We purchased the materials, manufactured the mixture, and put it about.  The beetles came and ate it.  They seemed to like it.  They finished it all up, and were evidently vexed that there was not more.  But they did not die.

We told these facts to MacShaughnassy.  He smiled, a very grim smile, and said in a low tone, full of meaning, “Let them eat!”

It appeared that this was one of those slow, insidious poisons.  It did not kill the beetle off immediately, but it undermined his constitution.  Day by day he would sink and droop without being able to tell what was the matter with himself, until one morning we should enter the kitchen to find him lying cold and very still.

So we made more stuff and laid it round each night, and the blackbeetles from all about the parish swarmed to it.  Each night they came in greater quantities.  They fetched up all their friends and relations.  Strange beetles—­beetles from other families, with no claim on us whatever—­got to hear about the thing, and came in hordes, and tried to rob our blackbeetles of it.  By the end of a week we had lured into our kitchen every beetle that wasn’t lame for miles round.

MacShaughnassy said it was a good thing.  We should clear the suburb at one swoop.  The beetles had now been eating this poison steadily for ten days, and he said that the end could not be far off.  I was glad to hear it, because I was beginning to find this unlimited hospitality expensive.  It was a dear poison that we were giving them, and they were hearty eaters.

We went downstairs to see how they were getting on.  MacShaughnassy thought they seemed queer, and was of opinion that they were breaking up.  Speaking for myself, I can only say that a healthier-looking lot of beetles I never wish to see.

One, it is true, did die that very evening.  He was detected in the act of trying to make off with an unfairly large portion of the poison, and three or four of the others set upon him savagely and killed him.

But he was the only one, so far as I could ever discover, to whom MacShaughnassy’s recipe proved fatal.  As for the others, they grew fat and sleek upon it.  Some of them, indeed, began to acquire quite a figure.  We lessened their numbers eventually by the help of some common oil-shop stuff.  But such vast numbers, attracted by MacShaughnassy’s poison, had settled in the house, that to finally exterminate them now was hopeless.

I have not heard of MacShaughnassy’s aunt lately.  Possibly, one of MacShaughnassy’s bosom friends has found out her address and has gone down and murdered her.  If so, I should like to thank him.