“Beware, my purring leopard,” said one of the men in reply, with a short and not pleasant laugh. “You may find that you call us assassins to some purpose.”
“You threaten me?” she demanded, her lips curling with contempt.
“Yes, countess, I threaten you.”
“You would murder me, doubtless, as you murdered poor Turnieff.”
“Very likely,” replied the man coolly. “Very certainly, if you defy us.”
“Bah! As if I feared you! You—was it you who struck the blow, Delorme? Was it you who stabbed Turnieff to death? You would stab me also; eh?”
“Yes. It was I. His death was necessary, and if it should happen that you were in the way, my fair one, you could die quite as easily.”
She laughed at him deliberately, mockingly. She bent forward toward him, still holding her grasp upon the curtain.
“You are a brute and a coward, Maurice Delorme!” she exclaimed. “But—have you forgotten the tin cylinder with its contents? What would you do without that? Offer to do me the least harm, and I will return it to the Russian ambassador.”
“By heaven, you shall give it up now!” cried Delorme, leaping to his feet and starting toward her; but he had not taken the second step in that direction when Juno was seized from behind, pulled backward through the open doorway and Maurice Delorme found himself facing a man instead of a woman. The man was coolly pointing a pistol at his heart and commanding him to throw up his hands or take the consequences.