Marietta | Page 9

replied Zorzi.
"I am Contarini," replied the voice, and the speaker felt for Zorzi's face in the darkness, and brought it near his ear.
"From Angelo," whispered Zorzi, so softly that Contarini only heard the last word.
The door was now shut as noiselessly as before, but not by Contarini himself. He still kept his hold on Zorzi's arm.
"The token," he whispered impatiently.
Zorzi pulled the little leathern bag out of his doublet, slipped the string over his head and thrust the token into Contarini's hand. The latter uttered a low exclamation of surprise.
"What is this?" he asked.
"The token," answered Zorzi.
He had scarcely spoken when he felt Contarini's arms round him, holding him fast. He was wise enough to make no attempt to escape from them.
"Friends," said Contarini quickly, "the man who just came in is a spy. I am holding him. Help me!"
It seemed to Zorzi that a hundred hands seized him in the dark; by the arms, by the legs, by the body, by the head. He knew that resistance was worse than useless. There were hands at his throat, too.
"Let us do nothing hastily," said Contarini's voice, close beside him. "We must find out what he knows first. We can make him speak, I daresay."
"We are not hangmen to torture a prisoner till he confesses," observed some one in a quiet and rather indolent tone. "Strangle him quickly and throw him into the canal. It is late already."
"No," answered Contarini. "Let us at least see his face. We may know him. If you cry out," he said to Zorzi, "you will be killed instantly."
"Jacopo is right," said some one who had not spoken yet.
Almost at the same instant a door was opened and a broad bar of light shot across the hall from an inner room. Zorzi was roughly dragged towards it, and he saw that he was surrounded by about twenty masked men. His face was held to the light, and Contarini's hold on his throat relaxed.
"Not even a mask!" exclaimed Jacopo. "A fool, or a madman. Speak, man I Who are you? Who sent you here?"
"My name is Zorzi," answered the glass-blower with difficulty, for he had been almost choked. "My business is with the Lord Jacopo alone. It is very private."
"I have no secrets from my friends," said Contarini. "Speak as if we were alone."
"I have promised my master to deliver the message in secret. I will not speak here."
"Strangle him and throw him out," suggested the man with the indolent voice. "His master is the devil, I have no doubt. He can take the message back with him."
Two or three laughed.
"These spies seldom hunt alone," remarked another. "While we are wasting time a dozen more may be guarding the entrance to the house."
"I am no spy," said Zorzi.
"What are you, then?"
"A glass-worker of Murano."
Contarini's hands relaxed altogether, now, and he bent his ear to Zorzi's lips.
"Whisper your message," he said quickly.
Zorzi obeyed.
"Angelo Beroviero bids you wait by the second pillar on the left in Saint Mark's church, next Sunday morning, at one hour before noon, till you shall see him, and in a week from that time you shall have an answer; and be silent, if you would succeed."
"Very well," answered Contarini. "Friends," he said, standing erect, "it is a message I have expected. The name of the man who sends it is 'Angelo'--you understand. It is not this fellow's fault that he came here this evening."
"I suppose there is a woman in the case," said the indolent man. "We will respect your secret. Put the poor devil out of his misery and let us come to our business."
"Kill an innocent man!" exclaimed Contarini.
"Yes, since a word from him can send us all to die between the two red columns."
"His master is powerful and rich," said Jacopo. "If the fellow does not go back to-night, there will be trouble to-morrow, and since he was sent to my house, the inquiry will begin here."
"That is true," said more than one voice, in a tone of hesitation.
Zorzi was very pale, but he held his head high, facing the light of the tall wax candles on the table around which his captors were standing. He was hopelessly at their mercy, for they were twenty to one; the door had been shut and barred and the only window in the room was high above the floor and covered by a thick curtain. He understood perfectly that, by the accident of Angelo's name, "Angel" being the password of the company, he had been accidentally admitted to the meeting of some secret society, and from what had been said, he guessed that its object was a conspiracy against the Republic. It was clear that in self-defence they would most probably kill him, since they could not reasonably run the risk of trusting their