"I shall give you one single portion of the antidote to the medicine which makes your hands behave so badly. You may take it when you please. The Senor Jamison I shall keep and enslave. I do not think he will be as obstinate as you are, but he has excellent qualities. If you prove obdurate, I may yet persuade him to undertake certain tasks for me. But you and the Senorita Canalejas are free. Your boat has been reprovisioned and provided with fuel. You may go from here where you will."
Ribiera snarled.
"Tio mio," he protested angrily, "you promised me—"
"Your will in many things," said The Master gently, "but not in all. Remember that you have much to learn, hijo mio. I have taught you to prepare my little medicine, it is true. That is so you can take my place if age infirmity shall carry me away." The Master folded his hands with an air of pious resignation. "But you must learn policy. The Senorita Canalejas belongs to the Senor Bell."
Jamison was staring, now, but Bell's eyes had narrowed to mere slits.
"You see," said The Master gently, to him, "I desire your friendship. You may go where you will. You may take the Senorita Canalejas with you. You will have enough of the antidote to my little medicine to keep you sane for perhaps a week. In one week you may go far, with her. You may do many things. But you cannot find a place of safety for her. I still have a little power, Senor. If you take her with you, your hands will writhe again. Your body will become uncontrollable. Your eyes, staring and horror-struck, will observe your own hands rending her. While your brain is yet sane you will see this body of yours which now desires her so ardently, tearing at and crushing that delicate figure, gouging out her eyes, battering her tender flesh, destroying her.... Have you ever seen what a man who has taken my little medicine does to a human being at his mercy?"
The figures about The Master were peculiarly tense. The fat man with the hard eyes laughed suddenly. It was a horrible laugh. Francia of Paraguay took out his handkerchief and delicately wiped his lips. He was smiling. Ribiera looked at Bell's face and chuckled. His whole gross figure shook with his amusement.
"And of course," said The Master benignly, "if you prefer to commit suicide, if you prefer to leave her here—well, my nephew knows little expedients to reduce her will to compliance. You recall Yagué, among others."
Bell's face was a white mask of horror and fury. He tried to speak, and failed. He raised his hand to his throat—and it tore at the flesh, insanely.
"Let—let me see her," croaked Bell, as if strangling.
Jamison stiffened. Bell seemed to be trying to get his hands into his pockets. They were apparently uncontrollable. He thrust them under his coat as there was a stirring at the door.
And Paula was brought in, as if she had been waiting. She was entirely colorless, but she smiled at Bell. She came quickly to his side.
"I heard," she said in a clear and even little voice. "We will go together, Charles. If there is a week in which we can be together, it will be so much of happiness. And when you are—The Master's victim, we will let the little boat sink, and sink with it. I do not wish to live without you, Charles, and you do not wish to live as his slave."
Bell gave utterance to a sudden laugh that was like a bark. His hands came out from under his coat. Dangling from each one was a small, pear-shaped globule of metal. A staff projected upward from each one, and he held those staffs in his writhing hands. About each wrist was a tiny loop of cord that went down to a pin at the base of the staffs.
"Close to me, Paula," he said coldly. She clung to his arm. He moved forward, with half-a-dozen revolver muzzles pointed at his breast.
"If one of you damned fools fires," he said harshly, "I'll let go. When I let go—these are Mills grenades, and they go off in three seconds after they leave the hand. Stand still!"
There was a terrible, frozen silence. Then a movement from behind Bell. Jamison was rising with a grunt.
"Some day, Bell," he observed coolly, "I'll be on to all of your curves. This is the best one yet. But you're likely to let go at any second, aren't you?"
"Like hell!" raged Bell. "I drank some of your poison," he snarled at The Master. "Yes! I was fool enough to do it! But I took what measures any man will take who finds he's swallowed poison. I got it out of my stomach at once. And if you or one of these deputies tries to move...."
Ribiera had blanched to a pasty gray. The Master was frozen. But Bell saw Ribiera's eyes move in swift calculation. There was a solid wall behind The Master. It seemed as if the greenhouse were a sort of passageway between two larger structures. And there was a door almost immediately behind Ribiera. Ribiera glanced right—left—
He flung himself through that door. He knew the secret of The Master's power. He was The Master's appointed successor. If The Master and all his deputies died, Ribiera....
But Bell snapped into action like a bent spring released. His arm shot forward. A grenade went hurtling through the door through which Ribiera had fled. There was an instantaneous, terrific explosion. The solid wall shook and shivered and, with a vast deliberation, collapsed. The greenhouse was full of crushed plaster dust. Panes of glass shivered....
But Bell was upon The Master. He had struck the little man down and stood over him, his remaining automatic replacing the grenade he had thrown.
"Ribiera's dead," he snapped, "and if I'm shot The Master dies too and you all go mad! Stand back!"
The deputies stood frozen.
"I think," said Jamison composedly, "I take a hand now. I'll pick him up, Bell.... Right. I've got him. With a grenade hanging down his back. If he jerks away from me, or I from him, it will blow his spine to bits."
"Hold him so," said Bell coldly.
He went coolly to where he could look over the heap of the collapsed wall. He saw a bundle of torn clothing that had been a man. It was flung against a cracked and tottering chimney.
"Right," he said evenly. "Ribiera's dead, all right."
He turned to the deputies, whose revolvers were still in their hands.
"The Master's carriage, please," he said politely. "To the door. You may accompany us if you please, but in other carriages. I am working for the release of all the Master's slaves, and you among them if you choose. But you can see very easily that there is no hope of the release of The Master without the meeting of my terms."
The Master spoke, softly and mildly and without fear.
"It is my order that the Senor Bell is to be obeyed. I shall return. You need have no fear of my death. My carriage."
A man went stiffly, half-paralyzed with terror, to where chattering scared servants were grouped in the awful fear that came upon the slaves of The Master at any threat to his rule.
But Bell and Paula and Jamison went slowly and cautiously—though they held the whip hand—to the entrance door of the house, and out to the entrance gate. A carriage was already before the door when they reached it, and others were drawing up in a line behind it.
"Get in," said Bell briefly. "Down to the waterfront."
He turned to the group of frock-coated, stricken men who had followed.
"Some of you men," he said coldly, "had better go on ahead and warn the police and the public generally about the certainty of The Master's death if any attempt is made to rescue him."
Francia, of Paraguay, summoned a swagger and raised his hand to the second carriage. It drew in to the curb.
"I will attend to it, Senor Bell," he said politely. "Ah, when I think that I once raised my revolver to shoot you and refrained!"
He drove off swiftly.