



Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by the
the Hathi Trust Org. (The Ohio State University)











Transcriber's Note: Transcribed from page scans provided by the
the Hathi Trust Org. (The Ohio State University)






[Illustration: Front Cover]






[Illustration: Frontispiece]






THE SPIDER.


BY
FERGUS HUME,
AUTHOR OF "THE MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB," "THE SOLITARY FARM," ETC.




WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED,
LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO.
1910.






CONTENTS.

CHAPTER
I.        A POSSIBLE PARTNERSHIP
II.       A CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
III.      HOW THE TRAP WAS SET
IV.       WHO WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAP
V.        AFTER THE TRAGEDY
VI.       TWO CONVERSATIONS
VII.      LADY CORSOON'S APPEAL
VIII.     THE GRIEF OF IDA
IX.       WITCHCRAFT
X.        MYSTERY
XI.       THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACK
XII.      A TEMPTING OFFER
XIII.     THE BAZAAR
XIV.      RUN TO EARTH
XV.       FACE TO FACE
XVI.      THE SEARCH
XVII.     IN THE TRAIN
XVIII.    AT BOWDERSTYKE
XIX.      A BOLD OFFER
XX.       GERBY HALL
XXI.      JUSTICE
XXII.     THE END OF IT ALL






THE SPIDER.




CHAPTER I.
A POSSIBLE PARTNERSHIP.


The exterior of The Athenian Club, Pall Mall, represents an ordinary
twentieth century mansion, which it is; but within, the name is
justified by a Græco-Roman architecture of vast spaces, marble floors,
painted ceilings, and pillared walls, adapted, more or less
successfully, to the chilly British climate. The various rooms are
called by Latin names, and the use of these is rigidly enforced.
Standing outside the mansion, you know that you are in London; enter,
and you behold Athens--say, the abode of Alcibiades; listen, and
scraps of speech suggest Imperial Rome. Thus, the tastes of all the
members, whether old and pedantic, or young and frivolous, are
consulted and gratified. Modern slang, as well as the stately tongue
of Virgil, is heard in The Athenian, for the club, like St. Paul, is
all things to all men. For that reason it is a commercial success.

Strangers--they come eagerly with members to behold rumoured
glories--enter the club-house, through imitation bronze gates, into
the vestibulum, and pass through an inner door into the atrium. This
means that they leave the entrance room for the general conversation
apartment. To the right of this, looking from the doorway, is the
tablinum, which answers--perhaps not very correctly as regards the
name--the purposes of a library; to the left a lordly portal gives
admittance into the triclinium, that is, to the dining-room. At the
end of the atrium, which is the neutral ground of the club, where
members and strangers meet, swing-doors shut in the pinacotheca.
Properly this should be a picture-gallery, but, in deference to modern
requirements, it is used as a smoking-room. These three rooms,
spacious, ornate, and lofty, open under a colonnade, or peristyle, on
to a glass-roofed winter garden, which runs like a narrow passage
round the three sides of the building. The viridarium, as the members
call this cultivated strip of land, extends only twenty feet from the
marble pavement of the peristyle, and is bounded by the side-walls and
rear-walls of adjacent houses. It is filled with palms and tropical
plants, with foreign and native flowers, and, owing to a skilful
concealment of its limitations by the use of enormous mirrors,
festooned with creepers and ivy, it really resembles vast
pleasure-gardens extending to great distances. The outlook from
tablinum, pinacotheca, and triclinium is a triumph of perspective.

Below the state apartments on the ground floor are the kitchens, the
domestic offices, and the servants' rooms; above them, the cubicles
are to be found, where members, both resident or non-resident, sleep
when disposed on beds more comfortable than classical. Finally, on the
top floor, and reached by a lift, are billiard-rooms, card-rooms, and
a small gymnasium for those who require exercise. The whole scheme is
modelled on a larger scale from the House of Glaucus, as described by
Bulwer