Tchigorsky entered the room a moment later. He had in his hand a small cardboard box with a glass lid. Inside something was buzzing angrily. It was an insect, the wings of which moved so rapidly that they seemed to scream, as a house fly does when the falces of a spider close upon him.
"Have a good look at it," Tchigorsky said curtly.
"Is it dangerous?" Geoffrey asked.
"One of the most deadly of winged insects," the Russian said. "It is a black bee from the forests near Lassa. There is a larger variety, whose sting produces the most horrible sufferings and death. This sort injects a poison which stops the action of the heart like prussic acid, but without the rigidity caused by that poison. The Lassa black bee invades other bees' nests and preys on their honey. They frighten the other bees, which make no attempt to drive them out, but go on working as usual. Then gradually the whole hive gets impregnated with that poison, and an ordinary brown bee becomes as dangerous as a black one. This is the bee that killed your dog."
"Then the hives are already impregnated," Geoffrey cried.
"Precisely. Half a dozen of these black bees have been introduced into the hives. Now, do you begin to understand the malignity of the plot? Your dog was not dead when, with my net, I caught this fellow—I expected to catch him."
"And ran great risk in doing so."
"Of course. It was a recreation compared with some of the risks I have run."
"You are right there," Ralph said in his deep, croaking tones. "Look at the thing, Geoffrey."
With a shudder Geoffrey took the box in his hand. There was nothing formidable about the insect under the glass lid. It had more anger and fury, more "devil" than the ordinary bee, but it was very little larger, of a deep, lustrous black, with orange eyes and purple gauzy wings. There was nothing weird about it.