Part 51 (2/2)

Blake heard Margherita's breath release itself. She was staring as if at an apparition. His mind, working with feverish speed, sought vainly to grasp the situation. Maruffi had broken away and come for his vengeance, but how or why this had been made possible he could not conceive. It sufficed that the man was here in the flesh, sinister, terrible, malignant as h.e.l.l. Blake knew that the ultimate test of his courage had come.

He felt the beginnings of that same shuddering, sickening weakness with which he was only too familiar; felt the strength running out from his body as water escapes from a broken vessel. He froze with the sense of his physical impotency, and yet despite this chaos of conflicting emotions his inner mind was clear; it was bitter, too, with a ferocious self-disgust.

There was a breathless pause before Maruffi spoke.

”Lucrezia Ferara!” he said, hoa.r.s.ely, as if wis.h.i.+ng to test the sound of the name. ”So Oliveta is the daughter of the overseer, and you are Savigno's sweetheart.” His words were directed at Margherita, who answered in a thin, shrill, broken voice:

”What--are you doing--here?”

”I came for that wanton's blood. Give her to me.”

”Oliveta? She is--gone.”

The Sicilian cursed. ”Gone? Where?”

”Away. Into the street. You--you cannot find her.”

”Christ!” Maruffi reached upward and tore open the collar of his s.h.i.+rt.

Blake spoke for the first time, but his voice was dead and lifeless.

”Yes. She's gone. You're wanted. You must go with me!”

Maruffi gave a snarling, growling cry and his gesture showed that he was armed. Involuntarily Blake shrank back; his hand groped for his hip, but, half-way, encountered the pile of silken cus.h.i.+ons upon which Margherita had been lying; his fingers sank into them nervously, his other hand gripped the carven footboard of the couch. He had no weapon. He had not dreamed of such a necessity.

In this imminent peril a new fear swept over him greater than any he had ever known. It was not the fear of death. It was something far worse. For the moment, it seemed to him inevitable that Margherita Ginini should, at last, learn the truth concerning him, should see him as he was that night at Terranova. Swift upon the heels of his long-deferred declaration of love would come the proof that he was a craven. Then he thought of her danger, realizing that this man was quite capable in his fury of killing her, too, and he stiffened in every fiber. His cowardice fell away from him like a rotten garment, and he stood erect.

Maruffi, it seemed, had not heard his last words, or else his mind was still set upon Oliveta. ”Gone!” he exclaimed. ”Then I shall not see her face grow black within my fingers--not yet. G.o.d! How I ran!” He cursed again. ”But I shall not fare so badly, after all.” He stirred, and with his movement Blake flew to action. Swiftly, with one sweep of his right hand, he brought the silken cus.h.i.+ons up before his breast and lunged at his enemy. At the same instant Maruffi fired.

In the closed room the detonation was deafening; it rattled the windows, it seemed to bulge the very walls. Blake felt a heavy blow which drove the floss-filled pillows against his body with the force of a giant hammer, it tore them from his grip, it crushed the breath from his lungs and spun him half around. Seeing that he did not fall, Maruffi c.o.c.ked and fired a second time without aiming, but his victim was upon him like a tiger and together they crashed back against the wall, locked in each other's arms.

Blake's will propelled him splendidly. All that indecision with which fear works upon the mind had left him, but the old contraction of his nerves still hampered his action. The blaze from Maruffi's second shot half blinded him and its breath smote him like a blow.

”Two!” he counted, wonderingly. A pain in his left side, due to that first sledge-hammer impact, was spreading slowly, but he had crossed the room under the belching muzzle of the revolver and was practically unharmed.

There began a struggle--the more terrible since it was unequal--in which the weaker man had to drive his body at the cost of tremendous effort. Blake was like a leader commanding troops which had begun to retreat. But more power came to him under the spur of action and the pressing realization that he must give Margherita a chance to get safely away. If he could not wrest the weapon from Maruffi's hands he knew that he must receive those four remaining bullets in his own body. He rather doubted that he could take that weight of lead.

He shouted to her to run, while he wrestled for possession of the gun.

He had flung his right arm about his adversary's body, his other hand gripped his wrist; his head was pressed against Maruffi's chest. The weapon described swift circles, jerking parabolas and figures as the men strained to wrest it from each other. Maruffi strove violently to free his imprisoned hand, and in doing so he discharged the revolver a third time. The bullet brought a shower of plaster from the ceiling, and Blake counted with fierce exultation,

”Three!”

He gasped his warning to the woman again, then twined his leg about his antagonist's in a wrestler's hold, striving mightily to bear Maruffi against the wall. But Caesar was like an oak-tree. Failing to move him, Blake suddenly flung himself backward, with all his weight, lifting at the same instant in the hope of a fall. In this he was all but successful. The two reeled out into the room, tripped, went to their knees, then rose, still intertwined in that desperate embrace.

The odd, stiff feeling in Blake's side had increased rapidly; it began to numb his muscles and squeeze his lungs. His eyes were stinging with sweat and smoke; his ears were roaring. As they swayed and turned he saw that Margherita had made no effort to escape and he was seized with an extraordinary rage, which for a brief time renewed his strength.

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