The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Richard Marsh: Volume 2

The second volume of a unique collection of bizarre tales from a master of the genre

Richard Marsh was the pseudonym of British born author Richard Bernard Heldman (1857-1916). His most famous work of supernatural fiction, The Beetle, was published in 1897, the same year as Bram Stoker’s tale of the vampire Count Dracula, and it is believed that initially Marsh’s book, which also features a bizarre and sinister figure capable of ‘shape shifting,’ was even more popular with readers than Stoker’s. Today Marsh’s book is still widely regarded as a classic of its genre. Although a prolific author who wrote in a number of genres including adventure fiction under his real name, Marsh is principally remembered as a writer of supernatural thrillers and his output in this field was prodigious. Most aficionados of the genre have heard of The Beetle, but this special Leonaur collection of the author’s excursions into the other worldly and strange extends to six satisfyingly substantial volumes containing many tales that will be unfamiliar to modern readers.
Volume two contains three novels, The Devil’s Diamond, The Mahatma’s Pupil and The Goddess a Demon, and four short stories of the strange and unusual.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.

“As I was observing, Mr. Hookham, I shall be happy”—the smoke suddenly increased in volume—“I shall be happy”—so dense had the smoke become that it obscured the persons on the stage, but through it issued, audible to every creature in the hall, the clear, well-bred tones of Mr. Leicester’s voice,—“I shall be happy to buy your diamond.”<br>
There was silence, just for an instant. People looked at each other’s faces, so much, that is to say, as they could see of them, for the smoke in the hall, as on the stage, began to be thick and suffocating. Then a scream rang out—the scream of a human being. They could not see for the smoke who it was that screamed, but they guessed that it was Mr. Leicester, though the acute, agonising scream, which made their blood run cold and their hearts cease beating, was pitched in a different key to the soft, easy tones to which they had just been listening. Then there was silence again.<br>
Then a curious noise began. It came from the stage. It was like the yelping of some strange beast. Yelp! yelp! Yelp! Each separate yelp made them shiver in their shoes, and wish they had been anywhere but in the Sphinx’s Cave that afternoon. It seemed, from the sound, as though some wild animal had appeared upon the stage. It seemed as though it were tearing something to pieces. It seemed as though it were in an ecstasy of rage, and, in its fury, was yelp, yelp, yelping!<br>
How long it lasted, that uncomfortable visitation from the unseen visitor—if it was a visitation, and there was a visitor—no one in the hall would have been prepared to say. It seemed to those there that it lasted hours. Possibly it only lasted seconds.<br>
Just as speedily as it came, it went away. All was still.<br>
The hall was filled with a dense and suffocating smoke, which penetrated into every nook and cranny, as though the place was on fire. But there were no signs of flame. And in the intense silence which followed the cessation of that remarkable noise which had proceeded from the stage the smoke began to disappear. Nobody seemed to notice where it went, but it did go, and by degrees the air was as clear again as though it had not been.<br>
And as the smoke passed away, the people were revealed, in the clear brilliance of the electric light, all standing up, and with white, frightened faces turned towards the stage. Something very curious seemed to have happened there. The table and two of the chairs were overturned, and on the third chair sat—if such an attitude can be spoken of as sitting—Mr. Samuel Hookham.<br>
He had every appearance of having been engaged in some desperate struggle. His coat was torn all down the back, one of the sleeves seemed to be attached only by a few loose threads to the shoulder, his shirt was ripped open at the neck, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, and there was a great scratch all down one side of his face. He lay, rather than sat, on his chair, which was balanced on its two hind legs. His head, with the blood streaming from the open wound—or scratch—on his right cheek, rested on his chest, and his arms dangled loosely at his sides. On the whole, he did not present at all a creditable picture.<br>
But his was not the only singular figure to be seen upon that little stage, which, for once in a way, might truly claim to have been the scene of an entertainment of mystery and imagination, a scene which had lost none of its piquancy through having been an unrehearsed effect. There was a figure there, the figure of a man, which appealed even more strongly to the imagination than Mr. Hookham’s, it lay so very still—right in the centre, full length upon the carpet, with his face turned towards the ground. It was the figure of Mr. Percy Leicester.<br>
Still in silence the people continued to stare. Why did he not get up? And why did he lie on his face there, so very still? In the front stood Colonel Dewsnap, staring down upon his friend. At the back was Madame Nurvetchky, her fists clenched so tightly that one fancied that her finger-nails must be piercing the flesh of her hands. On the right stood her husband, his tall, lean figure drawn straight up, peering through his sleepy-looking, half-closed eyelids at the man who lay upon the ground.