CHAPTER XCII.
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?