The fire which ensued destroyed, not only the house in which it had broken out, but the two adjoining; and the neighbouring mosque was saved only with the utmost difficulty.
When, in the dawn of the new day, Dr. Cairn looked down into the smoking pit which once had been the home of the spiders, he shook his head and turned to his son.
"If our eyes did not deceive us, Rob," he said, "a just retribution at last has claimed him!"
Pressing a way through the surrounding crowd of natives, they returned to the hotel. The hall porter stopped them as they entered.
"Excuse me, sir," he said, "but which is Mr. Robert Cairn?"
Robert Cairn stepped forward.
"A young gentleman left this for you, sir, half an hour ago," said the man—"a very pale gentleman, with black eyes. He said you'd dropped it."
Robert Cairn unwrapped the little parcel. It contained a penknife, the ivory handle charred as if it had been in a furnace. It was his own—which he had handed to his father in that awful cellar at the moment when the first spider had dropped; and a card was enclosed, bearing the pencilled words, "With Antony Ferrara's Compliments."