Free The Beetle by Richard Marsh

incredibly short space of time I was once more in front of
the house with the open window,—the packet of letters—which were
like to have cost me so dear!—gripped tightly in my hand.

Chapter IX
— The Contents of the Packet
*
    I pulled up sharply,—as if a brake had been suddenly, and even
mercilessly, applied to bring me to a standstill. In front of the
window I stood shivering. A shower had recently commenced,—the
falling rain was being blown before the breeze. I was in a
terrible sweat,—yet tremulous as with cold; covered with mud;
bruised, and cut, and bleeding,—as piteous an object as you would
care to see. Every limb in my body ached; every muscle was
exhausted; mentally and physically I was done; had I not been held
up, willy nilly, by the spell which was upon 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
the word of command, it came. It was as if some strong magnetic
current had been 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 that chamber of my humiliation and my shame. And once
again I was conscious of that awful sense of the presence of an
evil thing. How much of it was fact, and how much of it was the
product of imagination I cannot say; but, looking back, it seems
to me that it was as if I had been taken out of the corporeal body
to be plunged into the inner chambers of all nameless sin. There
was the sound of something flopping from off the bed on to the
ground, and I knew that the thing was coming at me across the
floor. My stomach quaked, my heart melted within me,—the very
anguish of my terror gave me strength to scream,—and scream!
Sometimes, even now, I seem to hear those screams of mine ringing
through the night, and I bury my face in the pillow, and it is as
though I was passing through the very Valley of the Shadow.
    The thing went back,—I could hear it slipping and sliding across
the floor. There was silence. And, presently, the lamp was lit,
and the room was all in brightness. There, on the bed, in the
familiar attitude between the sheets, his head resting on his
hand, his eyes blazing like living coals, was the dreadful cause
of all my agonies. He looked at me with his unpitying, unblinking
glance.
    'So!—Through the window again!—like a thief!—Is it always
through that 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
some uncomfortable way, of a rusty saw,—the things he said, and
the manner in which he said them, were alike intended to add to my
discomfort. It was solely because the feat was barely possible
that he only partially succeeded.
    'Like a thief you went into his house,—did I not tell you that
you would? Like a thief he found you,—were you not ashamed?
Since, like a thief he found you, how comes it that you have
escaped,—by what robber'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, but he is smaller,—your great Paul Lessingham!—Was there
ever a man so less than nothing?'
    With the recollection fresh upon me of Mr Lessingham as I had so
lately seen him I could not but feel that there might be a modicum
of truth in what, with such an intensity of bitterness, the
speaker suggested. The picture 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
slightest difficulty in deciphering what was passing through my
mind.
    'That is so,—you and he, you are a pair,—the