Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/34

10 Mr. Howitt gave utterance to a sort of strangled exclamation. He retained sufficient presence of mind to spring upon the seat of his chair, and to sit upon the back of it The stranger remained standing, apparently wholly unmoved, in the midst of the seeming pandemonium of creepy things.

"Do you not like snakes, Mr. Howitt? I do! They appeal to me strongly. This is part of my collection. I rather pride myself on the ingenuity of the contrivance which enables me to carry my pets about with me wherever I may go. At the same time you are wise in removing your feet from the floor. Not all of them are poisonous. Possibly the more poisonous ones may not be able to reach you where you are. You see this knife?" The stranger extended it towards Mr. Howitt "This is the knife with which, when he had stupefied him, Andrew Rolt slashed Douglas Colston about the head and face and throat like this!"

The removal of his overcoat, and, still more, the vomiting forth of the nest of serpents, had decreased the stranger's bulk by more than one-half. Disembarrassing himself of the remnants of his oilskins, he removed his soft felt hat, and, tearing off his huge black beard, stood revealed as a tall, upstanding, muscularly-built man, whose head and face and neck were almost entirely concealed by strips of plaster, which crossed and recrossed each other in all possible and impossible directions.

There was silence. The two men stared at each other. With a gasp Mr. Howitt found his voice.

"Douglas!"

"Andrew!"