"Oh, madam," she panted, "I daren't! I daren't go near it. I'm frightened out of my life, at beetles. And there's another of them"—and she pointed to the wainscoting—"and another! Why, the room's full of them!"
And so it was. Everywhere Gladys looked she saw beetles crawling towards her—dozens upon dozens, hundreds upon hundreds—and all of the same monstrous size and ultra-horrible appearance.
"Look!" she screamed. "They are climbing on to my clothes. One's got into my shoes, and another will be in them, in a second. There's another—crawling up my cloak—and another on my skirt. Oh! Oh!" and her cries, and those of the dresser, speedily brought a troop of actors and actresses to the door. The instant, however, the cause of the alarm was ascertained, there were loud yells, and a wild stampede down the passages. The Stage Manager was called, but one glance at the floor was enough for him—he fled. And in the end three of the supers had to be fetched. Hot water, brooms, ashes, and quicklime were used, and although thousands of the cockroaches were killed, thousands more came, and so hopeless did the task of getting rid of them become, that the room eventually had to be vacated, and the cracks under the door securely sealed.
Before Gladys left the theatre, she was called on the telephone.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Hamar," came the reply, in insinuating tones. "How do you like the beetles? You'll never see the end of them till—"
But Gladys rang off.
On her return home something scuttled across the hall floor in front of her. She sprang back with a scream. It was a gigantic cockroach. The hall was full of them. She summoned the servants, and they set to work to kill them. But they might as well have tried to stop Niagara, for as fast as they squashed one battalion, another took its place. They came out of cracks in the floor, from behind the wainscoting, from every conceivable place in the kitchens, and in a dense black ribbon some six inches broad, ascended the staircase. Gladys tried to barricade her room against them, but it was of no avail. They came from under the boards of the floor and poured down the chimney. They swarmed over the furniture, in the cupboards, chest of drawers, the washstand (where they kept continually falling into the water), in her clothes (her dressing-gown was covered with them), over the bed, and the climax was reached when they approached the chair she stood on. Too fascinated with horror to move, she watched them crawling up to her. She was thus found by her father. He had come to her assistance in the very nick of time, and after lifting her from the chair and taking her to a place, as yet safe from molestation, returned to her room, where, with savage blows, smashing, equally, beetles and furniture, he remained till daybreak.
With the first streak of dawn the beetles decamped, and the fray ended. The work of devastation had been colossal. Corpses were strewn everywhere—and it took the combined household hours, before all evidences of the slaughter were obliterated. As for Gladys, she had not slept all night and was a wreck.
"I can never go through another night of it," she said to Miss Templeton. "Do you think we shall ever get rid of the horrible things?"