THE VIPER TURNS.
“At last! at last!” exclaimed Louison Brisot, springing forward like a
panther, and seizing the dwarf, Zamara, by the shoulder as he came
through the door of her apartment. “I began to think you had been
playing me false.”
“Because I was late? That is hard. I can watch, not hasten the movements
of others,” answered the dwarf, snappishly.
“What, getting savage? That looks well. You have got the letter—I
understand that. Success always makes cowards audacious.”
“Yes, I have got the letter; but only by creeping, like a thief, into
Mirabeau’s house. Now, what am I to get for it?”
“Get for it? Why, your life, craven—your own precious life!”
“But I want more. The life of a dog—a slave, is not worth having, unless
there is enjoyment in it.”
“Enjoyment!” cried the girl, laughing boisterously. “Why, what can a
little withered thing like you want of enjoyment?”
“What can you want of it?” questioned the dwarf, fiercely. “I am human.”
“Scarcely!” answered the woman, with brutal sincerity; “but you shall
have your enjoyment. I have been so much from home that my cat is
getting ferocious. You shall tame him for me; he killed my dog in a hard
fight. You may have better luck.”
A fiendish scowl convulsed the dwarf’s face.
“I do for madame what no one else can, and for that she taunts me. I
will not bear it.”
“Indeed!” drawled the girl, delighting in the creature’s futile rage.
“How will the marmousette help himself?”
“Easily!”
“But how? The creature makes me laugh.”
“I will not give you the queen’s letter to Mirabeau.”
“You have got it, then?”
“Yes.”
“How? From the girl?”
“No. She would not part with it; but delivered it to the count with her
own hands.”
“Delivered it to the count! But you have it?”
“Yes. I followed her into the house, hid in the room you know of, and
stole it from under his very hands while he leaned back with shut eyes
to ponder over it. You see there is an advantage in being small. I went
in and out like a shadow.”
“And the letter! Give it up. I am burning with impatience. The letter!
Where is it?”
“Why should I give the letter to you for the privilege of taming your
fiend of a cat?”
“The letter, insolent—the letter, or I will have you hung at the first
lantern.”
Zamara turned his back upon the excited woman, and was leaving the room.
“What is this? Where are you going?”
“To give Mirabeau his property, with a full account of all you have done
to get him in your power. He has money to reward, and power to protect
those who serve him.”
“You would betray me, then, poor, miserable traitor?”
“If I were not a traitor how could I be of use here?” answered the
dwarf. “Traitor, if you will; but no one has yet called Zamara a fool;
and I do not intend to give reason for it. I know the value both of love
and hate. You ask the greatest luxury on earth at an unfair price. I
refuse to sell it while better customers can be found.”
Louison Brisot was struck dumb by the creature’s audacity. In her
arrogant self-conceit she had fancied that terror made him her slave;
but he turned upon her at the critical moment, when she had proofs of
Mirabeau’s complicity with the queen almost in her grasp. She had
taunted him a minute too early.
“You shall not leave the room. I will have the letter,” she cried,
darting before him, and placing her back against the door. “Give me that
letter, man, or I will find it for myself.”
The dwarf almost smiled in the face of that beautiful fiend. He drew
back and cast a sidelong glance toward the window, which was not very
far from the ground. Louison saw his intent, and prepared to spring upon
him. Still half-smiling, he thrust one hand into the bosom of his dress,
and she cried out,
“That is right. What folly to think of playing the traitor with me!”
But, instead of the package she expected, Zamara drew a poniard from his
bosom, and, with the sheath of embossed gold in one hand, and the sharp,
slender blade quivering in the other, stood ready to receive her.
Louison burst into a mocking laugh. Even with that weapon the puny
creature could be no more than a child in her grasp. She sprang forward,
determined to wrest both the poniard and letter from him.
Zamara stepped sideways prepared for her, his black eyes gleamed living
fire, his mouth was set like a vise; the poniard shook and flashed in
his hand.
“Have a care,” he said, in a low, sharp voice. “The point is poisoned
with carroval; if it touches you, that black heart will never beat
again.”
Louison had heard of that fearful poison, which only the savages of
Darien know how to prepare. One drop of which, penetrating the flesh,
strikes death through the heart in a single moment—half an inch deep the
point of that glittering blade was dulled by this resinous poison. The
girl drew back horror-stricken, her lips bloodless, her cheeks white as
snow.
“Fiend!” she muttered, trembling in all her limbs.
The dwarf laughed. “You see there are things more powerful than brute
strength,” he said; “this one drop of resin makes the dwarf a giant. Now
we can talk on equal terms. You want the letter in my bosom, and I am
not unwilling that you should have it.”
“Then why not give it to me at once?”
“Because you are insolent—because you have treated me like a dog.”
“It was but a jest,” said Louison, almost humbly.
“Such jests do not suit me.”
“Well, well, they shall not be repeated.”
“Then I cannot work like a cur because I am told. My mistress was always
munificent.”
“Doubtless,” answered Louison, impatiently. “But I have no King of
France to scatter gold at my feet; besides, in these times, safety is
better than gold.”
“But how is one sure that you can give safety? Let it be known that she
is working in opposition to the great Mirabeau, and Louison Brisot will
be more likely to want protection than the dwarf she dares to insult.”
Louison seemed struck by this speech; for a moment her eyes fell, but
directly her courage came back.
“You cannot understand,” she said. “There is no man in the Assembly has
so many bitter enemies as Mirabeau. One grave charge fastened upon him
is enough to hurl him from power and blast his popularity.”
“But who will you find more powerful? The next leader may not care to
bend his will to that of a woman more than Count Mirabeau.”
“You are sharp, Zamara, and wiser than I thought. Listen now. I do not
wish to injure this man, but to—no matter what I wish.”
“It is power through him, or revenge that you cannot get it. I
understand,” said the dwarf, while a look of slow cunning stole over his
swarthy face.
Louison regarded him with astonishment. She had fallen into the mistake
of measuring the creature’s intellect by his size, and thus thrown off
her guard, had given him an insight into her character and motives,
which might prove dangerous.
“Zamara,” she said, with abrupt frankness, “I do not wish to use that
letter against Mirabeau, but to secure him more firmly. Will you give it
to me now, and for that purpose?”
“No,” answered the dwarf, with a cunning smile. “I will keep it for the
same purpose.”
“Wretch!”
“Stand aside, I wish to go. You have sneered at and insulted me so often
that this blade quivers in my hand—a touch of its point and you are
dead.”
Louison stepped aside, for the gleam of a serpent was in the little
creature’s eyes, and she knew that he had a serpent’s longing to strike
her down.
When Zamara was gone, Louison sat down utterly confounded. Her
instrument, her slave, the creature whom she had depended on for help,
had openly defied her. What would he do? Show the letter to Mirabeau’s
enemies, and thus make it useless to her? Or would he go to the count
himself and tell him all that she had done?