The Beetle: A Mystery

It struck me as being as singular an application for a tenancy as I remembered to have encountered. When I passed it on to Lessingham, he seemed to think so too.

‘This is a curious letter, Miss Coleman.’

‘So I thought,—and still more so when I found the fifty pounds inside. There were five ten-pound notes, all loose, and the letter not even registered. If I had been asked what was the rent of the house, I should have said, at the most, not more than twenty pounds,—because, between you and me, it wants a good bit of doing up, and is hardly fit to live in as it stands.’

I had had sufficient evidence of the truth of this altogether apart from the landlady’s frank admission.

‘Why, for all he could have done to help himself I might have kept the money, and only sent him a receipt for a quarter. And some folks would have done,—but I’m not one of that sort myself, and shouldn’t care to be. So I sent this here party,—I never could pronounce his name, and never shall—a receipt for a year.’

Miss Coleman paused to smooth her apron, and consider.

‘Well, the receipt should have reached this here party on the Thursday morning, as it were,—I posted it on the Wednesday night, and on the Thursday, after breakfast, I thought I’d go over the way to see if there was any little thing I could do,—because there wasn’t hardly a whole pane of glass in the place,—when I all but went all of a heap. When I looked across the road, blessed if the party wasn’t in already,—at least as much as he ever was in, which, so far as I can make out, never has been anything particular,—though how he had got in, unless it was through a window in the middle of the night, is more than I should care to say,—there was nobody in the house when I went to bed, that I could pretty nearly take my Bible oath,—yet there was the blind up at the parlour, and, what’s more, it was down, and it’s been down pretty nearly ever since.

‘“Well,” I says to myself, “for right down imperence this beats anything,—why he’s in the place before he knows if I’ll let him have it. Perhaps he thinks I haven’t got a word to say in the matter,—fifty pounds or no fifty pounds, I’ll soon show him.” So I slips on my bonnet, and I walks over the road, and I hammers at the door.

‘Well, I have seen people hammering since then, many a one, and how they’ve kept it up has puzzled me,—for an hour, some of them,—but I was the first one as begun it. I hammers, and I hammers, and I kept on hammering, but it wasn’t no more use than if I’d been hammering at a tombstone. So I starts rapping at the window, but that wasn’t no use neither. So I goes round behind, and I hammers at the back door,—but there, I couldn’t make anyone hear nohow. So I says to myself, “Perhaps the party as is in, ain’t in, in a manner of speaking; but I’ll keep an eye on the house, and when he is in I’ll take care that he ain’t out again before I’ve had a word to say.”

‘So I come back home, and as I said I would, I kept an eye on the house the whole of that livelong day, but never a soul went either out or in. But the next day, which it was a Friday, I got out of bed about five o’clock, to see if it was raining, through my having an idea of taking a little excursion if the weather was fine, when I see a party coming down the road. He had on one of them dirty-coloured bed-cover sort of things, and it was wrapped all over his head and round his body, like, as I have been told, them there Arabs wear,—and, indeed, I’ve seen them in them myself at West Brompton, when they was in the exhibition there. It was quite fine, and broad day, and I see him as plainly as I see you,—he comes skimming along at a tear of a pace, pulls up at the house over the way, opens the front door, and lets himself in.

‘“So,” I says to myself, “there you are. Well, Mr Arab, or whatever, or whoever, you may be, I’ll take good care that you don’t go out again before you’ve had a word from me. I’ll show you that landladies have their rights, like other Christians, in this country, however it may be in yours.” So I kept an eye on the house, to see that he didn’t go out again, and nobody never didn’t, and between seven and eight I goes and I knocks at the door,—because I thought to myself that the earlier I was the better it might be.

‘If you’ll believe me, no more notice was taken of me than if I was one of the dead. I hammers, and I hammers, till my wrist was aching, I daresay I hammered twenty times,—and then I went round to the back door, and I hammers at that,—but it wasn’t the least good in the world. I was that provoked to think I should be treated as if I was nothing and nobody, by a dirty foreigner, who went about in a bed-gown through the public streets, that it was all I could do to hold myself.

‘I comes round to the front again, and I starts hammering at the window, with every knuckle on my hands, and I calls out, “I’m Miss Louisa Coleman, and I’m the owner of this house, and you can’t deceive me,—I saw you come in, and you’re in now, and if you don’t come and speak to me this moment I’ll have the police.”

