Something was coming from the broken green box! A black, spade-shaped head, with bright, hard eyes that seemed to survey the scene in a malignant stare. And then, inch by inch, a thick shining thing, like a rubber rope, wriggled slowly to the floor, coiled about upon itself, and raised its flat head. “Oh, God, look!” He turned about at the sight, that immovable grin of his upon his face, and said something in a guttural tongue. The snake was motionless, its baleful gaze first upon the sinking girl, then upon the man. Gurther’s surprise was tragic; it was as though he had been confronted with some apparition from another world. And then his hand went to his hip pocket; there was a flash of light and a deafening explosion that stunned her. The pistol dropped from his hand and fell with a clatter to the floor, and she saw his arm was stiffly extended, and protruding from the cuff of his coat a black tail that wound round and round his wrist. It had struck up his sleeve. The cloth about his biceps was bumping up and down erratically. He stood straightly erect, grinning, the arm still outflung, his astonished eyes upon the coil about his wrist. And then, slowly his other hand came round, gripped the tail and pulled it savagely forth. The snake turned with an angry hiss and tried to bite back at him; but raising his hand, he brought the head crashing down against the furnace. There was a convulsive wriggle as the reptile fell among the ashes. “Gott in himmel!” whispered Gurther, and his free hand went up to his arm and felt gingerly. “He is dead, gracious lady. Perhaps there is another?” He went, swaying as he walked, to the green box, and put in his hand without hesitation. There was another—a bigger snake, roused from its sleep and angry. He bit twice at the man’s wrist, but Gurther laughed, a gurgling laugh of pure enjoyment. For already he was a dead man; that he knew. And it had come to him, at the moment and second of his dissolution, when the dread gates of judgment were already ajar, that he should go to his Maker with this clean space in the smudge of his life. “Go, little one,” he said, grinning into the spade-face. “You have no more poison; that is finished!” He put the writhing head under his heel, and Mirabelle shut her eyes and put her hands to her ears. When she looked again, the man was standing by the door, clinging to the post and slipping with every frantic effort to keep himself erect. He grinned at her again; this man of murder, who had made his last kill. “Pardon, gracious lady,” he said thickly, and went down on his knees, his head against the door, his body swaying slowly from side to side, and finally tumbled over. She heard Oberzohn’s harsh voice from the floor above. He was calling Gurther, and presently he appeared in the doorway, and there was a pistol in his hand. “So!” he said, looking down at the dying man.