Part 28 (1/2)

As the man staggered under the unexpected blow, Kendric s.n.a.t.c.hed up the heavy stool on which he had been sitting and struck again, so swift that the blow landed while the figure was yet staggering backward. The man fell, stunned, and then, as quick as light, before Zoraida could lift a hand, Kendric was upon her again.

”Call off your cat!” he shouted at her.

She lifted her head defiantly.

”Never has man dictated to me!” she cried angrily. ”Here I dictate.

If you dared put a hand on me----”

He saw her own hand creeping out toward the table. What it sought he did not know; a hidden bell, perhaps. Or a dagger. He remembered her swift attack upon Ortega. He seized her wrist, his fingers locked hard about it; she struggled and he held her back in her chair. Suddenly she relaxed and shrugged and laughed at him.

”You add to the entertainment!” she mocked him. ”For, mind you, while you make large commands, the puma draws nearer and nearer. If you will, between your great commands, but glance into the mirror----”

”I say you can put a stop to that infernal torture,” he said fiercely.

”And you will!”

”Yes?” she sneered at him. ”And you will make me, perhaps? You, a common adventurer will dictate to Zoraida!”

For the moment he felt powerless in face of her cold taunting. But there was too much at stake for him to yield now to a feeling of powerlessness. One hand was on her wrist; the gripping fingers of the other shut about the haft of the ancient obsidian knife. The old knife of sacrifice. His face was white and stern, his eyes no whit less deadly than Zoraida's.

”You threaten my life?” she gasped. ”_You_?”

He made no answer. He was beyond speech. Slowly he lifted the great knife, slowly as in a dream he set the thin point against the soft flesh of Zoraida's throat. As a tremor shook his hand Zoraida whipped back.

”You would not dare! You would not dare!”

His hand was steady again. He held her still, and the point of the knife crept a hair's breadth closer to the life within her. A little more and it would have slipped into the skin it was p.r.i.c.king.

”You could not do it,” she whispered.

Then he spoke.

”I can do it.” His lips were dry, his voice very harsh. ”You have said that you know me for a man of my word. Well, then, I swear to you that little by little I'll drive that knife in unless you set that girl free.”

Still she sought to brave it out, sought to defy him; her eyes, on his, told him that his will was less than hers, and that this could never be. But Kendric knew otherwise. It was given him to know that if Betty died, he did not care to live. Like men of his stamp it was unthinkable to him that he should lift his hand against a woman. But woman for the moment Zoraida was not. Fiend, rather; reincarnated savage; a thing to stamp into the earth. What he had said he meant.

He was giving her time because on her rested Betty's fate. He pressed the knife a little deeper. So steady was his hand, so stiff Zoraida's body, so gradual the increased pressure, that the knife point made in the white flesh a tiny, shadow-filled dimple.

Now came into Zoraida's eyes a swift change, a look which in all of her life had never been there until now. A look of terror, of realization of death, of frantic fear. She sought to speak, and words failed her.

The knife pressed steadily. A piercing scream broke from her.

CHAPTER XVII

HOW ONE WHO HAS EVER COMMANDED MUST LEARN TO OBEY

Suddenly Zoraida had become as docile as a little frightened child.

She s.h.i.+vered from head to foot. She put her two hands to her throat where just now the point of the knife had been.

”Quick!” said Kendric.

She rose in haste. A vertigo was upon her like that dizzy weakness of one very sick, seeking prematurely to rise from bed. She had experienced a shock from which she could rally only gradually; she looked broken. Her eyes appeared to see nothing about her but stared off into the distance through a veil of abstraction.