The Beetle | Page 8

other, that it was impossible such a creature could be feminine. The
bedclothes were drawn up to his shoulders; only his head was visible.
He lay on his left side, his head resting on his left hand; motionless,
eyeing me as if he sought to read my inmost soul. And, in very truth, I
believe he read it. His age I could not guess; such a look of age I had
never imagined. Had he asserted that he had been living through the
ages, I should have been forced to admit that, at least, he looked it. And
yet I felt that it was quite within the range of possibility that he was no
older than myself,--there was a vitality in his eyes which was startling.
It might have been that he had been afflicted by some terrible disease,
and it was that which had made him so supernaturally ugly.
There was not a hair upon his face or head, but, to make up for it, the
skin, which was a saffron yellow, was an amazing mass of wrinkles.
The cranium, and, indeed, the whole skull, was so small as to be
disagreeably suggestive of something animal. The nose, on the other
hand, was abnormally large; so extravagant were its dimensions, and so
peculiar its shape, it resembled the beak of some bird of prey. A
characteristic of the face--and an uncomfortable one I--was that,
practically, it stopped short at the mouth. The mouth, with its blubber
lips, came immediately underneath the nose, and chin, to all intents and
purposes, there was none. This deformity--for the absence of chin

amounted to that--it was which gave to the face the appearance of
something not human,--that, and the eyes. For so marked a feature of
the man were his eyes, that, ere long, it seemed to me that he was
nothing but eyes.
His eyes ran, literally, across the whole of the upper portion of his
face,--remember, the face was unwontedly small, and the columna of
the nose was razor-edged. They were long, and they looked out of
narrow windows, and they seemed to be lighted by some internal
radiance, for they shone out like lamps in a lighthouse tower. Escape
them I could not, while, as I endeavoured to meet them, it was as if I
shrivelled into nothingness. Never before had I realised what was
meant by the power of the eye. They held me enchained, helpless,
spell-bound. I felt that they could do with me as they would; and they
did. Their gaze was unfaltering, having the bird-like trick of never
blinking; this man could have glared at me for hours and never moved
an eyelid.
It was he who broke the silence. I was speechless.
'Shut the window.' I did as he bade me. 'Pull down the blind.' I obeyed.
'Turn round again.' I was still obedient. 'What is your name?'
Then I spoke,--to answer him. There was this odd thing about the
words I uttered, that they came from me, not in response to my will
power, but in response to his. It was not I who willed that I should
speak; it was he. What he willed that I should say, I said. Just that, and
nothing more. For the time I was no longer a man; my manhood was
merged in his. I was, in the extremest sense, an example of passive
obedience.
'Robert Holt.'
'What are you?'
'A clerk.'
'You look as if you were a clerk.' There was a flame of scorn in his

voice which scorched me even then. 'What sort of a clerk are you?'
'I am out of a situation.'
'You look as if you were out of a situation.' Again the scorn. 'Are you
the sort of clerk who is always out of a situation? You are a thief.'
'I am not a thief.'
'Do clerks come through the window?' I was still,--he putting no
constraint on me to speak. 'Why did you come through the window?'
'Because it was open.'
'So!--Do you always come through a window which is open?'
'No.'
'Then why through this?'
'Because I was wet--and cold--and hungry--and tired.'
The words came from me as if he had dragged them one by one,--
which, in fact, he did.
'Have you no home?'
'No.'
'Money?'
'No.'
'Friends?'
'No.'
'Then what sort of a clerk are you?'

I did not answer him,--I did not know what it was he wished me to say.
I was the victim of bad luck, nothing else,--I swear it. Misfortune had
followed hard upon misfortune. The firm by whom I had been
employed for years suspended payment. I obtained a situation with one
of their creditors, at a lower salary. They reduced their staff, which
entailed my going. After an interval I obtained a temporary