57. CHAPTER LVII.
Though those that are betrayed
Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor
Stands in worse case of woe.
— Cymbeline.
Vinal sat alone, propped and cushioned in an arm chair,
when a clerk from his office came to bring him his morning
letters. He looked over the superscriptions till he saw one
in a foreign hand. Vinal compressed his pale lips. When
the clerk had left the room, he glanced about him nervously,
tore open the letter, and read it in haste.
“The bloodsucker! Money; more money! He soaks it
up like a sponge; or, rather, I am the sponge, and he means
to wring me dry. In jail! Well, he has found his place, for
once. Six hundred dollars! That, I suppose, is to pay his
fine; to uncage the wild beast, and set him loose. I wish
he were sentenced for ten years; then he might lie there, and
rot. I must send him something — enough to keep him in
play. No, I will send him nothing. He is in trouble; and
I may turn it to account. I will write to him that, if he will
return me my letters, I will give him a thousand dollars now,
and an annuity of five hundred for six years to come. I shall
do well if I can draw the viper's teeth at that price. Then
I can breathe again; unless Morton should have suspected
the trick I played him, or — what if he should meet with
Speyer! But that is not likely, for he never knew him, nor
saw him, and Speyer will shun him as he would the plague.
I wish they had shot him in the prison, as I am told they
meant to do. There would have been one stumbling block
away; one lion out of my path. But now the sword hangs
over me by a hair; I am racked and torn like a toad under a
harrow; no rest, no peace! What if Speyer should do as he
threatens, print my letters, and placard them about the
streets! I will buy them out of his hands if it cost all I
have. And even then I shall not be safe, as long as this ruffian
is above ground. With him and Morton to haunt me,
my life is a slow death, a purgatory, a hell.”
He tore Speyer's letter into small fragments, rolled and
crushed them together, and scattered them under the grate.
