Before Gladys left the theatre, she was called on the telephone.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Hamar," came the reply, in insinuating tones. "How do you like the
beetles? You'll never see the end of them till--"
But Gladys rang off.
On her return home something scuttled across the hall floor in front
of her. She sprang back with a scream. It was a gigantic cockroach.
The hall was full of them. She summoned the servants, and they set to
work to kill them. But they might as well have tried to stop Niagara,
for as fast as they squashed one battalion, another took its place.
They came out of cracks in the floor, from behind the wainscoting,
from every conceivable place in the kitchens, and in a dense black
ribbon some six inches broad, ascended the staircase. Gladys tried to
barricade her room against them, but it was of no avail. They came
from under the boards of the floor and poured down the chimney. They
swarmed over the furniture, in the cupboards, chest of drawers, the
washstand (where they kept continually falling into the water), in her
clothes (her dressing-gown was covered with them), over the bed, and
the climax was reached when they approached the chair she stood on.
Too fascinated with horror to move, she watched them crawling up to
her. She was thus found by her father. He had come to her assistance
in the very nick of time, and after lifting her from the chair and
taking her to a place, as yet safe from molestation, returned to her
room, where, with savage blows, smashing, equally, beetles and
furniture, he remained till daybreak.
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