‘All of a sudden, when I was least expecting it, and was hammering my very hardest at the pane, up goes the blind, and up goes the window too, and the most awful-looking creature ever I heard of, not to mention seeing, puts his head right into my face,—he was more like a hideous baboon than anything else, let alone a man. I was struck all of a heap, and plumps down on the little wall, and all but tumbles head over heels backwards. And he starts shrieking, in a sort of a kind of English, and in such a voice as I’d never heard the like,—it was like a rusty steam engine.

‘“Go away! go away! I don’t want you! I will not have you,—never! You have your fifty pounds,—you have your money,—that is the whole of you,—that is all you want! You come to me no more!—never!—never no more!—or you be sorry!—Go away!”

‘I did go away, and that as fast as ever my legs would carry me,—what with his looks, and what with his voice, and what with the way that he went on, I was nothing but a mass of trembling. As for answering him back, or giving him a piece of my mind, as I had meant to, I wouldn’t have done it not for a thousand pounds. I don’t mind confessing, between you and me, that I had to swallow four cups of tea, right straight away, before my nerves was steady.

‘“Well,” I says to myself, when I did feel, as it might be, a little more easy, “you never have let that house before, and now you’ve let it with a vengeance,—so you have. If that there new tenant of yours isn’t the greatest villain that ever went unhung it must be because he’s got near relations what’s as bad as himself,—because two families like his I’m sure there can’t be. A nice sort of Arab party to have sleeping over the road he is!”

‘But after a time I cools down, as it were,—because I’m one of them sort as likes to see on both sides of a question. “After all,” I says to myself, “he has paid his rent, and fifty pounds is fifty pounds,—I doubt if the whole house is worth much more, and he can’t do much damage to it whatever he does.”

‘I shouldn’t have minded, so far as that went, if he’d set fire to the place, for, between ourselves, it’s insured for a good bit over its value. So I decided that I’d let things be as they were, and see how they went on. But from that hour to this I’ve never spoken to the man, and never wanted to, and wouldn’t, not of my own free will, not for a shilling a time,—that face of his will haunt me if I live till Noah, as the saying is. I’ve seen him going in and out at all hours of the day and night,—that Arab party’s a mystery if ever there was one,—he always goes tearing along as if he’s flying for his life. Lots of people have come to the house, all sorts and kinds, men and women—they’ve been mostly women, and even little children. I’ve seen them hammer and hammer at that front door, but never a one have I seen let in,—or yet seen taken any notice of, and I think I may say, and yet tell no lie, that I’ve scarcely took my eye off the house since he’s been inside it, over and over again in the middle of the night have I got up to have a look, so that I’ve not missed much that has took place.

‘What’s puzzled me is the noises that’s come from the house. Sometimes for days together there’s not been a sound, it might have been a house of the dead; and then, all through the night, there’ve been yells and screeches, squawks and screams,—I never heard nothing like it. I have thought, and more than once, that the devil himself must be in that front room, let alone all the rest of his demons. And as for cats!—where they’ve come from I can’t think. I didn’t use to notice hardly a cat in the neighbourhood till that there Arab party came,—there isn’t much to attract them; but since he came there’s been regiments. Sometimes at night there’s been troops about the place, screeching like mad,—I’ve wished them farther, I can tell you. That Arab party must be fond of ’em. I’ve seen them inside the house, at the windows, upstairs and downstairs, as it seemed to me, a dozen at a time.’

CHAPTER XL.
WHAT MISS COLEMAN SAW THROUGH THE WINDOW

As Miss Coleman had paused, as if her narrative was approaching a conclusion, I judged it expedient to make an attempt to bring the record as quickly as possible up to date.

‘I take it, Miss Coleman, that you have observed what has occurred in the house to-day.’

She tightened her nut-cracker jaws and glared at me disdainfully,—her dignity was ruffled.

‘I’m coming to it, aren’t I?—if you’ll let me. If you’ve got no manners I’ll learn you some. One doesn’t like to be hurried at my time of life, young man.’

I was meekly silent;—plainly, if she was to talk, every one else must listen.

