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Page 23
Her gaze set wildly upon him, Lala staggered forward; stopped
dead; looked down at her bare ankle, and then, seeing the thing
which had fastened upon her, uttered a piercing shriek which rang
throughout the place.
At which moment the floor slid away beneath Durham, and he found
himself falling--falling--and then battling for life in evil-
smelling water, amidst absolute darkness.
Police whistles were skirling around the house of Huang Chow. As
the hidden men came running into the court:
"You heard the shot?" cried the sergeant in charge. "I warned
him not to go alone. Don't waste time on the door. One man stay
on duty there; the rest of you follow me."
In a few moments, led by the sergeant, the party came dropping
heavily through the skylight into the treasure-house of Huang
Chow, in which every lamp was now alight. A trap was open near
the foot of the stairs, and from beneath it muffled cries
proceeded. In this direction the sergeant headed. Craning over
the trap:
"Hallo, Mr. Durham!" he called. "Mr. Durham!"
"Get a rope and a ladder," came a faint cry from below. "I can
just touch bottom with my feet and keep my head above water, but
the tide's coming in. Look to the girl, though, first. Look to
the girl!"
The sergeant turned to where, stretched upon a tiger skin before
a half-open door, Lala Huang lay, scantily clothed and white as
death.
Upon one of her bare ankles was a discoloured mark.
As the sergeant and another of the men stooped over her a moaning
sound drew their attention to the stair, and there, bent and
tottering slowly down, was old Huang Chow, his eyes peering
through the owl-like glasses vacantly across the room to where
his daughter lay.
"My God!" whispered the sergeant, upon one knee beside her. He
looked blankly into the face of the other man. "She's dead!"
Two plain-clothes men were busy knotting together tapestries and
pieces of rare stuff with which to draw Durham out of the pit;
but at these old Huang Chow looked not at all, but gropingly
crossed the room, as if he saw imperfectly, or could not believe
what he saw. At last he reached the side of the dead girl,
stooped, touched her, laid a trembling yellow hand over her
heart, and then stood up again, looking from face to face.
Ignoring the mingled activities about him, he crossed to the open
coffin and began to fumble amongst the putrefying mass of bones
and webbing which lay therein. Out from this he presently drew
an iron coffer.
Carrying it across the room he opened the lid. It was full
almost to the top with uncut gems of every variety--diamonds,
rubies, sapphires, emeralds, topaz, amethysts, flashing greenly,
redly, whitely. In handfuls he grasped them and sprinkled them
upon the body of the dead girl.
"For you," he crooned brokenly in Chinese. "They were all for
you!"
The extemporized rope had just been lowered to Durham, when:
"My God!" cried the sergeant, looking over Huang Chow's shoulder.
"What's that?"
He had seen the giant spider, the horror from Surinam, which the
Chinaman had reared and fed to guard his treasure and to gratify
his lust for the strange and cruel. The insect, like everything
else in that house, was unusual, almost unique. It was one of
the Black Soldier spiders, by some regarded as a native myth, but
actually existing in Surinam and parts of Brazil. A member of
the family, Mygale, its sting was more quickly and certainly
fatal than that of a rattle-snake. Its instinct was fearlessly
to attack any creature, great or small, which disturbed it in its
dark hiding-place.
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