Write me down an ass again!’

  ‘That he did elude you, you have yourself admitted.’

  ‘That’s because I stopped talking with that mutton-headed bobby,—I’d have followed the man to the ends of the earth if it hadn’t been for that.’

  ‘Precisely; the reason is immaterial, it is the fact with which we are immediately concerned. He did elude you. And I think you will find that Miss Lindon and Mr Holt are together at this moment.’

  ‘In men’s clothing?’

  ‘Both in men’s clothing, or, rather, Miss Lindon is in a man’s rags.’

  ‘Great Potiphar! To think of Marjorie like that!’

  ‘And where they are, the Arab is not very far off either.’

  Lessingham caught me by the arm.

  ‘And what diabolical mischief do you imagine that he proposes to do to her?’

  I shirked the question.

  ‘Whatever it is, it is our business to prevent his doing it.’

  ‘And where do you think they have been taken?’

  ‘That it will be our immediate business to endeavour to discover,—and here, at any rate, we are at Waterloo.’

  CHAPTER XLII

  THE QUARRY DOUBLES

  I TURNED TOWARDS THE BOOKING-OFFICE on the main departure platform. As I went, the chief platform inspector, George Bellingham, with whom I had some acquaintance, came out of his office. I stopped him.

  ‘Mr Bellingham, will you be so good as to step with me to the booking-office, and instruct the clerk in charge to answer one or two questions which I wish to put to him. I will explain to you afterwards what is their exact import, but you know me sufficiently to be able to believe me when I say that they refer to a matter in which every moment is of the first importance.’

  He turned and accompanied us into the interior of the booking-case.

  ‘To which of the clerks, Mr Champnell, do you wish to put your questions?’

  ‘To the one who issues third-class tickets to Southampton.’

  Bellingham beckoned to a man who was counting a heap of money, and apparently seeking to make it tally with the entries in a huge ledger which lay open before him,—he was a short, slightly-built young fellow, with a pleasant face and smiling eyes.

  ‘Mr Stone, this gentleman wishes to ask you one or two questions.’

  ‘I am at his service.’

  I put my questions.

  ‘I want to know, Mr Stone, if, in the course of the day, you have issued any tickets to a person dressed in Arab costume?’

  His reply was prompt.

  ‘I have—by the last train, the 7.25,—three singles.’

  Three singles! Then my instinct had told me rightly.

  ‘Can you describe the person?’

  Mr Stone’s eyes twinkled.

  ‘I don’t know that I can, except in a general way,—he was uncommonly old and uncommonly ugly, and he had a pair of the most extraordinary eyes I ever saw,—they gave me a sort of all-overish feeling when I saw them glaring at me through the pigeon hole. But I can tell you one thing about him, he had a great bundle on his head, which he steadied with one hand, and as it bulged out in all directions it’s presence didn’t make him popular with other people who wanted tickets too.’

  Undoubtedly this was our man.

  ‘You are sure he asked for three tickets?’

  ‘Certain. He said three tickets to Southampton; laid down the exact fare,—nineteen and six—and held up three fingers—like that. Three nasty looking fingers they were, with nails as long as talons.’

  ‘You didn’t see who were his companions?’

  ‘I didn’t,—I didn’t try to look. I gave him his tickets and off he went,—with the people grumbling at him because that bundle of his kept getting in their way.’

  Bellingham touched me on the arm.

  ‘I can tell you about the Arab of whom Mr Stone speaks. My attention was called to him by his insisting on taking his bundle with him into the carriage,—it was an enormous thing, he could hardly squeeze it through the door; it occupied the entire seat. But as there weren’t as many passengers as usual, and he wouldn’t or couldn’t be made to understand that his precious bundle would be safe in the luggage van along with the rest of the luggage, and as he wasn’t the sort of person you could argue with to any advantage, I had him put into an empty compartment, bundle and all.’

  ‘Was he alone then?’

  ‘I thought so at the time, he said nothing about having more than one ticket, or any companions, but just before the train started two other men—English men—got into his compartment; and as I came down the platform, the ticket inspector at the barrier informed me that these two men were with him, because he held tickets for the three, which, as he was a foreigner, and they seemed English, struck the inspector as odd.’

  ‘Could you describe the two men?’

  ‘I couldn’t, not particularly, but the man who had charge of the barrier might. I was at the other end of the train when they got in. All I noticed was that one seemed to be a commonplace looking individual and that the other was dressed like a tramp, all rags and tatters, a disreputable looking object he appeared to be.’

  ‘That,’ I said to myself, ‘was Miss Marjorie Lindon, the lovely daughter of a famous house; the wife-elect of a coming statesman.’

