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.
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