Victorian Anthology
“The Beetle” Extract 2
Richard Marsh
By Richard Marsh (1897)
I found myself confronting an individual who might almost have sat for one of the bogies I had just alluded to. His costume was reminiscent of the ‘Algerians’ whom one finds all over France, and who are the most persistent, insolent and amusing of pedlars. I remember one who used to haunt the repetitions at the Alcazar at Tours,–but there! This individual was like the originals, yet unlike,–he was less gaudy, and a good deal dingier, than his Gallic prototypes are apt to be. Then he wore a burnoose,–the yellow, grimy-looking article of the Arab of the Soudan, not the spick and span Arab of the boulevard. Chief difference of all, his face was clean shaven,–and whoever saw an Algerian of Paris whose chiefest glory was not his well-trimmed moustache and beard?
I expected that he would address me in the lingo which these gentlemen call French,–but he didn’t.
‘You are Mr Atherton?’
‘And you are Mr–Who?–how did you come here? Where’s my servant?’
The fellow held up his hand. As he did so, as if in accordance with a pre-arranged signal, Edwards came into the room looking excessively startled. I turned to him.
And he went. I turned to the stranger. ‘Pray, sir, are you a magician?’
He replied to my question with another.
‘You, Mr Atherton,–are you also a magician?’
He was staring at my mask with an evident lack of comprehension.
‘I wear this because, in this place, death lurks in so many subtle forms, that, without it, I dare not breathe,’ He inclined his head–though I doubt if he understood. ‘Be so good as to tell me, briefly, what it is you wish with me.’
He slipped his hand into the folds of his burnoose, and, taking out a slip of paper, laid it on the shelf by which we were standing. I glanced at it, expecting to find on it a petition, or a testimonial, or a true statement of his sad case; instead it contained two words only,–‘Marjorie Lindon.’ The unlooked-for sight of that well-loved name brought the blood into my cheeks.
‘You come from Miss Lindon?’ He narrowed his shoulders, brought his finger-tips together, inclined his head, in a fashion which was peculiarly Oriental, but not particularly explanatory,–so I repeated my question.
‘Do you wish me to understand that you do come from Miss Lindon?’
Again he slipped his hand into his burnoose, again he produced a slip of paper, again he laid it on the shelf, again I glanced at it, again nothing was written on it but a name,–‘Paul Lessingham.’
‘Well?–I see,–Paul Lessingham.–What then?’
‘She is good,–he is bad,–is it not so?’
He touched first one scrap of paper, then the other. I stared.
‘Pray how do you happen to know?’
‘He shall never have her,–eh?’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Ah!–what do I mean!’
‘Precisely, what do you mean? And also, and at the same time, who the devil are you?’
‘It is as a friend I come to you.’
‘Then in that case you may go; I happen to be over-stocked in that line just now.’
‘Not with the kind of