Part 88

He stood before her with his hat in his hand, the other hand resting on his hip smiling, confident, the one long, black lock of hair hanging nearly in his eyes. He made no comment, but she saw that he was noting the ravages which the intervening hours had left in her face. Beneath his smile there was something hard and pitiless--a look that the executioner of a de Medici might have worn--and for a moment it put her at a loss for words. Then with an attempt at her old-time camaraderie, she shoved a glass toward him--

His white teeth flashed in a fleeting smile--

"If you will join me--in my last drink?"

For answer she filled his glass and hers.

He raised it and looked at her.

"I give you--the sweetest thing in the world."

Her lip curled.

"Love?"

His black eyes glittered between their narrowed lids.

"The power to avenge the wrongs of the helpless."

He set down his empty glass and fumbled in his pocket for a paper which he handed her to read.

"It's always well to know what you're signing," he said, and he watched her face as her eyes followed the lines, with the intent yet impersonal scrutiny of a specialist studying his case.

She looked, as she read, like a corpse that has been propped to a sitting position, with nostrils sunken and lips of Parian marble. Her hand shook with a violence which recalled her to herself, and when she raised her eyes they looked as though the iris itself had faded. The Dago Duke seemed absorbed in the curious effect.

He could hear the dryness of her mouth when she asked at last--

"You expect me--to put my name--to this?"

He inclined his head.

"It is--impossible!"

He replied evenly:

"It is necessary."

"You are asking me to sign my own death warrant."

He lifted his shoulders.

"It is your reputation or Essie Tisdale's."

The name seemed to prick her like a goad. Her hands and body twitched nervously and then he saw swift decision arrive in her face.

"I'll not do it!"

As moved by a common impulse they arose.

"It's the lesser of two evils."

"I don't care!" She reiterated in a kind of hopeless desperation, "I don't care--I'll fight!"

He eyed her again with a recurrence of his impersonal professional scrutiny.