‘During the last few days there have been some queer goings on over the road,—out of the common queer, I mean, for goodness knows that they always have been queer enough. That Arab party has been flitting about like a creature possessed,—I’ve seen him going in and out twenty times a day. This morning—’

She paused,—to fix her eyes on Lessingham. She apparently observed his growing interest as she approached the subject which had brought us there,—and resented it.

‘Don’t look at me like that, young man, because I won’t have it. And as for questions, I may answer questions when I’m done, but don’t you dare to ask me one before, because I won’t be interrupted.’

Up to then Lessingham had not spoken a word,—but it seemed as if she was endowed with the faculty of perceiving the huge volume of the words which he had left unuttered.

‘This morning—as I’ve said already,—’ she glanced at Lessingham as if she defied his contradiction—‘when that Arab party came home it was just on the stroke of seven. I know what was the exact time because, when I went to the door to the milkman, my clock was striking the half hour, and I always keep it thirty minutes fast. As I was taking the milk, the man said to me, “Hollo, Miss Coleman, here’s your friend coming along.” “What friend?” I says,—for I ain’t got no friends, as I know, round here, nor yet, I hope no enemies neither.

‘And I looks round, and there was the Arab party coming tearing down the road, his bedcover thing all flying in the wind, and his arms straight out in front of him,—I never did see anyone go at such a pace. “My goodness,” I says, “I wonder he don’t do himself an injury.” “I wonder someone else don’t do him an injury,” says the milkman. “The very sight of him is enough to make my milk go sour.” And he picked up his pail and went away quite grumpy,—though what that Arab party’s done to him is more than I can say.—I have always noticed that milkman’s temper’s short like his measure. I wasn’t best pleased with him for speaking of that Arab party as my friend, which he never has been, and never won’t be, and never could be neither.

‘Five persons went to the house after the milkman was gone, and that there Arab party was safe inside,—three of them was commercials, that I know, because afterwards they came to me. But of course they none of them got no chance with that there Arab party except of hammering at his front door, which ain’t what you might call a paying game, nor nice for the temper, but for that I don’t blame him, for if once those commercials do begin talking they’ll talk for ever.

‘Now I’m coming to this afternoon.’

I thought it was about time,—though for the life of me, I did not dare to hint as much.

‘Well, it might have been three, or it might have been half past, anyhow it was thereabouts, when up there comes two men and a woman, which one of the men was that young man what’s a friend of yours. “Oh,” I says to myself, “here’s something new in callers, I wonder what it is they’re wanting.” That young man what was a friend of yours, he starts hammering, and hammering, as the custom was with every one who came, and, as usual, no more notice was taken of him than nothing,—though I knew that all the time the Arab party was indoors.’

At this point I felt that at all hazards I must interpose a question.

‘You are sure he was indoors?’

She took it better than I feared she might.

‘Of course I’m sure,—hadn’t I seen him come in at seven, and he never hadn’t gone out since, for I don’t believe that I’d taken my eyes off the place not for two minutes together, and I’d never had a sight of him. If he wasn’t indoors, where was he then?’

For the moment, so far as I was concerned, the query was unanswerable. She triumphantly continued:

‘Instead of doing what most did, when they’d had enough of hammering, and going away, these three they went round to the back, and I’m blessed if they mustn’t have got through the kitchen window, woman and all, for all of a sudden the blind in the front room was pulled not up, but down—dragged down it was, and there was that young man what’s a friend of yours standing with it in his hand.

‘“Well,” I says to myself, “if that ain’t cool I should like to know what is. If, when you ain’t let in, you can let yourself in, and that without so much as saying by your leave, or with your leave, things is coming to a pretty pass. Wherever can that Arab party be, and whatever can he be thinking of, to let them go on like that because that he’s the sort to allow a liberty to be took with him, and say nothing, I don’t believe.”

‘Every moment I expects to hear a noise and see a row begin, but, so far as I could make out, all was quiet and there wasn’t nothing of the kind. So I says to myself, “There’s more in this than meets the eye, and them three parties must have right upon their side, or they wouldn’t be doing what they are doing in the way they are, there’d be a shindy.”

