Though those that are betrayed
Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor
Stands in worse case of woe.--_Cymbeline_.
Vinal sat alone, propped and cushioned in an arm chair, when a clerk
from his office came to bring him his morning letters. He looked over
the superscriptions till he saw one in a foreign hand. Vinal
compressed his pale lips. When the clerk had left the room, he glanced
about him nervously, tore open the letter, and read it in haste.
"The bloodsucker! Money; more money! He soaks it up like a sponge; or,
rather, I am the sponge, and he means to wring me dry. In jail! Well,
he has found his place, for once. Six hundred dollars! That, I
suppose, is to pay his fine; to uncage the wild beast, and set him
loose. I wish he were sentenced for ten years; then he might lie
there, and rot. I must send him something--enough to keep him in play.
No, I will send him nothing. He is in trouble; and I may turn it to
account. I will write to him that, if he will return me my letters, I
will give him a thousand dollars now, and an annuity of five hundred
for six years to come. I shall do well if I can draw the viper's teeth
at that price. Then I can breathe again; unless Morton should have
suspected the trick I played him, or--what if he should meet with
Speyer! But that is not likely, for he never knew him, nor saw him,
and Speyer will shun him as he would the plague. I wish they had shot
him in the prison, as I am told they meant to do. There would have
been one stumbling block away; one lion out of my path. But now the
sword hangs over me by a hair; I am racked and torn like a toad under
a harrow; no rest, no peace! What if Speyer should do as he threatens,
print my letters, and placard them about the streets! I will buy them
out of his hands if it cost all I have. And even then I shall not be
safe, as long as this ruffian is above ground. With him and Morton to
haunt me, my life is a slow death, a purgatory, a hell."
He tore Speyer's letter into small fragments, rolled and crushed them
together, and scattered them under the grate.