he Banker got up from
his chair to get a fresh cigar from a box that lay upon the desk. He
happened to glance across the room and on the floor in the corner by the
closed door he saw a long, flat object that had not been there before.
It was out of the circle of light and being brown against the polished
hardwood floor, he could not make it out clearly. But something about it
frightened him.

"What's that over there?" he asked, standing still and pointing.

The Big Business Man rose from his seat and took a few steps in the
direction of the Banker's outstretched hand. Then with a muttered oath
he jumped to the desk in a panic and picking up the heavy paper-weight
flung it violently across the room. It struck the panelled wall with a
crash and bounded back towards him. At the same instant there came a
scuttling sound from the floor, and a brown shape slid down the edge of
the room and stopped in the other corner.

All four men were on their feet in an instant, white-faced and
trembling.

"Good God," said the Big Business Man huskily, "that thing over
there--that----"

"Turn on the side lights--the side lights!" shouted the Doctor, running
across the room.

In the glare of the unshaded globes on the wall the room was brightly
lighted. On the floor in the corner the horrified men saw a cockroach
nearly eighteen inches in length, with its head facing the angle of
wall, and scratching with its legs against the base board as though
about to climb up. For a moment the men stood silent with surprise and
terror. Then, as they stared they saw the cockroach was getting larger.
The Big Business Man laid his hand on the Doctor's arm with a grip that
made the Doctor wince.

"Good God, man, look at it--it's growing," he said in a voice hardly
above a whisper.

"It's growing," echoed the Very Young Man; "_it's growing_!"

And then the truth dawned upon them, and brought with it confusion,
almost panic. The cockroach, fully two feet long now, had raised the
front end of its body a foot above the floor, and was reaching up the
wall with its legs.

The Banker made a dash for the opposite door. "Let's get out of here.
Come on!" he shouted.

The Doctor stopped him. Of the four men, he was the only one who had
retained his self-possession.

"Listen to me," he said. His voice trembled a little in spite of his
efforts to control it. "Listen to me. That--that--thing cannot harm us
yet." He looked from one to the other of them a