“Yes, Kalmar,” replied the man.

“Help!—­” The cry died at his teeth.

“No, no,” said Kalmar, shutting his fingers upon his windpipe.  “No noise.  We are to have a quiet moment here.  They are all too busy to notice us.  Listen.”  He leaned far down over the ghastly face of the wretched man beneath him.  “Shall I tell you why I am here?  Shall I remind you of your crimes?  No, I need not.  You remember them well, and in a few minutes you will be in hell for them.  Five years I froze and burned in Siberia, through you.”  As he said the word “you” he leaned a little closer.  His voice remained low and soft, but his eyes were blazing with a light as of madness.  “For this moment,” he continued gently, “I have hungered, thirsted, panted.  Now it has come.  I regret I must hurry a little.  I should like to drink this sweet cup slowly, oh so slowly, drop by drop.  But—­ah, do not struggle, nor cry.  It will only add to your pain.  Do you see this?” He drew from his pocket what seemed a knife handle, pressed a spring, and from this handle there shot out a blade, long, thin, murderous looking.  “It has a sharp point, oh, a very sharp point.”  He pricked Rosenblatt in the cheek, and as Rosenblatt squirmed, laughed a laugh of singular sweetness.  “With this beautiful instrument I mean to pick out your eyes, and then I shall drive it down through your heart, and you will be dead.  It will not hurt so very much,” he continued in a tone of regret.  “No no, not so very much; not so much as when you put out the light of my life, when you murdered my wife; not so much as when you pierced my heart in betraying my cause.  See, it will not hurt so very much.”  He put the sharp blade against Rosenblatt’s breast high up above the heart, and drove it slowly down through the soft flesh till he came to bone.  Like a mad thing, his unhappy victim threw himself wildly about in a furious struggle.  But he was like a babe in the hands that gripped him.  Kalmar laughed gleefully.  “Aha!  Aha!  Good!  Good!  You give me much joy.  Alas! it is so short-lived, and I must hurry.  Now for your right eye.  Or would you prefer the left first?”

As he released the pressure upon Rosenblatt’s throat, the wretched man gurgled forth, “Mercy!  Mercy!  God’s name, mercy!”

Piteous abject terror showed in his staring eyes.  His voice was to Kalmar like blood to a tiger.

“Mercy!” he hissed, thrusting his face still nearer, his smile now all gone.  “Mercy?  God’s name!  Hear him!  I, too, cried for mercy for father, brother, wife, but found none.  Now though God Himself should plead, you will have only such mercy from me.”  He seemed to lose hold of himself.  His breath came in thick sharp sobs, foam fell from his lips.  “Ha,” he gasped.  “I cannot wait even to pick your eyes.  There is some one at the door.  I must drink your heart’s blood now!  Now!  A-h-h-h!” His voice rose in a wild cry, weird and terrible.  He raised his knife high, but as it fell the Dalmatian, who had been amusing himself battering the Polak about during these moments, suddenly heaved the little man at Kalmar, and knocked him into the corner.  The knife fell, buried not in the heart of Rosenblatt, but in the Polak’s neck.