'How can I tell?' he asked. 'He will do what he thinks best! Ask him yourself!'
After all, she was only a slave, he said in his heart, and he was the descendant of five generations of notaries. What right had she to cross-examine him? He was the more angry with her for asking the question, because his own curiosity had tormented him for days to find an answer to it.
'Omobono,' Zoë said, affecting a very grave tone, 'you know very well what the master means to do. Now I ask you solemnly, and you are warned that you must answer me--by four----'
'No, no!' cried the secretary, in sudden distress. 'Do not ask me by that!'
'I must, Omobono; and of course you have been told what you have to expect if you refuse to help a friend over the water.'
She emphasised the last words in a way that made him tremble.
'Yes, yes--I know----' he said feebly, though he had not the least notion of the penalty.
'You will be broken to pieces by inches with a small hammer, beginning at the tips of your fingers till there is not a whole bone in your body. That is only the beginning.'
'Then your skin will be turned inside out over your head and your living heart will be cut out of your body, Omobono, and you will die.'
The secretary had already such belief in the power of those who knew the magic words that he turned pale and the cold sweat stood on his forehead.
'If all this were to be done to me now,' he faltered, 'I could not tell you what the master intends!'
'Very well,' she said; 'then you must manage that he shall come here to-day as soon as he returns from Polo's house.'
'I will tell him that you have asked to see him----'
'No. Tell him that I shall fall ill if I am shut up in these rooms any longer, and that if he does not believe it, he had better come and see how I am. He will probably take your advice. I do not choose to show you my face, but I assure you I am very pale, and I have no appetite.'
'He will come,' said the secretary confidently.
'You can also do me another service, Omobono,' continued Zoë. 'I have learned that last Friday, when you went to find Rustan about buying me, you came upon him in the beggars' quarter, near the church of Saint Sergius and Saint Bacchus, at a house where some very poor people lived. This is true, is it not?'