Speaker 1: The Green and Gold Bug by J. M. Alviy. The
inquest was over. The coroner had gone, and so had
the twelve men who formed his jury. The police officials
and reporters for the press had ceased to ring our doorbell.
The undertaker, polite and slow spoken, had got his work
well in hand, and the two coffins lay side by
side in the dimly lighted parlor. An odd silence was
in the house where, only a few hours ago, grim
tragedy stalked its hideous way. But I am starting my
story at the wrong end. Let us turn back forty
eight hours to the beginning. It was on Wednesday night,
and my uncle and I, dressed for dinner, sat each
at a window in the living room, watching every passing
taxi on the street. At last one stopped outside. Two
figures stepped out into the cold night, and while one
paid the taxi driver, the other rushed up the front
steps and came into the front hall and flung her
arms around my uncle's neck. It was my kid's sister, Joe,
back from a five month honeymoon in the far distant
and mysterious countries of the Orient. Well, well, said my
uncle is the little rosebud, glad to be home again
and rest once more in her uncle's arms. And Joe
said yes, oh, yes, and burst out crying, and hid
her face on my uncle's oversized vest and held his
coat lapels each with a tiny girlish hand. I went
out to greet her husband, but fell back before him
as he advanced. Shocked was I at the the change
in his appearance. From a handsome youth, well built and smiling,
he had become a pale, shriveled figure which staggered under
the weight of the light hand baggage he was dragging
into the house. My uncle and I had planned to
give the travelers a royal welcome. Our plans, however, were
rudely swept aside, and the bridegroom was rushed upstairs to bed,
and the doctor summoned. Just what the sick man's ailment was.
The physician was unable to determine. There were times when
his heart raised like fury, and his breath came in gasps,
and his neck swelled and his eyes bulged. At such
time he clutched the bedclothes with an iron claw and
tried to raise himself. Then the spell would pass like
a snap of the fingers, and the patient would relax
and fall back, as if exhausted from a violent struggle.
About midnight, he rested easily, and Joe, my uncle, and
I sat down to the untasted dinner. A month ago
in China, said Joe. We went up into the mountains
one day to a temple where a horrible old creature
sat on the floor with incense burning all around him.
He was a magician or priest or soothsayer or something,
and had power with the Chinese gods. But Dick laughed
at him and said the poor Chinamen were suckers to
fall for his line. And the magician was angry and
rose up in his ugliness and put a curse on
Dick and on his family. Dick was going to fight
him right there, and we would have been murdered, I'm sure.
Only I pulled him away and made him take me
quickly back into the city, And that night, said Joe,
Dick had the first atack. Josephine cried, my uncle, do
you know what you are saying? I'm confound it, my dear,
what nonsense? Put a curse on him? You know better
than to believe such trash curse. The devil. My dear,
Dick has got some low down foreign plague. It doesn't
matter whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in power.
There's no place like the USA con found these outlandish,
god forsaken, evil smelling places where all the pests and
misery of the world are bred. Dick's got the bubonic plague,
or the berry berry, or some such foolish thing. Joe
told us that Dick got over the first attack in
a few hours, but two weeks later, on the first
night out at sea, on the way home, he had
the second, and it was worse than the first. After that,
they became more frequent and more violent, and Dick was
wasting away, and poor Joe's heart was breaking. Fiddle sticks,
said my uncle Bosh, and Tommy Rot curse my eye.
I'm no doctor, but the lad's got some heathen disorder.
But cheer up, little woman. We'll have your lover overhauled
and in a one shape in a jiffy. It might
take a month to get real sick in China, but
that's China. You're home now, my dear, and it doesn't
take all day to get a pain in the tummy here,
nor all night to get over it. Just smile, little girl,
and get ready to go to housekeeping. That's what it
was two o'clock before the house settled down. It was
three when I heard a noise outside my door. I
went out to see what it was. The light at
the top of the stairs had been left burning, and
as I opened my door there was enough light to
show me the deformed creature that was creeping along the
wall of the hallway. A hideous man, a weird beast,
some terrible imp from hell. What I could not say?
So awful? Was it, so unlike anything I have ever
seen or heard of or fancied. And this thing opened
the door of the honeymooner's room and passed in. I
had no revolver, so I took up a dumbbell that
I used in the morning for exercise and went to
the door of the room where the thing had entered.
I opened it and reached in and snapped on the lights.
In the bed lay the travelers sound asleep. I went
over and touched them to make sure they were only sleeping.
I looked under the bed, in the closet, and out
on the porch roof under the windows. There was nothing there.
Joe open mouthed and wide eyed, caused me to pull
my head in from the window. What's the matter, what's
the matter? Nothing, I said, don't be frightened. I thought
I heard the fire engines going downtown and came over
to look. I went downstairs to look around a bit.
The hall, the parlors, the dining room were all empty.
But in the little passage that runs from the dining
room to the kitchen, I thought I heard a footstep.
I was sure I did. I stood and listened. Then
somebody sneezed. I pulled the swinging door open. There stood
my uncle in his night shirt. God bless my soul,
he said, I was about to shoot you. You're catching cold.
I told him go to bed. What are you tramping
around here for this time of night? Why are you, sir?
I heard a noise, I explained, So did I, and
I thought I saw something thought he cried. Thought, Hell,
I did you did? Where? You saw it too? Yes,
in the corner outside my room. You're lucky, said my uncle.
I saw it in my room. He smiled, a grim smile.
I was so shocked that I could not move. After
it left, I got up and came down here. I
thought it might have come this way. Now, I said,
it came past my room and went into their room.
The next day, the sick man was much improved, Joe
was brighter, My uncle smiled in spite of his troubled mind.
I said nothing. That night. We went to bed early.
I was tired out and soon fell asleep. It was
three o'clock again when I heard a noise. This time
I rushed out and came face to face with the
unearthly visitor. It gave me one mighty crack on the
chin and sent me back into my room. I lay
on the floor in a semi day's condition for full
five minutes, as well as I can estimate. Then I
grabbed my dumbbell and went out again. As on the
previous night. I went to the door of Joe's room
and opened it and switched on the lights. On the
floor lay Joe, blood at her mouth and nose. Across
the foot of the bed. Lay her husband, looking more
like his old self than I had seen him since
the day of his wedding. I told my story at
the inquest. The police officials laughed at it. The reporters
seized upon it as great stuff for the papers. The
coroner's jury considered it gravely and then gave it as
their verdict that Josephine Blackton was murdered by her husband,
Richard Blackton, who afterward died by his own hand. They
were right, and yet they were wrong. I have found
new evidence. I shall make it known. In the trunks
of the honeymooners which arrived tonight, was a collection of curios.
Among them was a small bottle containing a strange insect,
a green and gold colored bug, and the bottle was
labeled shang Tang January fifteenth, the strange bug that stung
Dick last night. We believe that someone threw it in
the window. I don't like the idea of a murder
and a suicide in our family. I don't want the
coroner's verdict to stand. I'm going to prove that an
enraged old magician in the mountains near shang Tung caused
the green and gold bug to be thrown in the
window where the Americans were staying, and it poisoned Dick
and slowly drove him mad, destroying his human qualities, mind
and body. And that the two who lay side by
side in their coffins were both murdered, and that the
murderer sits among his incense burners seven thousand miles away.
I'm going to prove it if I have to go
to China. The End of the Green and Gold Bug
by J. M. Alvey