  To Bellingham I remarked aloud:

  ‘I want you to strain a point, Mr Bellingham, and to do me a service which I assure you you shall never have any cause to regret. I want you to wire instructions down the line to detain this Arab and his companions and to keep them in custody until the receipt of further instructions. They are not wanted by the police as yet, but they will be as soon as I am able to give certain information to the authorities at Scotland Yard,—and wanted very badly. But, as you will perceive for yourself, until I am able to give that information every moment is important.—Where’s the Station Superintendent?’

  ‘He’s gone. At present I’m in charge.’

  ‘Then will you do this for me? I repeat that you shall never have any reason to regret it.’

  ‘I will if you’ll accept all responsibility.’

  ‘I’ll do that with the greatest pleasure.’

  Bellingham looked at his watch.

  ‘It’s about twenty minutes to nine. The train’s scheduled for Basingstoke at 9.6. If we wire to Basingstoke at once they ought to be ready for them when they come.’

  ‘Good!’

  The wire was sent.

  We were shown into Bellingham’s office to await results Lessingham paced agitatedly to and fro; he seemed to have reached the limits of his self-control, and to be in a condition in which movement of some sort was an absolute necessity. The mercurial Sydney, on the contrary, leaned back in a chair, his legs stretched out in front of him, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets, and stared at Lessingham, as if he found relief to his feelings in watching his companion’s restlessness. I, for my part, drew up as full a précis of t
he case as I deemed advisable, and as time permitted, which I despatched by one of the company’s police to Scotland Yard.

  Then I turned to my associates.

  ‘Now, gentlemen, it’s past dinner time. We may have a journey in front of us. If you take my advice you’ll have something to eat.’

  Lessingham shook his head.

  ‘I want nothing.’

  ‘Nor I,’ echoed Sydney.

  I started up.

  ‘You must pardon my saying nonsense, but surely you of all men, Mr Lessingham, should be aware that you will not improve the situation by rendering yourself incapable of seeing it through. Come and dine.’

  I haled them off with me, willy nilly, to the refreshment room, I dined,—after a fashion; Mr Lessingham swallowed with difficulty, a plate of soup; Sydney nibbled at a plate of the most unpromising looking ‘chicken and ham,’—he proved, indeed, more intractable than Lessingham, and was not to be persuaded to tackle anything easier of digestion.

  I was just about to take cheese after chop when Bellingham came hastening in, in his hand an open telegram.

  ‘The birds have flown,’ he cried.

  ‘Flown!—How?’

  In reply he gave me the telegram. I glanced at it. It ran:

  ‘Persons described not in the train. Guard says they got out at Vauxhall. Have wired Vauxhall to advise you.’

  ‘That’s a level-headed chap,’ said Bellingham. ‘The man who sent that telegram. His wiring to Vauxhall should save us a lot of time,—we ought to hear from there directly. Hollo! what’s this? I shouldn’t be surprised if this is it.’

  As he spoke a porter entered,—he handed an envelope to Bellingham. We all three kept our eyes fixed on the inspector’s face as he opened it. When he perceived the contents he gave an exclamation of surprise.

  ‘This Arab of yours, and his two friends, seem rather a curious lot, Mr Champnell.’

  He passed the paper on to me. It took the form of a report. Lessingham and Sydney, regardless of forms and ceremonies, leaned over my shoulder as I read it.

  ‘Passengers by 7.30 Southampton, on arrival of train, complained of noises coming from a compartment in coach 8964. Stated that there had been shrieks and yells ever since the train left Waterloo, as if someone was being murdered. An Arab and two Englishmen got out of the compartment in question, apparently the party referred to in wire just to hand from Basingstoke. All three declared that there was nothing the matter. That they had been shouting for fun. Arab gave up three third singles for Southampton, saying, in reply to questions, that they had changed their minds, and did not want to go any farther. As there were no signs of a struggle or of violence, nor, apparently, any definite cause for detention, they were allowed to pass. They took a four-wheeler, No. 09435. The Arab and one man went inside, and the other man on the box. They asked to be driven to Commercial Road, Limehouse. The cab has since returned. Driver says he put the three men down, at their request, in Commercial Road, at the corner of Sutcliffe Street, near the East India Docks. They walked up Sutcliffe Street, the Englishmen in front, and the Arab behind, took the first turning to the right, and after that he saw nothing of them. The driver further states that all the way the Englishman inside, who was so ragged and dirty that he was reluctant to carry him, kept up a sort of wailing noise which so attracted his attention that he twice got off his box to see what was the matter, and each time he said it was nothing. The cabman is of opinion that both the Englishmen were of weak intellect. We were of the same impression here. They said nothing, except at the seeming instigation of the Arab, but when spoken to stared and gaped like lunatics.