‘Presently, in about five minutes, the front door opens, and a young man—not the one what’s your friend, but the other—comes sailing out, and through the gate, and down the road, as stiff and upright as a grenadier,—I never see anyone walk more upright, and few as fast. At his heels comes the young man what is your friend, and it seems to me that he couldn’t make out what this other was a-doing of. I says to myself, “There’s been a quarrel between them two, and him as has gone has hooked it.” This young man what is your friend he stood at the gate, all of a fidget, staring after the other with all his eyes, as if he couldn’t think what to make of him, and the young woman, she stood on the doorstep, staring after him too.

‘As the young man what had hooked it turned the corner, and was out of sight, all at once your friend he seemed to make up his mind, and he started off running as hard as he could pelt,—and the young woman was left alone. I expected, every minute, to see him come back with the other young man, and the young woman, by the way she hung about the gate, she seemed to expect it too. But no, nothing of the kind. So when, as I expect, she’d had enough of waiting, she went into the house again, and I see her pass the front room window. After a while, back she comes to the gate, and stands looking and looking, but nothing was to be seen of either of them young men. When she’d been at the gate, I daresay five minutes, back she goes into the house,—and I never saw nothing of her again.’

‘You never saw anything of her again?—Are you sure she went back into the house?’

‘As sure as I am that I see you.’

‘I suppose that you didn’t keep a constant watch upon the premises?’

‘But that’s just what I did do. I felt something queer was going on, and I made up my mind to see it through. And when I make up my mind to a thing like that I’m not easy to turn aside. I never moved off the chair at my bedroom window, and I never took my eyes off the house, not till you come knocking at my front door.’

‘But, since the young lady is certainly not in the house at present, she must have eluded your observation, and, in some manner, have left it without your seeing her.’

‘I don’t believe she did, I don’t see how she could have done,—there’s something queer about that house, since that Arab party’s been inside it. But though I didn’t see her, I did see someone else.’

‘Who was that?’

‘A young man.’

‘A young man?’

‘Yes, a young man, and that’s what puzzled me, and what’s been puzzling me ever since, for see him go in I never did do.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘Not as to the face, for he wore a dirty cloth cap pulled down right over it, and he walked so quickly that I never had a proper look. But I should know him anywhere if I saw him, if only because of his clothes and his walk.’

‘What was there peculiar about his clothes and his walk?’

‘Why, his clothes were that old, and torn, and dirty, that a ragman wouldn’t have given a thank you for them,—and as for fit,—there wasn’t none, they hung upon him like a scarecrow—he was a regular figure of fun; I should think the boys would call after him if they saw him in the street. As for his walk, he walked off just like the first young man had done, he strutted along with his shoulders back, and his head in the air, and that stiff and straight that my kitchen poker would have looked crooked beside of him.’

‘Did nothing happen to attract your attention between the young lady’s going back into the house and the coming out of this young man?’

Miss Coleman cogitated.

‘Now you mention it there did,—though I should have forgotten all about it if you hadn’t asked me,—that comes of your not letting me tell the tale in my own way. About twenty minutes after the young woman had gone in someone put up the blind in the front room, which that young man had dragged right down, I couldn’t see who it was for the blind was between us, and it was about ten minutes after that that young man came marching out.’

‘And then what followed?’

‘Why, in about another ten minutes that Arab party himself comes scooting through the door.’

‘The Arab party?’

‘Yes, the Arab party! The sight of him took me clean aback. Where he’d been, and what he’d been doing with himself while them there people played hi-spy-hi about his premises I’d have given a shilling out of my pocket to have known, but there he was, as large as life, and carrying a bundle.’

‘A bundle?’

‘A bundle, on his head, like a muffin-man carries his tray. It was a great thing, you never would have thought he could have carried it, and it was easy to see that it was as much as he could manage; it bent him nearly double, and he went crawling along like a snail,—it took him quite a time to get to the end of the road.’

Mr Lessingham leaped up from his seat, crying,

‘Marjorie was in that bundle!’

‘I doubt it,’ I said.

He moved about the room distractedly, wringing his hands.

‘She was! she must have been! God help us all!’

‘I repeat that I doubt it. If you will be advised by me you will wait awhile before you arrive at any such conclusion.’

All at once there was a tapping at the window pane. Atherton was staring at us from without.

He shouted through the glass,

‘Come out of that, you fossils!—I’ve news for you!’

CHAPTER XLI.
THE CONSTABLE,—HIS CLUE,—AND THE CAB

Miss Coleman, getting up in a fluster, went hurrying to the door.

