“In that case we must kill him at once,” says Guy. “That’s what we’ve got to do. We must kill him for both our sakes. At all events, we must have the papers. Send for him, get him here, and I will do his business with a dirk. Then we can carry him out and toss him into the flood. He’ll float away to the ocean. There are plenty of drowned carcasses like his, so it will not be noticed.”
“No,” says the painter, “that might bring suspicion upon us. Perhaps I can suggest a better way,” and [[69]]begins to think, racking his subtle Flemish brain as it has never been racked before. Ten seconds and he cries out, hope in voice, joy in his eyes: “At the drinking bout Floris is sure to win. Floris will drink every one of the Six Drunkards of Brussels under the table, insensible, inert, lifeless. In the confusion we can assist the insensible Vasco from the table, take him to a room apparently to revive him, and steal from him the letters he has stolen from me.”
“But if Vasco wins?”
“Impossible! I’ve seen Floris drink more wine at one sitting than any other human beast on earth, I think, can hold and live.”
“But we must be prepared in case he does not,” says the Englishman; then he adds slowly: “Perhaps I can aid you; I have here,” he produces from his breast a small glass flagon of Venetian manufacture, this is protected from breakage by golden filigree work and its stopper carefully sealed, in it is a colorless, limpid fluid.
“What is it? Poison?” asks the painter. “The poison of the Borgias?”
“No, the poison of the Antilles. This is the juice of the Manchineel tree, prepared by the Indians of the Carrabees, after some secret process of their own. You know the wonderful properties of the tree; to sleep under it even for the night is death. It is peculiarly volatile, therefore I keep it sealed. I have carried this with me in case I should be captured and given over to the rack, to make me sleep so that my tortured lips can tell no secrets of my Queen. If it should happen that the painter doesn’t drink Vasco de Guerra insensible and inert, a few drops of this in his flagon will make the Spanish spy sleep forever.”
“Then if Frans Floris doesn’t succeed—the poison of the Antilles,” mutters the painter. “It is his life or ours.” After a second’s thought he continues: “I must kill mine enemy Vasco anyway. Were he only made insensible, even did I recover the letters of Louis of Nassau, he would still suspect me. Some day he would get other proof. If I don’t kill him now I must fly at once, and William the Silent will have no spy at Alva’s elbow. For my country’s cause, I stay here. [[70]]At the drinking bout Vasco de Guerra dies. The lion’s jaws gape for me. By heaven, they shall not close!”
“That’s well said,” returns Guy, briefly. “Put a dose of this into the Spanish spy.”
He presses the flagon of Manchineel poison into the painter’s hand, but suddenly looks doubtful, and asks anxiously this pertinent question: “How, by all the saints, will you get this into Vasco’s drinking cup and not into the flagons of the others?”