“You would not murder him. Your slave is not afflicted by dreams.” Hiram’s smile was extremely insinuating.
“Don’t quibble with words. It would be I who slew him, though I never struck the blow. You can seize him. Is he not asleep? Call Hasdrubal—bind Glaucon, gag him, drag him to the ship. But he must not die.”
“Very good, Excellency.” Hiram seldom quarrelled to no purpose with his betters. “Let your Lordship deign to leave this small matter to his slave. By Baal’s favour Hasdrubal and six of his crew sleep on shore to-night. Let us pray they be not deep in wine. Wait for me one hour, perhaps two, and your heart and liver shall be comforted.”
“Go, go! I will wait and pray to Hermes Dolios.”
Hiram even now did not forget his punctilious salaam before departing. Never had he seemed more the beautiful serpent with the shining scales than the instant he bent gracefully at Democrates’s feet, the red light falling on his gleaming ear and nose rings, his smooth brown skin and beady eyes. The door turned on its pivots—closed. Democrates heard the retiring footsteps. No doubt the Phœnician was taking Lampaxo with him. The Athenian staggered across the room to his bed and flung himself on it, laughing hysterically. How absolutely his enemy was delivered into his hands! How the Moræ in sending that Carthaginian ship, to do Lycon’s business and his, had provided the means of ridding him of the haunting terror! How everything conspired to aid him! He need not even kill Glaucon. He would have no blood guiltiness, he need not dread Alecto and her sister Furies. He could trust Hiram and Hasdrubal to see to it that Glaucon never re[pg 367]turned to plague him. And Hermione? Democrates laughed again. He was almost frightened at his own glee.
“A month, my nymph, a month, and you and your dear father, yes, Themistocles himself, will be in no state to answer me ‘nay,’—though Glaucon come to claim you.”
Thus he lay a long time, while the drip, drip from the water-clock in the corner told how the night was passing. The lamp flickered and burned lower. He never knew the hours to creep so slowly.
* * * * * * *
At last, a knock; Scodrus, the yawning valet, ushering in a black and bearded sailor, who crouched eastern fashion at the feet of the strategus.
“You have seized him?”