“For God’s sake, Cranshaw!” burst forth the frenzied tones of the other man, shrill and smitten with hysteria. “I’ll give up everything—I’ll sign a confession and give you Agnes—I’ll make it all right if you—”
“Shut your mouth—and look!” snapped Cranshaw, and the words fairly crackled through the room as he shoved his arm and swept the place with light.
The light was blinding, merciless, leaving every inch of the room clean-cut and distinct, dislosing the whole fearful secret of the hidden orchestration.
About the floor and walls and ceiling were poised cockroaches—South Sea cockroaches, as large as mice or larger, with great waving feather-feelers. They flitted hither and thither by the hundred—moving masses of hideousness, making as they went that ticking which furnished forth the body of the night’s symphony.
And here and there, flashing away from the light more quickly than the light could follow, or flopping from ceiling to floor as the light swept up, were things that looked like sausages. Only when they moved, when the fearsome hidden red legs flashed out in all their horror, could one recognize centipeds.
Yet these were not the most horrible nor the swiftest.
For heedless of the light, the occasional crunches swept up above the body of the symphony as the electric ray disclosed the hordes of cockroaches to their enemies. Great brown shapes darted here and there, back and forth, by the dozen; huge brown hairy things as large as a plate—hunting spiders—leaping on their pray, crunching once, and leaping forward anew.
The room was a wriggling horror in that moment, and when Cranshaw clicked off the light that triumphant “crunch—crunch—crunch!” was rising in a finale that drowned out the rest of the symphony—and shattered suddenly at his voice.
“Better not step out on the floor, Hobson—I saw a couple of those spiders on your curtains. I’ll take my chances, but you’ll stay here. If they get under your curtains you’re gone, remember—any one of those things means certain death. As I say, I’ll take my chances, because I’m going to leave you here.”
He calmly threw aside his curtains, reached out for his slippers, dumped the wriggling things out of them, and rose. Seizing a spray at hand, he sent a shower of boracic acid over the floor and calmly went to the door.