The Beetle: A MysteryWith an Introduction by David Stuart Davies. 'I saw him take a different shape before my eyes. His loose draperies fell about him...and there issued out of them a monstrous creature of the beetle tribe...' From out of the dark and mystic Egypt comes The Beetle, a creature of horror, 'born of neither God nor man', which can change its form at will. It is bent on revenge for a crime committed against the devotees of an ancient religion. At large in London, it pursues its victims without mercy and no one, it seems, is safe from its gruesome clutches. Richard Marsh's weird, compelling and highly original novel, which once outsold Dracula, is both a horror masterpiece and a fin de siecle melodrama embracing the fears and concerns of late Victorian society. Long out of print, The Beetle is now available in this Wordsworth edition, ready to chill you to the marrow and give you nightmares. |
Contents
Outside | 5 |
Inside | 10 |
The Man in the Bed | 15 |
A Lonely Vigil | 19 |
An Instruction to Commit Burglary | 24 |
A Singular Felony | 31 |
The Great Paul Lessingham | 38 |
The Man in the Street | 44 |
The Man in the Street | 152 |
A Fathers No | 155 |
The Terror by Night | 158 |
The Strange Story of the Man in the Street | 163 |
The Home on the Road from the Workhouse | 172 |
The Singular Behaviour of Mr Holt | 182 |
The Terror by Day | 184 |
IN PURSUIT | 189 |
The Contents of the Packet | 46 |
THE HAUNTED MAN | 51 |
Rejected | 53 |
A Midnight Episode | 58 |
A Morning Visitor | 63 |
The Picture | 67 |
The Duchesss Ball | 77 |
Mr Lessingham Speaks | 85 |
Athertons Magic Vapour | 90 |
Magic or Miracle? | 97 |
The Apotheosis of the Beetle | 99 |
The Lady Rages | 112 |
A Heavy Father | 116 |
The Terror in the Night | 120 |
The Haunted Man | 131 |
THE TERROR BY NIGHT AND THE TERROR BY DAY | 143 |
The Way He Told Her | 145 |
A Womans View | 149 |
A New Client | 191 |
What Came of Looking through a Lattice | 193 |
After Twenty Years | 201 |
A Bringer of Tidings | 208 |
What the Tidings Were | 210 |
What Was Hidden Under the Floor | 214 |
The Rest of the Find | 219 |
Miss Louisa Coleman | 223 |
What Miss Coleman Saw through the Window | 231 |
The Constable His Clue and the Cab | 236 |
The Quarry Doubles | 242 |
The Murder at Mrs Endersons | 247 |
The Man Who was Murdered | 256 |
All that Mrs Enderson Knew | 261 |
The Sudden Stopping | 264 |
The Contents of the ThirdClass Carriage | 271 |
The Conclusion of the Matter | 273 |