‘I won’t have that young man in my house. I won’t have him! Don’t let him dare to put his nose across my doorstep.’

I endeavoured to appease her perturbation.

‘I promise you that he shall not come in, Miss Coleman. My friend here, and I, will go and speak to him outside.’

She held the front door open just wide enough to enable Lessingham and me to slip through, then she shut it after us with a bang. She evidently had a strong objection to any intrusion on Sydney’s part.

Standing just without the gate he saluted us with a characteristic vigour which was scarcely flattering to our late hostess. Behind him was a constable.

‘I hope you two have been mewed in with that old pussy long enough. While you’ve been tittle-tattling I’ve been doing,—listen to what this bobby’s got to say.’

The constable, his thumbs thrust inside his belt, wore an indulgent smile upon his countenance. He seemed to find Sydney amusing. He spoke in a deep bass voice,—as if it issued from his boots.

‘I don’t know that I’ve got anything to say.’

It was plain that Sydney thought otherwise.

‘You wait till I’ve given this pretty pair of gossips a lead, officer, then I’ll trot you out.’ He turned to us.

‘After I’d poked my nose into every dashed hole in that infernal den, and been rewarded with nothing but a pain in the back for my trouble, I stood cooling my heels on the doorstep, wondering if I should fight the cabman, or get him to fight me, just to pass the time away,—for he says he can box, and he looks it,—when who should come strolling along but this magnificent example of the metropolitan constabulary.’ He waved his hand towards the policeman, whose grin grew wider. ‘I looked at him, and he looked at me, and then when we’d had enough of admiring each other’s fine features and striking proportions, he said to me, “Has he gone?” I said, “Who?—Baxter?—or Bob Brown?” He said, “No, the Arab.” I said, “What do you know about any Arab?” He said, “Well, I saw him in the Broadway about three-quarters of an hour ago, and then, seeing you here, and the house all open, I wondered if he had gone for good.” With that I almost jumped out of my skin, though you can bet your life I never showed it. I said, “How do you know it was he?” He said, “It was him right enough, there’s no doubt about that. If you’ve seen him once, you’re not likely to forget him.” “Where was he going?” “He was talking to a cabman,—four-wheeler. He’d got a great bundle on his head,—wanted to take it inside with him. Cabman didn’t seem to see it.” That was enough for me,—I picked this most deserving officer up in my arms, and carried him across the road to you two fellows like a flash of lightning.’

Since the policeman was six feet three or four, and more than sufficiently broad in proportion, his scarcely seemed the kind of figure to be picked up in anybody’s arms and carried like a ‘flash of lightning,’ which,—as his smile grew more indulgent, he himself appeared to think.

Still, even allowing for Atherton’s exaggeration, the news which he had brought was sufficiently important. I questioned the constable upon my own account.

‘There is my card, officer, probably, before the day is over, a charge of a very serious character will be preferred against the person who has been residing in the house over the way. In the meantime it is of the utmost importance that a watch should be kept upon his movements. I suppose you have no sort of doubt that the person you saw in the Broadway was the one in question?’

‘Not a morsel. I know him as well as I do my own brother,—we all do upon this beat. He’s known amongst us as the Arab. I’ve had my eye on him ever since he came to the place. A queer fish he is. I always have said that he’s up to some game or other. I never came across one like him for flying about in all sorts of weather, at all hours of the night, always tearing along as if for his life. As I was telling this gentleman I saw him in the Broadway,—well, now it’s about an hour since, perhaps a little more. I was coming on duty when I saw a crowd in front of the District Railway Station,—and there was the Arab, having a sort of argument with the cabman. He had a great bundle on his head, five or six feet long, perhaps longer. He wanted to take this great bundle with him into the cab, and the cabman, he didn’t see it.’

‘You didn’t wait to see him drive off.’

‘No,—I hadn’t time. I was due at the station,—I was cutting it pretty fine as it was.’

‘You didn’t speak to him,—or to the cabman?’

‘No, it wasn’t any business of mine you understand. The whole thing just caught my eye as I was passing.’

‘And you didn’t take the cabman’s number?’

‘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 woebegone 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 cocksure 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 insistence 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 Lindon 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 hid 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 its 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 the 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: