A few seconds went by—seconds of intense anxiety.
Then, of a sudden, my quick ears caught a curious ticking sound, and next moment a flood of white light fell upon the bedclothes close to my head.
I sprang up with a shriek, for there—close to me—I saw Something—the terrible claw-like Hand!
Chapter Twenty Nine.
Discloses Shaw’s Secret.
The Thing was ugly, hairy, and horrible—a huge dark brown tarantula, the size of a man’s palm, which, the instant it was discovered, turned and sped across the bedclothes and disappeared in the darkness.
Cardew had jumped to his feet with a wild, startled ejaculation of horror, having switched on the light, but though we rapidly searched the room high and low, yet nowhere could we find the horrible arachnid. But the secret was out! The revolting hairy thing, which had on that night in Arnay-le-Duc appeared to me like a weird hand, was that huge venomous spider whose bite was as fatal as that of a cobra!
Armed with sticks, Cardew and I groped into every hole and corner of that room, but it had vanished so suddenly that we could not decide in which direction it had gone.