The dwarf was writhing, twisting, biting with long, venomous teeth, but the grasp of the Spaniard was as steel. His eye was not on his captive, but on Richard.
"Wallah!" was his greeting, "are you wounded?"
Richard stood erect, his hand at his side.
"Again you have saved me. The Valencia shirt was proof once more." Musa was advancing, dragging Zeyneb, who still struggled, but helpless as a mouse in a cat's mouth.
The Spaniard picked up the dagger that lay on the grass, and frowned darkly when his eye fell on the edge.
"Poison," was his biting comment. "I did indeed suppose Iftikhar Eddauleh could at least trust to clean steel, even if he must place it in the claws of such vermin as this!"
And he shook the dwarf till the latter howled with mortal fright. Mary, now that the shock was past and the danger sped, was calling out to all the saints amid hysteric laughter and crying, and Richard, too, felt very strangely—thrice now his life had thus been sought.
Musa's fingers knit round the dwarf's wretched neck, and he seemed to find joy in watching the latter's agony.
"Beard of the Prophet!" he repeated, "Iftikhar shall wait long before he find another such servant!"
"Guard, hold fast!" admonished Richard. "Surely the fiends aid him; he escaped Louis de Valmont's grasp as by magic."