Page:Weird Tales v02n04 (1923-11).djvu/40



TELL you, Ron, it was queer—uncanny!"

My friend, Ronald Titherington, laughed and weighed the little golden spider in his palm.

"You don't mean to suggest, do you," he replied, "that this little mass of gold and carbon is capable of exercising control over the human will? The thing is valuable, I'll grant you—those diamond eyes must be worth at least a couple of hundred apiece—but as for anything else—absurd!"

I got up and stood with my back to the fireplace, somewhat piqued at my companion's incredulity.

"You can believe it or not, Ron," I said, "but I do most certainly suggest that such a thing happened. What did I go to the sale for? Not to purchase that comparatively insignificant ornament, you must agree. No, I went to secure for my collection those things that would make it the finest in the country—and I got them.

"But I tell you, Ron, that when that little spider was put up I felt a strange desire come over me, an overpowering determination to possess the thing. I don't know why it should have been so; I'm not going to try to explain it. Beside those other antiques it was as nothing, and yet I would willingly at that moment have exchanged them all for it. The diamond eyes of the thing were magnetic; they impelled me even against my mind's ruling. I say again it was uncanny!"

Titherington listened to my rather heated recital with a quiet smile on his thin lips, and taking a cigarette from his case lit it thoughtfully.

"Let me see," he mused slowly as though speaking to himself. "Wasn't this same spider found by the body of the late Sir Nicholas Goldeby when he