Something small and somehow rather horrible scrunched beneath his feet as he drew back the curtain and stepped into the musty little room. Beetle or roach, he thought, without dwelling on it, and moved silently toward the dim light at the front of the shop so that he could both use its faint glow behind him to look around and also shield his flashlight beam with his own body. Something scuttled across his feet as he reached the front door. Suddenly he was conscious of other sounds in the room — slithering, scurrying, fluttering sounds — as his passage through the room awakened something and annoyed it. Like the something that had scuttled softly across his feet.
The pencil beam of his flashlight swung low around the room, picking at the dusty shelves and searching for the eerie presence. He was the only human being in the room, unless...
His light jabbed at the floor. Something made one of those infinitesimal little movements and stopped a yard away from him. The probing flashlight sought and found it. The thing looked back at him. It had a reddish brown body slightly larger than a silver dollar, and eight long, reddish furry legs. A slight chill touched Nick’s spine. He saw a menace in miniature, a creature called “Red Devil” by the bush natives because its vicious spider’s bite stabbed like a pitchfork, burned like the flames of hell, paralyzed and killed.
It moved thoughtfully towards him, eyes glinting balefully in the pencil lightbeam.
Nick’s first thought was to crush it underfoot. Then he remembered the incredible speed with which these horrors could move when aroused, and how Hank Todd had died, writhing, after he had tried to step on one in the Uganda bush. It also occurred to him, in that same instant, that there were other things slithering around the room.
Jump over it and run like hell? Can’t get out of the front door — curse those useless watchers of Abe’s. And God knows what other lurking things were waiting to sink their fangs into him while he fumbled with the curtained back door.
The creature stopped and looked at him. A soft hissing sound came from the rear of the room. Nick played the beam of the flashlight quickly over the floor, praying that Red Devil wouldn’t take a flying leap at him in the darkness.
His first thought was one of amazement that he had managed to cross the room without stepping on anything more than a beetle. But it was probably his footsteps that had snapped them all horrifyingly to attention.
A second red devil was emerging from behind the counter, followed by a lizardlike creature Nick had never seen before. Red devil number two scuttled under the rear door curtain and stayed there, an armed guard covering the only possible exit. The floor between it and the first spider seemed to be twitching with strange life — spiders, beetles, lizards, scorpions of enormous size, and snakes. Jesus Christ, what snakes! Two — no, three, four — tiny, squirming, spitting bundles of death. Gaboon vipers, was it? The hell with the name. They were vipers, and they were murder.
A bat swooshed above his head. Nick started very slightly, and the devil near his feet zigzagged closer to him. The whole floor rippled and shuddered. It seemed to be converging on him like one vast, wallowing monster.
The flashlight, in its travels round the room, had found the shelves and counter and the tiny beasts and one straight-backed grimy chair that must have been used by clients waiting for some weird prescription of dead herbs and living venom. It might yet be Nick’s salvation.
He moved his feet cautiously and let the thin-beamed light play over the floor. The floor between him and the curtained door was writhing and hissing with strange life. He had time to curse himself for reacting too slowly to the slithering, shuffling sounds — yet it was only seconds since he had come into the room. Then the creatures closest to his feet — the first red spider, and a vicious little fork of lightning that he knew to be a viper — were moving in with horrible swiftness. He heard the hiss, and then he jumped.
The ancient chair teetered, fell back against the nearby wall, and straightened, creaking ominously. Even before it stopped its wild staggerings Nick had found his balance and was reaching into his pocket for the only tool that could possibly help him. As he found its reassuring, smooth, round shape he thought with grim humor of his own predicament. Ridiculous, he told himself, as he clamped the light between his teeth and his strong fingers twisted the small shape of Pierre. Like a woman scared of mice, leaping on the nearest chair.
But the things that shuffled and hissed around the chair legs were more monster than mice, and some of them could climb. Red devil number-something was already reconnoitering the left front leg and showing every sign of getting ready to climb it.
Nick held his breath and gave Pierre one final twist and tossed him lightly into the center of the writhing room.
The deadly gas pellet waited his usual thirty seconds before going silently to work. Pierre held a small but highly concentrated substance that sucked the air and gave back high-powered poison; Nick had seen strong men die of Pierre in seconds after the preliminary half-minute. But he had no experience with Pierre’s effect on animals, insects and snakes.
While he waited, lungs full of musty air and his mind on creeping things and “Eyes... Dakar” he swung the flashlight beam slowly around the room and wondered how he’d let himself be caught. From his new height he could see the open cages and the empty tanks behind the herbalist’s counter. Green-Face-Frog-Eyes must have had himself a nasty little ball before leaving for Dakar and killing a policeman on his way out. But why hadn’t he, super-sleuth Nick Carter, been aware of these skittering, scuffling things before? He swore at himself as he asked the question, and realized at once that he had only looked for human occupants before going on his way up stairs. And Eyes must have left long enough before so that the creatures would have quieted down. Or shortly enough before so that they were not yet free...?
The flash beam licked the floor beneath his feet. A viper spat back at him. Its tiny body twitched as though readying itself to jump, and the vicious spitting mouth opened and closed against the thickening air.
A red devil appeared suddenly on the wooden seat beneath Nick’s feet and tacked dazedly toward him. This time there was nothing to do but try to smash the creature. Nick raised his left foot and let death slither beneath it. The red devil sidled swiftly toward the standing right foot and Nick brought his free leg down in a lightning movement that would have befuddled any quick-thinking man. But the red spider was not a man. Some instinct made it dart free of the descending foot and scrabble up the outside of the right trouser leg. Nick’s foot came down uselessly on the wooden seat and the thing clung to the fabric of his pants. He swung his leg suddenly and violently as if he were kicking off a football game, and still the thing clung to his right trouser leg. Nick brought his leg far back, past the side of the chair, so that the thing was clinging to cloth separated from Nick’s vulnerable flesh by an inch of space. He felt it scuttle up to his knee, where the cloth was tighter and only its thickness separated him from death.
If he tried to strike it off, it would bite with deadly savageness. Wilhelmina would blow his knee to bits. Hugo could miss. The creeping bastard was still horribly alive and accurately swift. It was a wonder that it hadn’t bitten yet. Feeling Pierre quite badly now, most likely. Any second now it could fall off and die.
It didn’t. It tickled his knee and slithered up his thigh. Nick felt cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He held the lower part of his body still and relaxed, as his Yoga training had taught him, and reached slowly and carefully into his jacket pocket for the only other weapon he had.