UNDER FIRE
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 hell. 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, hoarsely, as if wishing 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."