He obeyed. She drew the dagger from its sheath and looked at it critically. The red velvet sheath, embroidered with gold, took her fancy much more than the damascened blade.
“It is too heavy to wear in one’s hair,” she said, throwing down the sheath, and taking up the weapon.
“Take care. The blade is as sharp as a razor. It is not by any means an ornament for a lady’s toilette table. I bought it against an excursion to the Zambesi, which I have been thinking about for the last two years.”
“The Zambesi,” she repeated wonderingly; “is that in Italy?”
“No, Signorina. It is on the Dark Continent.”
She had never heard of the Dark Continent, but she only shrugged her shoulders, incuriously, and leant further across the table to examine a black pearl pin, shaped something like a death’s head, which Vansittart wore in his tie, and thus brought her smiling lips very near his face.
While she leant thus, with the tip of her finger touching the pearl, and her eyes lifted interrogatively, a heavy hand was laid upon Vansittart’s shoulder, and he was half twisted out of his chair—tilted after the manner of chairs on which young men sit—by sheer brute force on the part of the owner of the hand.
“Come out of that!” said a voice that was thickened by drink.
Vansittart was on his feet in an instant, facing a man as tall as himself, and a good deal more bulky—a son of Anak, sandy-haired, pallid, save for red spots on his cheekbones, spots that burnt like flame.
He was scowling savagely, breathless with rage. Lisa had risen as quickly as Vansittart, and Lisa’s aunt had moved towards the newcomer in evident trouble of mind.
“Signor Giovanni,” she faltered, “who would have thought to see you in Venice tonight?”
“Not you, evidently, you wicked old hag—nor you, hussy!” cried the man, furious with jealousy and drink. “I’ve caught you at your games, have I, you good-for-nothing slut! You couldn’t stay indoors like a decent woman, but you must needs walk the streets late at night with this Cockney cad here.”
“Take care what you say to her—or to me,” said Vansittart, in that muffled bass which means a dangerous kind of anger.
He put his arm round Fiordelisa, drawing her towards him as if she belonged to him and it were his place to guard her from every assailant. The crowd made a ring about them, looking on, amused and interested, with no thought of interference which might spoil sport. The comedy some of them had seen at the Goldoni Theatre that night was not half so amusing as this bit out of the comedy of real life—the cosmopolitan comedy of human passion.
“You infernal blackguard!” cried the stranger, trying to tear the girl from Vansittart’s protecting clasp; “I’ll teach you to carry on with my—”
A foul word finished the sentence: a blow from Vansittart, straight in the stranger’s teeth, punctuated it. Then came other foul words, and other blows; and the men were grappling each other like pugilists fighting for the belt. The unknown was of heavier build, and showed traces of former training, but Vansittart was in much better condition, and was nearer sobriety, though by no means sober. He had the best of it for some minutes, till the other man by sheer brute force flung him against the table, crashing down among the shattered glasses and coffee-cups, and dealt him a savage blow below the belt, kicking him as he struck.
The table reeled over and Vansittart fell. Under his open hand as it struck the floor he felt, the unsheathed dagger which Fiordelisa had flung down, in careless indifference, after deciding that it was too big for an ornament.
Infuriated by that foul blow, maddened by the brutality of the attack, excited to fever heat by the surrounding circumstances, even by the very atmosphere, which reeked with tobacco and brandy, Vansittart sprang to his feet, clutched his foe by the collar, and plunged the dagger into his breast. In the moment of doing it the thing seemed natural, spontaneous, the inevitable outcome of the assault that had been made upon him. In the next moment, as those angry eyes grew dim, and the man fell like a log, Vansittart felt himself a coward and a murderer.
A sudden silence came upon the crowd, tumultuous a moment ago. A silence fell upon the scene, like a dull, grey veil, gauzy, impalpable, that had dropped from the ceiling.
“Dead,” muttered a voice at Vansittart’s elbow, as the man lay in the midst of them, motionless. “That knife went straight to the heart.”
A shriek rent the air, wild and shrill, and the vibrating glasses echoed it with a banshee scream. Lisa flung herself upon the body, and tried to staunch the bubbling blood with her poor wisp of a handkerchief. A man pushed his way through the crowd with an authoritative air—a doctor, doubtless; but before he reached the little clear space where the victim lay with Lisa crouching over him, and Lisa’s aunt wringing her hands and appealing to the Madonna and all the Saints, a rough hand pulled Vansittart’s arm, and a man whispered in Italian, “Run, run, while you have the chance!”
“Run?” Yes, he was a murderer, and his life belonged to the law, unless he used his heels to save his neck. Quick as lightning he took the hint, clove his way through the crowd, and made a dash for the door nearest the Piazzetta. The crowd were busy watching the doctor as he knelt beside that prostrate form—interested, too, in Fiordelisa, with her mask flung off, her loosened hair falling about her ivory neck, her dark eyes streaming, her red lips convulsed and quivering. Vansittart was at the door, past it, before a man cried—
“Stop him; stop the assassin.”
There was a sudden tumult, and twenty men were giving chase, a pack of human bloodhounds, perhaps as much for the sake of sport as from actual horror at the deed.
